Get To Know: Ryan Ericson of Well Fed Farmstead

Known for his million-dollar smile and 2.5-acre farm, Ryan Ericson took the helm of Well Fed Farmstead — formerly Raisin’ Roots — in December 2021. A Minnesota-born, Indiana-taught, California-tested workhorse, Ryan belongs to Northern Colorado’s new generation of young farmers bringing a fresh approach to agriculture, one that prioritizes soil health and regeneration through a wide variety of regionally-adapted foods. Below he talks about his upbringing, his experience in food systems across the country, and how he and his family plan to nourish the robust community his predecessors forged on a small plot of land at 2229 W Vine Dr.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Austin Lammers: Let’s take it from the top. Where were you raised?

Ryan Ericson: Born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, but bumped around a bunch as I was pretty young. My family moved around rural Wisconsin for a few years and then kind of all over the Twin Cities, but mostly in and around Minnesota.

AL: Where did your interest in farming come from?

RE: Out of nowhere really. My parents did a good job of introducing me to outdoor sports, so we did a lot of canoeing, kayaking, and I got into rock climbing pretty young. There's not a whole lot of it in Minnesota, but our family did seek it out.

In high school, I got into wilderness sports, and a few friends had gone to an environmental boarding school for high schoolers called Conserve School. It’s only one semester in absolutely nowhere in North Woods, Wisconsin, and it's all environmental-based education. They had full scholarships for every student that applied, so I was able to spend an entire semester in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been for like 200 bucks — room, board, education, everything. It was crazy. I went in wanting to spend time outdoors and came out a total hippie. They made me a vegetarian. I got hooked on that community garden there. I had grown up gardening with my mom, but just flowers, no food. The community garden got me really interested in growing, in reading a bunch about sustainability and small ag. I started reading Wendell Berry. Then I went to a college at a tiny school in Indiana and decided to specialize in it. I was a city kid who got hooked on farming.

AL: When did you move out to Colorado?

RE: I bumped around for a while and met my wife in LA. I actually followed a different girl out there, but she broke up with me two months later [laughs]. I was in California for four years, did a bunch of farming out there. Worked on some biodynamic farms and ranches. I was a picker for a while. Did an urban farming job in LA proper and took care of 26 Urban Farm plots. That was pretty neat. But when my wife and I met in LA, we were like, ‘we got to get out of here.’ I managed a farm in San Jose for a few years before moving to Fort Collins.

AL: How did you end up here?

RE: The move to was pretty intentional. San Jose is a really odd spot. And it's not a good place to raise a family. We had our first kid there, got pregnant with the second, and just couldn't imagine raising a family there. We have extended family here in Fort Collins, which was much more affordable at the time. We saw more of a future here.

This is funny for a lot of people now because it's getting to be unaffordable, but even three years ago, coming from San Jose — which is one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. — looking at land, possibility, opportunity out here in Fort Collins, it seemed plausible for me to be a farm owner someday. Before we even moved, I started talking to farmers here in the community, just cold-calling random farms. One day I called Raisin’ Roots and Ben (Pfeffer, previous owner) answered. And we chatted on the phone for an hour. I just asked him, ‘you know, I'm a farmer. I'm looking at opening a business in Fort Collins, but I want to take it slow and be thoughtful. What is it like to be a farmer there? What's the weather? What are your customers like?’

He was really open with information. And I would say our friendship started there. Before moving, I visited. We chatted, did some more official consulting. He had some really interesting advice. Through him, I got connected to the Larimer County Farmers Alliance (LCFA) and got to know a bunch of other farmers in the area. And very shortly after moving here, I was like, ‘I want to get my foot in the door. I know I don't have any land opportunities set up yet. We don't have a whole lot of money in savings. But I want to start getting to know people, farmers, chefs, produce managers, the farmers markets, everything.’ So I started a microgreens business in early 2020, before the boom of microgreens. I ran that business for a little over a year and then COVID hit hard. My main customers were restaurants, so greens were the first thing cut.

So I put a temporary close on that and pursued more full-time farming, managing a landscape company in the meantime. Nothing really came my way. And then about a year before Ben and Carolyn decided to leave, they let me know that they were potentially looking to move. They were like, ‘would you be interested in buying the business?’

We took about six months to sit down, have some meetings, walk around, look at numbers, all that stuff, just kind of taking it slow. It was an easy, natural transition. They gave us a fantastic deal on the business and I helped them out by buying everything so they didn't have to parcel it all out. It worked out really well.

AL: Going back to that first consultation with Ben, what piece of advice surprised you the most?

RE: He really admired the cautiousness I was taking. I wasn’t like, ‘I want to farm, I'm gonna find a plot of land, and I’m gonna start.’ I was like, ‘I've got a family. I gotta make this amount of money in a year to pay my bills. And I want to jump into this seriously, not bootstrap it. I'm gonna invest seriously in it with the right equipment and a good business plan.’

He admired and affirmed my caution, and was honest, like, ‘this is really f*****g hard.’ He bootstrapped it from absolutely nothing. No savings, no loans. They started from nothing and grew, and he talked a lot about how difficult that was. So his advice was really just, ‘take this seriously.’ Like, don't jump into it just because you want to do it. It’s hilarious that that's the advice he gave me, and then two years later, he's like, ‘here, buy my business!’ He made sure it was a smart decision for me, and it was. Here I am, year one, in the green and able to use all the infrastructure and community that they built, and people are really getting behind it.

AL: How’s the transition been?

RE: It’s been really cool. People have been very open and welcoming. And curious, too. It's been fun to step in as a family and have Alexa and the kids involved. I think people are jazzed about supporting a family farm. Ben and Carolyn were personalities, and people loved them so much. But I think people are excited to support a new family in the same way. People love and support small farming. But it’s so much about supporting the story and the people as well. We want to support the community, the land, and create a space for people to gather. Not just good food, but good community. The larger story. I think people have latched onto that.

AL: You’ve played a role in a number of different food systems across the country. How does the Northern Colorado food system differ from that of Minnesota or Indiana or San Jose or LA?

RE: It's a lot more friendly and cooperative out here. Indiana feels very isolated, like everybody is doing their own thing without talking to each other. San Jose was a strange area to farm because almost no one farmed there. No one was close by. Here, I got connected with LCFA even before becoming a farmer. I already had something to draw from. I went to their meetings and people were welcoming. I could ask anybody about anything, and they were open. Here, you don't have to worry about so much competitiveness. I even exchange price points with other farmers, like, ‘hey, is this too much? I don't want to price you out.’ Or the other way around. So that's been really unique and cool to see.

There are also four or five farms that are, like, big producers here. And I think every single one of the owners didn't grow up in farming. Me, Alex (Folks Farm), Nic (Native Hill) – none of us grew up in farming, so we're coming into it with a fresh perspective. We don't have to follow a tradition. We're learning about it as we're doing it. It gives us some humility to be like, ‘this hasn't always worked in the past. Let's find something new. Let's test this out. Let's work with nature a little bit instead of against it, because there's nothing holding us back. I feel that way with a lot of young people coming up right now — they don't have tradition to hold them back.

Which can also be harmful, you know? Because there's nothing there's not a well of knowledge to draw from. Sometimes I wish my mom or dad or my grandpa had farmed. Sure, we might be more progressive, trying some new things out, but we're probably missing a lot because we don't have this traditional or indigenous knowledge of history and adaptation. It comes with pros and cons.

AL: What are some things that you think could improve our local food system?

RE: I think what y'all are doing is an important step in the right direction. You’re connecting farmers to create a more reliable and larger conglomerate that serves a larger market. Us farmers are kind of doing our own things, selling to our own customers, selling to our own restaurants, you know. It's very individual. And I think that's totally fine. But I don't know that the small farm as it is today, or even as my farm is right now, is ever going to be the solution to a food system change. We're too small. And it's not that I think that everyone needs to get big, it's that we need to cooperate with each other even more than we already are. So I'm loving models throughout the country that are not only creating farm cooperatives but also creating market influence by coming together to produce a certain good that the market needs. And actually being able to enter large markets and say, ‘this is local food, grown by 10 different farmers in our area, but now we're big enough to go to every single King Soopers in Colorado,’ or whatever the state may be. For me, that's where larger food system change comes in. How can we as a group of farmers come together to change this? We make up, what, 5% of Fort Collins’ food? Maybe not even that.

How do we get the numbers up? We need to think about how we can actually compete with these massive corporations that define the market. How do we even get a foothold? It's a hard question. But I guess the simple answer is getting more people involved. I'm not scared about competition. The more farmers, the better. And then we can get farmers to work together instead of against each other, and stop growing the exact same things and going to the exact same markets. If we are going to grow the same thing, let's go together on it. Let's sell it together. Let's figure this out.

I think [ReKaivery] is doing that on a really small scale. You’re taking a bunch of different farmers, putting them together in one shop. If you could scale what you're doing up to provide these small markets for each little community in Fort Collins, that could be incredible. What if we had 20 ReKaiverys? Not as a chain store, but just literally serving each small community so people can walk to it. And creating something where I, as a farmer can centralize it. Yeah. Like, hey, let's distribute our stuff to all 20 of these. It’d be awesome.

AL: That’s the goal! It’s similar to what you said about putting you and your family at the forefront of your business. We’re not just selling faceless food. Everything you buy in our container has a story like this one behind it. We just gotta make this first one work! What's your vision for Well Fed Farmstead in the next two, five, ten years?

RE: Slow growth for sure. We do have plans to expand into another acre next year, so that’ll expand the business by 20 to 30% if I use that whole acre. I might not, just because 20 to 30%. sounds like a lot to me for one year. But there are plans to expand into more land.

More than anything, I care about the people working with me. I'm really excited about the community here. I hope to keep all of them. I hope to give them stable jobs and better wages over the next year. I've been able to give them raises throughout the year, but it's farming and it’s still hard to live on. I want to give everyone that works for me a livable wage and a stable job. That's a huge goal of mine.

I came in with more of an environmental bend. Like, ‘what can I do for the soil?’ And I still have that, but now I'm like, ‘what can I do for my people?’ The people are coming first. I'm not sacrificing the soil by any means, but I’m looking at how can I be more effective, more efficient, bringing up my profit margin so that I can actually compensate people for what I believe they're truly worth. I'm trying to grow to the point where I can pay people what I want to pay them and keep people happy here because I don't want my workers to have the same experience I did. I was learning to farm and getting paid cash under the table because wages were under the minimum. I don't want that experience. I want people who are excited about this and getting compensated fairly for their work. So that's, that's my goal. To make this sustainable business for myself and for my workers. And at the same time doing it sustainably for the Earth.