It was an early morning in March as snow fell across the Front Range, and local farmer Wyatt Barnes tended to his seedlings in a greenhouse located on his Niwot farm.
“Weather doesn’t stop the fact that I have work to do,” said Barnes, who was in the process of herding his dog Roxy away from the corner of the greenhouse, where a nest of baby bunnies was hiding from the cold, nestled in a hole in the ground.
Barnes and his crew were steadily working in the greenhouse, while yards away llamas and alpacas, which provide wool that his wife sells as yarn, huddled together, seeking shelter from the snow under an easement behind the house Barnes and his wife occupy.
The 70-acre farm, which is currently cultivating around 24 acres of all organic crops, is owned by Barnes and his wife, Amy Tisdale. Their farm operation is one of a handful in Boulder County which grows organically. With interest in the environmental effects of the American food system growing, organic farms have become increasingly popular, as have community-supported agriculture programs. Red Wagon Farm is dependent on its CSA for survival.
CSA’s offer consumers a direct link to the food they buy because it is bought straight from the farm. In the United States alone, there are more than 12,000 CSA programs.
“Knowing where the food is coming from is a big part of why people join CSA’s,” said Barnes.
Farming wasn’t always the path Barnes, who grew up in Philadelphia, expected to take. From around ages 16-26, Barnes was big into racing bikes and was drawn to Colorado because of its biking opportunities. He worked in the bike industry for a few years in Breckenridge, augmenting his income with restaurant jobs.
After a few years of this lifestyle, Barnes decided to further his education, moving to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado and graduated with a degree in business. After working in a corporate office for about two years, in 2002 Barnes realized that office life wasn’t for him.
“I had never walked out of a job, or really quit a job, on purpose,” said Barnes. “I just knew I was done with it. I had no idea what I wanted to do and was very nervous about it.”
After perusing the newspaper for open positions, Barnes came across an ad for farm help. Wanting something completely different than the corporate world, his interest in this position led him to visit the farm stand, which made him question his potential choice of employment.
“They had the farm stand in this old crappy gas station, and the girl there was talking about where the farm was. ‘It’s right over there,’ she said, as she pointed in the complete opposite direction of where the farm was located. It made me question whether it even existed or not,” Barnes said.
On a separate visit to the farm stand, the owner was present. After a short conversation, Barnes was hired on the spot and was told to report the next morning.
Upon his arrival, Barnes was faced with several beds of beans about 25 feet wide and 500 feet long. This was his work that day. When he was done harvesting, he would go to the market to sell the beans.
Describing his first day on the farm, Barnes couldn’t help but laugh when talking about the experience.
“Even then I could see all of these small things that were inhibiting the farm from being as successful as they could have been,” said Barnes.
During his first year of farming, a bad drought hit Boulder County. His boss knew little about the seasonality of plants and was planting late, leading to later harvest. But the dry year and a late first winter freeze allowed the late planting of crops to work out that year. Barnes realized that there was a lot he didn’t know about farming.
“I didn’t know that we were that far off of what normal was. We were the only people at the market with melons, and I thought ‘wow these guys should’ve planted some melons’,” he said with a laugh. “I had no idea.”
The melon season had come and gone, but they had planted everything late. This is why no one else had melons, but it worked out in their favor.
Soon after, the owner decided farming wasn’t for him anymore and left to attend law school in the Caribbean to get as far away from farming as possible. Barnes took over as the head of the operation in 2004.
While he admits he really had no idea what he was doing, in its first year the farm produced $45,000 in vegetables, and its sales doubled for the next 3 years.
“It was brutal, and it was insane,” said Barnes.
The farm became the number one selling vendor at the Boulder Farmers Market. His farm stand was doing very well, bringing in approximately $20,000 a week. Barnes was able to expand his farm operation to a new location in his seventh year of farming when the Boulder open space program opened a lease for a vegetable farmer to farm in Niwot. Barnes jumped at the chance to lease the property, as the farmland also included a house where he and his wife could live. At the Valmont farm, there was no house, so they had to commute every day to care for the land.
One benefit to Barnes in working in open space land was that his farming practices were already organic, something the open space program wanted to expand on. Organic farming avoids using synthetic or environmentally harmful pesticides and fertilizers. The use of genetically modified organisms is also a practice avoided by organic farmers, a practice that is banned by the program. While organic farms are on the rise, a lot of farms are still not bothering to go organic.
“So few farmers want to do it. The profitability is so low, and you have to really like doing this,” said Barnes.
And Barnes really likes doing it. Since starting to farm, he’s grown his business to two locations, the original farm and the new location in Niwot employing several employees, he was a board member and president of the Boulder County Farmers Markets, the nonprofit organization that runs area markets. Being a part of the community is extremely important to Barnes, as is his drive to not have a negative effect on the environment and world around him.
“We believe in growing local for our local community. Because of this, we use less energy and fuel, and we strive to be as sustainable as we can,” said Barnes.
Red Wagon Farms operates in the most sustainable ways possible, working towards protecting the lands and wildlife habitats.
“We try to do what we can to be less evil, but we’re part of an entirely unsustainable culture, which has unsustainable population growth, unsustainable use of resources and an unsustainable monetary system. How can my farm be 100% sustainable when I rely on that type of system?” said Barnes.
Regardless of its success, the farm has struggled, especially in sustaining its organic certification, a difficult and long process that Barnes says is sometimes more of a hassle than it’s worth. Achieving growth in his business while using farm practices that cause as little harm to the environment as possible is another issue, as costs are higher for organic seeds and techniques.
And then there’s life. Recently, his wife Amy began to suffer from health issues. While the farmers market and farm stand were profitable endeavors for Barnes, taking care of his wife was more important.
“I was taking in about $220,000 a year in sales from the farmers market, and we just dropped it,” said Barnes. “I’m kind of amazed we managed to survive.”
But they did, largely due to profits brought in from his CSA program, which supplies his produce to approximately 400 members. The money from his CSA allows Barnes to pay his employees, keep up with maintenance, purchase new equipment and to be able to buy necessary supplies, such as seeds and fertilizer.
“A lot of farms take advantage of their CSA members, but we cherish ours,” said Barnes.
If farms have a surplus of money or goods, they have the choice to keep it for themselves or share it with CSA members. Barnes said a lot of farms choose to keep the surplus for themselves. At Red Wagon, they give it back to their customers.
The farm appreciates its CSA members, as well as the community as a whole. If members neglect to pick up their weekly load, the farm donates the food to the community in order to decrease waste. The CSA program also offers reduced-rate shares to needy households in the community. The farm also sells to several restaurants, another source of income for the farm.
Barnes and his employees work year-round on the farm, growing roots in the winter to sell in deliveries in March. In the past year, Barnes and his wife took only a two-week break from selling to restaurants and through the CSA. While this may seem like a lot of work, Barnes is invested in what he does and is hoping to continue on this path for the rest of his life.
“It’s hard. We get to share with the community and support the local food system … that alone makes it all worth it,” said Barnes.
