{"id":1315004,"date":"2019-09-25T16:30:41","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T22:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=988143"},"modified":"2019-09-25T16:30:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T22:30:41","slug":"picking-time-in-garfield-county-for-uproot-colorado-volunteers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/picking-time-in-garfield-county-for-uproot-colorado-volunteers\/","title":{"rendered":"Picking time in Garfield County for UpRoot Colorado volunteers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UpRoot volunteer Michele Diamond harvesting plums at a home in New Castle<\/strong>
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Three years ago Ciara Low and David Laskarzewski founded UpRoot Colorado. The nonprofit organization started up at the end of 2016, and is now in their third growing season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came into this because I was excited about the potential to reduce food waste and our environmental foot print. And then the more and more I got involved I think a really important aspect of this I hadn\u2019t figured from the start is the community building aspect. People really enjoy getting outside, especially when we are working with farms and seeing where their food comes from,\u201d Low said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIts been really fun in particular with kids, as well as people who haven\u2019t grown up in an agricultural families.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Laskarzewski gleans crops on the Front Range, Low is based on the Western Slope directing glean coordinators in the Roaring Fork Valley and Garfield County.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been overseeing efforts out here for the last three years,\u201d UpRoot Colorado Co-Founder and Director, Western Slope Region Ciara Low said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically we work right now from Rifle to Aspen, working with local farmers and backyard gardeners to harvest surplus fruits and vegetables for hunger relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Low said by helping glean the crops they are helping avoid what they call food loss instead of food waste.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s left on farms it\u2019s not going in the trash, but it\u2019s not going to people,\u201d Low said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the farming world there is always surplus, that surplus has been increased with our modern food system because of the aesthetic standards we have for food, and the way contracted supermarkets kind of disadvantaged farmers so there tends to be a lot of surplus. We really want to work with farmers to take away the labor requirements for them to harvest that food and also transportation to get it to food pantries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Low said if farmers and gardeners are unable to sell their crops, UpRoot Colorado will come in, harvest and transport it and get the farmer a tax receipt, and that way they can donate their food without costs to food pantries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe partner really closely with LIFT-UP, and we try to where ever possible work with the closest food pantry to where we are gleaning so its localized. Working on really hyper-local food securities,\u201d Low said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re dealing with fresh food it can only be on the shelf for so long, so we want to make sure first we get it to the closest place, but then also that it gets to people and doesn\u2019t rot on the shelves,\u201d<\/p>\n

Low said they also work with Stepping Stones in Carbondale, Feed My Sheep in Glenwood.<\/p>\n

\u201cMostly we work with LIFT-Up because they work with those guys as well,\u201d Low said.<\/p>\n

According to Low around western Garfield County they mainly harvest a lot of fruit trees. Most of the small farms UpRoot Colorado works with are in the Roaring Fork Valley. <\/p>\n

UpRoot provides the service for many people that have fruit trees in their yards that have more fruit than they know what to do with.<\/p>\n

Low said last year they brought on Helen Rogers as the Gleaning Coordinator for Grafield County.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is based out of Rifle and has her finger on the pulse when it comes to the fruit trees being ripe and recruiting volunteers,\u201d Low said.<\/p>\n

Rogers is in her second year with UpRoot Colorado and just finished gleaning grapes in Rifle this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are providing all this nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables that were just picked out from the trees and the gardens to people that may not be able to afford them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very rewarding endeavor in that you get to meet volunteers you wouldn\u2019t normally have an opportunity to meet and the owners of the fruit trees and vegetable gardens are very generous for allowing us to go into their properties and glean their fruit and veggies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Low said volunteers put in 446 hours and they recovered 10,426 pounds in 2017 & 2018 combined, and volunteers have gleaned 2,020 pounds so far this year.<\/p>\n

With gleaning season well under way Low said they are always looking for volunteers to help collect the crops.<\/p>\n

\u201cOctober is usually the time of the season when farmers are going to have that excess,\u201d Low said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would love to have more volunteers, we are open to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

UpRoot Colorado and LIFT-UP have partnered together recently trying to support the farming community instead of just asking for donating from a community that is working so hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cFarming in this day and age is a really tuff profession, and one thing we have transitioned into this year as well as asking farmers to donate whatever they are not going to sell, we setup a farm to food pantry program. We have a grant through the state, which was matched through a private donation to purchase produce and meat from local farmers,\u201d Low said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re working really closely with five local farmers and a rancher who are supplying us with fresh local produce and meat we are purchasing. UpRoot Colorado and LIFT-Up are really excited about how the new partnership with farmers deepens the relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

kmills@postindependent.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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From left: Ciara Low, Shannon Muse, and Lynn Ruoff washing gleaned greens at Erin\u2019s Acres Farm in Emma. This picture was taken at UpRoot\u2019s first glean in 2017.<\/strong>
UpRootColorado-rct-092619-2<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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From left: Sara Tymczyszyn and Helen Rogers, UpRoot\u2019s gleaning coordinators for the Roaring Fork Valley and Garfield County, digging up onions for Peach Valley CSA in Silt.<\/strong>
UpRootColorado-rct-092619-3<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/p>

Helen Rogers gleaning apricots at Peach Valley CSA in Silt.<\/strong>
UpRootColorado-rct-092619-4<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UpRoot volunteer Michele Diamond harvesting plums at a home in New Castle Three years ago Ciara Low and David Laskarzewski founded UpRoot Colorado. The nonprofit organization started up at the end of 2016, and is now in their third growing season. \u201cI came into this because I was excited about the potential to reduce food waste and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1315004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 23:14:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}