To date we have been able to send out 1200 boxes of food to Paonia, Crawford, Cedaredge, Hotchkiss and Delta. We are still distributing from the schools in each of these 5 towns and will continue to do so until the district’s final day of free and reduced lunch on May 29th.

Thus far we have raised $19,875 from 250 donors. We have had over 24 volunteers help us distribute the boxes over the past 10 weeks. And we have had so many parents call to say thank you for the fresh food! Those calls make it all worthwhile.

We have supported 29 farmers/producers in our area by purchasing their local veggies, fruit and value-added products. With the summer crops starting to come in, the number of local farmers we will be able to support will only grow.

In the coming weeks we will continue these donation boxes to families in our county. Our plan is to weekly distribute to the Elementary Schools in Paonia, Hotchkiss, and Cedaredge. We may add Delta if things go well.

We will be working with the Food Bank of the Rockies to distribute meals from them along with our fresh boxes once a week on Fridays from 11am-1pm. The Food Bank of the Rockies will be handing out 5 meals to each family on Fridays, and the families will also get our fresh produce on top of that. We will be starting with 20 boxes per location and scaling up from there if needed. This program will start on June 5th and continue each week until Friday August 14th.

We are coming to the end of yet another busy summer. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel of our scheduled events. Last week I was one of a group of chefs called the Colorado Five who were cooking an eight-course Japanese Kaiseki-themed menu to help raise money for charity. This event was held at Knapp Ranch in Edwards and it was the most beautiful table setting I’ve ever had the privilege to be a part of. The FIVE team used Colorado-grown ingredients, Colorado wines and spirits and Colorado themes throughout the ambitious menu inspired by Chef Bryan Redniss of The Rose in Edwards. The previous week, the team was at the Crested Butte Food & Wine Festival. We were raising money for the Crested Butte Center for the Arts by cooking a menu inspired by European ski culture. Swiss and French traditional classics reimagined with — you guested it — Colorado ingredients. In mid-July, I was in Denver with the FIVE cooking at the Colorado Fare party at Slow Food Nations; their motto is “Good, Clean and Fair” food for all. If you aren’t already familiar, Slow Food Nations is an annual festival which takes place in downtown Denver. This year there were 30,000 participants over the week of events.

One of those events was the Slow Food Chefs Summit which was hosted by a panel of experts within the field of responsibly-sourced food. If you have been an avid reader of this #thenewwest column in Spoke+Blossom, it should come as no surprise that I am an avid supporter of the Slow Food Movement and a member of the Slow Food Chef’s Alliance. This panel was important to me as two of the speakers of the panel, Alice Waters and Anthony Myint, were there to promote their work within sustainable agriculture. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse has pioneered local and sustainably-sourced food for over 40 years and created the Edible Schoolyard Project in 1995. The Edible Schoolyard, in a nutshell, is an outline that allows students to farm vegetables for use within the schools, then compost from the school’s cafeteria to help sustain the farm. Anthony Myint of Mission Street Food has been working to push this agenda one step further with the ZeroFoodprint initiative: a program allowing restaurants to analyze their carbon footprint, then offsetting that footprint to carbon neutral through credits used to support community and statewide composting projects.

In July, our restaurants made a commitment to moving towards a carbon neutral model through ZeroFoodprint. However, here in western Colorado, the infrastructure doesn’t yet exist to allow us to do as much as we could be/should be. On one hand, here we are, all of us collectively in a day and age that our convenience store salads are locally sourced. We are able to source local and regional ingredients (more on regional sourcing soon) from the least expensive menu item, our sweet corn ice cream to a $300 per person seven-course Japanese-themed dinner on a mountaintop outside of Vail. On the other hand, our farmers are doing all they can to keep up with the never-ending demand of more food, higher yields and rising costs. Somehow what we’ve all been creating to improve our economies and provide better products to our guests is also taking resources from our soil and is only replenished by our dwindling water supply.

Grand Junction, like most smaller western Colorado communities, currently does not have a commercial community composting facility in place. Composting is the easiest, least expensive and ultimately probably the only way to improve soil health by introducing life (microbes) back into the soil which we farm upon. The ability to increase soil biodiversity allows us to grow better produce and at a lower cost, but it also contributes to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. If 50 restaurants/coffee shops/universities/bars throughout our region were to compost our food waste, we could transform the small farms that support us.

Let’s take that one step further. The five farms we work with the most within the restaurants combined probably total less than 25 acres combined. Meanwhile the small hemp farm down the street is likely 50 acres. I’ve written about CBD in the Western Slope in the past — we are having an absolute boom of hemp farms, all of which rely on soil health and biodiversity. Let’s enlarge that 50 commercial composting accounts into 500 households and add the acreage being converted to hemp to continue to help offset our carbon emissions and improve our air quality in doing so. In other words, let’s take inspiration from the public lands which surround us and do our part to leave no trace before we love our local land to death!

ZeroFoodprint: zerofoodprint.org
Edible schoolyard: edibleschoolyard.org
Slow Food: slowfoodusa.org

Slow Food Nations touched down in Denver for the third year in a row this past weekend (July 19–21), when more than 30,000 passionate chefs, academics, activists, authors, farmers, fishermen, policy makers, and foodies gathered around Larimer Square to learn about and discuss the culinary—and societal—issues affecting us and our planet.

The festival also celebrated the cuisines and cultures that make the world such a delicious, diverse place. The theme was “Where Tradition Meets Innovation,” sparking workshops, panels, tasting events, and countless conversations around everything from the hidden narratives of indigenous peoples to the flavors of coastal Mexican cooking to trends in farming, fermentation, and craft beer. Through it all, Colorado chefs, mixologists, growers, and artisans represented the Centennial State with pride, sharing their skills and products. 5280 was there for it all, so read on for highlights from the weekend.

Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam demonstrated how to cook fonio fritters, based on the African whole grain. Photo by Lucy Beaugard

On fonio, an ancient African whole grain…

“This grain thrives where nothing grows. It’s drought-resistant, gluten-free, and also very nutritious. It’s great for the environment, and it matures in two months—it’s one of the fastest, if not the fastest maturing grain.” —Pierre Thiam, Senegalese chef, social activist, and cookbook author

On food as connection…

“Food is the ultimate commonality. I always ask ‘what did you eat for breakfast?’ It’s an easy question but it’s also revealing. What do you think a homeless person had for breakfast? They might say ‘I didn’t,’ and that speaks volumes.” —Davia Nelson, co-producer of NPR’s the Kitchen Sisters podcast

On edible insects…

“Cattle actually produce more greenhouse gases than all of the cars and trucks and motorcycles on the planet. It’s driving climate change on a large scale. If farmers switched over to raising grasshoppers, they could cut these emissions dramatically.” —David George Gordon, author of The Eat-A-Bug-Cookbook

“I became a bug farmer because we are facing a very uncertain future on how we are going to feed ourselves. It looks pretty likely that with an increasing population and shrinking national resources—particularly land and water—we are not going to be able to raise enough calories. And at the same time, agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions….Bugs might not save the world, but I think they can be a significant part of how we feed ourselves as we face these challenges.” —Wendy Lu McGill, founder and CEO of Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch

On sustainability…

“Sustainability is bullshit. We need regenerative practices that do something. Do you want a bank account that sustains itself or one that grows?” —Ron Finley, “the Gangsta Gardener,” founder of the Ron Finley Project

“Sustainability [in seafood] is a journey, not a destination.” —Derek Figueroa, president of Seattle Fish Co.

“The important thing as consumers of seafood is to get curious. Ask questions. Where and how is it being caught?” —Paul C. Reilly, chef-owner of Beast & Bottle, Coperta, and Pizzeria Coperta

“Eat all the fish. They’re like vegetables, all with different nutritional attributes.” —Patrick Dunaway, U.S. director of sustainability and chief scientist for Niceland Seafood

“We say we don’t like aquaculture but we’re thinking aquaculture 1.0, not aquaculture 5.0.” —Sheila Bowman, manager of culinary and strategic initiatives for Seafood Watch

On values…

“We need to change what we’ve been taught to value. We value money and diamonds, we don’t value air or the soil. The most important things in life are not your kids. It’s air!” —Ron Finley

“If you eat fast and cheap and easy, you’re eating those values.” —Alice Waters, food activist, author, and Chez Panisse founder

“Every craft brewery has, if not a mission, then a purpose.” —Dr. J. Jackson-Beckham, educator and diversity ambassador for the Brewers Association

“Twenty-six percent of young consumers are more likely to buy from a socially good company than not.” —Ron Tanner, vice president of philanthropy, government, and industry relations for the Specialty Food Association

“It’s a myth that it’s too expensive to do the right thing.” —Katie Wallace, director of social and environmental impact for New Belgium Brewing

“Eat and drink what you like, but know what you are eating and drinking.” —Talia Haykin, founder and CMO/CFO/COO of Haykin Family Cider

On indigenous people in the United States…

“Invisibility is the modern form of bias against Native Americans. They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know that we are seeds.” —Denisa Livingston, food justice organizer of Diné Community Advocacy Alliance, Slow Food International Indigenous Councilor of the Global North, and social entrepreneur

Culinary Institute of Charleston chef instructor Kevin Mitchell (front) and Denver author Adrian Miller (rear) during a demonstration on the culinary stage at Slow Food Nations 2019. Photo courtesy of Woody Roseland / Slow Food USA

On African American foodways…

“Any culture can have its own soul food. It comes from that family connection, passed down to the next generation.” —Kevin Mitchell, chef instructor at the Culinary Institute of Charleston

On inclusion…

“I’m interested in craft beer as a product but also as a tool. Four percent of craft beer drinkers are African American. —Dr. J. Jackson-Beckham

On cultural appropriation in restaurants…

“You have to honor the culture [that cuisine] came from. Intentionally credit those people on your menu. Pay for someone from that community to go to culinary school or pay back in some other way through authentic community involvement. Also, cook that food well and have a genuine love for it and for the culture it came from.” —Kevin Mitchell

A stellar panel on mental health issues in the hospitality industry was led by (from left to right): Alexandra Palmerton (CHOW); Patrick Mulvaney (Mulvaney’s the Building & Loan, I Got Your Back); Zander Tekus (Aspen 7908); John Hinman (Hinman’s Bakery); and Katherine Miller (James Beard Foundation). Photo by Lucy Beaugard

On mental health in the restaurant industry…

“We need to turn hospitality back onto ourselves. We need to have empathy on the line. If a cook’s not doing well, don’t yell… ask why?” —Patrick Mulvaney, chef-owner of Mulvaney’s the Building & Loan and co-founder of I Got Your Back, a peer support program with online resources to help those facing mental health challenges

On food policy…

“A lot happens at the state level. Civilians and constituents have a lot of power on a local level. There are levers of power to pull.” —Caity Moseman Wadler, executive director of the Heritage Radio Network

On animal welfare…

“They are not factory farms. They are farmed animal factories.” —Carrie Balkcom, executive director for the American Grassfed Association

On farming…

“Farmers are making what they made in the 1970s on a bushel of corn. And the price of a tractor is not the same as it was in the 1970s.” —Stephanie Ohnmacht, co-owner of Whiskey Sisters

“This is the backbone of our country. This is the tradition that feeds us.” —Pete Marczyk, co-owner Marczyk Fine Foods

“Nature has been doing this longer than any of us.” —Meriwether Hardie, chief of staff for Bio-Logical Capital

“Create one true relationship with one farmer. Fall in love with them. Have them in for a drink on a hot day. Buy their great stuff, then buy their crappy stuff and get creative with it.” —Eric Skokan, farmer and chef-owner of Black Cat Farm Table Bistro and Bramble & Hare

“We know what happens when whole generations are disenfranchised from the land.” —Jack Algiere, farm director at Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture

“For many generations, the farm was not the main source of income. It was about feeding the family and the community.” —Lynda Prim, senior director of Glynwood’s Farm

“I don’t believe in crutches. Chemicals are crutches. Chemicals keep us from learning things and being innovative.” —Bob Quinn, founder Kamut International and Quinn Farm & Ranch

“Big Ag wants us to be confused.” —Marilyn Noble, food and agriculture writer for New Food Economy

On food labels…

“Companies can pretty much make any claim they want. Free-range, natural, no artificial colors, or flavors; these are idiotic claims that have no standards.” —Urvashi Rangan, chief science advisor to the Grace Communications Foundation

“There are 16 employees who oversee food labels in his country.” —Carrie Balkcom

On climate change…

“Scientists are studying amaranth as an indicator of climate change. It’s a crop of our resilience; it’s been with us all along.” —Lynda Prim

“Climate disasters mean that disenfranchised people will be impacted first.” —Raquel Lane-Arellano, policy manager for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition

This rice pudding with Palisade peaches, strawberries, and crunchy pepitas—made with leftovers from festival events—was an exquisite way to cap off a weekend of camaraderie, collaboration, and calls for change. Photo by Denise Mickelsen

On taking action…

“It’s time to act. With simple daily choices, we can contribute. Choices can be sustainable: Don’t buy pre-washed salad. Don’t drink Coca-Cola. Every once in a while, cook something!” —Paolo di Croce, international secretary of the Slow Food International Board of Directors

“I would like all of you chefs to think about what school lunch can be. What do children love? What would be culturally diverse and simple to make? Let’s make school lunch an academic subject.” —Alice Waters

“Land management and restorative techniques can lower the global temperature, so, as chefs, we have work to do.” —Anthony Myint, co-founder of Mission Chinese Food, Zero Foodprint, the Perennial Farming Initiative and Commonwealth

“I changed food by not changing food. I didn’t go for the new industrial model.” —Paul Willis, farmer and co-founder of Niman Ranch

“Cheap food is not cheap. You’re paying for environmental degradation.” —Carrie Balkcom

Fourth-generation rancher Cory Carman holistically manages 5,000-acres which serve as a model for sustainable meat operations in the Pacific Northwest.

Saying that grass-fed beef is an important catalyst that brings farmers and ranchers together, Carman feels that it’s a place to start the conversation about regenerative agriculture and rebuilding the food system.

“The push is always for any brand to go national,” she said. “Instead, we need to think about production on a regional basis and build out and support appropriately scaled infrastructure. That’s where you can really have the magic.

“Those are all the things we’re trying to prove out with our little model.”

How many of you have driven to the Western Slope to buy Paonia cherries or West Elks wines? How many have spent the night at one of our bed and breakfasts or guest ranches, fished the Gunnison, or biked the scenic loop? Maybe you’re a chef who has featured the North Fork Valley’s heritage pork, grass-fed beef, Avalanche cheese, Peak Spirits’ eau de vie, Ela Family Farm peaches, Thistle Whistle Farm vegetables, or purchased Big B’s ciders and juices at Whole Foods?

If you have been to the North Fork Valley or enjoyed its distinctive foods, I’m glad.

Because if the natural gas industry has its way on November 1, a deceptively routine process called a Resource Management Plan will start the industrialization of this special place.

The North Fork Valley, which includes the towns of Paonia, Hotchkiss, and Crawford, is home to the largest concentration of organic farms in the state. It’s also a designated Colorado Creative District and an American Viticulture Area. The region is a checkerboard of private farms and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) parcels laced with a web of irrigation ditches, many of which run through or by BLM land. And almost all the BLM spaces have been targeted for fracking, according to Natasha Leger, interim executive director of Citizens for a Healthy Community, a grassroots organization established in 2009 by residents concerned about the risks of large-scale oil and gas development in the community.

The Uncompahgre field office, which manages more than 900,000 acres of BLM land, has proposed opening 95 percent of the area above and below ground, including split estate leases under organic farms, to oil and gas extraction, Leger says. What does industrialization mean to our farms and vineyards? Drinking water contamination; health problems from methane pollution, ozone smog, and soot; well pads, roads, pipelines, and other infrastructure; heavy truck traffic on our two-lane country highway and subsequent road damage; water source depletion; increased demands on public services like 911 and police; and the plugging and cleanup costs of orphaned wells.

Before she was a butcher, Meredith Leigh was a vegetarian. She was fascinated by plants and loved vegetables—how they grew, the way they tasted right out of the field, how they changed color and texture as they cooked.

But during a trip to Vietnam in 2004—after Leigh had been a vegetarian for nine years and a vegan for two—a woman named Loi served her water buffalo. Aware that Loi had raised and slaughtered the animal herself, the act of eating it became an act of connecting, and Leigh began to consider the idea of ethical meat.

“Eating gained new meaning,” she writes of that experience in The Ethical Meat Handbook: Complete Home Butchery, Charcuterie, and Cooking for the Conscious Omnivore. It was then, she says, “I began my journey into the meaningful consumption of animals.”

Concerned that her previous choice to forego meat had had little effect on the systems by which animals are raised—and virtually no impact on the lives or deaths of those animals—Leigh started to identify with the concept of ethical meat.

Is it possible to grow food in the snow? Susie Sutphin thinks so, and she’s determined to teach other mountain dwellers how it’s done. Sutphin is the founder of the nonprofit Tahoe Food Hub, and has spent the last four years growing a thriving regional food system in a part of California no one associates with farming. Her approach is two-pronged: First, she set up a network of farmers throughout the Sierra foothills and northern Nevada, whose produce (and eggs, and herbs, and, in some cases, juice) she distributes to restaurants, schools, and hospitals in the area. As a nonprofit, the food hub also donates food to local shelters and food banks, and offers free education and hands-on learning programs.

Second, she set up the Sierra Agroecology Center, which aims to teach Tahoe residents how to grow their own food. The center includes a large geodesic greenhouse called the Sierra Growing Dome, where Sutphin and her team grow all sorts of things, all year round. The Growing Dome, designed by Growing Spaces, in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, has been specially engineered to withstand large snow loads and to regulate indoor temperature with no electricity. The Sierra Agroecology Center also features assorted cold frames: garden boxes with toppers that make them resistant to cold and thus extend Tahoe’s tiny, 3-month growing season to a solid 9 months.

So far, only three Sierra Growing Domes have been erected in the area — one at the Tahoe Food Hub site, in Truckee, California, and two at an elementary school in South Lake Tahoe, NV — but Sutphin has high hopes that others will pop up soon. In the meantime, the Sierra Nevada farmers she’s working with are happy that the Tahoe Food Hub spares them a few farmers’ markets a week.

Organic meat and milk differ markedly from their conventionally produced counterparts in measures of certain nutrients, a review of scientific studies reported on Tuesday.

In particular, levels of omega-3 fatty acids, beneficial for lowering the risk of heart disease, were 50 percent higher in the organic versions.

“The fatty acid composition is definitely better,” said Carlo Leifert, a professor of ecological agriculture at Newcastle University in England and the leader of an international team of scientists who performed the review.

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, and the Sheepdrove Trust, a British charity that supports organic farming research, paid for the analysis, which cost about $600,000.

However, the question of whether these differences are likely to translate to better health in people who eat organic meat and drink organic milk is sharply disputed.

“We don’t have that answer right now,” said Richard P. Bazinet, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto who was not involved with the research. “Based on the composition, it looks like they should be better for us.”

The two new scientific papers, published in The British Journal of Nutrition, are not the result of any new experiments, but instead employ a statistical technique called meta-analysis that attempts to pull robust conclusions out of many disparate studies.

They are certain to further stir a combative debate over whether organic foods are healthier. Some scientists assert that organic and conventional foods are nutritionally indistinguishable, and others find significant benefits to organic. Many people who buy organic food say they do so not for a nutritional advantage, but because of environmental concerns and to avoid pesticides.

The higher levels of omega-3, a type of polyunsaturated fat, arise not from the attributes usually associated with organic food — that the animals are not given antibiotics, hormones or genetically modified feed — but rather from a requirement that animals raised organically spend time outside. Organic milk and beef come from cattle that graze on grass, while most conventional milk and beef come from cows subsisting on grain.

“It’s not something magical about organic,” said Charles M. Benbrook, an organic industry consultant who is an author of the studies. “It’s about what the animals are being fed.”

Most of the same changes would be observed in conventionally raised animals that also grazed for the majority of their diet, the scientists said.“For once, this is a pretty simple story,” Dr. Benbrook said.

The review of comparisons of organic and conventional milk analyzed all 196 papers the scientists found. Because studies of meat are sparser, they could not look at just one type of meat like beef or pork. Instead, they did one analysis of the 67 papers they found for all types of meat. “Only if you throw them all in one pot can you do a meta-analysis,” Dr. Leifert said.

Two years ago, Dr. Leifert led a similar review for fruits and vegetables that found organic produce had higher levels of some antioxidants and less pesticide residue than conventionally grown crops.

Nutrition experts broadly agree that omega-3 fatty acids in food offer numerous health benefits. When the United States Department of Agriculture revised its dietary guidelines in 2010, it urged people to eat more seafood, which is rich in omega-3.

Omega-3 is much more prevalent in grass than in grain, which is why organic livestock and milk also contain higher levels. “Lo and behold, we altered in some fundamental ways the nutrient intake of these animals and hence the nutrient composition of the products that we derive from those animals,” Dr. Benbrook said.

The new analysis found that levels of another polyunsaturated fat, omega-6, were slightly lower in organic meat and dairy. Omega-3 and omega-6 are essential for the functioning of the human body, which can make neither. But some have argued that a skewing toward omega-6 has become unhealthy.

Centuries ago, people ate roughly equal amounts of the two fatty acids. Today, most Americans eat more than 10 times as much omega-6, which is prevalent in certain vegetable oils and thus also fried foods, as omega-3.

In an email, Dr. Walter C. Willett, the chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the differences between organic and conventional beef were trivial, and the amount of saturated fat in both were high.

“Far greater, and beneficial, differences in fatty acids are seen if poultry and fish replace red meat,” Dr. Willett said.

A shortcoming of the recommendation to eat more fish is that if everyone followed it, the rivers, oceans and lakes would be emptied of fish. Dr. Bazinet of the University of Toronto said perhaps encouraging people to switch to organic meats and milk would be “a way to kind of get at them with the foods they’re already eating.”

Dr. Bazinet said observational studies suggested that adding 200 milligrams a day of omega-3s to an average diet should yield health benefits. Switching to organic beef would add about 50 milligrams. “Eating one grass-fed beef serving per day is not going to do it,” he said.

But if combined with a couple of glasses of organic milk, “it should make a difference,” Dr. Bazinet said. “That would be the hypothesis.”

Scientists are now trying to examine the health question more directly.

Dr. Leifert cited several studies that indicated that infants of mothers who ate organic fruits and vegetables were less likely to contract some diseases. He is also conducting experiments to see if rats fed organic foods are healthier. So far, he said, it appears that crop pesticide residue does have measurable effects on the rats’ hormones.

“We still don’t know whether it kills you, but we do know it has an effect on hormonal balances,” he said. “It’s something that makes you think a little bit.”