High-Country Farming
Growing and feeding a community at 7,200 feetThe Alpine Farm
All about the Farm at Home Ranch
The Farm at Home Ranch is a thriving farm and visionary horticultural program with a mission to sustainably feed the North Routt community and its visitors at the rarefied altitude of 7,200 feet. A beautiful complex of stunning gardens, alpine greenhouses, and orchards, the farm lovingly illustrates how a high-country farm in Colorado can flourish with ingenuity, hard work and the singular vision of its energetic and inspired owners.
If you’d like a taste of the bounty – during the growing and harvest season of late spring through fall – you can purchase fresh produce from the charming Farm Stand located on County Road 129 across the street from the Clark Store. Open from 4 to 7 pm on Wednesdays starting in June, the Stand sells seasonal fruits and vegetables, and eggs and beef, and has attracted discriminating customers from Clark and the surrounding areas. For best selection, come early; produce this fresh and delicious at this altitude is a precious and rare commodity.
If you’d like to purchase a share of the bounty from our CSA, please follow this link to our CSA page.
Current and future plans ~
What’s happening and what’s to come
The Farm at Home Ranch is currently expanding operations to provide more produce for Routt County and beyond. We believe it’s a fun challenge to experiment with the limits of growing in a high-country climate and an adventure to find new methods of growing delicious, local produce with our dynamic seasons. Our North Routt community has been incredibly supportive of our new venture into selling produce at the Clark Farm Stand, and we have decided to extend our offerings at the Steamboat Farmers Market in 2023. It is humbling and inspiring to see the community excitement for eating food that is grown locally.
To meet the rising demand for local food, we have added an eco-design greenhouse on the Ranch that is heated and cooled by a climate battery with a pellet stove as back-up. This will facilitate growing annual crops in all four seasons, while adding the capacity to grow tropical and Mediterranean plants – citrus, figs, avocados, and passionfruit, for example. The new facility also has expanded space for seed germination and produce processing to allow production activities to continue throughout the winter months. With two high tunnels and the new greenhouse, we hope to provide tasty and nutritious food to our community year-round. Stay tuned for future farm developments and stories.
