While the U.S. Department of Agriculture pushes its “Know Your Food, Know Your Farmer” initiative and opens a series of hearings into whether agribusinesses are getting too big and concentrated — the first was held in Des Moines, Iowa, last week — James and Irina Bertini are already busy transforming their historic south Denver neighborhood into a greener, more self-reliant place. Under their umbrella business Denver Urban Homesteading, they’ve started retailing locally grown food in an 8,000 square foot warehouse, opened an indoor year-round farmers market and brought in experts to teach classes in backyard food growing, brew-making, butchering and more.
As the vast majority of the population becomes increasingly disconnected from rural life, old homemaking skills seem new again. Groups like the Greater Denver Urban Homesteaders, which claims more than 100 members, want to rediscover lost arts, provide for more of their own necessities and achieve greater self-reliance.
“We’ve sanitized our cities to the point where many times it’s illegal to grow or raise food, even in small amounts that people could use to feed their families,” laments James Bertini, who has campaigned for looser restrictions on backyard poultry and goat farming.
Hosting a winter farmers market is one of several things that demonstrate the Bertinis’ pioneer spirit. With its high elevation and relatively short growing season, Colorado tends to concentrate most of its markets for a few short months in the summer and early fall when fresh produce is in season. But many small farmers offer food products that are less seasonal, including meats and cheeses, baked goods, honey, preserves and even hydroponic micro-greens, herbs and tomatoes.
So why are so few farmers markets open during the winter?
“I wondered the same thing when I began this market,” Bertini says. “What I found out is the public really accepts it.”
The Saturday market continues to grow and now attracts more than 500 shoppers a week.
Since they sell products themselves, they’ve made it possible for shoppers to visit the vendors and pay with a credit card, even for those farmers who aren’t set up to take plastic.
“We’re thinking about using ‘Market Bucks,’ which people would buy from us and then go use to settle up with the vendors,” Bertini says. “We also take food stamps. People buy here every week using food stamps.”
Another unique aspect is the degree to which the Bertinis personally monitor the vendors and make an attempt to visit every farm that’s represented.
“There’s a hunger for people to get food in one location that is local, and have confidence that the owner has taken care to select good quality, local foods. I have to reject a lot of people,” Bertini says.
One thing driving some of the growth is that they have positioned the market to be a pick up and delivery point for Windsor Dairy, which operates the largest cow share program in the state. Other milk share and Community Supported Agriculture programs are also using the venue as a meeting place.
“I think we have room to develop this business,” says Irina Bertini, as she goes from booth-to-booth to make her weekly purchases. A chemical engineer originally from the Soviet Union, she says she was disappointed by the quality of food in American supermarkets and says her time in other countries convinced her that even poor people in poor countries tend to eat better than the average American. She makes most of the couple’s daily meals from scratch.
The Bertinis are looking at expanding the market to a few more days a week and may even offer food deliveries in the future. They also want to add a commercial kitchen to the property, which would include drying equipment for fruits, mushrooms and other items.
Rob Anderson, who owns Mini Moos and Kids Too goat dairy at Canon City, says the market is helping he and his wife Amy expand into Denver. Their goat cheeses are already sold at about seven retail locations in Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Monument. They are currently milking 40 goats with plans to increase to 80 by summer.
“Anything to get the word out on fresh goat cheese and goat milk,” he says, at a booth he operates with his father-in-law. “We’re in it so people can have access to a healthy natural product.”
He says offering classes on backyard goat farming is a great idea, which he fully supports.
“I encourage folks to do it. I think it’s a wonderful experience,” he says. “I love the personality that goats have.”
Cynthia Cronan’s Capra Collina farm at Trinidad is also represented at the market. Her son, who was spreading samples of the jar-packed soft goat cheese on crackers, said the product could be incorporated into a multitude of dishes, even frosting. He was also selling free-range meat from traditional Navajo churro sheep.
Next to him was artisan cheese-maker Michelle Warner from Twin Mountain Milkhouse of Del Norte, which James Bertini considers one of their biggest success stories.
“It takes them almost four hours to drive here to market. They sell raw milk shares and delicious cheese. Since coming here to this market, they have been found by buyers for three other stores in the Denver area, whereas before they had no outlets in Denver,” Bertini says. “They have to come here on Friday night to be at the market on Saturday morning. They say they will rent an apartment because it’s working out for them. They can also leave milk here for people to pick up during the week.”
Denver Urban Homesteading bills itself as a “re-skilling center” where city residents can take classes in dying arts like raising their own chickens and goats, slaughtering them at home, growing and cooking with herbs, even backyard fish farming.
They are also spearheading a community wine project. Neighbors will be in encouraged to grow certain varietals of grapes and when the first fruit is harvested three years from now, it will be made into wine by a local winery and distributed back to the growers.
“I’m aware you can make wine on your own but many people don’t want to go to the trouble or can’t make the space to set up the equipment, and plus that makes it such a solitary venture,” he says. “Whereas this will be a group of people working together and educating each other on how to do this.”
They also plan to offer field trips, one of which will tour a home that captures and reuses rainwater, uses solar panels to heat water and relies on other sustainable living techniques.
Bertini came to Denver after practicing transactional real estate law in New York. But he found himself stuck doing litigation, something he didn’t enjoy, so he turned to renovating houses in the quirky Baker Historic District.
“I moved here 15 years ago when it was less developed than it is now,” he says. “On one side of me was a gang house, on the other side were two abandoned houses. I liked this neighborhood, I thought it was interesting, and at the time it was all that I could afford. Since then I’ve acquired the houses around me — naturally I don’t have a gang living next to me anymore — and I’ve renovated the houses and I have tenants living in there, and other people are discovering this corridor.”
West, across the rushing traffic of I-25, is a tall structure that’s a converted bolt factory. “A Lo-Do loft developer bought it three or four years ago and made it into office lofts,” Bertini says. Now the people who work there in pursuits like art galleries, public relations and private tango lessons shop at the market.
The Bertinis also own a dog daycare and boarding facility, located across the street from their house, that claims to have the biggest doggie swimming pool in Colorado as well as elaborate tunnels and play areas.
The industrious couple have been labeled “social entrepreneurs” by at least one observer.
“That’s what I was told by a professor at the University of Denver, who described a social entrepreneur to me as somebody who uses business practices to advance some sort of social need or good,” Bertini says. “Some do it in the nonprofit world. Some do it in the government world. And some of us do it in the for-profit world. It causes confusion for some people, because they assume we are a nonprofit — I’m not sure why. And I’ve even had people criticize me because I’m not. There seems to be a thought by some people if you are part of a nonprofit you are inherently good, and if you are part of a for-profit than you are inherently suspect.”
But Bertini likes the idea that a person can do something good for society and still make a profit doing it.
“After all, we all know and appreciate that farmers have to make a profit and support their families. They have to live in houses and be able to send their children to school, so we should also want the people who help those farmers bring their food to market be able to make a profit too,” he says.
While it is their intention to create a for-profit venture, right now it’s also still a start-up.
“We hope there will be profit in what we are doing,” Bertini adds. “Right now there are only losses, but that’s not surprising for a new business.”
Meanwhile, their efforts are making a difference. The Bertinis have gone from spending all of their food dollars at big grocery stores to spending about half of it on local food from small farmers.
“We don’t have an official position against any particular kind of agriculture,” Bertini says. “I understand that there are billions of people in the world and one way to feed them is through industrialization of agricultural processes. That exists now and may always exist. But it is good to promote small farms and small farmers, and we’re putting our money where our mouth is by investing in this.”
DENVER, Colo. —
