Edible Aspen - Spradley Farms: From the Land

{ from the land }

Allison and Mike Spayd enjoy getting their hands dirty on their 15-acre farm in Missouri Heights.

WORK, LIVE, PLAY: Cultivating the ideal mountain lifestyle at Spradley Farms

By Sarah Chase Shaw

I

f you’re a diehard Highlands skier or you’ve enrolled your children in programs at Rock Bottom Ranch, chances are you know Allison and Mike Spayd.

Locals for almost 15 years, the Spayds are transplants from the American South, but it’s easy to mistake them for Colorado natives. Mike, with his trademark plaid shirt, and Allison, with her twinkly brown eyes and Southern twang, have worked for more than a decade educating locals on everything from avalanche safety and forest management to animal husbandry and vegetable gardening.

In fact, they’ve spent so much time

and energy educating others that they’ve largely neglected their own interests— until now.

Several years ago, the Spayds purchased a large agricultural property in Missouri Heights, but full-time summer jobs thwarted their efforts to shape it into the homestead they knew it could be.

“We started with a couple of hens and a patch of garden, just for us,” says Allison. Two years ago, they took a chance and decided to spend the bulk of their summers developing their fledgling Spradley Farms into a productive livework environment where procuring their own food is their number one goal.

“Now,” she says, “we are hard-pressed to keep up with the demand for our

honey, meat chickens, eggs and greens.”

Located on a high plateau in Missouri Heights, the Spayds’ 15-acre farm—called Spradley after Allison’s maiden name— fits comfortably into a neighborhood of small subdivisions, giant equestrian facilities and large swathes of agricultural land.

The farm compound, located at the center of a long and narrow lot, is accented by all manner of haphazardly parked farm equipment, standing ready to work at a moment’s notice. Electric and wood fences staked across the property contain three horses, 25 laying hens and 110 fryer chicks raised for meat. Just-harrowed pastures sport the patchy green of early spring, hinting at the work ahead.

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By mid-April, one quadrant of the garden has already been planted with cold-loving crops like spinach, peas and onions. Other areas are awaiting a layer of manure and an annual tilling. A giant compost pile runs along the garden fence on the west side. Two greenhouses anchor the garden to the east. In the smaller greenhouse, shallow ceramic-bottomed planters host rows of endive, kale and spinach that Allison planted in early January.

“I just needed to get my hands dirty, so I experimented with a few seeds that were left over from last year,” she says. The Spayds are currently renting the larger greenhouse to a landscape company, but they plan to plant it next year to extend their growing season.

Random six-inch tomato plants sit on a side bench. “We haven’t cracked the code on tomatoes yet,” says Mike. “The hard truth is that tomatoes just don’t grow in the ground here. We tried them in this entire greenhouse one year and it was a disaster. We’d open the door to three days of work just staking and pruning the plants.”

Visit their home for a few hours and you might think that Allison and Mike have a picture-perfect life. After all, a cozy straw bale home, substantial acreage and a refreshingly wholesome lifestyle

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centered on land and animals are the stuff of dreams for many. While the farm is a carefully cultivated labor of love, though, it’s also the product of determination, hard work and a little bit of luck.

Obstacles like drought, plant disease and a shortage of produce during peak season can make farming an unpleasant occupation at times.

“We’ve made huge sacrifices to get here,” says Allison, “and our lives revolve around this place.” With an ironic laugh, she adds, “Our life is great, but it is difficult to go on vacation… ever. We have to make free time for ourselves. If that means that the seeds don’t get in the ground that week, then that’s OK. For now, no one else is relying on us for a paycheck, so any decisions we make only affect us.”

The Spayds started their farm after long careers in other fields. For years, Allison managed both the educational programs and the agricultural operations at Basalt’s Rock Bottom Ranch, while Mike split his time between throwing bombs and schussing slopes for the Highlands Ski Patrol and guiding for the National Outdoor Leadership School in Alaska.

In 2008, after hunting for land in rural areas throughout the West, they found their Missouri Heights property through an ad in a local newspaper. They

rented the house next door and spent evenings and weekends improving their land.

“One day, we just gave in,” recalls Mike. “We were tired of working multiple jobs when we knew in our hearts that we needed to make this place work.”

“Leaving Rock Bottom Ranch was a difficult decision,” says Allison. “It was such a good springboard for me.

Everything we are putting into practice here now we learned through our work there.”

Today, the young and growing Spradley Farms offers summer CSA shares to a dozen families. In early to mid summer, customers find a mix of greens— arugula, kale, spinach, lettuce—and eggs in their boxes, while late summer harvests include beets, carrots, potatoes, eggs, honey and greens. If all goes well with the meat chickens, customers will be able to order fryers throughout the season.

Allison and Mike have also developed relationships with local chefs that have proven a boon to their business. They often sell produce to chef Chris Keating of the Pine Creek Cookhouse, and in return he dispenses invaluable wisdom on food and farming.

“He does a really nice job of cooking within the seasons,” says Allison, who spent a winter waiting tables at the Cookhouse. “He takes anything we can

give him: honey, greens, eggs, whatever we have in season. It’s fun for me to be able to serve people a product that I grow on my farm.”

For chefs, Mike says, fresher and more local ingredients simply mean better food.

Many of the Aspen chefs that partner with Spradley Farms would rather gather around the back of a local farmer’s pickup truck for produce than accept anonymous product off of a long-haul semi every day.

Yet supplying Aspen restaurants gets tricky in mid-summer, Mike adds, because in Aspen, “When the demand is big, it’s huge.”

Between the numerous juice bars, restaurants and CSA customers who pine for Spradley produce every summer and their already harried on-farm schedules, Allison and Mike are often hardpressed to meet peak demand. Entering their second full season of production, the couple is anxious to expand their operation and work more efficiently. They haven’t yet settled on the crops that are most economical to grow and could be scaled up to supply larger contracts.

Says Allison, “We haven’t pursued a relationship with any grocery stores because we haven’t felt the need to do so. Obviously, when you decide to go down that path, the expectation is that you can and will provide that product for an extended period of time. That is

really challenging for us. In our current situation, if we have to offer spinach in lieu of lettuce greens, our CSA members and chefs are willing to accept it.”

Pragmatists at heart, the Spayds’ long-term dreams of self-sufficiency are tempered by the present reality of their situation. As they grow, they’re careful to take care of their own needs first.

“We have progressed really slowly here on purpose. We’ve been very thoughtful about growing it in a slow, methodical way,” says Allison.

To be sure, expanding the operation is a goal, but the Spayds are wary of getting in over their heads with bigger contracts, more demand and more outsourcing. “We didn’t enter into this to become business managers,” says Allison. “We are here because we love getting our hands dirty.”

At the same time, the Spayds are anxious to be part of a larger, more effective locavore movement. “In conjunction with our neighbors [who include the beef producers at the Milagro and Strang ranches along with the egg producer Potter Farms] we are trying to recreate a model of self-procurement, where community-supported agriculture is a given and shoppers buy directly from producers,” says Mike. “We want to contribute to an environment where locals can come to Spradley Farm for

eggs, greens and honey, and we send them down the road for beef, lamb or chicken.”

For now, Spradley Farms remains a summer-only operation, due to the Spayds’ need for both seasonal balance and steady income.

“It’s been a long transition period for us to get to the point where we have summers off,” says Allison, who just finished her first year as a second grade teacher at Aspen Elementary School.

“Now that I have a real job with a regular paycheck from one employer, I’m able to concentrate more on growing the farm.”

For Mike, developing the farm is a welcome change after a winter of patrolling at Highlands where days off are few and far between. Could running Spradley Farms become a full-time occupation any time soon? Allison laughs, “It depends which month you ask. Right now, we have a great balance which keeps us going. By the time fall rolls around, both of us will be ready for a clearly defined job with a regular paycheck.”

GO FIND IT! Spradley Farms 1020 County Rd. 102, Carbondale 970.309.5867 allison@spradleyfarms.com SpradleyFarms.com

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