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Farmer Dan Hobbs says Pueblo County is "as good as it gets."
Hobbs,
whose 10-acre farm is one of only a handful of certified-organic farms
in the Arkansas Valley, is a fifth-generation Coloradan who grew up in
Denver, and the first farmer in his family. He farmed on the Pecos
River in New Mexico before buying his Avondale farm in 2000. This
area's long growing season and water availability -- he has Bessemer
Ditch water -- influenced his decision to move here.
The
well-established agricultural infrastructure is a bonus: When Hobbs
went looking for a vine thresher so he could save vegetable-crop seeds,
he found an old and rusty but perfectly usable one right up the road.
"We
can grow just about anything down here except leafy greens; it gets too
hot for them and they turn bitter," he says. "Pueblo County has a long
history of wet-seeded-crop seed production. These are the ones that
have pulp; they grow under hot conditions -- watermelons, squash,
peppers, tomatoes."
Hobbs, 39, discovered his love for growing food as a young man when he
worked with local farmers in Ecuador and Paraguay through the volunteer
organization Amigos de las Americas, and while attending Earlham
College in Richmond, Ind., where students managed a 35-acre farm.
"It
took me 20 years to teach myself how to farm," he says. Hobbs
Family Farm was certified organic in 2001 -- the land had to be free of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides for three years -- and Hobbs was
geared up to start production when the drought of 2002 slowed things
down. He soon rebounded. "We
started out growing fresh veggies but now we're about 50-50 veggies and
seeds. Most of the seed is contracted out and the veggies go mainly to
Colorado Springs, to Whole Foods, restaurants and farmers markets." Hobbs
has some buyers in New Mexico and says Denver is a huge market for
organic produce, but high gas prices have driven transportation costs
way up.
Pueblo's organic market share is "pretty small," he says, so
selling in Colorado Springs makes sense. Hobbs
has a loose association with four other organic producers in the
valley, the Arkansas Valley Organic Growers, and they buy boxes
together, market their produce together and help each other with
transportation. He's
also executive director of the Organic Seed Alliance, an organization
based in Port Townsend, Wash., that trains farmers in the basics of
saving seed, plant breeding and crop improvement through its Heirlooms
of Tomorrow projects.
The organization has donated organic seed to
projects in Kenya, Colombia, Guatemala, Senegal, Malawi and elsewhere. "We're trying to raise the bar on organic seed," Hobbs says. "It's sort of an undeveloped aspect of organic farming."
Hobbs'
main crop is garlic. He grows seven varieties, including Music Pink, a
very spicy German garlic; Silverwhite, which keeps extremely well; and
Chesnok Red, which is good for roasting. He just finished the garlic
harvest, and 2 acres' worth of garlic plants, loosely bunched, hung in
the drying shed before being shipped out.
The biggest heads will go to
the seed market and the medium-size will go to Whole Foods and
restaurants. Next,
he'll harvest banana and rose fingerling potatoes at the end of July,
cut the hay, turn the cover crop, and plant next year's garlic in
October and irrigate it heavily in November. Before fall, he'll also
harvest the spaghetti squash he's growing for seed stock for Seeds of
Change, a New Mexico organic research farm and seed supplier.
"The
farm is down for the winter, and when the ditch comes on in May, it's
time to irrigate the garlic, plant root crops, plant wet-seeded crops
and beans and other fresh-market stuff," he explains.
Because he doesn't use chemical fertilizers, Hobbs relies on crop
rotation to keep the ground fertile and productive and he uses foliar
sprays made from sea kelp as well as compost and aged manure, though he
doesn't keep livestock and has to haul the manure to the farm. He's happy farming 10 acres, but says he'd be happier with 20 acres.
"Land
is expensive, though. You have to be so smart and so intensive at
managing this small an amount. You have to have a whole lot of
flexibility." Hobbs says organic production is growing at about 20 percent a year and there are small farms that are doing well.
"Farming on a smaller scale is still a struggle; you have to work at
it. I think it's an interesting time to be in agriculture, with all the
attention to 'eat local' and 'buy fresh.' For the first time in years,
agriculture is getting its due." He
says local conventional farmers regarded him with some skepticism at
first, but over the years, some have contacted him for more information
about organic farming.
Among the people working with Hobbs on his farm are interns from Colorado College who want to learn about organic farming.
"Hopefully, we'll get a whole new generation of farmers on the land," he says.
More
information about Hobbs Family Farm is available at www.colorado
garlic.com; more information about Organic Seed Alliance is at www.seed
alliance.org. |
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