Lyons-area CSA grows more than vegetables

by Katherine Weadley

CSA is a new term for an ancient idea. Individuals and families join Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) farms by purchasing weekly shares of produce as members of the farm. CSA members share the costs of farming, as well as the bounty or losses of the growing season.

In older, agricultural-based societies CSAs were a well-established principle. Today, CSAs are growing in popularity as people realize the health and environmental benefits of eating locally grown, fresh organic produce.

Stonebridge Farm, a CSA just east of Lyons, was established in 1993 by John Martin and Kayann Short long before eating locally was in vogue. Martin likes math puns and growing organic vegetables, but not necessarily eating them. Short likes knitting and composting. When they aren’t teaching at the University of Colorado they run their organic CSA. Martin is a math professor and Short is a professor of women’s literature and writing.

Stonebridge offers seasonal memberships of organic produce, herbs, and flowers. Every Saturday from early May to late October members come to the farm for their share of the vegetables picked fresh that morning. Offerings may include such items as cucumbers, carrots, basil, beets, and kale and a variety of beans, Jerusalem artichokes, dragon-tongue beans and heirloom tomatoes “Heirloom tomatoes look so different, but they taste great” said Short.

Short and Martin use seasonal workers to help pick their produce early Saturday morning before members arrive. However, these seasonal workers are locals who exchange their labor for a share of food. “We have about 25 people who barter for us. We had heard about the bartering system from CSAs in the 1970s. We have long term barterers,” said Short.

Stonebridge not only grows vegetables for CSA members but for the Eagle Rock School in Estes Park. Eagle Rock is an alternative school for kids, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Recently Short and Martin taught the class “Farm, Food and Forgiveness,” at Stonebridge for Eagle Rock students. “The kids were impressed by the fact that you could pick a vegetable directly from the ground and eat it. Now they are helping us rebuild our herb garden,” said Short.

Also on the farm next to the community building, the straw-bale outbuilding, a wood castle and many swings, stands a newly built stage. Country-rock musician Coyote Joe built the outdoor stage so he could have a concert there to celebrate the 15^th year of the CSA at Stonebridge last summer. Eco-folkers Jimmy Sferes and Jennifer White often grace this stage. “We usually have one or two concerts a season and they are open to the public,” said Short.

Short, who has 25 years experience teaching writing, life-writing, and women’s literature is developing the genre of eco-biography as a bridge between her writing, teaching, and farming lives. This May she plans a three-day workshop on the grounds of the farms. According to Short “an eco-biography may even be within an urban, rather than rural or wilderness, setting and may challenge the dichotomy of human versus nature.”

Along with providing food, Stonebridge also works to educate the public about the organic food production and its place in a healthy community. “Members not only discover the pleasure of eating seasonally, but also help sustain agricultural land and preserve family farms in Boulder County,” said Martin. “We emphasize the ‘C’ in CSA and we want the farm to be a place for people to spend extra time, to learn about farming,” said Short.

Another example of a CSA is the Pachamama Farm in Longmont. Pachamama is Quechua for “earth mother.” Quechua is a Native American language of South America. Pachamama also sells their produce at the Boulder’s Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays. The cost to join the Pachamama CSA is $450 for a regular-size share and $650 for a large-size share. Pachamama, unlike Stonebridge, does not offer a barter system or a discount for people who work on the farm. Both Stonebridge and Pachamama have waiting lists for their CSAs.

Not all CSAs offer exclusively organic produce. Miller Farms, located in Platteville on 300 acres, just recently added 10 acres to grow organic food to offer to their CSA members. Miller Farms, which is open to the public, sells their produce at over 25 farmer’s markets in Colorado.

Short says that CSAs are not in competition with each other. “We’re glad that people have found out about CSAs and are eating locally. We hope that Boulder County will help new farmers develop CSAs in this area. We’re all full. We’re not competing with each other,” she said.

Lyons resident Betsy Burton works for the environmental non-profit Green Heart Institute in Boulder. Last year her organization and another non-profit organization, Boulder County Going Local! helped put together the three-day event “Renaissance of the Local” on the Planet Bluegrass ranch in Lyons. This event highlighted environmental practices, including CSAs and farmer’s markets.

While Burton isn’t sure if there will be another “Renaissance of the Local,” this year she and her partner Mike Whipp are having a farmer’s renaissance of their own. Starting in the middle of July they began a small farmer’s market on Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. on their self-named “Lyons Farmette” at the north-east end of Lyons.

Their farmer’s market offerings include basil, dill, peas, beans, squash, beets, onions and fresh eggs among other produce. “We have the farmette; it is doing great and producing a lot so we thought ‘why not?’ So here we go. This is our first year and we view ourselves as more of a farm stand than a farmer’s market,” said Burton.

Not only do they sell produce but they also give it away. “Fifty percent of what we grow goes to the Boulder Homeless Shelter,” said Burton. Whipp, who has a background in agriculture, and Lyons resident Peter Rousseau are the main farmers. Burton, along with Lyons resident Carol Conigliaro call themselves the “chicken chicks,” and are in charge of the eggs. “We also have almost 60 free-range chickens, three peacocks, sheep, and one duck named Ping,” Burton said.

At the moment only produce from the Lyons Farmette is sold at their farmer’s market. However, Burton says they would welcome other growers to be a part of it. “It will take community support for this to work and we’ll see how it goes this summer and fall. It is all about local sustainability and fresh wonderful food – we feel that is important,” said Burton.

The original hand-canning "facility" at Oskar Blues

Oskar Blues begins brewing in Longmont

By Katherine Weadley

A batting cage to the left, a basketball hoop to the right, skateboards here and there and in the back sit big shiny metal vats full of beer-to-be. This is what the inside of the new Oskar Blues canning and brewing facility in Longmont looks like. “Our brewers are excited because they have new toys to play with,” said spokesperson Marty Jones referring to the brewing equipment and not the actual toys.

There are five brewers on hand and around a dozen employees at the 36,000 square foot Oskar Blues Longmont facility. “Some of the employees rotate between Lyons and Longmont,” said Jones.

The new brewing facility on Pike Street in Longmont officially put out its first batch of beer on Friday, April 4^th. According to Marty Jones, spokesperson for Oskar Blues the new facility will produce 30,000 barrels of beer annually and can 250 beers a minute. Last year the facility in Lyons produced 12,409. “Considering how small the Lyons facility is that’s actually an amazing amount,” he said.

A law in Colorado states that one person can’t own two breweries so Dale sold the Oskar Blues brewpub in to his wife Kristi Katechis. So now there are two Oskar Blues entities. One is the Oskar Blues Brewing Company which produces the beer in Longmont. The other is Oskar Blues Grille & Brewery which is the brew pub in Lyons. One of his long-time employees, Wayne Bowers, also owns a piece of the brew pub through profit sharing.

“I have no interest in selling Oskar Blues brew pub now or in the future. It’s the heart and soul of everything I do. I love that restaurant and hope my kids run it some day,” said Dale. Although his major brewing and canning facility is now in Longmont, Dale has no plans to stop brewing in Lyons. “By shifting the canning production to Longmont we’ll be able to make different beer in Lyons. We haven’t been able to brew some of the other beers we wanted because we’ve been so focused on producing our three canned beers: Dale’s Pale Ale; Old Chub; and Gordon’s.” Dale said.

Dale bought his original brewing facilities in Lyons from the Great Divide Brewing Company. “Now we’re going to find someone like us, who is small and wants to grow and sell them our current system in Lyons,” said Jones. “We’ll sell our current brewing facilities but buy something smaller and more efficient to use in Lyons.” Dale plans to expand the beer line in the restaurant and play around with some of the recipes. "Some of those beers could possibly become canned beers in future," said. Also in the works is an attached tasting room to the Longmont brewery. Jones said that people in Longmont don't have a place to taste Oskar Blue's beer and they've been asking for it. "Lyons already has a tasting room. It's called Oskar Blues," said Jones.

This article was published in the Redstone Review in April, 2008

Three "festivarians" enjoy a beer at Planet Bluegrass

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Planet Bluegrass reduces waste by limiting plastic bottles

Planet Bluegrass sends message in a bottle

By Katherine Weadley

Planet Bluegrass is getting off the bottle. The plastic water bottle, that is. In their on-going efforts towards carbon neutrality Planet Bluegrass banned the sale of plastic water bottles from their most recent festival event, The 35^th Telluride Bluegrass Festival. They intend to do the same for their upcoming RockyGrass and Folks Festival and the music schools attached to each event.

Steve Symanski, vice-president of Planet Bluegrass recently spoke about this process on National Public Radio’s “Living on Earth,” radio show. “Living on Earth” is a weekly environmental news and information program distributed by Public Radio International. Every week approximately 300 public radio stations broadcast the show that focuses on a broad range of ecological issues.

Bruce Gellerman interviewed Symanski about Planet Bluegrass’ environmental strategy. According to Symanski, Planet Bluegrass used an easily-composted corn plastic water bottle in 2004 as a viable alternative to the plastic water bottle. In his radio interview he says, “Part of the thing is we've really been mandating at the festival now is everything in the festival grounds must be recyclable or compostable. We were touting it off, look at us, we're cool, we have the ability to throw this in our compost pile,” Symanski said.

Symanski continued, “We've come to realize through lots of reading and other dialogues we've had that bottles, no matter what you're doing you still have a waste stream, you still have to drive it somewhere, you still have that carbon footprint, so why not get rid of the bottles entirely? That's kind of one of our new initiatives this year is to really go back to drinking local water so we're pretty excited that we're going to have a wonderful, free filtered water station for all our audience and they can bring a reusable bottle and let's not have any plastic at the festival.”

Planet Bluegrass will set up water stations for people to use during Rocky Grass Festival in July and the Folks Festival in August. According to Brian Eyster of Planet Bluegrass the water initiative worked really well at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. “In the audience, we served 10,160 gallons of water. We have about 10,000 people per day in Telluride, so that’s about a bottle fill-up per person per day. That amount of water dispensed from the station is the equivalent of 3,387 cases of 16oz water bottles,” Eyster said. In our post-festival online surveys, 72% of the festivarians said they used the water station at “every possible opportunity.” And 94% of the festivarians said they used it at least once.

In an effort to send the message to the audience and beyond Planet Bluegrass provided their artists with Kleen Kanteens. These are reusable stainless steel water containers made from the same steel that is often found in brewing industries. According to the Kleen Kanteen Web site the containers retail for about $20. Planet Bluegrass will sell Kleen Kanteens at their Country Store during the festivals.

Eyster said that their sustainability initiatives came together really well. “The artists really did use their stainless steel Klean Kanteens and vendors only sold one-liter or larger bottles of water.

Oil is used to make and transport water bottles, which contributes to the environmental impact of the water bottle. Also, despite the fact most water bottles are recyclable very few of the bottles actually get recycled. According to Doug James of Cornell University it is estimated that in 2005 alone approximately 30 billion plastic water bottles were purchased, with only about 12% recycled.

Also contributing to the environmental concerns about the use of water bottles is the toxic chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA). It is used in the creation of plastic water bottles, plastic baby bottles and many food containers. According to a press release from the Federal During Administration the FDA recently formed an agency-wide BPA task force to facilitate cross-agency review of current research and new information on BPA for all FDA regulated products.

As part of the evaluation, the FDA Task Force is reviewing the concerns presented in the National Toxicology Program (NTP) Draft Brief published on April 14, 2008 by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The press release states “Based on our ongoing review, we believe there is a large body of evidence that indicates that FDA-regulated products containing BPA currently on the market are safe and that exposure levels to BPA from food contact materials, including for infants and children, are below those that may cause health effects.”

However, BPA can be released from plastic into food when heated, washed, or exposed to acidic foods according to a study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives which is published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Plastic water bottles aren’t popular at Planet Bluegrass and their hope is that not only that people don’t choose to bring plastic water bottles to the festival but that people everywhere start drinking locally using environmentally friendly containers for their water.

This article ran in the July 2008 issue of the Redstone Review.

CEMEX, the cement plant east of Lyons ,says it is working on the future. Its past is riddled with environmental fines.

CEMEX receives Citizen’s Notice of Violation at protest march

Plant manager Goodrich focuses on change

By Katherine Weadley

Plant Manager Steve Goodrich of the cement factory CEMEX finally has a chance to speak his mind. He was hired in May of 2006 but all official corporate communications from the multi-million dollar international corporation came through the headquarters of the CEMEX U.S. operations in Houston. Now they’ve given Goodrich the green light to speak up and out about the past, present and future of CEMEX.

Goodrich is upbeat about the future of CEMEX in Lyons, “As a company we’ve recognized that it is important to frame our story and we think we have a good story to tell.” CEMEX does a lot for the community, according to Goodrich. They are proud of that CEMEX Lyons employs about 108 people. Of those people Goodrich says about 16 employees have Lyons addresses and about two-thirds of the employees live in Boulder County.

Not only is Goodrich proud to supply locals with jobs but he’s proud of the diversity of employees as well. “We have engineers from Jamaica, Italy and one who is originally from India,” he said. “Also, we pay very competitively; an entry-level unskilled position starts at over $16 an hour. They aren’t unskilled for long because we teach them skills and promote from within,” he said. Goodrich said the payroll at the cement plant runs about 8.5 million annually in Lyons.

CEMEX takes a supportive role in the community. CEMEX provides financial support for the annual Parade of Lights, the Community Barbeque, and Good Old Days. “We also provide donations for larger projects from time to time as requested, for example we donated to the Town of Lyons’ Fifth Avenue project. We provided all the material for the sidewalk and underwrote the concrete costs, and last year we provided one of the multi-purpose weight racks for the Lyons Middle-Senior High School.

CEMEX is also a member of the Lyons Chamber of Commerce at the Cornerstone level, which means an annual payment of $1,500. A typical business membership is $125 according to the chamber Web site. The next chamber social is July 17^th and is hosted by CEMEX at their plant.

Volunteer firefighters receive paid time off while fighting fires according to CEMEX policy. “Right now we’re working with the Hygiene Volunteer Fire Department on providing them with space for training,” said Goodrich. “We look for ways to support our employees and our community,” he said.

Goodrich has big plans for CEMEX in Lyons and is looking forward to reaping the results of the all the changes for the better he and his environmental compliance team is making at the plant. The past, however, is riddled with fines from state and federal agencies. The latest fine came just this June 17^th from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. They issued a notice of violation (NOV) to CEMEX, alleging various violations of state air quality regulations and operating permit conditions.

“We are concerned that CEMEX continues to operate this facility without direct and consistent focus on compliance with air quality regulations and the facility’s permit,” said Paul Tourangeau, director of the department’s Air Pollution Control Division. “We expect this plant to be operated in compliance with the law, and will continue to take the actions necessary to produce that result.”

Since 2000, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has entered into four separate compliance orders on consent with CEMEX over alleged noncompliance issues at the Lyons plant. This notice of violation is the latest in a series of enforcement actions taken by state and federal authorities against CEMEX during the last several years, including a state action in 2006 that resulted in a $1.5 million penalty. The 2006 penalty was the second-largest penalty ever assessed by the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division.

In addition to the state actions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its own notice of violation in March 2007 that has yet to be resolved. These are just some of the reasons that a protest march was held Saturday, July 12 according to march organizers. The march began at the Stone Cup Café on High Street in Lyons and ended at the CEMEX plant east of Lyons on Ute Highway.

Speakers included Jeremy Nichols of Rocky Mountain Clear Air Action and local area activists Richard Cargill and Lois Hickman.

At the end of the march Goodrich was handed a Citizen’s Notice of Violation (CNOV). The CNOV was created collaboratively between the environmental groups St. Vrain Watchdogs, Mothers Against Burning Tires, Colorado Citizens Campaign, and Friends of the St. Vrain River Valley.

Julie Smith, a health practitioner and Lyons local helped write the detailed CNOV which runs about two pages. “The state has been issuing them NOVs. I think they have received seven NOVs in the last year eight years. They pay and pollute. It’s cheaper for them to pay the fines rather than make the changes. That’s why we issued them a Citizen’s Notice of Violation.” Citizen signatures for the CNOV were collected at the Stone Cup Cafe before the march.

Nonetheless Goodrich is still optimistic about the plant and its future in Lyons. “It’s a complicated business, we have a complex permit. We’re trying to achieve 100 percent compliance. Our objective is to meet all those standards and meet the permit requirements and the community expectations as well. It’s our challenge and our opportunity,” he said.

Smith says that she just wants them to come into compliance with their permit. “They are operating unlawfully. Maybe Goodrich likes to paint a rosy picture but reality is bleak.”

This article ran in the July 2008 issue of the Redstone Review.