Young rancher trying innovative techniques

James Shea

Daily Press Writer

MONTROSE— Farming is hard. Jeff Downs knows.

The air was cool, soft and cotton candy clouds covered the Uncompahgre Valley on a recent visit to Downs’ farm. Like other ranchers in the valley, Downs was tending to the farm.

He grabbed a rope and pulled a bird cage through a green pasture. He strained under the weight and the chickens circled the cage, bewildered at the movement.

A 2000 graduate of Ridgway High School, Downs returned home after college to implement innovative farming practices. He wants to produce beef and poultry without fertilizers, pesticides or growth hormones.

“This is all brand new,” Downs said.

He attended college at California Polytechnic State University, majoring in animal husbandry and food safety. After graduation, he traveled to South America, working in a sushi restaurant. At the same time, dreams of returning home swam through his head. He crunched numbers and knew the land could be profitable if new techniques were utilized.

A farmer leased the family’s 700-acre ranch and Downs was not pleased with the results.

“I wasn’t too impressed with the way things were run,” Downs said, adding, “It was a bunch of good-old-boy farmers who wanted to burn the ditches and spray everything.”

Rather than following standard ranching practices, Downs decided to jump out on a limb. He traveled to Virginia and visited Polyface Farm, where environmental farmer Joel Salatin developed “outside-the-box” methods.

Instead of focusing on large-scale feedlots, Salatin wants a farm to function as a unit. Each animal and crop compliments the other.

Salatin looked at nature and tried to mimic the environment. He noticed that birds always followed grazing animals in the wild, so he has poultry follow behind cattle after grazing. The poultry eat the worms inside the cow manure and fertilize the pasture.

Salatin said a natural farm has to find other ways to operate when it cannot depend on fertilizers and pesticides.

“You have to come up with symbiotic relationships for the non-chemical approach,” Salatin said, speaking from his home in Virginia.

This spring, Downs took up residence on a small section of the family farm, which is located southeast of town, and got started. Working on a limited budget, he used old building material for the cages and plastic piping for the poultry feeders.

“You’ve got to find cheap ways to do it,” Downs said.

He designed a systems where cattle, poultry, goats and pigs work together. The goats clean the ditches, the pigs clean the waste, the poultry fertilize the pasture land and the cattle graze.

“When you do the same old thing,you get the same old results,” Downs said.

The effort is worth it. Downs said the naturally grown meat is more nutritious and tastes better than mass-produced meat. He has already sold some chickens locally. People have raved about the meat and the ability to buy a local product directly from the farm.

“The chefs, their jaws drop when I show the pictures,” Downs said. “They say, ‘you mean I can come out and pick that cow or that cow.’”

The meat is processed at an adjacent farm and Downs said he hopes some of the natural food stores will carry the products. For now, he has people reserve a particular animal and pick the meat up at the farm.

Downs does have some help. Jenika Waters, a friend from California, joined Downs earlier this summer. She philosophically believes in Downs’ methods and visited Salatin’s farm with him.

“It sold me, because it seemed like the way God intended it,” Waters said, adding, “The animals need to be in a natural environment.”

Waters, dressed in a yoga shirt and drinking a South American herbal tea, said she will only eat naturally grown meat.

“Not only is it good for your conscious, it is good for you,” Waters said.

Besides rotating the animals through the pasture, Downs has also implemented other innovative practices. He does not till the pastureland. He wants to reduce costs by not running the tractor and said soils build up valuable nutrients when they are not altered.

“If you get the soil right, the grass will follow” Downs said.

He said other farmers in the area are not sure of his new operation. They drive by and wave but never seem too interested.

“They think I’m a little crazy,” Downs said.

Salatin said it comes with the territory. He said working in naturally based agriculture is not well accepted.

“I’m a third generation lunatic,” Salatin said, adding his father and grandfather practiced non-chemical based agriculture.

Downs said he can produce the meat but the challenge is to sell the product. He is a farmer and not versed in marketing.

“The back end is the hard part,” Downs said. “The raising the birds is what I went to school for.”

Downs has plans for the second year at the farm. He will purchase 40 head of cattle next spring and plans to increase the acreage. He thinks he can make the farm profitable in three years.

“We will see,” Downs said.

The last chicken harvest will be available soon and he is taking reservations for Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas geese. Kinikin Heights Natural Foods can be contact at 901-9959 or kinikinfoods.com.

Contact James Shea via email at Jamess@montrosepress.com