History of the Farm
Every morning and evening,
Sunrise Farmers
manually move irrigation pipes together.
The farm at Sunrise Ranch builds on a legacy of sustainability, organic farming and land stewardship at Sunrise Ranch since 1945.
In the past sixteen years, we leased many of our pastures, gardens and hayfields to The Stewardship Community and Guidestone Farm. Their management of our farm property was fruitful and productive for the valley, and for all the people who participated in the farm project with them.
With the Guidestone Farm team moving to initiate a new project at Cottonwood Meadows in Buena Vista in western Colorado, Sunrise Ranch will once again be more directly involved in sustainable agriculture here.
The Farm Managers will be using 2008 as a year of renovation and planning. We are upgrading the entire farm property, renewing the soil with manure and other organic fertilizers, changing the infrastructure of the property to support our plans, and developing markets for our products.
Since our inception in 1945, Sunrise Ranch has valued and practiced sustainability. One of the first actions taken after the purchase of our land was the building of the soil in our four-acre garden. The first gardeners imported carbonaceous material, in the form of straw and horse manure, and set the precedent in our land-stewardship practices of building health, instead of battling disease.
Today, we use Holistic Management, a system of visioning, decision making, and land management that ensures our actions will be sustainable ecologically, socially and economically.
Those early practices have continued, and expanded over the years. In 1995, we set up a Community Supported Agriculture farm operation, as well as a sustainable-agriculture education program through The Stewardship Community and Guidestone Farm, that thrived for over 10 years. Their work came to a close in 2006, and we are initiating a new cycle of sustainable agriculture for 2008 and the future.
We have purposely kept almost half our acreage held in a reserve. On it are thriving communities of deer, coyotes, wild turkeys, eagles, geese, rattlesnakes, and a few bears and mountain lions.
We also have our own water-treatment plant on the property, and a second pond that treats our wastewater uses aeration and cattails to finish the purification.
We also have many beautiful perennial and xeriscaped flowerbeds and a few lawns that give us a chance to marvel and appreciate the beauty of the natural world.
