A steady stream of people flowed through the Farm Collaborative’s greenhouse in Aspen like the juice flowing from the apples children were pushing through the cider press owned by the farm.
They’d come for the annual Farm to Fridge event, during which Farm Collaborative founder and Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commissioner Eden Vardy gives away thousands of pounds of locally grown food to the first 500 people who sign up.
There was a wide array of recipients, from ski bums to service workers, lawyers to school teachers. Each held a bag they’d either brought or been given by the farm, which focuses on regenerative agriculture. As they moved between piles of locally grown food spread out on long tables, they selected a few mushrooms from Toadstool Traditions here and a couple of onions from Top of the World Cultivators there. A loaf of bread from Mountain Oven Bakery, with grain grown in the North Fork Valley, here and a bag of root vegetables from Two Roots Farm there.
This third week in November was the 18th time that Vardy and his employees had collected food from producers in the Roaring Fork and North Fork valleys at a time when demand for their produce wanes, the risk of spoilage increases and sales start dropping.
Farm to Table started in 2008, then became Farm to Fridge during the COVID shutdown. During the farm-to-table years, the sit-down dinners grew from 200 in the Aspen High School cafeteria to 1,500 in the Hotel Jerome. And for nearly two decades now, Vardy, 39, has paid local farms fair market value for the food he offers at his events — “a huge fundraising effort,” he said.
All along, his mission has remained constant: Give farmers an end-of-season boost, get food to people who need it and destigmatize food insecurity. And that’s a good mission, says Sam Landercasper, deputy director of strategy and communications for Pitkin County Human Services, since just because it’s Aspen doesn’t mean food need isn’t happening.
In fact, more and more people are experiencing food insecurity, due to the income gap in a county where the average listing price for a home was $3.3 million in 2024 and the minimum wage is the state minimum of $14.81, although most employers pay upward of $25 per hour, Landercasper said. The living wage for two adults and one child in Eagle County is around $8,000 a month and in Garfield County it’s around $7,000, he added. And the wage required for a family of four to adequately live in Pitkin County increased to $148,512 from $50,752 over the last 25 years.
“Whereas the income level for government food assistance in the form of SNAP benefits for a household that size is $4,400,” he added. “So you’re looking at a 100% gap between not qualifying for SNAP but also not earning a living wage. I think that really helps frame the issue we’re facing, and the fact that it’s largely unrecognized by a lot of people. I think that creates a stigma around accessing food assistance, which you know causes increased levels of food security.”
Then, add in President Donald Trump’s tariff wars, food inflation and the basic cost of living in Colorado. The American Farm Bureau Federation says the price of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner — turkey, cranberry sauce, bag of frozen vegetables, but, sorry, no pumpkin pie — is down 8.1% from last year, but that doesn’t matter if your income makes you choose between transportation or basic foods, let alone those celebratory ingredients. It’s why organizations across Colorado are partnering with local producers to get holiday meals to tens of thousands of residents at a time when producers are experiencing their own price drops and insecurity.
The Farm Collaborative supports local agriculture in several ways, including children’s programming, a no-interest loan program for producers and a gear-lending library that includes the cider press. But its biggest impact this time of year is the farm-to-fridge program, which Vardy says feeds 2,500 people.
Drive-away turkeys and farm-grown bay leaves
Over in Carbondale, the median income is around $94,000, the median home price is around $800,000 and the average salary is around $70,000, according to the Economic Research Institute.
Elyse Hottel, interim executive director at the food assistance nonprofit LIFT-UP in Glenwood Springs, says there are many people in her service territory who could use occasional help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, sometimes called food stamps or SNAP, but aren’t eligible for the aid.
If a person isn’t working or makes over the designated amount, they won’t qualify. “But if someone has a medical emergency or their car breaks down, there are infinite reasons they might need a little help,” she said.
LIFT-UP has provided food aid on the Western Slope since 1982 and offered holiday meals for more years than Hottel can count. In an average week, they distribute three days worth of healthy food in “72-hour” bags through health clinics and some libraries from Aspen to Parachute.
But when the holidays come around, they mix up the regular schedule by offering an additional box with a turkey or turkey breast (depending on how many people will be eating) and a bag of sides — cranberry sauce, green beans, potatoes, veggies — to anyone who signs up. In the days preceding the holiday, they head to predesignated distribution sites where recipients can pick up “all the parts and pieces” they were promised.
This year, “a crazy amount” of LIFT-UP’s general food stocks have come from food drives, after SNAP benefits were canceled during the government shutdown, and Coloradans across the state “wanted to help out any way possible,” Hottel said. At one point in her region there were 45 food drives going concurrently.
LIFT-UP orders beef from local ranches as often as possible. But the several hundred turkeys and hams they distributed over the last two weeks came from Food Bank of the Rockies and not necessarily Colorado producers. UpRoot Colorado, another Roaring Fork Valley food assistance organization, harvests and redistributes surplus, nutrient-dense foods while supporting farmers, and Hottel said this year it provided locally grown bay leaves for LIFT-UP boxes.
Local farmers also donated hundreds of apples. Hottel said LIFT-UP distributed Thanksgiving meals to 379 households representing 1,120 individuals. And on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, she’d already received five requests “from people who forgot or missed the distributions,” she wrote in an email.
Local food for local people
There’s a LiftUp in Routt County — no relation to LIFT-UP in Garfield County.
And they’ve recently formed a partnership with the Yampa Valley Community Agriculture Alliance to get the freshest possible food to the greatest number of people.
Sue Fegelein is LiftUp’s executive director and Amber Pougiales is regional director of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust and the Community Agriculture Alliance. Together they formed the Local Food for Local People program, which they call “simple but impactful.”
Fegelein said the partnership formed after the state cut a grant they’d been getting to $5,000, down from $40,000, over the summer. “That affects not only our clients and our food budget, which is around $308,000 this year,” she said, “but that’s money that will not go into the hands of our producers and ranchers.”
Funds raised through Local Food for Local People go to the ag alliance to purchase foods including eggs, fresh produce, beef and other staples needed to stock the shelves at LiftUp’s food bank.
LiftUp in turn distributes those goods to local families and individuals who may otherwise go hungry. They manage and track the funds while the ag alliance coordinates orders with producers to stretch program dollars as far as possible.
The purpose is to replace the funds LiftUp lost with the state cuts. Fegelein said they’ve started to — but only to the tune of $10,000. More money is needed, but at the moment they’re focusing on the holidays.
So far, they’ve gathered 700 hams and turkeys, so people can choose what they’d like for the centerpiece of their table. “Then they can come through and choose shelf stable sides for no extra points” associated with getting goods from the food bank. That way, they’re not filling their weekly quota with food meant for a special occasion.
Food not just for celebrating Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving-specific foods are great if you’re someone who celebrates the traditional American Thanksgiving.
But what if your heritage is Afghan? Or Latino?
Sue Ellen Rodwick is Western Slope director of Food Bank of the Rockies.
She says the food bank embraces Coloradans facing food insecurity who have different customs.
The food bank starts sourcing turkeys for Thanksgiving from local producers way back in the summer. But they also source halal foods and ingredients for tamales.
A traditional tamale is a dried corn husk filled with meat and masa harina dough and livened up with spices. And halal foods — those permissible under Islamic law — include fruits, vegetables and grains, as well as meats from animals that have been slaughtered in a specific, humane way.
Rodwick says the food bank, which distributes goods to food hubs throughout the region, sources “quite a bit” from producers and ranchers on the Western Slope and Grand Valley. And right now, what they’re seeing the most are winter vegetables — a lot of squashes — and apples.
Some squashes come from the Western Colorado Agriculture Experiment Station, run by Colorado State University, at Orchard Mesa southeast of Grand Junction. Some potatoes come from the San Luis Valley. And the food bank partners with Mountain Freshies, a food aggregator based that collaborates with family farms based in the North Fork Valley, to get the freshest food to as many people as they can.
At a time when Rodwick says Food Bank of the Rockies is seeing a 20% to 25% increase in attendance at its mobile pantries, the whole chickens, stuffing mix, gravy, sweet potatoes and other festive foods they provide are as welcome as the pumpkin pie on a post-feast dessert plate.
Don’t forget the spices, or community
Providing fresh, locally grown food is great, says Giselle Díaz Campagna, but don’t forget the spices.
Díaz Camapagna is executive director of The GrowHaus, a nonprofit food security organization in north Denver’s Globeville and Elyria-Swansea community. Every year around this time, like they do every week throughout the year, The GrowHaus distributes thousands of pounds of food to thousands of people, through their “deep partnerships” with organizations like the Denver Public Library, Boys and Girls Club and the Tepeyac Community Health Center, she said.
But this time of year, the boxes they deliver are filled with 25 to 30 pounds with “all the goodies,” she added. “You know, fresh fruits and veggies, but really leaning towards the holiday flavors — eggs, milk, pumpkin pie filling.” What makes their holiday boxes a little more special, however, are the spices they include, “because we forget that we need to make our food delicious, and it’s really hard when you’re food insecure to buy spices.”
The GrowHaus is intentional about connecting local government with “middle stars, as I call them: the small community hubs, to create an economy between the cities and the farmers,” Díaz Camapagna said. But it will never work unless there’s investment from all communities, and a divestment from the belief that we owe something to “corporations, all these sales and Black Friday,” she added.
That’s where food, need, generosity and the spirit of giving come together.
“I think we all need to invest back in our communities, in the people that are going to roll up their sleeves and be there for you without a question,” Díaz Camapagna said.