E38: From Seed To Community With Early Morning Orchard

For Julia Coffey, Farm Director at Early Morning Orchard in Palisade, her dream job on a farm isn’t really about farming. Learn what it’s really about – and then go visit the farm! They’re located at 3694 G 4/10 Road in Palisade and at earlymorningorchard.com.    

Theme Music: Riverbend by Geoff Roper    

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Welcome to the Postcards From Palisade podcast. I’m your host, Lisa McNamara. Palisade is most famous for its peaches, but there’s so much more happening in our little town. Join me as I chat with our community members to learn how they are making Palisade a great place to live and visit.

Today, I’m talking with Julia Coffey, Farm Director at Early Morning Orchard in Palisade, about seeds, farm life, her dream job, and finding happiness here. For Julia, her job on a farm isn’t really about farming. Learn what it’s all about on today’s Postcards From Palisade.

Lisa: Thank you so much for being here today and spending some time with me talking about Early Morning Orchard.

Julia: Yeah, I’m super thrilled to be here. Thanks for inviting me. my name is Julia Coffey and I am the director at Early Morning Orchard, which is a four season vegetable farm and stone fruit orchard. So we do a little bit of everything.

Lisa: And where is Early Morning Orchard located?

Julia: Ah, okay, so it’s on G and 4/10, just like half a mile down to the west. The farm is owned by Skip Doty and he is probably a known name in Palisade. He’s been around for a long time. And let’s see, I think that he started his operation in the early 2000s. and then it’s been a farm and an orchard ever since then. And we’ve done all kinds of different attempts at that business model.

Lisa: That’s cool. It’s crazy to think that early 2000s is over 20 years ago.

Julia: It seems just like yesterday.

Lisa: It does.

Julia: a peak for me.

Lisa: but yeah so that’s a long record of farming in this area.

Julia: Yeah. And so recently I think there’s been, a real interest in regenerative farming practices. Like, it’s popular, it’s trendy, but it’s also very important. And our former farm manager and farm director were very focused on those types of practices which take time. So you can’t just be regenerative overnight. It really takes a lot of methodical planning and patience. For instance, moving away from something like tilling, which is turning the earth over really aggressively, does have a significant impact on the microbiome of the soil and all kinds of living organisms. And it can deteriorate the quality of soil. So when we say that we grow responsibly at Early Morning Orchard, a lot of the things that we think about orient around soil health. That also goes with pest management. It goes with crop rotation to protect the soil from diseases, from blight, from, overuse. It does help to protect the soil in the off season. So you have a cover crop and then it puts nutrients back in the soil. Not, disturbing too much of the upper layer. And so when you’re working with the soil and being cognizant that everything below you really matters and then rotating crops so that you can mitigate disease and you can have something like a really heavy feeder be replaced by something that fixes nitrogen back into the ground. We do a lot of composting, and that’s kind of shifted over the years. We do not have it dialed in 100%, but that’s part of our process to add nutrients back into the soil. yeah, there’s a lot of different things. You know, we used to have a livestock component, so we had chickens. and right now we’re not currently able to care for them. So we adopted them out and had to kind of scale back our operation. But we do have that on the horizon as the farm develops. but yeah, that’s kind of the idea of responsibly grown. It is really seeing our work as stewardship, as growing soil and then creating a space for plants to kind of grow themselves because that’s what they do.

Lisa: Oh that’s a really interesting distinction that I honestly haven’t really thought about. and a good description of what regenerative principles are. How is that different from. Or does that include like, organic or biodynamic principles too?

Julia: Okay, that’s a really good question, and I’m going to answer this in my layman’s terms

Lisa: good!

Julia: because I don’t actually know, like, the. All the laws being written about it, but it’s definitely in process because organic standards are currently, okay, to the best of my knowledge, in conflict with regenerative practices. And one of the biggest reasons is because of livestock and animal integration. Those are really important for regenerative farming practices, especially with manure, with hooves turning under food, like the digestive processes are so important with livestock, grazing, all that kind of stuff. It’s just, it’s a really natural combination. However, with national organic standards, you cannot have livestock or any animals on the land, like 90 days before harvest, which is a considerable amount. So you actually find that they do not overlap. So I think, again, best of my knowledge, that many, many people are aware of this. And I think that there’s some types of efforts to address that kind of miss. That’s one of the ways that, like, organic is super out of touch with stewardship.

Lisa: Right. Maybe when it was started, like anything, there has to be some kind of compromise in the principles. So you talk about the distinction I think probably on the website where it’s called Certified Naturally Grown. Is that like a program or something like that that accounts for that difference?

Julia: not with livestock. I don’t think. But I think Certified Naturally Grown is just a different but similar distinction to organic. I believe it’s a little less stringent and maybe quicker. when I owned Seeds Trust, which was my previous company, we were really interested in biodiversity and saving seeds that had a story in history. Now when we narrowed it down to just organic, it actually was super limiting and was the opposite of creating a biodiverse ethos. So we actually opted to not do organic because it was too limiting. We did take on Certified Naturally Grown because we still do all the organic practices, but it allowed us to purchase from other people who were very small operations with very responsible growing habits in line with our values, but weren’t part of like, a really, really large, somewhat expensive and burdensome thing. There’s pros and cons to all kinds of these certifications and whatnot. And they’re not appropriate for all size levels they’re not. It’s just not one size fits all. So that’s kind of an example of certified naturally grown versus organic. I’m curious to see what happens with regenerative. I know there’s a lot of policy work going on with that, so we’ll stay tuned.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s fascinating, but there’s more behind the labels, so.

Julia: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa: So you mentioned earlier, Early Morning Orchard is a four season farm. what does that mean? Why is that unique?

Julia: Well, it’s unique because oftentimes here in Colorado, our climate, we don’t have a full 360 growing season. 365, I should say. and normally it’s a summer or a shoulder season. And we’re fortunate enough to have pretty robust greenhouses right now and tunnels. So we’ve decided to really lean into the winter season and offer greens when there’s not a ton of options out there. A lot of it is like very quick cold season stuff. And when I say quick, I mean days to maturity is low. and then cold tolerant items are going to be your kale, your chard, lettuces. let’s see what else. We’ve got like 15 beds of spinach outside with their little hoop covers. Herbs, we can do romaine lettuce. We have this really cool mustard mix of Asian greens. so it’s just like basically green therapy because you walk into a greenhouse in the middle of winter and it’s alive and warm. Yeah, we’re just really fortunate to be able to offer food in the wintertime.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s really unique. I don’t think there’s many places around here that do that. How can people buy your products?

Julia: So historically we have not had a huge direct to customer presence and right now we’re really, really trying to develop that. So I’m proud to have been involved in food access and wholesale types of sales. As we move forward as a business, we really need to be like, we are your neighbors. We have produce for you. So here’s how you can find us. You can wander onto the farm anytime you want. There’s a big cartoon peach right outside the driveway. And we’re just wanting it to be like you come on the farm, you can buy whatever you would like. So we’re going to have a farm stand every Friday from 2 to 6pm. we’re going to be at the farmers market this coming season. And we have a website on which you can kind of like go grocery shopping. So you can put things in your cart like you would anywhere and then come pick up your order once we have it ready. So that’s earlymorningorchard.com. early morning orchard. A lot of people want to say early morning orchards, but it’s just one.

Lisa: not plural.

Julia: so those are all the ways, you know, we’re on Instagram, we’re trying to build, build our following and you know, we’re joining the chamber of commerce and we’re trying to be, you know, including ourselves in some of the agritourism events, trying to see what’s going on in town, going to town meetings, all that kind of stuff. So we’re trying to just be there, which we have not been historically so it’s kinda fun.

Lisa: So what was behind the shift in that and being more wholesale to being more community focused.

Julia: I think that economically and our size there’s a better fit for our business. So the growing space that we have for vegetables is not very big. So it doesn’t make as much sense to do wholesale when the size of our farm is so small. another thing is it’s so close to the center of town and it’s right along all of these bike loops. It just makes so much sense for it to be like a really welcoming space for people and neighbors and tourists and folks who are here in town. We are still gonna do food access. We’re still gonna do wholesale. but we’re gonna just add the direct to consumer aspect of it. You know, like, we have amazing food to share, not just with food access, which is an honor, but for our community, our direct community. Like, we are a resource for food right there. We have to share that with people. Like, it’s just so cool. It’s so satisfying. Like I live on the farmhouse on the farm and I’ll be cooking something and I’m like, oh, I need rosemary. And I run off into the farm and I get some herbs or I’m like I want a carrot. I literally go out with a pitchfork and dig up some carrots for carrots and hummus. It’s so satisfying. And it’s very cool to share that with our friends and neighbors.

Lisa: Yeah. And very delicious.

Julia: Yeah. And here’s the other thing that I think is very cool. When you pull something out of the ground, from that moment on, it loses its nutrient profile significantly. So the sooner that you can eat produce from the time it was harvested, the bigger boost of nutrients you’re going to get. The amount of vitamins and minerals that are packed into fresh greens, particularly, but vegetables across the board, is incredible. So being able to be like, yeah, I’m gonna eat that within 24 hours or even a week is significant.

Lisa: Yeah.

Julia: Yeah.

Lisa: That’s why when you buy something from the farmer’s market or from a farmer, it tastes so much better. It’s like, versus from the grocery store. Like, who knows how long that’s been around.

Julia: That’s stuff does. Yeah, you can taste. It’s true. You can taste a lot of that. A lot of what’s in there. This goes back to, four season farming. And I was talking about what you grow during the wintertime and cold season items. So we have chard and kale in our tunnels, which means it’s just covered with plastic.

Lisa: Okay.

Julia: It doesn’t mean that it’s

Lisa: I was picturing a tunnel in the ground.

Julia: Oh yeah, no, we call it a tunnel, a high tunnel. Right. So it’s covered with metal framing and then plastic over the top. And there’s no supplemental heating other than what the sun can produce in there and then what that plastic can trap.

Lisa: Wow.

Julia: So it gets, I mean we had what like a day of six degrees or night. So the cool thing is when those cold hardy crops are exposed to that level of cold, they create sucrose within their cells and that’s a protection mechanism against the cold. So you get unbelievably sweet taste, from kale and chard and all that stuff. And you can really like it tastes so different than summer kale. Just like such a cool little special thing that really only happens in the winter.

Lisa: And I don’t think I’ve ever had any winter grown produce, now I feel like I’m

Julia: Okay well

Lisa: I’m embarrassed to admit that, but I gotta stop by and get some.

Julia: You’re embarrassed? I should have come in here with an offering of greens. What was I thinking? Like what the heck.

Lisa: But yeah, I don’t know if I’ve ever tasted that difference. So I’m very intrigued.

Julia: I am going to get you some of that as soon as possible. So it’s coming towards you. You’ll be able to taste it.

Lisa: Sounds good. I’ll stop by. So you mentioned food access earlier. And so can you talk a little bit more about what that means?

Julia: Yes. Okay. This is super cool. So food banks will have programs in which they not only have, donors, but they have potential access to funding from many different sources. Whether it’s federal, whether it’s state, whether it’s personal, grants, whatever, all that kind of stuff. And with that money, a lot of people don’t realize that they do actually purchase a lot of food. It’s not just donating food to a food bank. They do a lot of that. But they have the capacity to actually buy really high quality food. Well, at least some of them do. So we have been really fortunate to be included in sourcing for food pantries. So Community Food Bank based in Grand Junction does excellent work with this and they really prioritize local food, they prioritize local food systems and they prioritize like fresh greens that are also culturally responsive. So they have their clients really, really well in mind. pretty amazing work. So they will buy a lot of stuff from us. and then similarly, Garfield County has a program called Lift Up and they buy greens and veggies and all kinds of stuff from us all year long, and they commit to that upfront as part of their programming. So, so they’re doing a really wonderful service for their clients.

Lisa: That’s very cool yeah. That is like a win, win, win, win for everybody.

Julia: Totally. Yeah.

Lisa: Continuing on with the different things that you do, tell me more about the seed adaptation.

Julia: Yeah, so we did a seed adaptation project, and this is kind of like in the interspace between when I was just seasonally working at Early Morning Orchard, but I also was running my own business. So I owned a company called Seeds Trust for 14 years, and my business partner and I moved it out here in 2020. Once I was involved with Early Morning Orchard, I saw a lot of opportunities for us to do seed growouts and then also seed trials and then seed adaptation projects. and one of the reasons is because the farm itself was interested in responsible growing. And part of responsible growing is saving your seed, planning to save your seed, being aware of how certain varieties are responding to our stressors. Our region and a lot of western regions and just, okay, the world in general, we’re seeing more and more extreme weather. We are going to be challenged and are challenged with heat, water scarcity, all kinds of stuff like extreme weather. So when you can start with adapted seed that already has within its DNA and genetic expression, hardiness to drought, to heat, maybe even some pest resistance, and then early production, we are ahead. And that’s regional responsibility. Not to bash any other seed companies, but you should be buying, if you’re growing, from your regional seed companies that are growing regionally. that’s true sustainability and resilience. So anyway, long story short, there was an opportunity on a little parcel of land across Front Street, to do some pepper and tomato adaptation projects. And all that really means is growing these varieties under stress and then saving seeds from the best plants, the most ideal fruits, or whatever criteria really you’re looking for. It can be early setting, it can be, general resistance. It’s kind of up to the person who’s, who has a relationship with that plant to choose what they’re looking for. So our parameters were heat tolerant, early producing, and drought tolerant. So you keep selecting for those things, and then each season you will see that resilience build. And then that’s what we are planting in our farm and we should be building, you know, resilience moving forward.

Lisa: And so, like you mentioned too, like, that’s not a fast process because you have to go a whole year before you see what the plant does. And do you like, tag the ones that you like and then.

Julia: Yes. I do.

Lisa: Wait until they go to seed and then you have to start over with those the next year and just.

Julia: That’s exactly it. Yeah, you mark them. Sometimes you rogue out the ones that you know you don’t want because they’re just complicating things. We have to make sure that they’re not cross pollinating because you don’t want that the genetic material from that one to contaminate the one that you’re trying to go for. and then also it’s easy for peppers and tomatoes because they’re self pollinating. You don’t have to worry as much about the cross. So they’re actually a really great beginner plant for seed savers.

Lisa: So then you mentioned that you’re developing the seeds. So it’s not even like this isn’t like some kind of lab thing where something’s being created. It’s like a natural process of selection, and then using them and then also distributing them?

Julia: Yeah. So there’s a lot of very natural collaborative folks involved in this. So, the farm benefits from its own seed stock, but you get so many seeds out of a tomato, like, you’re just overloaded. So Seeds Trust will actually. We will sell seeds to Seeds Trust so that we can actually make money off of both the seed, the produce itself, and we can save costs on purchasing seed in the future. So it’s kind of a win, win, win, win.

Lisa: Again! Yeah. And then if people wanted to buy them, they would buy them from Seeds Trust?

Julia: That’s correct. Yes, we have those varieties available at Seeds Trust.

Lisa: I think, and this is a little bit different for you because it’s a four season farm. I think for a lot of people, they assume there isn’t anything to do on a farm in the winter, and that’s totally untrue. So setting aside even the lettuce and, and the greens and the things we talked about earlier, what else is really important that you have to do in the winter?

Julia: Okay. Several things come to mind. One of them is vegetable oriented and the other is orchard oriented. So when we’re talking about vegetable production, like when you’re in the middle of your winter season, you have to also simultaneously be planning for spring and summer. So all of these items that you have in your greenhouses you have to give a date for, all right, we’re going to pull you up and we have to have everything growing for what’s going to be transplanted in there. You start first from your greenhouses because they’re most protected, so they’ll be able to house your more kind of like tender things. Right. Then you move out and you plan into the tunnels because they don’t have heat. Then you move on to planning in the field. It’s basically like constantly playing with the puzzle. So you’re constantly doing that. Then you also have to think about, okay, how are we taking care of our orchards in the wintertime? Like, just because they have no leaves doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. So there are some pretty significant, milestones that you have to hit in the quote, unquote, off season. It depends, I think, on sort of how you decide to manage your orchard. But there are certain pest management and maybe even dormancy sprays or frost protection sprays. Blight management types of sprays, like these are on a schedule at certain times. So I’ll give you an example. In the fall when you have your leaves drop, there’s a certain type of spray that you would put on the trees to protect from a certain type of blight or some type of bacteria. Okay. I actually, this is my first season in the orchard, so I’m actually learning and I can’t remember the scientific names of these things, but the idea is that as the leaves fall, it exposes more of the woody material and that’s what the spray sticks to and that helps prevent spores from spreading. there are organic ways you can do that and there are conventional ways you can do that. And then there will be the pruning season, which is happening now. You see that all over, right? We used to see all the kind of like the red, really young growth, adding a little bit of color. As one of our CSA members Lisa mentioned, she’s like, oh, I love seeing all the red, and now it’s all getting pruned off. So like January through Marchish is the time when you really prune. And then that allows the buds to set and the fruit to set in a way that is, that’s using the best resources for the tree and easier fruit picking and bigger fruits because. Okay, so another thing you’ll do with pruning is, okay, now we’ve pruned. Then once the fruits start to set, you’ll go back and you’ll do thinning so that the fruits have enough space to mature without crowding each other out. So those are all kind of things that need to happen. Then, okay, so after you prune, then the branches are all on the ground. Now what? Well, okay, now you bring a big flail through. So now you got to mulch it all in. And it’s actually a significant operation that’s happening all over right now. So it’s kind of cool.

Lisa: So that’s interesting, you mulch the branches in instead of. I know a lot of people will pull them and just burn them. I see that too.

Julia: They do. Especially if there’s gummosis, or Cytospora, which is the same thing. You want to cut those branches out and burn them because you do not want that going back into your soil. So there’s a lot of remediation that has to happen to protect against disease spread. That’s certainly a burn pile situation. A lot of times those types of diseases are not necessarily in that new growth. And so when you get the lighter stuff coming off, you can mulch it right in, which is a great practice. But yeah, you got to get that disease stuff out.

Lisa: No, that’s an interesting distinction and just makes a lot of common sense that you wouldn’t want to take something with a disease and put it into the ground. Interesting. I’ve always wondered. Yeah. Why some people will burn and then other people you’ll see. But it just would be about the timing then in terms of what you’re pulling down and when.

Julia: Exactly. And they may do both.

Lisa: Yeah. It’s always fascinating to watch the pruning happen because it looks like it’s like, aren’t you gonna kill that tree? But it’s really interesting to know that that’s what you have to do to make it be like. Make the peaches and the fruit and the apricots be so delicious.

Julia: Yeah. Like there is a lot of maintenance that goes into tree health. For sure.

Lisa: Yeah. So another thing that I’ve heard people talking about, specifically in relation to fruit trees is, something about needing a certain number of dormant days. and so. And that this year I think there was maybe a little concern early on that we weren’t having enough or it wasn’t cold enough. How does like, what does that mean? How does that work?

Julia: I have heard that too. And this is something I don’t really know, but there’s definitely a number that you have to hit. And then from my understanding, if you don’t, then they’re susceptible. I don’t know. I haven’t gotten to that particular part yet. There was a very well known hard freeze in 2020 that had like impacts years and years after. And that hard freeze was so damaging that the lasting wounds from that and the effort that it has taken the trees to recover, because they’re basically constantly trying to recover and then produce and then recover and then produce. It’s been an issue. So I was learning recently about. And again, any orchard person will be like duh. But that there are certain sprays that you can use. and again I think there’s both organic and normal, what do you call that? Conventional, thank you, options. But as you know a freeze is coming, you can, I think it’s like a 10 hour window that you can spray the blossoms in order to protect them. Conversely in the fall if, okay, because this is what happened in 2020. There was like a 75 degree stretch of days in October and then in a matter of 63 hours it went down like I can’t even remember what it went down to. It just pulverized. But if you do know something like that is coming, you can also, I think there’s like a dormancy spray that encourages dormancy earlier because they’re not getting the cue to start to go into dormancy. And so they’re still really susceptible to they haven’t had time to harden off to incremental weather changes. So this spray encourages dormancy. The kind of balance to that is if you do use that, you shouldn’t use it all the time, only in kind of an emergency but because what ends up happening is then they do wake up a little bit sooner which is also a potential liability.

Lisa: So that’s so fascinating because like here, like you said, it has been single digits since at some times overnight this year. They can handle that now, but they couldn’t handle that if it was just like overnight.

Julia: No, they have no time. So like even with you know, something as simple as putting a tomato outside. So if you started in the greenhouse, it’s used to a certain expectation in its environment which is not direct sun, regular temperature, it’s babied. Then it’s gonna go out into the field. Right? Well, you cannot take it from a greenhouse and just plop it into the ground. It’s gonna get what they call this transplant shock. So you spend a significant amount of time slowly exposing plants to the elements to direct sun, to temperature changes, so that they’re better equipped, because they will they’ll actually adjust themselves, then you can put them in the ground. And it’s the exact same thing with with trees. They need gradual shift into temperature changes. In order to handle it.

Lisa: That totally makes sense. It’s just like normal, like a normal seasonal type thing.

Julia: Yeah, exactly.

Lisa: Since it’s warming up now, it seems like spring is always a little bit of a season when people are holding their breaths because it can be 70 or 80 or it could be like 20, you know, on a daily basis. So during this season, I mean, how do you kind of manage that? Like it sounds like there’s some things that can be done, but then also we’re also sort of just like at the mercy of nature. How do you just like manage dealing with that?

Julia: Well, the inherent risk is total loss anytime you’re farming anything. And many, many orchardists and farmers have been through that exact thing not too long ago. so what you can do besides the spray stuff is, okay, so you’re going to hear probably like, oh, the weather’s getting great. And then other people are gonna be like, no, it’s getting too warm, too soon. It’s encouraging these buds to grow too soon and then we’re going to get that April frost and they’ll all die. So I think just what you can do is be very attuned to the weather. You can put weather sensors out in your field, you can Bluetooth connect them to your phone so that you get an alert about temperature drops. But essentially physically what you can do is you’ll see a lot of orchards out there that have fans and that moves cold air just away. It’s really that really, really low cold air that does the most damage. So getting it, just moving it through and not letting it stagnate is important. You can also attach what you call a wind drain to the back of a tractor, which is kind of a smaller version of a large fan.

Lisa: Yeah, I see those driving around town. Like tractors towing them around town.

Julia: Exactly. So you set that strategically at a point in your orchard or you drive up and down. I don’t know what you do yet. I still have to learn that because I’ll need to be doing this in April because we have the wind drains on the back of a tractor. So you get out there at 2am or whenever and you protect your crop.

Lisa: Wow. The fan for the average person who doesn’t know anything about farming. You’re like, wait, if you blow a fan on something, it gets colder. it’s just so interestingly counter-intuitive.

Julia: There’s like, there’s also growing practices. So when you plant your tree and it grows, you are then going to do a strategic cut to establish what you call the crotch. And that should be at about knee height, well, depending on how tall you are. But that crotch is then where your scaffolds or your branches start to come out. And if your crotch is too low, then your whole tree is more susceptible to frost damage. Whereas if you have a taller crotch sometimes, that additional height can bring bring your buds out of a danger zone. So there’s also just like different techniques like that. And if you have two scaffolds, usually those two scaffolds tend to go up higher, which can protect your fruit. Then again, if you have any problems and you have to cut off one branch, then you got only one branch left. Like there’s all kinds of give and take as far as what method is best.

Lisa: Interesting. I’m thinking about all the variation now that I’ve seen and never thought about that it was intentional, you know, around, if you just bike around the fruit loop, the different variation in tree shapes and sizes and forms. I didn’t realize that there’s like a purpose behind that.

Julia: Absolutely. So you will see some that, are more closely planted together and two scaffold. So that’s what we call high density. And you can pack them a little bit closer together, which increases your fruit production. But it’s also, it can be a higher risk because if you lose some, that’s a significant loss. Then, you have a four scaffold. And then that also, like, you kind of have to be picking, all around the tree. But you usually are able to use just ladders because those scaffolds don’t grow up as tall. Whereas typically, from my understanding, when you have just two scaffold, sometimes you need a picking platform to get that much higher up. And again, the idea is to save it from the frost, but it can also be like more labor to be able to get that going. So.

Lisa: So when you say scaffold, you mean basically like one of the arms of the tree?

Julia: Exactly. Yes. Those. The branches that come out from the crotch of the tree, which is just that, that diversion part.

Lisa: All right, now I got to go around and see, like, how many different options I see.

Julia: Yeah!

Lisa: Let’s talk about how did you. How you got into farming? Because you’ve mentioned, the seed program, the seed business that you had in the past and just starting this and being fairly new. So how did you get to it? What made you decide to make that switch?

Julia: Okay, well, Buckle up. Kidding.

Lisa: If it is a switch.

Julia: It’s a little bit of a winding story, but I will try to be concise. So, okay, when I graduated from college, I earned my degree in linguistics in French. And then I moved to France to teach English. And I, of course, was just in love with France. But something I noticed that I did not see here at that point in time was a genuine value by the community of local producers. From vegetables to cheeses to wine. A very robust local culture. So you would still have like an industrial like, but you’d have like a Monoprix, which would be, you know, large scale canned goods or whatever, processed foods, popular. But in that same town square, every single week, you would have people coming to bring their really fresh stuff. And everybody in town went and bought there. And you would have a shepherd come in, like, certain points of the year with his sheep, and then he would sell his, sheep’s milk and the (french word) cheese and all kinds of stuff. Like it was seasonal and so valued. And I was like, wow, I’ve never seen anything like this. Even a farmer’s market, you know, it’s meat coming from Kansas being sold here in Colorado. Like, this doesn’t even.

Lisa: And if you don’t know it’s a local orchard, they could be getting their produce from anywhere. Right?

Julia: Yeah. Like, the. The genuine nature of this was really impressive to me. So when I came back, I wanted to know, who’s doing alternative agriculture? Is there a possibility for this? Is this happening even? So I found a little farmette in Lyons called the Lyons Farmette. And they did really cool. Like they were. They did permaculture stuff. I don’t know what’s happening with them now. That’s why I’m saying they did. This was a while ago. And they would do workshops and lectures. And, there was a seedsman giving a lecture one evening called I don’t know what it was called, but it was about seeds, and his name is Bill McDorman. And so I was like, oh, yeah, I’m gonna go to that. I’m gonna bug him about whatever. So I heard his talk, and it changed my life. After I heard how important seeds are and how our civilization basically is resting upon something that no one even thinks about, I was like, wow, I basically need to dedicate my life to increasing biodiversity and reversing the loss of seeds.

Lisa: Wow, that’s so cool.

Julia: So that was kind of where those two things met. So I basically glommed onto Bill, and he and his wife let me move down to Cornville, Arizona, where they had their seed company, Seeds Trust, and I became a seed apprentice. And they grew out all their vegetables and saved the seeds. Like that was their thing. So I lived with them and I learned about seeds. And then I eventually purchased that company from Bill and I brought it back to Colorado. And I mean, that set me on this whole farming trajectory. It was never about farming. It was about food security and it was about environmental responsibility. So having a purpose of responsible growing and not just plundering the earth, but care-taking is so important. Like the amount of loss that we face from something as simple as topsoil is like. We’re talking about survival.

Lisa: Yeah.

Julia: So the stakes are really high. And it’s something that’s so easy to ignore.

Lisa: Yeah. It’s easy to forget that because it’s here. You know, it took thousands or more, you know, of years to form topsoil. You can’t just form it tomorrow.

Julia: Similarly, you think about how we got to corn today. It started from something called teosinte, which is also, it sort of looks like a bloated wheat grass. And that over thousands of years was responding to the relationship between humanity. So we were selecting, we had a hand in selecting what we needed from that crop. And over time it became what we know as modern day corn over thousands of years. The sad thing is, is somebody’s effort can easily be lost forever because nobody took care of it anymore. Almost like the bystander effect. And without protecting heritage varieties and landraces and genetic diversity and open pollinated seed, this is not a reversible situation. When it’s gone, it’s gone, period. And our genetic pool diminishes. Genetics 101. You’re only ever as strong as your genetic pool. Think of the Habsburgs.

Lisa: Right. Then things are susceptible to disease. Or like bananas I think is a really good example where you’re just like there’s, there’s one commercially produced kind of banana. like that’s crazy.

Julia: Yeah.

Lisa: So it was like that passion for seeds more so. But then. So what made you then say all right. I’m gonna stop doing just the seed thing and I’m gonna do all this other stuff because there’s so much more that you do now.

Julia: Yeah. I honestly think I was a little under-stimulated. So I operated Seeds Trust as one person for so many years. It kind of like it sized itself around my capabilities. Like I’m actually not a business person. I didn’t go to business school. There are certain things that I just taught myself over time with varying degrees of success. So what I’m trying to say is I never ended up, I mean we have had employees at Seeds Trust, but it has always been. I got most of my satisfaction out of collaborative efforts with that seed company and working with other people and doing interesting combinations of skill sets. I wasn’t as in love with engaging with a customer about seeds. I wanted to tell them why it was important. And oftentimes being sort of isolated, I would lose a little bit of that line of sight about why the hell I’m doing this in the first place. So I needed more of a team and a larger reach to stay connected to the mission. And then I actually realized that I am happier as a person when I’m toiling in labor. So I struggle behind a screen, as many of us do, and I’m much more effective in my body, working in the soil and working hard. That’s like the best therapy I ever got in my life. And I just couldn’t go back from it. And I was just. I was done with the business aspect of the seed company and ready to launch into something that I knew nothing about. I just started my farm director role basically with this winter CSA season. So it was supposed to be like, January 1^st, but we launched this in November. And so I keep saying that I’ve been with Early Morning Orchard for, like, four seasons, but now I’m kind of, like, asking myself, what even is a season, since it’s four seasons.

Lisa: Yes.

Julia: but, yeah, I basically officially started, late last year and early this year, and then before that, you know, was doing collaborative projects or was, a farmhand, at Early Morning. So now I get to decide what we do.

Lisa: You’re the boss lady.

Julia: It’s pretty awesome. I feel so lucky. Like, I gotta pinch myself. It’s crazy!

Lisa: That’s great. That’s wonderful. So what brought you to Palisade originally and when?

Julia: So, my business partner, Alisha Wenger, she’s actually from the Grand Valley, from Grand Junction, and she was my inspiration to come out here. She lives in Palisade with her family, and she’s the executive director of Community Food Bank.

Lisa: I was like that name sounds familiar.

Julia: Yeah, she’s definitely. Yeah, one of those names. Let’s see, around 2020, she and her husband were getting, you know, thinking about, hey, where do we want to set down roots? Where do we want to raise a family? So they decided to come back to where Alisha grew up and start their family here. And Palisade is where they chose. And that was going to take my business partner away from me and from the business. And Alisha’s like, hey, why don’t you move? Why don’t we move Seeds Trust out to the Western Slope? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. I’m totally sold. I am grateful for my life in Denver, which is where I was before. That’s where I’m from. Quality of life was actually like, deteriorating relatively significantly. The traffic was crazy. I mean, you’re gonna hear the story. Time, time, time, time, time again.

Lisa: Yeah. We came out here from Fort Collins.

Julia: Oh, my God. I was spending my life in traffic.

Lisa: that’s not why we live out here.

Julia: It’s so expensive. And it’s like, how do you have a seed company and, like, survive? Like, I had four, I’ve always had so many extra jobs. So we have growers out here. It’s way more our pace. It made so much sense on so many different levels. So we actually move Seeds Trust into the business incubator center in Grand Junction, which is one of the best things we’ve done. And we had a lot of support for some of the ways in which we needed to grow our business. Covid was the biggest year we ever had for sales. Like, unmanageable. I get it. Right. Like, okay, we’re on our own. We got to grow our own food.

Lisa: Yeah. There was the whole interest in backyard chickens and sourdough and all those things coming together.

Julia: Totally, yep. So that helped us make this move and helped us grow as a business. Then things sort of evolved from there. But that’s how I found myself here in the Grand Valley.

Lisa: What do you like about Palisade? Like, are you glad you moved here? Like, what keeps you here?

Julia: Yeah, this is, well, like, the job opportunity brought me here, and I just feel so fortunate and so, like, I just feel so grateful. What I love about Palisade?, well I love my job. This is a very peaceful place to be. It’s stunningly beautiful. It truly honors the word epic. You, like, you look up and you see the Grand Mesa. Then you see the Bookcliffs like you’re on Mars. And then you look out and see the monument. It’s like a 360 degrees of magnificence. I think personally, I really thrive in a size similar to Palisade or Grand Junction. I like seeing people I know. I like feeling like I can have an impact in my community and a purpose in my community. I like serving my community. That’s so satisfying. Service is so satisfying. So I’ve been really impressed by the feeling of community and feeling like I can bring something to the community. yeah, I just. I love. I love all of that. I love that it’s an agricultural community. It’s very special. I also love, like, all of the luxury, kind of like indulgent experiences around here. Like, I love wine. I love peaches. I like riding my bike. I like music. I like hiking. I mean, it’s freaking paradise. It’s the coolest, the coolest place. Yeah. You could not pay me to move.

Lisa: Love it. I mean, obviously, I feel exactly the same way. Okay, so especially on your farm, four seasons farm, you mentioned, you know, having to be up at 2am sometimes driving a tractor around. It’s like a job that could never end. So, like, how, what’s your. What’s your day like? And how do you. Or do you need to, like, make yourself stop working ever?

Julia: yeah, I think a that’s a really good question. I think it will be different, during each season. So. Yeah, one of the things I’m compensated for is definitely taking care of that property when things go awry, they need to be taken care of. So something like protecting from a frost in the middle of the night is absolutely my job. It is a little odd living onsite because, you know, all the employees drive right past your window. Or, like, you weave. It’s. Yeah. Like, the boundary situation is something that I’m just trying to learn to navigate. And it is easy to go out and be like, well, just let me just finish this thing and let me just finish this. But I also feel really exhausted at the end of the day. And it’s very easy to be like, okay, I’m done, and I’m not gonna do one more freaking thing because I can’t.

Lisa: Your body tells you when it’s time to quit? That’s fair.

Julia: Yes. And so, I think that having things that bring me away from the farm and kind of contribute to, like, a more vibrant social life within the town is going to help a lot with that feeling of just always being at work. And it does have a very different vibe when nobody’s on the farm, like, it’s my time to connect with the farm. But honestly, that’s going to be a work in progress as time moves forward. So a day in the life. I wake up and pet my cat and then feed her her third breakfast of the day, make my coffee, and then try and get out the door to be on the farm by 8 and it’s always 8:03, because I cannot, like, I live there and I’m like three minutes late every morning. But we have our little farm team meeting in one of the sheds that we’ve turned into an office. The property is very cool because it was designed by Skip, who’s an architect. So there’s really cool structures on the farm, which I encourage everybody to come see. And it’s sort of a unique thing about this farm. They’re sort of funny shaped, so using them practically can be a challenge. But we meet up, we talk about our tasks, and then we disperse and we do our tasks. And those are going to be, you know, watering the propagation house. Because we have always having seeds starting in trays, from herbs to tomatoes to lettuce. These are things that need typically about four weeks in a tray before they’re ready to transplant. Which means you always have to be thinking at least four weeks ahead so that when there’s a space that opens up in a bed, you’ve got something to put in there. So we do like our watering. And then we actually have a lot of orders to fill, and certain organizations order on certain days. So we have our food access orders that go out one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, and then we have, our retail orders that go out on Friday. So Monday’s a big harvest day. In our winter season, we harvest according to orders, right? We harvest our heirloom greens, Asian greens, romaine, spinach, and then we bring them into the washing shed. We wash it all, then we lay it out to dry. Then we bag it. We get the labels on it. That’s kind of like the labor aspect. And then there’s always the admin of invoicing and connecting with customers and developing business and then planning the farm, meeting with people, establishing relationships, following up on those relationships, doing really fun things like a podcast. Like, that’s the fun thing that I get to do. We do some deliveries. That’s a typical, typical day. A little bit of hands in the dirt, a little bit of fingers on the computer.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s a lot. I think the variety of any job is, is helpful to me. Like, I love just something where it never gets boring and old.

Julia: Right! It stays stimulating and not just it, doesn’t become the slog. It’s like it will change if it is slogging.

Lisa: Is there anything else you wanted to make sure you talk about or share with people that we haven’t covered already?

Julia: I would like people to know that we want the farm to be a welcoming space. I would like to see people drift on in. we’re going to be doing events, we’re going to be doing classes. We’re going to do some business attempts, like maybe some picnics in the orchard. so I just, I guess I want to get that out there to just come over and check us out! We actually have a plant sale on May 10th and so we’re gonna kind of kick off like, okay, so right before Mother’s Day, right. So you can pick, you can get some plants and give them as gifts. we’re gonna have some music. We’re going to sell our plants. We’re go going to sell some seeds. Seeds Trust will be there. We’re gonna have some sourdough bread from Little Button Bakery, who is one of our partners for our CSA add ons. and we’re just gonna kind of create a little party where you can enjoy what we have to offer. Stay tuned and be willing to let me pester you about coming to the farm and coming to an event and buying produce, like, and letting me pitch how awesome our produce is. Yeah, like, just. I’m excited to get more entwined into the community.

Lisa: I think the community is very excited to have you.

Julia: Thank you.

Lisa: Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Julia: My absolute pleasure.

Lisa: An awesome conversation and I definitely can’t wait to check out some of the things I learned.

Julia: Me too. Actually, I feel like I learned something from this conversation as far as, like, what I need to research.

Lisa: Cool. Win, win, win, win again.

Lisa: Listeners who closely follow the news will have picked up on Julia’s mention of food access, and that a couple of Early Morning Orchard’s bigger customers were local food pantries.

Julia and I chatted right before the USDA announced that it was cutting the federal programs that provided about $1 billion in funding to schools and food banks to buy food directly from local farmers, ranchers, and producers. This will impact farmers across the country, including here in Palisade. This funding had already been announced and farmers had planned their 2025 seasons around it.

I reached out to Julia to ask if she wanted to add a comment about this change. Julia wanted to “emphasize how precarious our food situation is when billions of dollars of funding disappear. It affects everyone in the chain from the folks who are in serious need of fresh food and nutrients, to the non-profits who provide access, all the way to the local farms who produce. It is devastating and wrong. [She would like to] encourage people to support local food producers and local food access programming.”

Farmers are incredibly resilient; they have to be, they deal with change and challenges and uncontrollable outcomes every day. But if you care about having local food to eat from local farmers, if you care about the agricultural community of Palisade, it’s more important than ever to support our local farmers by buying food directly from them.

But I’ll close on a lighter note, because I want to leave this conversation full of the passion, energy, and excitement that Julia has for her job, the Palisade community, and the earth. So I’ll end with her teasing me about the podcast.

Julia: So when are you going to let yourself be an interviewee for your podcast?

Lisa: Oh, people have asked me that, and I’m just like, I don’t know. Here’s the funny thing. I don’t really like talking about myself.

Julia: That’s why you’re in the question seat.

Lisa: I like asking questions. I’m very curious and I always want to know, like, why and how and whatever, but I feel like I don’t really have anything interesting to say. So, never!

Julia: Which is why you need a good question asker, because they’ll draw out all the obviously very interesting things about you.

Lisa: Very true.

Julia: Yeah, it would be cool. It would be cool to get a little inside scoop on your creation. It’s so cool.

Lisa: We’ll see who can do that. Maybe it’ll be you.

Julia: Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Well, it’ll be like a very laborious process. You’re like, okay now push this button.

Lisa: Oh, it’s really not that hard, trust me. If you can operate farm equipment, you’ll just be like, oh, it’s one click.

Julia: Oh, God, don’t get me started on farm equipment. Talk about a learning curve and, like, brute force.

The podcast’s theme music is Riverbend by Geoff Roper.

Thanks for listening. With love, from Palisade.