Montezuma County hosts organizations that promote sustainability in agriculture and offer educational resources for people of all ages. From saving seeds to selling produce, Montezuma County fosters advocacy for growth in environmental and social justice.
. The work that the following organizations put in to spread the wealth of fresh food is expansive, which supports health and food security in the dry desert climate.
Nestled between a busy road and Montezuma-Cortez Middle School with its baseball field nearby, Ben Goodrich, the 34-year-old executive director of School to Farm Project, points out rows of fruit trees (mostly apple) and vegetable crops, such as kale, corn and beans. He said he’s excited about teaching kids the importance of growing food.
Goodrich called it a tragedy that people lost the skill within a couple of generations. Food literacy brings the security that he hopes future generations to obtain.
“Of all the places I’ve farmed in the country, this is the most challenging climate and so that’s why I decided it’s time to go back to Southwest Colorado,” Goodrich, 34, said.
In 2018. he returned and worked as a gardener with the Mancos Conservation District. Once the program grew to serve Montezuma County, he helped establish the Montezuma School to Farm Project as a nonprofit in 2020.
With two full-time employees and support from its garden coordinators – a cohort of seven teachers from the district – they will educate about 1,500 students this year. They also have summer internship opportunities for high school students through Southwest Conservation Corps, where the interns and students build their skills through food production, nutrition and resource conservation.
The organization mainly works with pre-Kindergarten through fifth grade students, bridging agriculture with academics together and incorporating Indigenous agricultural techniques.
“We always like to have some kind of tasting components with lessons,” he said. “Almost in every lesson the kids learn how to make either a simple salad dressing or how to prepare green beans, something really easy and basic that they can bring back home.”
Goodrich said the organization wants to gain educators’ perspectives of the outdoor classroom as an asset, since STEM education is easily accessible outside even when weather conditions are not ideal.
The school gardens they serve – Mesa, Kemper and Mancos – grow regional food including beans, wheat and corn. They also received 70 fruit trees from Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project, now growing at Montezuma-Cortez Middle School. On top of growing food, they also teach food production, such as milling grains.
Additionally, the organization introduces marketing skills at the farm stand they set up at the Cortez Farmer’s Market in August. Although they’re there just a couple times in the season, they set up a weekly stand to give away produce at Southwest Open School, where many of the interns take ownership of their work from seed to feeding others.
When looking into the future, Goodrich would like to see the students expand their knowledge of sustainable agriculture and incorporate creative methods such as flower arrangements and culinary skills.
He wants to figure out how they can develop a program that really works for the kids and schools in this climate so they can replicate it as a model for other schools.
Primarily funded by the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, the nonprofit New Mexico Agriculture in the Classroom trains the general public with specific attention toward K-12 students and teachers about agriculture’s significance and natural resource education in the Four Corners region.
Ranchers and farmers make up 2% of the U.S. population, and the organization is concerned that production won’t keep up with the growing population. The more detached people are from nature, a misconception evolves about food growth and production.
“Students are often awed when discovering such simple things as all cows are female and only produce milk for a given time after they have a calf, that chocolate milk doesn’t come from brown cows, cotton grows on plants (and not sheep) or exploring the basic parts of a plant that we use and how we use it,” Traci Curry, director of New Mexico Agriculture in the Classroom, said in an email.
To combat this conundrum, the organization supplies free education resources from their website. They also hold NM Grow Project Grant workshops where participants learn how to set up hydroponic systems and build raised beds. Recent grant winners each received a raised bed and hoop system, drip irrigation system, hydroponics system and additional educational tools.
The organization also created the NM Ag Literacy Project for elementary schools in their own communities. There, children receive books, visits with farmers and ranchers, field trips, AgXplorer events, hands-on activities and recipes. They also incorporate Indigenous teachings and agricultural methods in their plans.
Because various locations in the region are slightly different ecologically, the organization encourages educators to also work with their area Cooperative County Extensive agents to get a better understanding of their climate and conditions.
Midge Kirk, who directs adult programs at the Mancos Public Library, doesn’t remember the exact year she and a co-worker opened the Seed Lending Library, but it began in 2010 or 2011.
Their purpose and inspiration to save seeds promotes non-GMO, heritage and organic gardening. Kirk said that since food has been genetically altered and the nutritional value lost, she and her co-worker wanted to return to the back-to-the-land movement, where self-sufficiency supplies healthy soil and healthy food.
The Seed Lending Library can be this type of foundation for the small Mancos community.
Anyone can join, and they ask folks to let one plant go to seed and bring the seeds back to them in order for the stock to be replenished. There’s no penalty if that doesn’t happen.
About 100 people are members, and share vegetable, fruit, herb and flower seeds. Seed screens exist at the library for customers to filter out their seeds after their plants have gone to seed, thus allowing them to share the bounty with the rest of the community.
Members of the program vary in age. As long as people are proactive, the library is thrilled for anyone to participate.
“I just had this one little boy who’s like, ‘Oh, watermelon watermelon,’” Kirk said. “And that was weeks ago they took the watermelon seeds home.”
In early July, Cultivando, a high school-age group from Commerce City that serves the Latino community in Adams County, had tents set up and people preparing food for dinner after an eventful day in Montezuma County. Guadalupe, a member who helped prepare the food under an open tent, said the group focuses on environmental justice, something she sees that’s desperately needed in Commerce City.
“It’s great to get away from the inner city,” Guadalupe said. “We have an oil refinery area and so the air is never this good. And the water, you can’t drink from the tap in Commerce City because it doesn’t taste good.”
Jay Loschert, Montezuma Land Conservancy’s community programs director, welcomed the group to Fozzie’s Farm for a few days to expand their knowledge on sustainability and social justice, with the hopes that they can bring ideas home to enrich their communities.
The Conservancy sits on 83 acres and runs an irrigated farm in Lewis where they grow and teach people the importance of sustainable agriculture and land use. Since 2016, Fozzie’s Farm has taught important agricultural techniques and they incorporate Indigenous practices into the land.
On a conservation level, soil health is necessary when it comes to adapting to the unavoidable climate change. Loschert said that for every 1% increase in soil and organic carbon, the soil is able to store between 20,000 and 27,000 gallons of water per acre.
The organization’s three goals include land conservation, education and developing cross cultural opportunities with the Ute Mountain Ute tribe. They hire young folks from Southwest Open School to develop skills in conservation and social justice.
“The youths we connect with come from very diverse backgrounds,” Loschert said. “Bridging two Native cultures along with the white culture has brought an awareness of how we connect with the land.”
As they did with Cultivando, Montezuma Land Conservancy hosts a variety of field trips, where they have several places to learn – an education center, classroom space and the farm itself as a classroom. They recently hired a Spanish-speaking assistant.
“We talked about building connection to the land and feeling like we’re part of ecosystems and part of this place. I don’t think you really can have an authentic relationship with anyone or anything if you don’t really acknowledge the past and the present,” Loschert said. “I think part of the history of this land is a history of colonization, and so we talked about how this often refers to the original inhabitants and the Indigenous people who have roots here and still maintain connections to this place; how that’s been altered in history and what’s the role of the conservation movement.”
On a hot July day just outside of Cortez’s business district, a group of high school and college-age SCC students sit on the ground listening to Jude Schuenemeyer, MORP’s co-director. He talks about the new baby orchard trees they’re going to plant.
On this day they learned about MORP’s focus on preserving historic cultivars, mostly apple trees, and their deep history in Montezuma County. Many of these trees that MORP conserves date to more than 100 years ago, when orchards thrived in Southwest Colorado.
“These trees are still here.” Schunemeyer said. “What we want to do is use this to be the genetic thing for the next 100 years.”
The organization has been rebuilding the orchard economy by cultivating the old genetics.
They also partnered with the Montezuma County Historical Society to acknowledge the strong culture and economy that the area’s orchards once had.
Schuenemeyer said MORP preserves the rarest genetics by testing each tree’s DNA and planting them in their orchard alongside other historic fruit trees.
Schuenemeyer said they focus on water conservation in order for the trees to survive the Four Corners climate. Although it might seem counterintuitive, they flood the land once a month to keep the soil saturated. They still irrigate the trees, but less than normal because the soil has been saturated.
They promote conservation by inspiring other people to grow orchards in Montezuma County, supplying them with genetic trees. Once mature, many of the apples are sold to local cideries in the area, thereby enriching the local economy.
Jessica McIntyre, 43, obtained trees from MORP for her family’s property.
“We started with 60 apple trees, and I’m guessing we have 80 now,” she said, although her husband corrected the number to 100 because of the new baby trees they got. “We love growing stuff. We sell our apples at Fenceline and Esoterra cideries.”
MORP has also donated trees to eight heritage schools in partnership with the Montezuma School to Farm Program, as was highlighted at Montezuma-Cortez Middle School.
Schuenemeyer said their cultivars include Ben Davis, Winesaps and Colorado Oranges. They also have many unknown varieties that DNA tests weren’t able to detect.
“We know they were in an orchard. We know they were grafted. We know they were historic cultivars,” Schuenmeyer said. “They just don’t have a name with them anymore. Maybe we can do it and maybe we can’t. Keeping the trees alive is what’s important.”
How to participate
Mancos Public Library Seed Lending Library
(970) 533-7600
(970) 565-1664216 W. Montezuma Ave., Cortez
Montezuma County Orchard Restoration Project
(970) 565-3099
