Eight Years of Beers // Field Day 2024 Fun Facts (and Photos!)

We never truly got a chance to say thank you!

To each and every one of you who came out to celebrate EIGHT years with us…and those who helped Field Day happen!

So if one of us Root-Shooters didn’t make it over to you personally to say thanks for joining us, we apologize. And…thank you so much! We wanted to take a minute this month to make sure to give some shout-outs and share some of the fun, and the fun facts from our big day!

But first, beer!

Beer is at the heart of Field Day and we had SO MUCH good beer! A huge thank you to Verboten, Bent Barley, Wynkoop, Station 26, Knuckle Puck, Los Dos Cerveceria, Bruz, Barquentine, Zwei, and Avant Garde, for giving us some killer kegs to put on tap! And so many more breweries that brought cans to share!

A few beery fun facts:

The Mexican Lager from Los Dos was the first 1/2 barrel to kick

Zwei’s Blanch Dubois Pale Ale was the favorite on tap, and…

Talnua’s Continnum Cask Whiskey was selected as the second (annual) Field Day Favorite craft beverage winner, by the previous winner Cy at Timnath Beerwerks. Which leads us to the next fun fact…Root Shoot has a traveling Field Day award….a handmade didgeridoo (seriously!) from Kjell Wygant at Two22 that will live at Talnua for the next year, until it goes to someone new next Field Day.

A spirited good time!

Craft malt isn’t just for beer, and the whiskey and canned cocktails at Field Day were a huge hit. Samplings from The Family Jones, Talnua, and Abbott and Wallace helped warm our bellies as the night cooled off. If you haven’t yet been to all of their tasting rooms, we highly recommend you schedule some field trips. They’re the perfect place to be as fall settles in!

Root Shoot Spirits provided our American Single Malt Whiskey and we now must say that the Dazzling Ice Shot Luge is our new favorite thing.

Fine Food!

Did you even see that charcuterie board??

Wander and Graze out of Denver knocked it out of the park (field!)

If you’re having an event, you should totally hit Shelby up!

Our friends, partners, and the all-around fantastic people at Six Capital Brewing and BBQ and Golden Toad did an amazing job prepping and seasoning over 350 hamburgers, all the sides, and they even brought beer, too! It was service with a smile, good spirit, and even a little singing.

How best to top off a good meal? With Little Man Ice Cream, of course.

Food fun fact: Every single burger served was from Olander Farms, born and raised just down the road from Field Day by Farmer Steve.

And, oh, the music!

The One and Only Jon Ham has been a musical fixture at Field Day for years, now and the amazing vocals from Angie Stevens and the Beautiful Wreck (with her friend and Root Shoot’s own Christian Roberts) we were pinching ourselves as we watched a concert in a field of conserved farmland with spectacular views of the Front Range… (minus the wind!). Thanks for sticking around to listen to Songbird Duo rock out all night!

High fives!

The Waggener family, you rock! The Waggener Farm is such a magical place and we are so grateful for their family’s commitment to protecting agriculture in the Front Range. Jake Waggener and Jane Vielehr were gracious enough to not only provide our backdrop for Field Day, but they sponsored our delicious food!

Volunteers, you rock! This event is made possible because of YOU! Many thanks for pouring beers, slapping on wrist bands, flipping hamburgers, harvesting barley, and donating your time. Check out the antique harvest photos below!

Donors, you rock! Wow! To those of you who are sporting some new Root Shoot swag, wear it proud! Your donations towards merchandise and all tips are greatly appreciated. These funds will be used towards future Field Day events!

Thank you for celebrating EIGHT years of craft malt with us!

If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be us. Cheers to eight years of friends, fun, and the craft malt community! We’d love to hear feedback from the event, so we can continue to make it a successful Field Day for years to come. Please fill out this FEEDBACK FORM.

Enjoy photos from the day, courtesy of Emily Sierra Photography.

Same As It Ever Was

Remember studying the Nile River and ancient Egypt in school?

It’s the stuff of legends for elementary school students: huge pyramids, lion-looking sphynx, and images of strange creatures, humans with animal heads, [carved into rock. Always, in these primary lessons of world history, time is spent studying the Nile. The longest river in the world! Its annual flooding provided rich soil! Ancient Egyptians were master farmers even building irrigation systems to water their crops!

In fact, the ancient Egyptions dug a systems of canals to irrigate their crops. They build reservoirs to hold water to feed these canals. Then they built gates to control the water flow and…

Wait, just one second.

Five thousand years later and half a world away, this is all starting to sound quite familiar.

Over the millennia that humans have been farming, amazing advances have been made. From understanding soil health to managing pests, from the discovery of the role key elements play in growing healthy crops to plant breeding for specific characteristics in labs, we have tools at hand today that the ancient world would never have imagined. We can grow plants in simple water solutions (hydroponics.) We can grow plants on top of tubs of fish (aquaponics.) We have AI weeding machines, half-million dollar tractors, and grain elevators the size of skyscrapers.

Yet one thing that has remained stubbornly the same is the concept of flood irrigation. Take a water source - a river or reservoir, say. Dig a ditch off of it to route water where you want it to go. Install some gates to reduce or increase flow. Then direct that water to your field, and run it down pre-made furrows between your crops.

It is, in all ways that matter, exactly the same as it was five thousand years ago.

There’s something oddly comforting in that. A connection to both the generations of farmers who preceded us, developing, honing, and passing on their craft. And a connection to the land. An understanding that as smart and resourceful as humans are, sometimes getting work done means simply getting muddy, getting wet, and battling the impressively powerful determination of water to go where it wants to go, ditches, canals, and dams…be damned.

Times are changing, slowly.

We’ve moved most of our fields off the flood irrigation system and replaced them with pivots, which use less water and require less hands-on work, both important characteristics when running a family farm in an arid climate. Overall, we’ve managed to get all but about 5% of fields under pivots greatly reducing our water usage and the labor required to keep our crops growing.

Pivots cost much more money, however. They require more infrastructure, and can only be placed in fields where the size and the shape allow for them.

Pivots won’t work everywhere. And so, for those fields that don’t fit them, for the corners that they can’t reach, for the years we can’t afford them…

We’ll slip on our boots and grab our shovels. We’ll cut a gate made of plywood and cover it with a tarp. We’ll traipse out to the field (every 12 hours, religiously) to move the pipe, check the flow, and repair any leaks. We’ll stand in the sunset and water, evaluate the progress of our crops, and pray for a good season.

The same as generations before us. The same as farmers thousands of years ago. The same across fields throughout the world.

The same as it ever was.

Where Does (Our) Water Come From?

It’d be great if it rained water from the sky.

Rumor has it that that actually happens in parts of the country. Word is, that there are areas so wet and humid that farmers can actually grow crops using nothing but soil, sun, and water that - apparently - just comes on its own. Just falls from the clouds without pivots, ditches, or pipes.

Must be amazing. ‘Round here, we’ve never heard of such a thing.

A bit of an exaggeration? Perhaps. It does rain here, of course. Sometimes too much in spring. And often our Colorado rain is accompanied by an impressive round of Colorado hail, which is precisely the type of precipitation we don’t want. Yet even in the wettest years, the reality is that we live in an arid climate.

The average annual precipitation for our farm’s area is just shy of 16 inches per year and, as most of that does not come in the dead of summer, there are precious few crops that can grow without supplemental water. Thus, we rely on our irrigation system.

Water in the West, the policies that govern it, and the system of rivers, irrigation ditches, pipes, and pivots that make it happen are incredibly complex issues. When we, as farmers water our barley or fill tanks for livestock, we represent the final destination of a long journey for each gallon of water that pours from our pipes. In our case, that journey begins in the high country of Colorado and ends, (hopefully!) with a pint glass of beer (or a snifter of spirits) in your hand.

At Olander Farms, our irrigation water comes from two ditch systems, the Handy and the Home Supply ditches, and both originate from the Big Thompson River. If you’ve ever been up Highway 34 to the Dam Store, that’s “our” dam. If you haven’t seen it up close and personal, it looks like this photo.

The three compartments you see on the lefthand side are three headgates for the Handy Ditch, the ditch that supplies the majority of our water. A little further down the river, the Home Supply has a similar set up.

Each of the three gates can be opened, closed, or adjusted to let out a specific amount of cubic feet of water per second (CFS). The water then runs down a long flume, into a ditch and then meanders all the way from the dam through west Loveland, into Berthoud and lands in the Welch Reservoir. Along the way, it feeds properties along the upper ditch.

After a brief respite in the Welch Reservoir, a second series of ditches pulls the water through the lower ditches including ours, feeding additional properties east of the reservoir. Eventually, the ditch peters out past Johnstown.

Water in the West is so valuable that it’s frequently referred to as “liquid gold” and, as is the case with any valuable commodity, it’s highly regulated. Overseen by the Department of Natural Resources, the state employs a system of engineers and water commissioners to ensure that the water drawn from rivers and ditches gets where it needs to go…and that no sketchy shenanigans siphon it off elsewhere. Water users must own water rights, and those rights come at a cost - often tens of thousands of dollars per share.

Once water hits the ditches (many more exist outside of the Handy and Home Supply that we use) ditch companies oversee the management and distribution. Key players in this process are the ditch riders, personnel who go out and “ride” every inch of ditch, cleaning, maintaining, inspecting, repairing, and keeping an eye on this as the water flows.

It’s an old profession. Irrigation ditches have been used in our state long before we even were a state. And while some technology has changed - flow is monitored electronically now, and ditch riders use pickup trucks rather than horses - the vast majority of the ditch infrastructure remains largely the same as it has been since its inception: tradition, in liquid form, flowing from the mountains to our fields, to your beer and whiskey.

Cheers!

-Your Olander Farms team

Field Notes for Farm Nerds: So Many Seeds

Often in our posts, you’ll see us drop farm lingo about what we’re doing and, in springtime, (like now!) what we’re planting. One frequent source of confusion in all that lingo is the difference between all the seed types we plant. We’ll reference our “non-GMO distiller’s corn.” Or tout this year’s, “heirloom Hopi corn.” Some seed is “treated” other seed is “untreated” and, in the end…it makes a farmer’s head spin. If our heads are spinning, we figure you non-farmer folk probably just learn to ignore our farm babble sometimes. Sorry about that.

So, this edition of Field Notes for Farm Nerds: clearing up all this seedy business.

Here’s the scoop on the seeds we sow!

Treated Seed: These seeds have been treated in some manner to reduce the incidence of seed or soil-borne pathogens. Typically, this means the seeds have been treated with a pesticide, fungicide, or preservative and as such, treated seeds are not usually used in organic farming.

Untreated Seed: Exactly as it sounds, these are seeds that have not been treated with a pesticide, fungicide, or preservative. While arguably cleaner and permitted in organic farming, these seeds may have more disease or pest pressure.

Organic Seed: Organic seeds are seeds that have been grown on a certified organic farm that uses certified organic methods. Officially, that is the only definition of organic seed. If you’re growing your own seed in your own garden using organic methods…it’s still not organic seed unless you’re a federally certified organic grower. Over time, however, “organic” has come to be a catch-all term for produce (and seeds!) that are grown without the use of synthetic inputs such as pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.

Non-GMO: These are seeds that have not been genetically modified meaning, more specifically, the DNA of the organism has not been artificially altered. For us, as farmers who grow corn, this is an important distinction to be aware of as we choose our crops. Corn has commercially available GMO and non-GMO options. But if you’re a home gardener…don’t sweat it. GMO seeds aren’t available to you. In fact, even commercially, there are only 9 crops that have GMO varieties available to farmers: corn, soybeans, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, canola, papaya, squash, and potato.

Psst…all that distiller’s corn we’re growing? It’s non-GMO AND un-treated!

Heirloom Seed: Heirloom seed mean it’s old, and it’s been passed down through generations in a traditional manner. There is no single standard definition of how old a variety has to be to be heirloom. The minimum accepted rule of thumb is 50 years. Some argue 75 years. Heirloom seeds play an important role in maintaining the genetic diversity of food, and keeping crops in the rotation that, while they may not be picture-perfect or the highest-yielding varieties, posses unique genetics.

Variety is the spice of life, as they say, and maintaining genetic variety in a food system is the key to surviving the next plant plague. The Irish potato famine? That’s what happens when an agricultural ecosystem doesn’t have healthy variety.

All of these seed distinctions don’t necessarily stand alone. A seed could, for example, be an heirloom organic seed. Or a treated GMO seed. Or a non-treated GMO, a treated non-GMO, an organic, untreated seed…and the combinations continue almost ad-infinitum.

The skinny?

We’ve got a little bit of it all. Though, no GMO crops in any foodstuffs!

Different strokes for different folks.

Different seeds for different needs, growing this family farm, one plant at a time.

Worm Tea

Cup of worm tea, anyone?

Served up with a tasty crash course in composting, perhaps? 

Yes? Oh, we’re so glad you accepted! You’ll just have to hang on a year or so.

Welcome to Farmers Todd and Steve’s latest regenerative project: a Johnson-Su bioreactor.

It sure sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Like something straight out of an Austin Powers film, right up there with “sharks with laser beams attached to their heads.”  But as much as it might evoke something high-tech and sci-fi-worthy, it’s really just…a pile of organic matter and some worms. But before we dive into worms, let’s back up a minute to cows.

We’ve been doing traditional windrow composting for years at Olander Farms. It’s a system we believe in to add nitrogen to the soil and divert waste products, mostly dairy manure, into something useful. Here’s how traditional composting works: Mix carbon-rich materials (i.e. cornstalks) with nitrogen-rich materials (i.e. manure,) add sufficient moisture, and then let it process by alternating periods of allowing the piles to sit with regular intervals of turning it to mix it. Through this process, bacteria in the pile really get cranking, heating the pile up, breaking it down, and creating a nitrogen-rich end product to add our fields. 

Great, right? Sure is!

But what if we could do better?

We’re giving it a shot with the bioreactor experiment.

While certainly of value, traditional composting has limitations. First off, it is a bacteria-dominant form of compost. Why does that matter? 

An ideal agricultural field has soil with a 1:1 fungal-to-bacterial ratio. Currently, however, most fields - ours very much included - are bacterial dominant, which means quite simply, that the balance is off. We know, from extensive soil testing on our own fields, that our microbes aren’t where they should be for the land to be maximally healthy. We’ve got far too many bad microbial critters, and not nearly enough good ones. 

Enter the bioreactor.

Developed by Dr. David Johnson of California State University and his wife, huiChen Su, a Johnson-Su bioreactor is a new(er) system of composting that creates the fungal-dominant, high-microbial product that our soils so desperately need. 

An admittedly oversimplified explanation of the process looks like this: set some large, tower-like containers on top of pallets (for airflow) on the ground. Intersperse pipes running vertically throughout the bins (this will also be for airflow) then fill them to the top with damp organic matter. Let it heat up (those bacteria will do their thing, just like traditional composting) and then, when the temperature of the bioreactor drops to 80 degrees or below, pull the tubes (you’ve now created air pockets) and add…worms! Red wigglers to be specific, an excellent composting worm. After that, allow the bioreactors to sit for one full year, watering them occasionally.

What makes this relatively straightforward process different? The combination of organic matter + worms + time (with a little water and air thrown in) creates fungal-dominant compost. It’s teeming with microbes, worm castings, and all the good things that are lacking in our farm fields. After a year, when the bioreactors are taken apart and the compost extracted, it can be used to brew a “tea” that can then be sprayed on fields to give them a dose of microbiology. Or the compost can be applied directly to the fields, much like our traditional compost.

We’re going to go the tea route for our first try. We just built our initial bioreactors last month, so they’re only beginning the process of creating microbes. For this farm year, we’re working with a vermiculture company out of Ft. Collins to try and kick off the farm season with some local, homemade vermi-tea.

It’s probably about as tasty as it sounds. While we enjoy sharing, our honest advice is maybe to stick to the beer and whiskey made with our award-winning malt. Leave the tea for the barley and rye. 

Cows and compost. Worms and water. Microbes, fungus, and fully planted fields. 

We’re excited to be jumping into another growing season, excited to be learning new things, and, as always, excited to have you with us.

We’ll keep you posted on the compost. If all goes well, maybe we’ll invite you out to sip on a brew while brewing some poo. Worm poo that is.

Just another day of fun (and fun-gal!) in farming.

- Your Olander Farms Crew

Beefy Steve's Cow Corner, Episode 1: What In The World is Beefy Steve Up To?

A Crash Course in Cattle (and More!) with One of Our Favorite Farmers

Steve Olander has been farming longer than some of you (okay, many of you…) have been alive.

With decades of experience under that perpetual Western hat, and three generations of knowledge collected before him, Farmer Steve is one of this country’s most valuable treasures: a veritable encyclopedia of lived agricultural experience. Well-versed in everything from barley, to corn, to irrigation systems, and tractor repairs, Farmer Steve can do it all…but given a little free time, it’s likely you’ll find him behind the farmhouse hanging out with his “ladies.”

Cattle have long been a passion of Farmer Steve’s. So much so that it’s earned him the nickname of Beefy Steve and a reputation for selling the best farm-fresh beef around.

But in a high-quality farming system, cattle aren’t just for T-bones and hamburgers. They’re an integral part of a healthy ecosystem; and a lot of thought, science, and care goes into raising them.

We’ve mentioned cattle many times before on our posts and on our socials, but we’re going to partner with Beefy Steve himself to do a deeper dive into all things bovine at Olander Farms.

So, let’s begin…at the very beginning:

Beefy Steve’s Bovine Count:

The herd has grown by a good bit this year!

The Carr Herd:

Beefy Steve acquired 53 bred cows this year which means exactly what it sounds like: 53 pregnant mommas. Those mommas are calving right now, so soon we anticipate that number…well, doubling!

Because everyone loves baby pics, here’s our first calf of the year.

Name suggestions, anyone? Look at that little spot on its head. Spot! Too obvious?

This herd is a mish-mash of different breeds: Red Angus, Black Angus, Hereford, Black Baldies, and probably a few others mixed in. Beefy Steve’s take, “They’re a motley crew, but they’re cool!” This herd is referred to as the Carr Herd, and you’ll hear a lot more about them, soon.

Billy’s girls:

The home herd, affectionately referred to as “Billy’s Girls” for Billy the Bull, are 16 bred cows that live right out the back door of the farmhouse. (When they’re not meandering about grazing fields, anyway.) The ladies are Angus, Billy is Wagyu, and this herd has been responsible for Beefy Steve’s high-end beef sales. If you haven’t tried a Wagyu-cross steak yet, you haven’t lived.

the rest of the mob:

Over the course of the year, an additional 270+ cattle will graze our farm fields under grazing leases. An easy food source for the ranchers owning the cattle, the grazing is also actually a key part of our farming operation as it helps us regenerate and improve our fields. More on that, soon!

What’s next for Beefy Steve’s cow corner?

We’re planning our upcoming posts! In April and May…calving updates! Lots of them. Stay tuned to learn from the Beefy Master himself.

And, as the weather to from winter to warmer, if you’re looking to get grilling and support a local farm, you can always order Olander Beef directly from Steve! Give him a call or text at 970-217-2342 to order.