Fresh Faces & Fresh Produce

Alongside other farmers at the Boulder County Farmers Market, working to set up their produce neatly on top of wood-finished tables adorned with purple tablecloths, is Kyle Stewart and Emmie Bender. It’s not quite 8:15 on a July morning in Longmont, Colorado and the glowing, still soft rays of sun shine down on some ninety plus canopy topped tents shading the many vendors and their fresh produce.  

Already, the ten-foot-wide walkways of the market are milling with shoppers, and a colorful farmstand on the far north end of the market attracts the eyes of the earliest produce pickers. A tin of fresh cut flowers sits atop the back corner of the display, and every other square inch of real estate is covered with carrots, turnips, onions, beets, leeks, snap peas, kale, and pre-packaged buckets of “sassy mix.” The colorful farmstand has more customers than two people can attend to at once and the market hasn’t even been open for an hour. The stand’s popularity and superior presentation together belie an important fact: it's Off Beet Farm’s first season selling at the Boulder County Farmers Markets (BCFM), and just eight months ago the farm in question didn't even exist.

Small operations oftentimes cannot find enough land, equipment, or infrastructure to sustain themselves and ultimately fall into the hands of the larger corporate players.

“There was quite a while where we didn't know if we were gonna have access," said Bender. “And I mean, it's really special that we have access to all the infrastructure that we do: greenhouse, wash station, cooler tools. We have access to a small BCS walk behind tractor ... stuff like that … we’re really lucky that we were able to find this situation.”

The two farmers are extremely grateful for the situation they are in, the access to the land they share, and the privilege of having the equipment/infrastructure to ensure their crops and yields are as robust as possible. In the eyes of Bender and Stewart, they have struck gold with Off Beet Farm.

Historically speaking, disadvantaged and marginalized communities have found themselves lost when trying to navigate the world of agriculture. In Boulder, Colorado, despite minor representation from underrepresented groups, most of the farming is controlled by white men, as is uniform across the United States. Boulder is a rather diverse community, and due to this the initial thought was that underrepresented groups would be rather well-represented in the farmers market scene. After careful analysis and inquiry, these groups are shockingly small in the grand scheme of those representing themselves at the markets in Boulder and Longmont.

Although the BCFM does not directly collect data on the demographics of their vendors, some vendors do self-identify as belonging to affinity groups. Based on the BCFM website, at least five of 32 producers and farmers openly identify with traditionally underrepresented groups or communities. The farmers and fresh food producers who self-identify this way include Simply Fresh Microgreens, Rough and Ready Farm, Off Beet Farm, and Morton’s Organic Orchard.

Unfortunately, the demographic breakdown found in Boulder County’s farmers market scene appears to be no different from the numbers found across the country. An article from USAFacts.org says, “Farmers in the U.S. are for the most part either White or Hispanic, with 95.4% of all farmers falling in that category. Hispanic or Latino farmers, regardless of race, make up 3.3% of all producers. Even fewer agriculture producers are American Indian or Alaskan Native or Black: 1.7% and 1.3%, respectively.” The article was composed based on information provided by the U.S.D.A., B.L.S., and B.E.A.

Like many other farming operations across the country, owners Kyle Stewart and Emmie Bender started the Off Beet operation to further explore their passion for farming and sustainable agricultural practices. The two millennials and first-time business owners had the panache to pull the idea off in Boulder County – one of the most expensive counties in the country for owning and working land. Although both Stewart and Bender have been immersed in working farmland for the better part of a decade, it was just last year that they decided to start their own operation. For Stewart, it was working under other farmers who dictated the pace and style of the work that motivated him to make a change.

“I got into farming by accident,” claimed Stewart. “I needed a job in high school and my brother worked on a farm, so I just fell into that.”

Bender has a family history with farming too, as she first learned about growing food from gardening with her mom and grandma. Then a college education edged her back toward the food system. “I started studying food systems and environmental sciences in college and got more and more interested in farming,” said Bender.

But besides a family history with the trade and a passion for sustainable agriculture, the two farmers share another pertinent feature: their identity as queer individuals. Emblazoned on their T-shirts and farmers markets banners is the farm’s proud slogan that points towards embracing one’s identity: “The Gayest Little Farm in Boulder.”

“That identity doesn't go away, no matter what we're doing or where we're working,” explained Bender, when asked about the motivations for emphasizing the LGBTQ nature of ownership.

The pair feel fortunate to have that kind of reception and admit that isn't the case for all queer folks in all spaces. To Bender and Stewart, it appears that the business play on their queer identity has begun paying dividends in more ways than financial success. The message about Off Beet Farm is spreading throughout the queer and farming communities in Boulder County which helps their operation grow consistently.

“We didn't really know what it was going to be like going to markets,” said Bender. But “people have been so excited about our tagline; they’ve gone bananas over it!”

According to Stewart and Bender, the fellow vendor community has also welcomed them with open arms at both the Boulder and Longmont locations. One fellow produce vendor has helped them out with recommendations of what to sell, how to price their goods, and so forth. Despite the apparent success of the farm’s first year, it hasn’t been without its challenges. Perhaps one of the farm’s largest? Finding land. Bender and Stewart sent out ‘cold email’ inquiries to various landowners in the area and received no response in most cases. One day, they got a response from a woman named Amanda at 63rd Street Farm, who had a plot of land available near the outskirts of eastern Boulder County. Stewart and Bender believe they lucked out with this connection: not only did 63rd Street Farm have land available for lease; the agreement also came with access to irrigation, a greenhouse, and walk-in cooler; all essential and money-saving pieces of infrastructure for a first-year farm.

Neither Bender nor Stewart had any prior experience when it came to running a business – which brought about a plethora of issues from accounting to managing supply lists and miscellaneous paperwork related to affiliations with Boulder County Farmers Markets. But Bender and Stewart, plucky that they are, figured out how to build their plane as they flew it.

“Sometimes we would talk to a business advisor, and they would say, ‘well, I wouldn't have done it like that’” said Stewart, mimicking the calculated doubt of a financial professional. “And we would say, “well, we already did.'”

Also new to the local agriculture space in Boulder County is Yellow Fellow Farms, a small backyard producer, run by the fresh faced 23-year-old farmer, Luke Downey. He named the farm after his late mother, who nicknamed Downey ‘Yellow Fellow’ when he was a child due to yellow being his favorite color. A new guest vendor at the Longmont Market, Yellow Fellow appears just once a month this summer to sell fresh produce to the public. The owner of the farm, Luke Downey, decided he would forgo a college education and pursue his dream of running his own farming operation.

“I want to create a sort of parallel food universe where people can still enjoy all those same nutritional staples, but grow them in a responsible way,” said Downey.

Downey posited that “The goal is to someday have all major animal types: pigs, chicken, cows, and sheep and all of their secondary products: wool, milk, leather, etc., while still providing grains and vegetables to complete a full diet.”

Coupling his passion for agriculture and his YouTube-based knowledge of the industry, Luke took the idea of starting a farm to his parents. With the help of his dad, who supplied the land, Luke has begun farming organically sourced produce on a small plot in Boulder County. In fact, he is producing everything out of a corner of his dad’s backyard which he hopes to grow out of as the operation expands soon. His business is in its earliest stages of infancy and has a lot of expansion that needs to take place, requiring him to be a multi-faceted businessman, before becoming a profitable endeavor.

“I have to take all the hats of the middlemen and put them on myself. I have to be diligent in research in how to do accounting, I need to know how to do marketing and website design, business planning and management, seed starting and saving, hydrology, biology, ecology; there is an unbelievable number of fields of study which farming touches. … I need to be expert level proficient in many fields just to compete,” Downey explained. “That’s just to get my foot in the door to sell to a customer directly to make enough money for it to be a business possibility. It’s still not guaranteed,” he went on.

Downey has previously taken his crops to be sold at the market located in Longmont, but as of now can only supply enough produce for one visit per month on Saturday mornings. He has hopes of expanding operations and becoming a more frequent vendor of the Longmont location in the future. Downey uncovered a passion for sustainable farming at a young enough age that he hopes significant progress can be made by himself and other young farmers in his generation.

“My whole dream is to heal as much land as I can in the time I have,” said Downey. For those young, new-generation farmers like Downey, Stewart, and Bender, the conversations and efforts concerning sustainable farming continue to be crucial to their potential successes in a changing farming landscape.

The impacts of traditional farming practices, like using fossil fuels and herbicides/pesticides, contribute to global warming disproportionately more from the multi-billion-dollar American corporate farming endeavors like CHS Inc. and Cargill than the impacts of the smaller players. Meanwhile, the presence of corporate farmland creates problems related to profitability and margins for smaller farmers.

From studying agriculture and farming, Downey learned "that for every dollar spent in the grocery store, the farmer that grew that product makes only seven cents. It’s pretty much a dead-end gig because they are buying their inputs at retail prices and selling at the bottom of the barrel wholesale prices," he said. Downey, Bender, and Stewart alike all share this common problem: trying to take on the corporate players who have access to deep pockets, billion-dollar budgets, and large economies of scale farming advantages.

Even when small scale farmers like Off Beet and Yellow Fellow do make it past the production stage, there is another hurdle to scale: vending. That’s where local farmers markets and individuals like Mackenzie Sehlke come in. Sehlke, the Executive Director of Boulder County Farmers Markets (BCFM), claims that one of her major roles is supporting vendors in both the Longmont and Boulder locations.

Sehlke reflects optimism about who shows up to participate in the space. “There is a mix of local businesses who are able to participate in our farmers markets. It is a real privilege to see the ways that diversity shows up either in gender, sexual orientation, or racial and ethnic background,” Sehlke explained.

To further support the diversity and inclusivity of the space, BCFM has taken a few recent initiatives. For the first time this year, BCFM now offered applications for potential vendors in both English and Spanish.

BCFM and its vendors also partner together to offer “about half of their operation in terms of money raised and distributed, that goes towards supporting low-income access to fresh quality local food,” according to Sehlke. BCFM has put in place a “shared success financial model.” This means that vendors pay a share of their gross sales based on their category. For producers, in particular, which are folks who are farming, ranching, or raising bees, those are the lowest of our percentage sales collected because we are a farmer-focused market, Sehlke explained.

She continued, “The way we ensure that we support low-income access to fresh quality local food is by participating in the Double Food Bucks program…We are also a leader in this state, and nationally, with our WIC doubling program where we offer an additional $20 per every visit for WIC (Women, Infants, & Children) customers who are shopping at our market.” According to Sehlke, accommodating a wide representation of backgrounds with both customers and vendors is important to the mission and successes shared at BCFM, a point that’s pertinent given the history of farming in the country.

“Colonialism and land dispossession are present factors that increase vulnerability and create economic challenges for tribes,” says Kyle Whyte, who is an environmental justice scholar at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and co-author of an article regarding the current state of native tribes’ loss of their land in the United States. The colonial beginnings of the agricultural industry in America meant tribal communities faced struggles in properly sourcing their food, which persist today for many native populations across the United States. It’s these facts that make it so essential for new faces in farming to be supportive.

That’s where the work of Rosalind May comes in, who is the executive director of the Colorado Farmers Market Association (COFMA). A primary objective of COFMA, according to May, is to maintain “a focus on sustainable and regenerative practices from younger growers." Based on this description Yellow Fellow and Off Beet Farms are just the types of growers her organization aims to support. This support comes in many forms, from assistance filling out permits and applications for vending, to running workshops for newer agricultural businesses. COFMA additionally helps lobby local and state governments in ways that support their farmers.

May alluded to the vital role that COMFA plays in connecting its clients with organizations working in statewide food markets. “The other main piece of what we do, we’re the link from market managers and their vendors to state agencies and organizations,” said May when speaking of the work done at COMFA. COMFA allows food producers in Colorado opportunities for broader exposure and a chance to connect with customers looking to purchase their products.

The strength of the COFMA perhaps was best seen in the summer of 2020, amidst the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated fears of public gatherings. “All but one of our farmers markets across the state stayed open that summer,” says May. Markets staying open was only made possible because of the existing relationships between COFMA, farmers, and legislatures. In this way, May’s office was able to do what they do best.

In discussing her role and that of the COFMA, May also hits on a key reflection about the markets that feels common amongst herself, Sehlke, and the new producers. “I think that direct connection with your customers is one of the huge benefits, it's where producers can build relationships directly with their customers,” said May.

This sentiment rings just true with Bender at Off Beet Farm as well. “Growing food for people”, said Bender, smiling - and seeing them appreciate it at the market – “that just really fills my cup