Community Photos

Sun Mountain Farm Club helps small farms fill labor needs

By Jon Huang

Dan Zimmerman grew up on a farm in Southern Michigan and worked 17 years as a mechanical design engineer for a water systems company. By the time he left, he was burnt out by the hectic, corporate environment and his own deteriorating health. Seven years ago, he returned to the land and began organically farming, and started Good Steward Farms in Peyton. 

The experience has brought positive changes for Zimmerman, including improved control of his diabetes. 

“I couldn’t afford the gym anymore and I thought this would be a good workout,” he joked. 

Now 54, farming has connected him to good food and others within the community. Zimmerman is passionate about providing education and food security to low-income groups, partnering with like-minded organizations such as the Southeast Food Coalition in southeast Colorado Springs. In addition to hosting planting events on the farm, he and his wife, Sonya, have been instrumental in starting this year’s Southeast Farmers Market in Colorado Springs. 

For Zimmerman, the shift in his work has mirrored his own health journey as well. As his diet has improved, so has his ability to engage in other areas of his life. 

“It’s like the way I was nourishing my body changed the way I thought,” he said. 

One of the challenges that Zimmerman and many small-scale organic farms face is labor. Organic farming is more labor intensive when it comes to planting, pruning, thinning, weeding and harvesting. While larger farms can utilize labor programs like the federal H2-A visa program, which relies on foreign workers, this is not a financially viable option for many small, family run farms that lack the land to expand. Many often rely on second jobs and other sources of income to keep the farm running. 

A 2020 Colorado State University analysis showed that farmers only receive 12 cents on every dollar spent on food, with the majority of those dollars going toward food service, food processing and retail services. Many small produce farms don’t have the volume and income to compete in wholesale markets or sell in large grocery stores. Instead, they rely on direct-to-consumer outlets like farmers markets and community supported agriculture programs. Legislation like the 2022 Colorado Agricultural Labor Rights and Responsibilities Act have increased labor costs on top of already thin margins. 

Some small farms rely on volunteers and community support to help with labor, which comes with limitations. For example, Zimmerman said he works with Front Range Community Service to provide help for the farmers through the community youth in the criminal justice system; however, the quality of the help can be inconsistent. 

Colorado Springs native Matt Noyes is involved in the local agriculture and farming community. He volunteers with grassroots organizations like the Colorado Springs-based Hunt or Gather Buying Club, which partners with Colorado family farms and other local producers to provide more affordable, direct-to-consumer, wholesale offerings. 

In the summer of 2024, Noyes and three other volunteers formed the Sun Mountain Farm Club. They worked on three local organic farms, including Good Steward Farms, and this year have expanded to six Colorado farms. The other farms include Nola Naturals in Avondale, New Roots Farm in Canon City, Quarter Acre and a Mule Farm in Pueblo, Frost Farms in Fountain and Sunflower Fields Farm in Hanover. 

“If you try to buy what those farmers are producing, that’s great but there’s a limit to how much they can produce unless they have people helping. Farm Club is giving that, making them much more productive,” Noyes said.

Farm Club is a local, mobile workforce that rotates at different farms but also includes farmers helping out at participating farms throughout the growing season. The group conducts regular meetings with farmers to assess ongoing needs and ways they can help each other. By connecting members of the farming community and addressing immediate labor needs, Noyes hopes it will also provide the foundation for other initiatives. 

“You’re increasingly building this weave of people who then are going to find all these opportunities to collaborate and start other things,” he said. 

Farm Club is working toward a cooperative labor model that provides fair wage to workers but at a lower cost to small local farms. The current goal is to provide workers with a $20 an hour wage with half of the cost paid by the farmer and the other half raised from community donations. This year, the farmers are providing $10 an hour while the group is still working to raise donations from the local community. 

As far as the labor impact, the results have been promising. The extra help allowed Zimmerman to plant additional crops throughout the growing season last year, which increased his production fourfold. 

Will Frost is the farm and sales manager at Frost Farms, a multigenerational family farm that also participated in the 2024 pilot program. Frost Farms grows organic produce on 2 acres, participates in the Colorado Farm and Art Market and the Southeast Farmers Market. He said with the extra assistance, Frost has been able to expand their community sponsored agriculture program at local schools in Colorado Springs. 

“From Sept. 1 through the second week of October, our farm services anywhere from 100 to 160 vegetable boxes per week; last year, with the Farm Club backing, we were easily able to service such a high demand for an operation with only two full-time employees,” Frost said. “Farm Club members would harvest 80% of the needed produce for the entire week in just five hours of work. The effectiveness moved mountains for our operation. Looking at this year, 2025, this cooperative movement is the only thing that will allow us to effectively and cost efficiently service even more production.”

Frost said that profit margins for small-scale vegetable growing are small, but the sense of purpose that comes with growing clean, climate-resistant, ethically grown food for his community has never been stronger. 

“As a small farmer, our charge is to provide food at a scale that supports our communities, but from a quantity and labor standpoint, we can never produce enough to compete with the large-scale agri-business models,” he said. “The farm labor co-op has created a space where farmers are only required to front half the bill of the necessary labor while the community, which benefits from the success of small farmers and their products, covers the other half of the bill. That way, everyone laboring makes a respectable living wage and small farms have the opportunity to expand operations without the unrealistic expectations of high cost and low gain.” 

For many of the farmers and workers involved, Farm Club not only has helped grow more local food, but the group’s collaboration has provided a supportive social network in a grueling line of work that can often be isolating.

For Zimmerman, grassroots initiatives like the Farm Club are a step in the right direction in getting more people to be active participants in their local food system. He hopes they are laying the foundation to address larger systemic issues like land access and markets. 

“We need more farmers, but we also need to educate people, provide exposure, and get more people involved in the necessary work,” he said.

For those interested in donating to Farm Club community fundraising efforts check out https://givebutter.com/FarmClub.

For any additional questions or inquiries regarding the organization, contact: 

sunmtnfarmclub@social.coop.

For more information on Hunt or Gather Buying Club, visit https://pikespeakbulletin.org/community/hunt-or-gather-buying-club-provides-locally-grown-food-at-wholesale-prices/.

A person stands inside a greenhouse tunnel, looking over rows of leafy green plants growing in soil with irrigation lines and some white covering material on the ground.

Dan Zimmerman is looking over the organic produce he grows on five acres in Peyton.

Two people work in a greenhouse; one uses a planting tool on a soil row while the other observes. Young plants grow along drip irrigation lines.

Matt Noyes and Gianna King are Farm Club members helping out at local organic farms this summer.

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Jon Huang

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