We have always been on a quest to discover the ‘Good Life’; a life inherently filled with meaning, purpose and of course good food. It’s just only recently that we decided to do it on a farm.
We began our journey together with Alice as a frustrated designer yearning to explore architecture for the soul and Karel as the swimming coach for the Boulder Poseidons. In 1994 we started the Gold Lake Mountain Resort & Spa in Ward, Colorado which we operated for eleven years. At Gold Lake, we wanted to create a place that would allow guests to relax and reconnect on a deep level. It was a magical place that had great food, art, beauty and undisturbed nature and quiet, without the snob appeal of the typical upscale resort.
We learned a lot from our experiences at Gold Lake, especially about the challenges of creating a healthy work-life balance in our culture. In a parallel process we started to realize that we had the beginnings of serious food related illnesses. Alice had struggled with digestive issues since childhood and Karel had recently developed an autoimmune disease. We soon discovered that we, as well as our three children, had Celiac Disease - a disease centered around an inability to digest gluten proteins in grains.
During our attempt to regain our health, we discovered that grains, legumes, and processed foods were neither easily digestible nor nutritious for us. After removing gluten, un-sprouted grains and legumes, and most processed food from our diets -- in addition to reducing our exposure to toxic chemicals, reducing our stress, and increasing daily exercise -- we have both reached a place of greatly improved health and vitality.
Through our newly cultivated interest in great, healthy food, our longstanding desire to be a part of the solution, and our inability to get what we were looking for at grocery stores or restaurants, we gradually realized that we wanted to grow food for ourselves and others.
As we researched growing systems, we learned the central role animals play in every ecosystem designed by nature, and in those of diversified farms. Petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers and large machinery have been used to replace the work normally done by animals in our industrial food system. Instead of learning from and copying the brilliance of nature, our society has systematically eradicated natural ecosystems and replaced them with sprawling mono-cultures dependent on endless inputs ultimately leading to a myriad of problems.
We believe that it’s time for us as a culture to reconnect with the brilliance of nature: to watch, to learn, to mimic. And so our journey continues. Please join us on our adventure and support your local farmers.