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Golden hoof farm greenhouse roof design10/9/2023 ![]() ![]() When going through our review process in 2009 to obtain building permits, we were told by Boulder County Land Use officials that we were one of the only private agricultural properties in the county to go back into local food production. Our Farm has survived the major dismantling process of the last decades, however it had been disconnected from its surrounding pastures which are now owned by the City of Boulder Agricultural Open Space program. Wendell Berry’s sentiments from the the 1980’s have only become more true. It is no longer possible to generate a living by farming land in Boulder County while paying off the value of that land. A grassroots movement toward local sustainability would like to recapture some of the potential benefits from having more small and mid-sized local farms in the Boulder "Foodshed," however most farm properties configured like ours have gradually disappeared, subdivided, or transformed into more suburban uses. ![]() In other words, the productive value of the land was in sync with the market value of the land as a real estate commodity, and there were many farms like ours.įast forward to present times and the context had changed significantly. At that time, a new farmer buying a small agricultural property like ours in Boulder County might reasonably expect to be able to pay for the land over time through the value derived directly from managing that land. Through the 1960ʼs, our farm, then well over 100 acres, was a commercial dairy with about 100 dairy cows, complemented by a dozen pigs, about 100 laying hens and a couple of horses. This reality has weighed heavily on Alice and I over the past years, but also inspired us to pursue our dream of demonstrating a viable, ecologically managed, food-based model for agriculture in 21st century Boulder County. The ability to buy agricultural land and pay for it by farming alone is not currently possible here in Boulder or most other developed places. ![]() In his 1986 essay, “In Defense of the Family Farm,” Wendell Berry observed, "money is the primary way to access land, but farming on a small scale performs poorly when it comes to creating financial wealth.” ![]()
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