by Page Buono

Linda Illsey of Linda’s Local Foods Café (formerly Cocina Linda) opens the box of store-bought thyme and holds it up. The odor isn’t recognizable until it’s right next to your nose. All she has to do is open the bag of thyme grown by a local farmer, and the mouth-watering scent fills the space. Illsey recently rebranded her restaurant around this sensation and the superiority of local foods.

 

“There is nothing you can do as a chef to get that flavor,” said Illsey. “Nature does that for you, local farmers do it.”

Farming at 6,500 feet (give or take a couple hundred) presents its fair share of challenges: temperature swings of more than 40 degrees on a given day, a four-month growing season, late frosts, early frosts and limited water availability to name a few. Farming here is not for the weak of heart, but those who’ve made the commitment to feeding their community are passionate about what they do.

“For us it’s the perfect lifestyle,” said Chuck Berry of Stone Free Farms. “We work really hard during the season, spending our days outside, and pursue other interests in the off season.” Berry has been farming in Montezuma County for 17 seasons and is the current president of the Durango Farmers Market.

Local farmer Mike Nolan, left, hands off the goods to Nature’s Oasis produce manager Jason Mitchell last Thursday.

 

Dave Banga, of Banga’s Farms, tells locals at a recent dinner, hosted by Linda’s Local Foods Café, that when he first purchased his land in Mancos it was essentially a swamp.

“It almost got the name Soggy-Bottom Farm,” Banga said, going on to describe the immense amount of work that went into to making the land arable.

And while farming the high desert certainly presents a range of challenges, the cool nights and short season eliminate many threats from pests and disease yet keep the vegetables rich in flavor.

Nationally, the average age of farmers is 57, a disconcerting trend for the United States on a whole. However, the demographic seems significantly younger for the region –attesting to a growing interest by young farmers to become more connected to the land and their food source, and to decrease their environmental impact.

For many local farmers, collaboration is key for moving forward. Whether for storage, marketing, distribution or education, the needs of a small community are better met by a communicating and collaborative local food network.

“I see a huge need for coordination,” said Gabe Eggers, of Twin Buttes, explaining that collaboration between farmers leads to more consistent supply and access for consumers.

Farmers not only band together to address a need for consistency, but to support each other. While supporting each other may help with day-to-day operations, local farmers also rely on their community to survive.

“I wish more locals would come here,” said Peg George, of Evening Star Farm, from her stall at the Durango Farmers Market. “We have enough food here for the whole community.”

George went on to talk about her love of feeding her community while she made a weekly sale to loyal customer Alison Dance of Cyprus Café.
“I want to see the day when every farmer sells out at every farmers market,” Eggers said, echoing George’s sentiments.

While the customer base at the market has grown over the years, few farmers move their entire harvest at the market. Some growers choose not to go to the market any more, and sell only wholesale to minimize their loss.

“The hardest thing to change is people’s perception that food should be cheap, versus a willingness to pay for the true value of fresh, local food,” Illsey said. “When you are paying for conventional food, you pay the tax subsidies going to big farmers, are taxed again when you buy the food at the store, pay again when you have to purchase supplements to make up for lost nutrients, and again when you go to the doctor. You’re not paying for the depletion of the soil or the contamination of the water table. That food is cheap because you aren’t paying the true cost.”

Fortunately, local restaurants are starting to step up to the plate, a trend many farmers have noticed gaining momentum in the last couple of years. And, as Berry mentioned, this demand often comes from local chefs like Chris Crowl, of Cosmo, and Vera Hansen, of Cyprus Café, who are passionate about the quality of food they serve to their customers.

 
One of the obstacles faced by restaurants that source local produce is availability (due to the short growing season). But local farmers are trying to meet their needs.

Take for example Mike Nolan, of Mountain Roots Produce, who is trying something new this year. Inspired by farmers he worked with in Santa4 Fe, Nolan will attempt to meet the local demand for year-round vegetable production by harvesting his vegetables (carrots, beats, golden turnips and rutabaga) late in the season and then storing them in a root cellar for distribution – hopefully to last through February.

A number of local restaurant owners identified the consistency of local food as another obstacle. And while many of the local farmers seek to address this issue, (Berry of Stone Free makes his restaurant accounts a priority in order to ensure consistency and availability) Eggers emphasized the importance of consumers understanding the challenges faced by local farmers and the seasonality of the food. “Our community needs to learn to eat to the rhythm of the land,” Eggers said.

Eggers also emphasized the importance of getting fresh, nutritious food to the populations who need it most, and both he and George at Evening Star, as well as many other local farmers, donate a significant amount of food to the Manna Soup Kitchen. Twin Buttes Gardens also donates to the Cooking Matters (formerly Operation Frontline) class aimed at teaching individuals with low incomes to prepare nutritious meals with local goods at a low price.

“I think there is room for more farmers, for collaboration, and for individual enterprise,” Nolan said.

And with local support ranging from Linda’s Local Foods Café, where the menu is based entirely on the availability of local food, to newcomers like Tad Brown, of Fired Up Pizza, who sources between 25-30 percent of his produce locally, and unique interventions like Tim Turner, owner of Zia Taqueria, purchasing a 30-by-80-foot greenhouse managed by Beth LaShell at Old Fort Lewis to ensure the availability of tomatoes throughout the winter, support for local farmers is growing.

Consumers can better support their local farmers by doing more of their shopping at the Saturday Farmers Market, signing up for a CSA, supporting the local restaurants and grocers who support the farmers, and by taking advantage of all of the educational opportunities offered by local farmers.  

 

“I am stoked on the local food seen here,” Brown said. “People here are doing what everyone else is talking about.”

 

Aside from providing fresh, nutritious food, many involved in farming and the local food movement see the need to provide food locally in order to ensure the community continues to thrive.

 

“We can wait until there is a crisis, or we can act now to ensure that we can produce enough food locally to meet our needs,” said Turner, who has been sourcing locally since Zia opened in 2005. “We’re on the right track, but I think we all wish some things that need to happen would have happened yesterday,” Turner continued. “These farmers work so hard. My heart really goes out to them.”

 

But they’ll only stay and grow their efforts if the community shows its support in return.

 

“Every time you shop, you are voting with your dollar,” Illsey said. “You are voting to maintain industrial food systems, or to support the community by ensuring farmers are able to stay.”

 

Whether it is “if” or “when’ the trucks stop coming, local restaurant owners, farmers and citizens alike recognize the importance of empowering the local food system to support the population and the economic impact of dollars spent locally.

 

 “It is a matter of tightening up the purse strings on the other end rather than sacrificing local goods,” Brown said, emphasizing that fresh, local food can be sold at a reasonable cost to customers if restaurant owners accept less significant profit margins.

 

 “There is no way to lose by buying local,” Illsely said. “It just doesn’t make sense to do it any other way.”