High-Altitude Hustle: Winter at Cloud City Farm
Digging Deep and Dreaming Big at 10,200 Feet
What do you get when you mix construction, sub-zero temps, a talented farm team, and a whole lot of determination? A winter farming experiment that actually worked. 💪❄️
Take a behind-the-scenes peek at recent expansion at Cloud City Farm—and find out what our plants taught us about patience, resilience, and growing food during high-altitude winter.
By Liz Larkin, Cloud City Farm Manager
The Cloud City Farm team shares one big goal: grow as much food as possible for our community.
In the fall of 2024, we broke ground on two big additions: our third high tunnel and a new propagation greenhouse, thanks to support from the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Small Food Business Resilience and Recovery grant. With these new structures and CDA’s support, we’re expanding access to healthy, local food in Lake County.
Turns out, if you want to expand your infrastructure AND keep your “grow-as-much-as-possible” dream alive through the winter, you need more than one farmer.
So, last fall, C4 officially brought on our second full-time team member: Liz Larkin. While we both proudly call ourselves “farmers,” Sarah now holds the title of Farm Director (aka “Farm Mastermind”) and Liz has stepped into the new role of Farm Manager.
So, as winter crept closer, our fearless duo raced to dig holes and set posts in concrete before the ground froze—just the first of many steps in building the infrastructure needed to grow food in Leadville.
Because let’s be real: growing food at 10,200 feet is no joke. This winter, we found ourselves staring down an existential question: Is it even possible to grow food during a Leadville winter?
We figured the only way to find out was to try it for ourselves.
Our experiment started in our original high tunnel, which is insulated with two layers of plastic, a fan that blows air between the layers, and additional fans that circulates air above the veggies to keep things moving. In September, we started spinach, beets and carrots by seed, hoping they would get big enough to “overwinter” before it got too cold. In October, we added transplants of kale, chard, lettuce, and even some spring onions.
Every night from then on, we crossed our fingers and tucked these plant babies in under layers of fabric, hoping they’d survive the night. Every morning, we uncovered them, greeted them (sometimes with a song), and hoped for the best. And so it went—day in, day out—through the quiet winter months.
It wasn’t all sunshine and songs—there was plenty of snow shoveling too. While it’s not easy, removing snow is essential to being able to open the sides of the tunnel and prevent overheating. Without snow removal and opening the tunnel, temps could swing from well below freezing to the high 90s…..classic Leadville.
The good news?
Most of the plants made it! Despite January’s brutal sub-zero temps, we harvested 50 pounds of sweet, crispy carrots for February’s Flash Tattoos and Pop-Up Farm Stand.
Today, many of those winter warriors are still growing—some have bolted (gone to seed) from the stress of winter, but most are delicious and very much alive.
We learned a lot from our experiment, not only about what plants can survive, but also about what the plants themselves can teach us: perseverance, endurance, patience, and service.
With the intelligence that turns an acorn into an oak tree, our little plants waited patiently knowing that the hard winter would pass. Like little green sages, they endured the dark months, knowing their time would come.
And now, just as the patient little plants predicted, spring is around the corner.
So as we head into spring (ok, well, mud season), we’re putting the finishing touches on our propagation tunnel (aka the “prop house”), built from a 36x20 ft kit from FarmTek. With some serious roof reinforcements for snow load, and with help from our friend, favorite biologist, and most recent farm assistant Ethan Moyer, we’ve been slowly chipping away at construction with smiles on our faces, matching muck boots and plenty of inside jokes.
UP NEXT: We’ll finish our third high tunnel, a 72x30 ft greenhouse from Tunnel Vision. Once completed, these new greenhouses will significantly increase our growing capacity — and the amount of healthy, local, affordable food we share with our community.
In the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, “All flourishing is mutual.”
We can’t wait to see you (and feed you) this summer!
With abundant gratitude,
Liz, Sarah, and the entire C4 Team