![]() ![]() “We know we have ethics and people can see that in our faces at the market.”Īfter 20 years under the fluorescent lights of an office at CSU, accountant Vickie Marlatt asked herself “what really made me happy as a kid.” The answer: “Gardening with my dad.” She decided to work under the sun in Frederick, just northeast of the intersection of county roads 15 and 52, where a sign announces the “Frederick Village Market, 90,000 square feet of retail” coming soon. “We don’t need a sticker, we have much more than a sticker,” he says. “We want to work the land respectfully,” says Theisen, plucking a carrot out of the ground, brushing off the dirt, and snapping it in two with his teeth.Ĭolona is organic, but not certified, a process that costs too much, says Theisen. He has a tractor, but prefers not to drive it. ![]() He grows heirloom varieties of pole beans, broccoli, lettuce and other greens, and tiptoes through the rows to weed by hand. With his wide-brimmed straw hat, jeans and overgrown mustache, the 30-year-old farmer looks like he strode out of the late 1800s, and farms like it too. While Rushlow runs Cafe Ardour in Old Town Fort Collins, Theisen applies the sustainable farming techniques he learned at Pacha- mama (Longmont) and Guidestone (Loveland) farms to 2 acres of land that lay fallow for 20 years. While the classic BLT recipe calls for iceberg or romaine, we chose Colona Community Farm’s mikola butterhead for its red-flecked green leaves and almost bitter flavor.Īt this tiny plot along the Poudre River in LaPorte, just north of Fort Collins, Nicolas Theisen and Sara Rushlow are taking it small and slow. Integral to the BLT, lettuce adds more than a pretty contrast to the tomatoes. It has a porkier flavor, closer to a pork chop than the typical grocery store bacon. “It doesn’t have all the nitrites and nitrates in it.”Īnd because it lacks those preservatives that turn pork products pink, the bacon is brownish-red. “We use smoking and sea salt and that’s just about it,” says Haynes, warning that his bacon might taste different than expected. The hogs are slaughtered at Steving Meats in Kersey, and Wayne Yauk smokes the meat at his butcher shop in Windsor. You don’t even smell his hogs - they aren’t raised in buildings.” “It took me two years to find a producer who raised pork the way we raise our buffalo,” says Haynes, who has spent the past 17 years connecting with small producers of free- range, grass-fed and finished animals. His bacon, for example, comes from Jess Bond’s 007 Ranch in Kersey, where the pigs eat home-grown alfalfa and corn. “They want to know how old was the animal, what was it fed?”Īnd Haynes can tell them. His customers want meat with no hormones, antibiotics or steroids. “If you want good food it can’t be cheap, and if you want cheap food, it probably won’t be good,” he says. Ask him about the chicken, beef, lamb, bison, fish and pork he sells in the little shop on his Dacono bison ranch and you’ll get an education on what “natural” really means.Īs a few bison graze just beyond the screen door, Haynes explains his philosophy. ![]()
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