Sarah Jones didn’t start out as a farmer, but when she married into a 4th generation farming family in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, Jones Farms Organics, she went all in. She recently co-founded the Rye Resurgence Project when she saw that rye, traditionally a cover crop, could be a profitable cash crop. Rye uses far less water than other crops being grown in the valley, and because it covers the ground in the winter, it protects and nourishes the soil. Its many varieties can be used for a wide variety of products including bread, cookies, beer, whiskey, and livestock feed. The key, as Jones talks about in this episode, is cultivating markets for rye so that farmers can grow it profitably.
Jones has also opened a retail store, Hooper Junction Mercantile, which sells a variety of local food and locally-made products, and where she’s planning to install a mill where people can mill their own grains.
TIMELINE
1’11 how Sarah became a farmer
2’50 what they’re growing
3’41 rye does not taste like caraway seeds
4’23 baking with rye
5’15 rye pizza crust
5’58 one restaurant’s pizza use supports an acre of rye
7’47 rye can be planted in October after the potato harvest in cold climate
9’26 how the Rye Resurgence Project started
15’36 dust storms as a result of bare fields
18’16 rotating crops on center pivot irrigation systems
18’40 the Jones farm is on a six-year rotation
20’09 if you change the consumer demand you can change the way land is used
21’22 rye uses a lot less water than most other cash crops
23’23 the state of the aquiver
24’13 Jones farm has cut its water usage 50% using a variety of strategies
25’33 the soil health aspect
28’01 dealing with weather extremes
29’06 ease of growing rye
30’03 rye coming up in the spring
31’13 livestock and rye
32’06 rye healthy for gut health
33’26 the main goal is to create and markets demand for crops that use less water
34’00 how do you create demand and markets
37’18 San Luis Valley rye in rye whiskey
39’01 “community over commodity”
41’14 Rye terroir
44’02 regenerative can make more money than conventional
47’11 helping farmers find customers is key to regenerative agriculture
48’25 farmers who left organic because it was not profitable for them.
50’04 benefit to ecosystems
52’58 the quality of the food can be found in its flavor
54’49 Hooper Junction Mercantile
59’44 milling your own grain for fresh flour
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