Saturday’s Event a Step toward Communal Agriculture

RIDGWAY – Inspired by a love for “growing their own,” landscape designers Janet Smith and Susan Maybach have organized the first annual Harvest Festival to begin a dialogue on how food can be produced locally.

“We need to reconnect with the land,” said Smith. “The festival is really about community growing together and preparing for the future.”

Open to all of Ouray County, the festival is intended to educate people interested in growing food locally, raising backyard farm animals such a chickens and goats, composting, and planting fruit trees. The festival will take place Saturday, Sept. 27 from 4-7 p.m. at the Independence Café in Ridgway.

Smith said people have become disconnected from the landscape, yet the Ridgway region contains enough water and good soil for locals to be able to grow some of their own food.

“We really need to come together and see how we can start working our soils and using the land and water that we have,” said Smith.

Smith and Maybach hatched the idea for the Harvest Festival a week ago while sitting around the dinner table.

“I love to work spontaneously,” said Smith. “We gave ourselves a short time before the festival, but we need to react as fast as the market is crashing. We need to take our anxiety and use it productively as a community.”

Smith and Maybach plan to introduce a number of sustainable food growing practices during the festival. At the top of the list is community supported agriculture. They want to discuss public production of food on private property, and said they hope community members will donate land for food production and orchard space. They are looking at growing a number of different crops and fruit trees, and want to jump-start a goat milking program and educate people about cheese and yogurt production. Raising chickens is also on the list, which Smith said is growing in popularity and can provide people with an excellent source of meat and eggs.

Smith also said that she and Maybach want to educate the community on the importance of composting to build good soils. She said Joe Ryan, with the San Juan Hut System, could be on hand to talk about his custom composting toilets, which are known for their efficiency in dealing with human waste.

Smith also plans to enlist the help of local solar energy companies, saying that the community food growing effort could benefit from solar lights and solar ovens.

The public is encouraged to come to the Harvest Festival with ideas and open minds on how they could contribute to producing food communally.

“We’re hoping that everyone can contribute a little bit of everything,” said Smith. “There might be some people that have land, others might have time, some might have money, and others might have chickens, goats, fruit trees, or seeds.”

For more information about the Harvest Festival contact Smith at 970/626-4322 or planet@independence.net.