When Celia Adamec heard Colorado State University had hired an extension agent to deal with urban agriculture in the Denver area, the Arvada farmer got in touch right away.
She and her business partner, Jackie Raehl, were determined to turn residential yards into food machines. But they were hungry for business advice, for food-safety dos and don’ts, for a resource beyond Google and their friends.
They turned to Blake Angelo, the
“We used him from Day One,” said Adamec, who last year with Raehl started in Arvada. “It’s great to have somebody whose job is to just help out, somebody who is there when you call. You don’t feel like you are all alone trying to research this stuff.”
Angelo, a Denver native, had never worked as a farmer. His background is in nonprofit management and government. But deep knowledge of tomato pests and cabbage diseases doesn’t form the backbone of his role, which the extension office created a year ago. Instead, he works to buttress the passions of urban farmers with business savvy.
Because it’s one thing to grow a bunch of carrots in the backyard.
Making money, Angelo said, could mean the difference between urban farming being a short-term fad and a long-standing trend.
“I work on questions like, ‘What is your business plan? How are you dealing with food safety? Before you take out a loan, let us help you through this. Are you budgeting properly? What is the profitability of an urban farm enterprise?’ “
Though he’s not a farmer, it helps that one of Angelo’s principal passions is gardening. What did he do shortly after buying his Edgewater home? He plowed the entire backyard and began planting.
“I’ve had a veggie garden since I convinced my mom to give me one of her flower gardens, when I was like 9,” said Angelo from his small Golden office.
The office is a part-time way station for Angelo, a place to park when he’s not giving talks, powwowing with politicians and policymakers, visiting with growers, or wandering farmers markets and taking notes. But interest in urban agriculture has been so intense, the state extension office hopes to not only make the position full time, but to pour more resources into helping farmers who plow, plant, and weed quarter-acre plots instead of 640-acre sections.
“We had some data and a lot of phone calls from consumers. So we had a hunch,” said Rusty Collins, director of “We got Blake in there, and since then, we have found there is a whole other world we can be involved with.”
One effort, Collins said, is making urban agriculture profitable enough to create jobs in the city of Denver. It’s important to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, Collins said, and the extension office is key in helping to transform patches of grass into working farms that create income.
Angelo helps people navigate the different mazes of rules and regulations that affect farming in cities, involving noise, odor, waste, managing chicken roosts and much more. He talks with them about insurance and creating things like limited liability companies, or LLCs, to protect their assets from lawsuits. He harps on food safety.
“When it become commerce, instead of just gardening,” Angelo said, “it’s a whole new world.”
So far, none of the urban farms — and he has visited every one — have turned their owners into moguls. The toil is tough, and the financial payoff fairly slim. Adamec’s farm is her sole source of income, for example, but her husband pays the bulk of the bills, she said.
“I couldn’t make it if I had to support myself entirely off this,” she said. “But I hope to get there. I do think it’s possible.”
And as the urban-farm movement catches on, growers are beginning to understand what sorts of things turn nice profits, like herbs and flowers, and how to combine the tarragon with the turnip in a way that keeps both customers and balance sheets happy.
It’s growth that’s been exciting to witness, Angelo said. He can envision Front Range cities becoming known for different vegetables and fruits in the same way that “Olathe sweet corn” and “Palisade peaches” now roll off the tongues of anyone who eats in Colorado.
“I could see the Denver area being known for five different kinds of cantaloupe,” he said. “The city of Denver is famous for one type, Wheat Ridge for another.”
Douglas Brown: 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
