Full circle

Harrison recently started a new job at the Cloud City Farm in Leadville. This is a third job in addition to his continued work at Community Threads, where he does shop chores and runs errands for Smokey Burgess, and City on a Hill, where he is learning sourdough baking.

Cloud City Farm is operated by the Cloud City Conservation Center, known locally as “C4” and supported by Lake County. At 10,000 feet altitude where summer typically lasts about a week, most of the growing is done in high tunnels and greenhouses.

There’s a serendipitous story behind all this . . .

Back in 2011-’12, I was the media specialist for Arkansas Valley Organic Growers, a co-op of seven organic farms in the Arkansas River Valley. One of the things I did for AVOG was produce a newsprint magazine called The Farm Beet. This was undoubtedly the best journalism job I ever had — and I have had more than a few. Besides being fun, the work itself held redeeming value as opposed to laboring for specialty publications like Annie’s Attic and The Pueblo Chieftain, neither of which I would ever admit to on a resume. But I digress . . .

For The Farm Beet, I mostly traveled around to these farms taking pictures and talking to the growers about their crops, methods and philosophies. Sometimes Harrison tagged along on these farm visits. He was around 7 years old then.

One of the AVOG farms was Venetucci Farm in Colorado Springs, where Susan Gordon and Patrick Hamilton were practicing regenerative agriculture, transforming former mono-crop pumpkin fields into a biodiverse operation where improved soil health produced high-nutrition vegetables and meats for local markets.

In addition to touring farms, I also visited high-end restaurants, like Blue Sage Cafe, The Warehouse and The Broadmoor, to interview talented chefs using local AVOG ingredients in their dishes. I never left any of these places hungry in any sense of the word. All of this information-gathering went into the production of The Farm Beet, which at the time was leading-edge reportage on the local food movement in Colorado.

Fast forward about 15 years to a couple weeks ago when I took Harrison for his interview at Cloud City Farm. I introduced myself to the farm manager, Sarah Hamilton. She seemed familiar but I couldn’t quite place her. Then Sarah said that we actually had met previously. She went on to explain that her parents managed Venetucci Farm when I was doing the aforementioned journalism. It all came back to me. We even published the essay Sarah wrote for her Boettcher Scholarship application, “My Old Winter Coat,” in The Farm Beet!

Full-circle — Sarah now carries on the local foods mission at Cloud City Farms, surely the highest altitude community farm in the nation, and Harrison is helping out with tending plants, landscaping tasks and harvesting. It’s meaningful work in a positive environment, and Sarah seems to project a remarkable calmness.

From The Farm Beet to C4, I remain grateful for all the people who have taken a chance on Harrison, and myself, over the years.