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Like farmers everywhere, Gary May is in the midst of a busy fall season.
He has 1,300 acres of field corn to cut. He recently got out the drills and planted 1,500 acres of wheat.
What makes his situation unique is the large corn maze that opens to the public during the month of October and the 10 acres of sweet corn he picked and sold earlier this year. Fourteen acres of bright orange pumpkins lay ripening in the sun, many of which will be harvested by visiting school children and families. A short golf-cart ride from what is likely the state’s largest lavender patch, he’s also planted a strip of decorative Indian corn that yields miniature multi-colored ears.
“I think families will enjoy the corn,” he said. “It didn’t cost me much to put it in. They can pick some corn for what they pay for a Big Mac. They want to do something, they just don’t know what. And while they are out here, they can be learning something, too.”
A native Minnesotan, who worked in the beef business before turning to farming and ranching 25 years ago, May likes having a challenge. His latest is the 400 manicured interstate-frontage acres that comprise May Farms, much of it planted in various kinds of produce. “We don’t have the inherent knowledge up here that some areas have,” he noted. Coaxing tiny seeds like carrots and beets from the paper thin soil is tough; this year’s drought means his wheat and corn crops are producing only 25 percent of their normal yields.
What motivates him to push ahead is a desire to keep innovating and to craft a model that will solve some of the hurdles farmers face as they attempt to cultivate new revenue streams.
“I’m trying not to be a one-trick pony,” he said. “Too many farmers are.”
Petting zoos, zucchini and zoning
May traveled extensively early in his career and fell in love with Colorado. In the 1980s, he bought an old Shorthorn ranch on the prairie east of Denver with the vision of eventually creating an agritourism enterprise. Today a brightly-painted barn surrounded by flowers, fields and a large pond hosts everything from weddings to weekend outings for families to elegant corn maze dinners prepared by Denver chefs.
The Colorado ag department lists nearly 50 farms offering fall activities, but May Farms is likely the only outfit zoned for “agri-entertainment,” which May considers one of his most significant innovations.
“I saw all of these farmers starting out as mom-and-pops and then their popularity took off,” he explained. “So they build a nice house in the country but they are surrounded by land that is all zoned agricultural (or A-1.) The farm-to-market roads can only handle so much traffic. So they have a great thing going, but now people are complaining that, legally, they can’t do what they are doing.”
Agricultural ordinances typically don’t allow commercial use of land for entertainment purposes. May was concerned about how this might limit the growth and value of his business, so he went to his local commissioners with a plan to zone May Farms as A-E, “agri-entertainment,” a definition that would encompass all of the activities he dreamed of offering.
At first, they laughed at him. What sold them was the realization that it would help protect the land from residential development.
“Over a year, we put together an agri-tainment zoning designation,” he said. “We had it done before we did any building here, to protect us. Now it’s a marketable product if ever we want to move on.”
May believes his is the only farm in Colorado to obtain such zoning but said there is growing interest in the concept nationwide.
“Gary’s been a leader on this in his area,” said Wendy White, marketing specialist with the Colorado ag department. “But zoning approvals really depend on the county a producer is in.”
The ag department offers workshops and online resources and encourages farmers to do their homework before starting an agritourism venture. In addition to looking into zoning and conditional use permits, White recommends farmers organize a business entity that’s separate from the farm, minimize liability with proper documentation and signage and obtain adequate insurance. “Liability is always one of the first issues we get asked about,” she noted.
Regulations associated with catering to the public are often a moving target, May said. As the mandates increase, it’s not clear he’d have the financial resources to launch the equivalent of May Farms today.
He points randomly to a barrel train used to give rides that costs $500 annually just for safety inspections and licensing. Then he moves on to something bigger: the on-site water treatment facility he built that is so strictly monitored that he now has to contend with heavily chlorinated water at his house, which is upstream from the rest of the system.
Selling produce he grows on-site is another frustration.
May, who hires around 20 employees during his peak season, explains that if he wants to take his watermelons into Denver to sell at the flea market, it costs $45 to rent a space, plus more to pay one or two people to gather the produce, haul it into town and work the booth. He said there is no way he can charge enough per melon to cover his costs. Likewise, the labor expense is “astronomical” to harvest sweet corn that ends up selling “five ears for a buck.”
Like farmers everywhere, Gary May is in the midst of a busy fall season.
He has 1,300 acres of field corn to cut. He recently got out the drills and planted 1,500 acres of wheat.
What makes his situation unique is the large corn maze that opens to the public during the month of October and the 10 acres of sweet corn he picked and sold earlier this year. Fourteen acres of bright orange pumpkins lay ripening in the sun, many of which will be harvested by visiting school children and families. A short golf-cart ride from what is likely the state’s largest lavender patch, he’s also planted a strip of decorative Indian corn that yields miniature multi-colored ears.
“I think families will enjoy the corn,” he said. “It didn’t cost me much to put it in. They can pick some corn for what they pay for a Big Mac. They want to do something, they just don’t know what. And while they are out here, they can be learning something, too.”
A native Minnesotan, who worked in the beef business before turning to farming and ranching 25 years ago, May likes having a challenge. His latest is the 400 manicured interstate-frontage acres that comprise May Farms, much of it planted in various kinds of produce. “We don’t have the inherent knowledge up here that some areas have,” he noted. Coaxing tiny seeds like carrots and beets from the paper thin soil is tough; this year’s drought means his wheat and corn crops are producing only 25 percent of their normal yields.
What motivates him to push ahead is a desire to keep innovating and to craft a model that will solve some of the hurdles farmers face as they attempt to cultivate new revenue streams.
“I’m trying not to be a one-trick pony,” he said. “Too many farmers are.”
Petting zoos, zucchini and zoning
May traveled extensively early in his career and fell in love with Colorado. In the 1980s, he bought an old Shorthorn ranch on the prairie east of Denver with the vision of eventually creating an agritourism enterprise. Today a brightly-painted barn surrounded by flowers, fields and a large pond hosts everything from weddings to weekend outings for families to elegant corn maze dinners prepared by Denver chefs.
The Colorado ag department lists nearly 50 farms offering fall activities, but May Farms is likely the only outfit zoned for “agri-entertainment,” which May considers one of his most significant innovations.
“I saw all of these farmers starting out as mom-and-pops and then their popularity took off,” he explained. “So they build a nice house in the country but they are surrounded by land that is all zoned agricultural (or A-1.) The farm-to-market roads can only handle so much traffic. So they have a great thing going, but now people are complaining that, legally, they can’t do what they are doing.”
Agricultural ordinances typically don’t allow commercial use of land for entertainment purposes. May was concerned about how this might limit the growth and value of his business, so he went to his local commissioners with a plan to zone May Farms as A-E, “agri-entertainment,” a definition that would encompass all of the activities he dreamed of offering.
At first, they laughed at him. What sold them was the realization that it would help protect the land from residential development.
“Over a year, we put together an agri-tainment zoning designation,” he said. “We had it done before we did any building here, to protect us. Now it’s a marketable product if ever we want to move on.”
May believes his is the only farm in Colorado to obtain such zoning but said there is growing interest in the concept nationwide.
“Gary’s been a leader on this in his area,” said Wendy White, marketing specialist with the Colorado ag department. “But zoning approvals really depend on the county a producer is in.”
The ag department offers workshops and online resources and encourages farmers to do their homework before starting an agritourism venture. In addition to looking into zoning and conditional use permits, White recommends farmers organize a business entity that’s separate from the farm, minimize liability with proper documentation and signage and obtain adequate insurance. “Liability is always one of the first issues we get asked about,” she noted.
Regulations associated with catering to the public are often a moving target, May said. As the mandates increase, it’s not clear he’d have the financial resources to launch the equivalent of May Farms today.
He points randomly to a barrel train used to give rides that costs $500 annually just for safety inspections and licensing. Then he moves on to something bigger: the on-site water treatment facility he built that is so strictly monitored that he now has to contend with heavily chlorinated water at his house, which is upstream from the rest of the system.
Selling produce he grows on-site is another frustration.
May, who hires around 20 employees during his peak season, explains that if he wants to take his watermelons into Denver to sell at the flea market, it costs $45 to rent a space, plus more to pay one or two people to gather the produce, haul it into town and work the booth. He said there is no way he can charge enough per melon to cover his costs. Likewise, the labor expense is “astronomical” to harvest sweet corn that ends up selling “five ears for a buck.”
Meanwhile, expanding food safety requirements — Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, or HACCP, for produce — has made it more difficult for a small producer to sell to large retailers like Sunflower Markets.
Much of his produce this summer was donated to charities.
“People better wake up to what it means if the small farmer can’t afford to do what he does,” May said.
Offering an education
That sentiment helps explain why May Farms puts so much emphasis on educational activities.
“I understand the need to produce in large enough volume to have an affordable grocery basket,” he said. But he also believes consumers need a place to reconnect with what it takes to grow food and why farming is important.
“If we want to maintain small farms, we better keep this connection up,” May said. “People need to know our importance in the food chain.”
He and his wife Stacie, an accomplished pianist, created a nonprofit educational foundation, Country Kids, even before they developed May Farms. Its mission is to help connect children with the country through hands-on experiences.
May doesn’t just wait for the city to come to him, either. On Oct. 15, for example, he’s taking the farm to them with a free family event, FarmIn’ The City, which will raise funds for the foundation and for a community garden in Denver. “That’s a unique deal. It’s within four blocks of Coors Field, in a needy neighborhood where the kids and their parents don’t normally get to see the connection between the farm and the city,” he explained. He is also setting up a pumpkin patch at the Colorado Punkin Chunkin “jack-o-launch” at the Arapahoe County Fairgrounds in Aurora and has teamed up on other activities around town including visits to children’s hospitals.
Donations aside, he makes it clear the intent of May Farms is to be profitable.
“We’re not doing this for charity,” he said during a quick tour. “Some days I feel like it’s for charity.”
“The farm has been very good to us,” he adds, alluding to the recent profitability of farm commodities. “But it won’t always be that way. We want to continue to develop the educational component.”
Entering a new season
This year May Farms is becoming more visible again as it emerges from what might best be described as a fallow period.
Imprinted in May’s brain is the exact date — Sept. 15, 2008 — when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the stock market nose-dived and gas prices shot up on their way to $4 a gallon.
“Nobody was interested in jumping in their car and driving 20 miles out here to see us,” he recalled. “I can’t overemphasize the effect 9-15 had on our economy out here.”
Now things are looking up and new economic activity is percolating again. May cites the High Plains Raceway, a two-and-a-half-mile road course that relocated from Denver to land northeast of Byers three years ago. Off-road enthusiasts “can go out and race all day and then stop by here in the evening,” May said. The Colorado Rifle Club is also located nearby, another draw.
May Farms runs a farm stand and hosts wine tastings, dinners and festivals during the last golden weeks of fall. The maze will be combined in November.
“I just want to give people some new ideas about what is possible,” May said.
From the extensive subsurface drip irrigation system that underlies the surrounding fields to figuring out the riddle of how to zone them, the venture is his way of staying engaged and excited about the future while involving his wife and six children in a shared endeavor.
“I look at it like this: I’m only going around once,” he said. “I want to do the things I want to do. We are constantly asked if we want to sell our place, because of the water we have and the location. But money isn’t the issue. You have to be in it because you love it.”
