Brittany Meyer, of Open Sky Farm in Mancos, stands outside her geodesic dome recently. Despite snow and frigid temps, the climate inside the dome is mild enough to grow tomatoes, greens and other assorted vegetables in the dead of winter. The produce is used to feed clients of Open Sky’s wilderness therapy program./Photo by Paul Ferrell

Dome on the range

Year-round geodesic agriculture taking root

by Paul Ferrell

Brittany Meyer spends much of the winter where it’s warm and humid – just outside Mancos.  The 26-year-old Meyer is the farm manager for the Open Sky Farm where she is growing food inside a geodesic dome greenhouse. “I planted tomatoes in September at 7,000 feet,” she says. “I’ve been harvesting red tomatoes up until this month. I just pulled them because they were getting old, and I’ve got some new ones coming in. It hasn’t froze once, with no electric heater or propane heater or natural gas – nothing.”

Meyer’s spacious dome is 16½ feet high and 42 feet across. Its 1,300 square feet of floor space is kept warm with a battery, not an electrical battery, but a “climate battery.”

The climate battery is simply the soil beneath the greenhouse that is charged by the changing seasons. In the summer, the greenhouse’s glass (actually translucent poly-carbonate panels) traps warm air inside the dome. Two electric fans push the warm air 4 feet down into the cool earth through two large plastic pipes. Underground, the warm air is forced into several narrow, perforated pipes. The warm air inside the pipes cools down as it passes through the cool soil, and the soil around the pipes gradually grows warmer. The small pipes are attached to two more large pipes at the other end of the greenhouse that go back up to the surface. By the time the air returns to the surface it has transferred most of its heat into the soil below, so cooler air emerges. In the wintertime the fans blow cool air, from the dome’s interior, down into the warmed soil and warmer air emerges. “That’s why we call it a battery,” she says. “We charge it in the summertime so it will heat it in the wintertime, and we charge it in the wintertime so it will cool it in the summertime.” 

During last December’s cold snap, when nighttime temperatures dropped to minus-13 degrees, the interior of the greenhouse was 42. “We estimate these climate batteries decrease our energy needs by about 75 percent because you’re just using that passive thermal mass,” she explains.  “Each of these fans is one amp. You can imagine how much it would take to heat this if you were using an electric heater or a natural gas heater.” A typical room-sized electric space heater at maximum setting draws about 12 amps.

In addition to the thermal mass of the climate battery, the dome contains a 2,500-gallon above-ground pool that further moderates the interior temperature. The pool is 11 feet in diameter and 4 feet deep.  In the summer, the water is shaded by a wooden deck 3 feet above it. In the winter, when the sun is low in the sky, it absorbs the sun’s rays. 4

Meyer grows aquatic plants and raises goldfish in the pool. “Sometimes I harvest a bunch of plants,” she says, “then I’ve got all this biomass that I can create compost with.” The goldfish excrement is also put to good use, “It creates this really rich fertilizer that I can feed the crops with.” 

Meyer holds a broccoflower, a hybrid of cauliflower and broccoli, that she has grown. Using plastic pipes that exchange air underground, the greenhouse is able to regulate its temperature, keeping things cool in the summer and warm in the winter./Photo by Paul Ferrell

The crops are grown in raised beds and watered with a drip irrigation system. Currently, with the shorter daylight hours of February, Meyer is concentrating on growing fewer tomatoes and more cold-hearty vegetables. Her long list of crops include: kale, chard, spinach, bock choy, carrots, beets, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, fennel, parsley, cilantro, peas, onions and various salad greens. Planting is done in succession ensuring a constant yield of fresh vegetables. “Every week I harvest about $120 worth of produce, wholesale. Every single week I’m planting, harvesting and replanting in here.” 

The harvest contributes to the food supply for students of Open Sky Wilderness Therapy, for which Meyer works. The program, which takes kids into the wilderness for nine to 10 weeks, operates on the premise that deep and profound healing can happen in the wilderness.

Open Sky also believes that a big part of a person’s health and well-being comes from nutrition, she says, and the dome is a new part of Open Sky’s dietary program.  Construction was completed last summer and seeds were planted in the fall. Meyer hopes that in the future fresh vegetables are not the only benefit for the students.  “Maybe someday we can get to the point where we have the infrastructure where they’ll actually be able to come and visit and connect the horticultural therapy with the wilderness experience.”

She sees horticulture as therapeutic. “Putting your hand in the soil releases serotonin,” she says.  “Doing these things when we’re interacting with food, when we’re growing food, is actually good for us on a deeper level than just the nourishment we get from the food that we eat. It’s rewarding in my soul basically.” 

But more importantly, sustainable agriculture is good for the earth, too, she said. “Instead of a truck shipping food from Mexico, I built this system that, by and large, uses things that I’ve got here on the property. All the soil underneath our feet, all that thermal mass, and with this simple structure I grow food year round,” she said.

Meyer is not just concerned with her corner of the world, she thinks globally.  “I really think it’s important for our world to change our agriculture system,” she said.  She sees a tangled web of problems with modern agricultural: GMO crops, monoculture, petrochemical fertilizer, herbicides and insecticides, to name a few.  She believes the answer is sustainable ecological agriculture. “It’s saying, ‘How can we create an agriculture system that self-regulates? How can we set it up so that it will take care of itself? So that we don’t have to constantly be putting in inputs. Inputs being time, labor, money, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, even diesel for our tractors.”      

The idea of making the shift to sustainable agriculture is taking root across the nation and around the world.  The word “sustainable” now seems to be supplanting the word “green” in matters concerning the environment, but maybe it’s the word “love” that’s most important.  Meyer says, “I love this planet and I want to see it go on and thrive.”