our story
Mountain Roots cultivates a resilient and equitable food system by enhancing healthy connections between earth, food, and community. We foster knowledge, teach skills, and provide opportunities that ensure access to affordable, nutritious food that is regionally based and sustainably produced.
2010
Founded under fiscal sponsorship of our local community foundation. Our first 2,100 sq. ft. urban garden produced 600+ pounds of food that was donated to the local pantry, schools, and offered as work-trade for volunteers.
2011
Launched a Farm to School program with local food lunches at Crested Butte Community School, built two youth gardens, and piloted a summer camp program.
2012
Awarded 501(c)3 status in April.
2013
With a Together Green grant from the National Audubon Society, we established our community garden network. We began a Community Food Security Assessment, the precursor to our Food Security program.
2014
Mountain Roots designed a new conceptual framework that identified five focus areas for our work: Food Culture & Education, Food Security, Food Production, Food Economy, and Food Policy. We are active in the first four areas. Policy is an area for future growth.
2016
We took steps into food economy by launching a multi-farmer CSA and piloting value-added product development.
2017
Broke ground on our Community Farm at the Coldharbour Ranch.
2018
Through cultivating partnerships, we converted an old train car into a walk-in refrigerator and established our aggregation and distribution center at South Main Gunnison.
2019
Launched Healthy Futures AmeriCorps Program, a regional initiative.
2020
Purchased four container farms, our indoor growing containers, in order to triple our food production.
2021
We continued to respond to community need post Covid-19. Our Backyard Harvest fresh food boxes continued all-year long. We delivered free boxes to 85 families in need every week.
2022
We began three new community partnerships at the Community Gardens, including a WIC (Women, Infants and Children nutrition program) garden club, hosting support groups with Project Hope and a collaboration with Inmigrantes Unidos to revive the Cottonwood garden, now known as "Cultivemos Cottonwood".