Located in the mountains of southwest Colorado, Mountain Roots is a community-driven, grassroots food systems initiative founded in 2010. Executive Director Holly Conn was among the founding members, including Rose Tocke, Renee Brekke-Ebbott, Mountain Oven Organic Bakery founder Chris Sullivan, Emily Goughary, Colleen Strauss, Robin Jones, Mike Wehmeyer, and Richard Melnick.

Mountain Roots cultivates the local food system in Gunnison Valley and the surrounding areas by creating and coordinating local food programs like community farms and gardens, food distribution programs for those experiencing food insecurity, CSAs, agricultural and outdoor-focused kids camps, cooking classes, beginning farmer training, and more.

How It All Began

Executive Director Holly Conn moved to Gunnison Valley, Colorado in 2010 to raise her two young daughters in the mountains, bringing her background as a private chef and a passion for vegetable gardening with her. The K-12 school in Crested Butte had just completed an expansion, and the new kitchen manager put out a call to the community for parents to help redesign the lunch program – and Holly answered. That was the birth of the Farm to School program.

Although growing conditions were known to be challenging with low rainfall, a short growing season, and frequent freezes - the soil was fertile, there were an average of 266 days of sunshine each year, and she had the grit, passion, and determination to make it work. She built a shared garden on an empty lot in the ski town of Crested Butte. The 2,100-square-foot urban garden’s first harvest yielded an incredible 600+ pounds of food, which was donated to local food pantries and schools, and offered as work-trade for volunteers.

The Early Days of Mountain Roots

After seeing the positive difference that the gardens made to the community, and the opportunities to make positive change in the schools, Holly and the group of people passionate about local food working with her decided to form Mountain Roots as a nonprofit in 2010, establishing their mission to cultivate the local food system. They rounded up more community volunteers and launched a Farm-to-School effort for the 2010-11 school year with local food lunches at Crested Butte’s K-12 school, built a youth garden at the school, and implemented a pilot summer camp program that brought kids from the garden into the forests, rivers, sage, rock formations, wetlands, farms, and ranches of the Gunnison Valley.

In 2014, Mountain Roots executed an extensive community assessment and designed access strategies for low-income and food insecure residents, including the Backyard Harvest food distribution program, Cooking Matters cooking classes for low-income individuals, and, in 2021, were granted the ability to accept SNAP+ benefits toward CSA purchases.

Hungry to get more fresh produce into people’s hands, and to support the growth of small family farms, they launched their Multi-Farm CSA in 2016. Now highly popular, the subscription-based box program brings fresh local fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs, artisan bread, and even flowers into 140+ households each year and keeps $95,000 in the local rural economy.

In 2017, Mountain Roots broke ground on a 1.5-acre community farm in partnership with Coldharbour Institute on Coldharbour’s ranch east of Gunnison, and in 2018, added chickens that are raised for both meat and for eggs. The farm models and teaches regenerative practices that produce clean, organic food while restoring soil health and biodiversity to the land.

In 2020, Mountain Roots established Glacier Farm, created with a grant from Great Outdoors Colorado and brought to life through a fellowship project for a Western University graduate student of environmental management. This two-acre parcel is part of the historic Niccoli homestead, now owned by the Crested Butte Land Trust.

Mountain Roots Today and Tomorrow

Today, Mountain Roots is considered the leading local food and sustainable agriculture initiative in Gunnison County, committed to increasing local food in schools, supporting food security for all, teaching lifelong food self-sufficiency skills, and building awareness and availability of locally produced, nutritious foods.

Programs include:

Growing and distributing food: The organization now manages eight growing spaces, including two production farms, two youth gardens, three community gardens, and a set of four hydroponic container farms in Gunnison and Crested Butte. The produce is distributed through its Backyard Harvest program via weekly boxes to those facing food insecurity, and sold to community members through their collaborative CSA, as well as to wholesale customers throughout Gunnison Valley. Most recently, Mountain Roots purchased four hydroponic container farms to expand the possibility of year-round production, and broke ground on a new community farm showcasing active conservation of working agricultural lands at Glacier Farm in Crested Butte.

Education: Mountain Roots focuses heavily on providing hands-on education and guidance around growing and preparing food, which is otherwise becoming a “lost skill”. They bring in local and outside experts to teach special interest topics such as native pollinators, seed saving, and fermenting/food preservation.

Schools: Mountain Roots’ districtwide Farm-to-School program serves 2,400 kids and young adults (pre-K through college) with experiential environmental science lessons, living classrooms/school gardens, and nutrition lessons.

Regenerative agriculture: Mountain Roots’ Regenerative Agriculture program prioritizes agricultural practices that improve soil health and conserve waterways, educating the next generation of farmers about the importance of conservation in farming.

CSA: CSA Produce Boxes. Mountain Roots’ CSA is a collaboration between several small farms who don’t produce quite enough yield to support their own membership. By aggregating produce from several small farms, the Mountain Roots collaborative CSA provides greater variety to customers and supports small farmers in building their business and expanding their offerings.

Holly Conn, Executive Director

Mountain Roots’ Executive Director Holly Conn was one of those kids who picked fresh raspberries by the bridge on her walk to school in the morning and snapped beans on the back porch on summer evenings. Growing up in a small town in northern Ohio, she was also what some would call a ‘free range’ kid who had lots of unstructured, creative play in the outdoors.

As a young adult, her love of cooking and sharing food took her to restaurants, where she learned both front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house operations, before working as a private chef on luxury yachts on the east coast and in the Caribbean.

Holly moved to Crested Butte, Colorado in 2010 with her husband Ira to raise her two young daughters in the mountains, bringing her background as a private chef and a passion for vegetable gardening with her. The K-12 school in Crested Butte had just completed an expansion, and the new kitchen manager put out a call to the community for parents who wanted to help redesign school lunches – and Holly answered. That was the birth of the Farm to School program.

She also heard a common myth about the tiny mountain town, which was: “you can’t grow food here.” Conditions are known to be challenging at 8,888 ft elevation. The high alpine environment is cold and dry, and the short growing season has only 45-60 frost-free days, but the soil was fertile, there’s plenty of sunshine, and Holly had the grit, passion, and determination to make it work. With a handful of other garden optimists, she built a shared garden on an empty lot in the ski town of Crested Butte. The 2,100-square-foot urban garden’s first harvest yielded an incredible 600+ pounds of organic food, which was donated to local food pantries and schools, and offered as work-trade for volunteers.

After seeing the positive difference that the gardens made to the community, the interest from parents, teachers, and kids at the school, and acknowledging the inequities and disparities around food that existed valley-wide, Holly and the eight-member grassroots founding group decided to form Mountain Roots as a nonprofit (the original name was actually Paradise Food Project, named after the Paradise Divide mountain range that fringes the town).

Momentum built quickly, and with the annual engagement of 300+ volunteers contributing over 4,000 hours per year to the projects, by 2014 they had established a district-wide Farm to School Program, a network of youth and community gardens, and conducted a Community Food Assessment to inform the food security initiatives they would pilot over the next few years. Cooking Matters (a free six-week course for low income people), Backyard Harvest (a food rescue/food donation program), and The Giving Garden became anchors for the Food Security program.

The demand for fresh, local food has continued to increase, outpacing supply and presenting more equity challenges. By 2016, Holly saw demand for Food Security programs doubling each year, and the school district requested an expansion of the environmental education and nutrition education programs. In 2017, Mountain Roots established a 2-acre diversified community farm, launched a beginning farmer training program, and helped to establish a Producer’s Guild farmer cooperative and a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture weekly food box program) to support emerging farmers establish their farms and expand their production for local and now regional markets. To increase year-round food production, in 2020, Holly negotiated the purchase of four recycled shipping containers that have since been converted into hydroponic farms.

Under Holly’s leadership, Mountain Roots has grown from an all-volunteer organization to one that has eight full time employees and 15 AmerCorps members, more than 300 volunteers, hundreds of donors, and dozens of strong community partnerships. Today, Mountain Roots engages and serves over 5,600 unique individuals (over 1/3 of the valley’s population) with local food – whether in production, distribution, education, or as recipient of or donors to hunger relief efforts. Mountain Roots’ programs encourage intergenerational interaction, peer-to-peer learning, and hands-on engagement.

Holly is a liaison between the Board of Directors and the organization’s operations. Keeping the long-term vision in sight and core values at the forefront, she manages the day-to-day operations, trains and oversees key staff, coordinates volunteers, manages organizational budget and finances, fundraises, nurtures strategic partnerships, coordinates outreach efforts, oversees promotion and marketing, program development, resource development, grant management and reporting, as well as monitoring and evaluation.

Holly has fallen in love with the mountains of the Gunnison Valley. When she’s not busy at Mountain Roots supporting the local food system, she loves to hike and bike, alpine ski, nordic ski, snowboard, tend her home garden, practice yoga, meditate, play guitar, spend time with her children, and travel. She loves to sing old Broadway tunes in the shower and curl up with a good book, a candle, and a cup of herbal tea.

What’s so important about local food?

Food that is grown locally travels a shorter distance from where it’s harvested to where it’s eaten, so it’s fresher, which makes it taste better, and makes it more nutrient-rich than produce that travels hundreds of miles to reach the consumer.

This shorter distance also translates to fewer carbon emissions, which lessens the food’s environmental impact.

Prioritizing local food keeps more money in the local community and provides jobs for local producers and other people in the food value chain. Supporting small family farms and ranches helps them care for the land, which promotes clean water, healthy soils, and builds biodiversity.

Local food can also provide opportunities to build relationships with the people who grow the food we eat.

Who benefits from your services?

We’re based in Gunnison-Crested Butte, and directly impact thousands of people who live in and visit this rural mountain community. Through Farm to School, 2,500 local school kids get hands-on environmental science and nutrition education during the school year, and in the summer, our kids camps have a mix of locals and visitors. We’re dedicated to serving small to mid-sized local farmers and ranchers - in fact, between 2015 and 2020 we helped launch four small farms in the valley.

The food we grow reaches the tables of more than 250 households through our CSA and online marketplace, as well as the food pantry and the senior meals program. Gunnison Valley has a surprisingly high poverty rate - low-income, vulnerable, and socially disadvantaged residents who are facing food insecurity receive fresh fruits and vegetables from our Backyard Harvest program and can take cooking classes and join community gardens to become more self-sufficient. Young adults who want to explore careers in agriculture, environmental education, or food security can serve as AmeriCorps members.

What Does Mountain Roots Do?

Visit our website for more information about our many programs and initiatives, including:

Backyard Harvest

Mountain Roots’ Growing Spaces

CSA

Online Marketplace

AmeriCorps

Farm-to-School Programs

Summer Camps

Feast in the Field

Cooking Matters free course

Tell me a little about your farms. How many are there? Where are they? Who do they serve?

Mountain Roots manages eight growing spaces across Gunnison Valley:

Two interactive teaching gardens at the Gunnison Community School and Crested Butte Community School

Three community gardens in Gunnison that operate on a “common ground” model, meaning a group of people come together to cultivate the whole space instead of renting small plots individually. This results in greater yields (and a whole lot of camaraderie) with fewer human inputs. Any surplus harvest is distributed to households in need through our Backyard Harvest program.

Two farms operating in the Regenerative Agriculture program. These three acres grow a diverse mix of seasonal organic produce for our collaborative CSA, and for distribution to families in need by the Backyard Harvest program.

Four recycled shipping container farms that use hydroponic technology to grow year round, producing the equivalent of four acres’ worth of produce within a 24”x40” footprint on 5 gallons of water a day.

Looking ahead, we are exploring indoor hydroponic technology as a cold-climate solution. Infinity Greens, our soon-to-be-launched brand of hydroponically grown organic greens, herbs, and edible flowers, will be brought to retail and wholesale customers as a way of elevating locally grown food and bolstering the market for other farmers as well.

What is a CSA? What makes the Mountain Roots CSA so special?

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, a farming model built on fairness and transparency for both the farmer and the consumer. CSAs are a way for small scale farmers to pre-sell the season’s crops before they’re planted. Members pay in advance, allowing farmers to better prepare for and plan for their growing seasons, as well as pay for the supplies they need for a successful growing season.

We support this model of agriculture via our CSA Produce Boxes. Ours is special because it is a collaboration between several small farms who don’t produce quite enough yield to support their own membership. By aggregating produce from several small farms, the Mountain Roots collaborative CSA provides greater variety to our shareholders and supports small farmers in building their business and expanding their offerings.

Where does the food you grow go?

Mountain Roots is a key agricultural producer in Gunnison County and a founding member of the Gunnison Valley Producers’ Guild. In our eight growing spaces, we grow 12,000+ pounds of organic produce annually, while training 12 farmer apprentices each year. In close partnership with the Gunnison Country Food Pantry and the City of Gunnison Senior Meals, Mountain Roots is a key provider for food relief in Gunnison County: 12 low-income, vulnerable, and socially-disadvantaged residents receive a combined 39,000 pounds of produce in weekly boxes delivered to their doors.

Do you work with Western Colorado University?

Mountain Roots partners with Western Colorado University in several ways, including offering two two-year fellowships to Master in Environmental Management graduate students and sponsoring capstone projects for the Environmental Studies undergraduate students. We’re currently advising on the development of a four-season greenhouse, the emerging Center for Cold Climate Food Systems minor, and a new culinary intern program.

How can I get the food Mountain Roots grows?

Our online marketplace is your gateway to all things local food. You can register online and then check our weekly list to purchase locally and regionally grown fruits, vegetables, meat, grains, and more.

You’ll also find information about becoming a CSA member – members receive a weekly box of local food from June through October. Registration to be a seasonal shareholder opens in late February on National CSA day. Coming soon, restaurants, grocers, schools, and institutions will be able to order local food from small farms across southwest Colorado with a one-stop-shop - one invoice, one delivery. Our produce can be found on restaurant menus throughout the valley.

Food Assistance: If you or someone you know in Gunnison or Crested Butte area is in need of food assistance, we have a simple request form on our website to request a free weekly box of fresh produce.

How are you funded?

Community support is incredibly important to keep our good work going. Approximately one third of our operating budget comes from individual donations. Five to ten percent comes from local businesses and 25% of the budget comes from grants. The remaining 30% comes from produce sales (via wholesale programs, CSA boxes, soup share and online marketplace,) and programs like summer camps, afterschool programs, and cooking classes.

How many people does Mountain Roots employ? How many volunteers? Americorps members?

Mountain Roots has a staff of eight full-time employees, two graduate fellows, and 15 AmeriCorps members serving in different terms. Dozens of volunteers distribute fresh produce to households in need and work the fields with us every week.

This is great! How can I get involved?

The Get Involved tab on our website will direct you to all the wonderful ways to participate with Mountain Roots.

Every day of the week throughout the summer there are opportunities to harvest in the garden, assist with packing and distributing food to families in need, or greet CSA members as they pick up their weekly shares. During the spring and winter months, the Backyard Harvest Program continues distributing food to those experiencing food insecurity and volunteers are always welcome to assist with those efforts.

Our lively annual events, like Feast in the Field and Harvest Hoedown, are always in need of volunteers and sponsors.

If you are a business owner, there are sponsorship options and team building volunteer opportunities available throughout the year.

Backyard gardeners can donate produce or eggs to families in need by signing up for the Fresh Food Connect app.

People looking to explore careers in food systems can apply for two-year apprenticeships through AmeriCorps, and graduate students can apply for fellowships.

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Photo credit to Mountain Roots unless noted in the photo title.