One of the certainties in the uncertain world of farming is that businesses must change in response to market conditions. No one knows that better than Chet Anderson of The Fresh Herb Company in Longmont, Colorado. In his 21 years of farming, Chet has taken his business through several dramatic transformations. His farm today is a far different business from the farm he started. Chet was doing graduate work in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Colorado when he felt the pull of the farming life.

“I was 99.9% through a thesis on preserving agricultural land when I decided I had to be involved in agriculture in some way,” he said.

He stopped pursuing his master’s degree and with his wife, Kristy, bought a farm a few miles outside of Boulder. Their 10 acres is flat land with a stream winding through it, the foothills of the Rockies rising on the western horizon. Their house is built around an 1887 one-room schoolhouse that is now a roomy kitchen where Chet can indulge his love of cooking. Outside the stone and stucco house is a terrace with a long grape arbor that provides dense shade and a cool place to rest on hot summer days. It is, in short, a beautiful and comfortable home as well as a productive farm.

In the beginning, Kristy continued her career as an attorney in Denver, and Chet grew fresh-cut herbs and vegetables for restaurants, farmers’ markets and grocery stores. Over time, Kristy left her job to be home with their two sons, Chet and Nick, who are now 17 and 13. Chet found a profitable niche in organic salad mix, which was a novelty crop in demand by upscale restaurants and savvy home cooks, bringing $12 to $16 a pound. Chet expanded to 20 acres of salad crops and imported a harvester from England. The harvester was able to cut 30 pounds of greens per minute, and The Fresh Herb Company increased production to 6,000 pounds of salad mix per week.

“It rolled along great for a number of years,” Chet said. “Then it went from being a specialty crop to a commodity, and from a field crop to a processed food.”

By the late 1990s, big California growers, including some big organic growers, had jumped into the salad mix market. Within a few years, there was a glut of it – not as beautiful, varied or fresh as locally grown mixes, but close enough that the price dropped to as low as $3 a pound, where it remains today.
At the same time, government health regulators got involved. They determined that because consumers might think of salad mix as a ready-to-eat product, it had to be prepared with all the attention to sanitation required for any other prepared food. New regulations called for processing facilities, equipment and processes that would prevent contamination. Supermarkets began to require contamination-prevention plans, called HACCP plans, and third-party inspections, for salad greens.

Although The Fresh Herb Company already had an automated packing line with stainless steel equipment, upgrading to comply with a HACCP plan would have cost about $50,000. In view of the plummeting prices, the expense didn’t seem worthwhile, and Chet decided to get out of the salad business. He sold his equipment and turned his attention to growing what had previously been a sideline in his vegetable business – cut flowers.

Flowers proved an easy crop to expand. Demand was high in the upscale communities of Colorado’s front range. And the area’s summer climate of warm days and cool nights produced high-quality flowers. The Fresh Herb Company soon gained a reputation for its cut flowers.

The cut herbs that the business was named for had also declined in importance for similar reasons to the salad mix. “Even then they were catching on in California, and we had a struggle with things going dormant in winter and we couldn’t keep up with demand.,” Chet said. However, the potted herb plants that Chet had also been growing were selling well, and they continue to be an important part of the mix. Herb plants are produced in the greenhouses beginning in January and sold to local retail outlets such as supermarkets and garden centers, as well as at farmers’ markets. Bedding plants and hanging baskets also have become important spring crops.

Fourteen years ago, Chet built his first greenhouses – two 29×96-foot gutter-connected Nexus houses. Those houses filled up quickly, and two years later, he added two more. A fifth bay was added a couple of years ago. Now, the 15,000 square feet of greenhouses are used year-round. In November and December, the houses are kept at a night temperature of 40 degrees and used to overwinter rosemary and other tender plants. In January, the herbs and bedding plants are started and sales begin the first of March.
“By March, you can’t put a toe in here,” Chet says of the intensive spring plant production. “It’s covered with baskets and pots and you think ‘It will never sell.’”

It does sell, though. Six thousand flats of plants and 1800 pots of rosemary will be sold by the end of June.
As soon as the herbs and bedding plants have moved out, the house fills quickly with crates of lilies for cut flowers. Chet grows about six varieties of Asiatics and six of Orientals, and he plants repeatedly to have lilies through the end of October, when his farmers’ markets close. This year, he produced 46,000 stems of lilies. Bulbs are purchased precooled, then planted in plastic crates. The lilies are lightly fertilized and watered by lines of drip tape which run over the top of the crates. Some Asiatics are used in bouquets, but most lilies are sold in five-stem bunches.

Field crops
Outside the greenhouses are 6 acres of high-dollar perennials, planted in 360-foot-long beds with two rows 18 inches apart in each bed. One line of drip tape is used on each bed.

Peonies are one of the most valuable perennials. Chet’s 5,000 plants brought in $30,000 this year. He grows Veronica ‘Blue Charm’ from a line that a friend has spent six years selecting for earliness. English and Dutch hybrid delphiniums produce throughout spring and early summer. Kniphofia ‘Alcazar’ blooms prodigiously in July and August in an intense salmon color. In September and October, deep blue Aconitum pairs well with the hybrid Solidago ‘Tara’ and the species S. rugosa ‘Fireworks.’ Behind the greenhouse is an impressive garden of half a dozen genera of ornamental grasses, including Calamagrostis acutiflora, Chasmanthium latifolium, Miscanthus, panicum and Pennisetum species and hybrids. Dozens of other field-grown perennials supply the flower business from May until late October.

Annual flowers are grown on another piece of land a few miles from the home farm. Chet grows two dozen varieties of annuals, including amaranths, celosias, sweet williams and zinnias for a total of about 15 acres. About 70% of his annual flowers are sunflowers. He grows pollenless, single stem hybrid varieties such as ‘Sunbright’ and ‘Sunrich Orange’. He also likes ‘Sunbeam,’ ‘Double Shine’ and ‘Sungold.’ All the sunflowers are direct seeded. Beginning the first of July and going through frost in October, he harvests 400 bunches (5 stems per bunch) per day.

At one end of the home farm is a 80- by 40-foot packing shed with a 16 by 40 cooler at one end where flowers are stored after they are bunched and stems recut. Delphinium, peonies and safflower hang from the rafters to dry. “We used to dry a lot of flowers when drieds were much more popular than they are now, back in the ‘80s,” Chet said. “Safflowers are still reasonably popular, though that’s starting to wane a bit. Now we’ll just hang up the odd bunches of peonies or delphiniums that get by us. One of our employees started making dried-flower bouquets that sell for $20. I wouldn’t advise getting into it in a big way, but if you’ve got nice flowers like larkspur or peonies, it’s probably worth hanging them up and doing something with them later in the season.”

The Fresh Herb Company has a large number of outlets for all this production. First are the farmers’ markets: Boulder on Wednesdays and Saturdays and Dillon on Fridays. At each, Chet takes a full truck of flowers and usually sells most of them. In addition to the wholesale accounts for plants, he also sells cut flowers direct to three Whole Foods Markets and to six wholesale florists.

What the future holds
To accomplish all this growing and selling, Chet hires eight to 10 full-time employees from February through October. One of his employees recently became the farm manager when Chet took a job in Denver. Last summer, severe drought in Colorado threatened Chet’s livelihood so he accepted a friend’s offer to open and manage a commercial bakery that makes baked goods for coffee shops. As it turned out, Chet enjoyed the bakery job and he decided to stay with it for the immediate future as his children go to college.

“It was hard this year because I’m a hands-on guy and to not be around the farm drove me crazy,” he said. “If we were on a different scale, I might just put it all into cover crops and let it sit for a few years. But we have a lot invested here in infrastructure and we’ve spent a lot of time developing our markets.”
Besides, revenue was excellent this year, reigniting Chet’s enthusiasm for the farm’s financial potential. Still, he reminds himself that a hail storm or rainy spell or early frost could have greatly reduced his income. Such are the uncertainties of farming. But, like most farmers, he’s hooked and can’t give it up.
“It defines you,” he says. “I’ve done this for 21 years; it’s who I am.”

He plans to continue to expand production of the flowers he has found most profitable, and to work the best markets, even though he’s off the farm at his other job.

Chet advises new growers to figure out where they can fit into the mix of retail and wholesale markets. He has found his optimum scale, which is large for a direct marketer, but small in comparison to wholesale growers. “If I had to sell all my stuff to a wholesale florist, we wouldn’t survive,” he said. “My advice to new growers would be to be mindful of what your scale is and where you should be in the market.”

Chet Anderson can be emailed at canderson@rockymountainbaking.com.