Sprout City Farms farms with Jack's Solar Garden

For Liza McConnell, Research Farm Director for Sprout City Farms, farming and working at Jack's Solar Garden is a multi-sensory experience that began as a passion for cooking good, fresh food. "Really freshly grown food is a wonderful experience - the flavor, color, and vibrancy is just amazing," said the Niwot resident. "The first time eating food directly from a farm really made an impression on me."

Helping others experience the same fresh food and finding regenerative farming practices that allow for a better quality and quantity of food produced have become McConnell's job and passion. While Sprout City Farms is based out of Denver, Jack's Solar Garden is the only farm to serve Boulder County, just a five-minute drive from Niwot on N. 95th Street, and is more research focused than some of the other farms in the area.

Jack's Solar Garden functions as a Community Supported Agriculture garden, better known to many as a farmshare. People living in the area can pay a set amount before the harvesting season starts to get either a weekly or bi-weekly share of the vegetables that are in season. Shares can be picked up at the farm on Thursdays or at their booth at the Longmont Farmers Market on Saturdays from June 6 to October 17.

A wide variety of vegetables are available as they become ripe and ready for harvest as the season progresses including various root vegetables, alliums, herbs, cabbages, squashes, fruits, and more. The farm also partners with Mystic Mountain Mushrooms and Ela Family Farms to provide locally grown mushrooms and western slope fruit.

Farmshares can be purchased for half price using an EBT card for those with SNAP benefits. A farmshare can also be sponsored as part of food access programming for local groups such as The Our Center Food Pantry & Cafe, the Longmont Food Rescue, and Longmont Community Fridges. In addition to participating in a farmshare, anyone can reach out to the organization via email to volunteer at one of the farms or set up a family or staff retreat to work on team-building.

Sprout City Farms has also been running a crop production research project at Jack's Solar Garden in collaboration with the University of Arizona science department for the past four growing seasons. The research focuses on what crops can be grown under rotating solar energy panels and how farmers can most effectively use the land for both energy collection and food production. This type of agriculture within a solar panel array, also called agrivoltaic farming, has many benefits to both the environment and the farmers working the fields.

McConnell said, "When only using solar panels to collect energy, the soil beneath the panels can become damaged. Growing crops or even just grass for animal foraging can help the soil retain its runoff and water holding capacity as well as help the microorganisms living in the ground." For farmers, the large lifted solar panels provide opportunities to escape the strong heat from the Colorado sun. Other research collaboration partners include Colorado State University.

Sprout City Farms grows 25,000 pounds of food annually, which feeds over 3,000 Coloradoans. For more information, visit: http://www.sproutcityfarms.org/jacks-solar-farm