Bloom where you are planted
We’ve considered buying a farm in the flatlands, where we could sustain ourselves from land we could be in touch with every day. Sometimes selling Alaskan salmon at farmers markets in Colorado seems strange. Wild sockeye salmon is not a local product, but neither is the farmed salmon readily available in grocery stores and restaurants, as it usually comes from Chile, Norway, or Scotland. If salmon is going to be brought from all over the world to be sold here, it might as well be wild. We feel called to make this happen as sustainably as possible.
Our dream of an electric supply chain isn’t perfect. To get solar panels installed at our house, to charge our electric car, to feel better about driving all over the county to make deliveries, we’ve had to cut down about 30 trees. Now the solar panel company thinks the ground might be too rocky to mount panels there anyway. At least we can use the firewood, so cutting down those trees will help our electricity bill one way or another. Anything to not rely on the coal plant halfway across the state.
Plus, trees might be the best crop to harvest from our property. Bucking logs with a bowsaw and hauling rounds uphill by hand is a good way to slow down and connect with our three acres. If we can’t have a real farm, we can at least appreciate our land for what it naturally produces.
We’re trying to make the best use of what our community has to offer as well. That means trying to set up a local cold storage warehouse, so we don't have to drive fifty miles to Denver to pick up our salmon. We’ll just have a few chest freezers to start with, but we hope to expand to a walk-in freezer, and possibly offer cold storage to other local businesses and families. And powering it with solar panels would be cool. There’s even a flat place outside that might be good for a garden.
Driving less and using less electricity to charge our car at home sounds good to us, but having our fish stored nearby will also make it easier to deliver fish to our neighbors on short notice. And being based in our home community feels right. Living only 15 minutes away from the Nederland Farmers market, and most of our customers, it makes sense to store our fish minutes away too, instead of an hour away.
We look forward to growing our business and our kids in Nederland, where we are planted.