PHOTO: Roger Candelária of Ranchito Alegre at the 2021 Pagosa Springs Farmers Market and a community volunteer with Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) which is a worldwide movement to link visitors (WWOOFers) with organic farmers, promote a cultural and educational exchange, and build a global community conscious of ecological farming and sustainability practices.
Healthy Archuleta, a local non-profit in Archuleta County also known as the Food Coalition, continues to celebrate the local food heroes that make up the food system in Archuleta County and the surrounding southwest region. These individuals uniquely contribute to the community’s vision for a sustainable, health promoting, and equitable local food system so that everyone has access to affordable nutritious foods. The effort to capture the profiles of these integral community members was initiated as part of the Archuleta Food System Summit that took place April 9, 2022.
Today we would like to feature Roger Candelária of Ranchito Alegre. The following is a narrative that Roger shared with us:
Ranchito Alegre, roughly translated, meaning “Joyous Homestead, ” a fount of joy for our family, our crew, neighbors and customers. “Inspired by Nature and Powered by the Sun,” Ranchito Alegre works to naturally generate healthy living soil to feed healthy active local people. Over past centuries, our ancestors settled in New Mexico and southern Colorado, built homes of adobe and raised sheep, cattle, goats, poultry, hay and cultivated vegetable gardens.
Now, we apply newly understood scientific principles regarding the soil biome and its relation to human health to organically produced foods for our own local community. This means that all of our farm animals are raised, pastured and fed without the use of antibiotics or synthetic growth hormones. It is our goal to keep your farm foods raised as nature intended. It is no coincidence that our initials, RA also stand for Regenerative Agriculture!
This growing season we face two big challenges. First, busy and informed consumers want to gain access to safe and ethical foods they can eat with confidence. That means we have to ramp up and diversify our production and do so without any compromise in quality. Second, we want to make it even more convenient for our loyal past and our new customers to order and receive freshly harvested delicious foods for their families. To meet the first challenge we are joining hands with other regenerative farmers and growing more. (We’ll soon make announcements about the details.)
To make it easier and more convenient for residents and visitors to get Ranchito Alegre products, we are streamlining our online ordering system and soon will open a completely new roadside Farm Stand at 6501 Highway 151 south of Chimney Rock at our farm’s entrance. You can learn more at https://ranchitoalegre.eatfromfarms.com/
Contact us for more information or to schedule a tour. contact us at 970.201.4630 or email RanchitoAlegre@cognizor.com.”
For questions please contact us at fsfearchuleta@gmail.org or 401-371-3227. To donate to support the work of Healthy Archuleta dba FSFE-Food Coalition please visit our website: https://www.foodcoalition4archuleta.org/donate.html
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