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The Holistic Homestead, Health Starts at Home, Here's to your Health!
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The Holistic Homestead, Health Starts at Home, Here’s to your Health!


The Holistic Homestead is a 501c3 dedicated to improving health and wellness through education, outreach and advocacy. While we are based in Gilpin County, our work serves the entire Peak to Peak region of Colorado including residents of Coal Creek Canyon, Nederland, Ward and the neighborhoods in the mountain areas of unincorporated Boulder County. 

What does our work actually look like?

In practice, our mission is the Homestead Co-Op Market AND the Homestead Farmers Market.

“Improving health and wellness” is multifaceted, and implicitly includes advocating for personal health through nutrition, community health through collaboration, & environmental health through sustainable choices. Through collaboration with the Nederland Farmers Market, the Holistic Homestead has brought our holistic mission to the rural, underserved communities of Boulder and Gilpin Counties by: 

  • offering ultra fresh, nutrient dense produce and dairy to our Community Food Share Members
  • directly supporting small, independent, local farmers
  • actively and consistently supporting sustainable agriculture, 
  • and drastically reducing the carbon footprint and cost of producing, transporting, and distributing food. 

Building a Community FOOD HUB from the ground up

get all this produce twice a month with our half share! 3 pounds of roots, 1 pound of greens, 4 pieces of fruit.

The Holistic Homestead has supported the Nederland Farmers Market since 2018 when we launched our Community Food Share and the Gilpin County Farmers Market by mutually supporting local vendors, and scheduling our markets on days that did not conflict with the Nederland Farmers Market.  

In 2021 we began actively collaborating by buying some of the “after market” produce and dairy to sell to our Community Food Share Members. (btw, “after market” means food that Nederland Farmers Market produce manager Kipp Nash picks up directly from local farms on Saturday, sells at the Farmers Market on Sunday, and is available to our customers on Tuesday! It doesn’t get fresher than that!) In 2022, we built on our established collaboration to prioritize purchasing locally sourced produce and dairy, and NFM purchased more quantity and variety from local farms, which we distributed directly to our CFS members. During the 2022 Farmers Market season the Holistic Homestead invested over $6,000 in purchasing directly from NFM. 

Establishing the Homestead as a TRUE Community FOOD HUB!

For the past two years, the Homestead has prioritized purchasing ultra fresh, nutrient dense, and locally sourced food from NFM for our Community Food Share members. The impact of having more locally sourced food available for our members is the establishment of the Holistic Homestead as a genuine food hub for the Peak to Peak region.

According to healthyfoodaccess.org, “a food hub actively manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers in order to satisfy wholesale, retail and institutional demand.”

The Holistic Homestead does this because of our growing partnership with NFM. Our Community Food Share is a year-round program committed to making fresh, organic produce affordable and accessible to our rural, mountain communities. We have a retail location that is open to the public 6 days a week, commercial storage capacity, a grocery delivery service, and a pay-what-you-can Farm-to-Table Cafe (literally “Nederland Farmers Market-to-Table”!) that ensures nothing goes to waste, and our rural mountain communities have access to affordable, locally produced food. 

WHY FOOD HUBS MATTER

Jim McVey, Director and lead farmer for the Nederland Victory Gardens brings his freshly harvested produce to the Homestead Market all summer long!

Without food hubs, local farmers don’t have a way to get their food out to the community. Thriving food hubs mean thriving local farms, and healthier communities.

We are thrilled at the success of our collaboration with the Nederland Farmers Market, and look forward to building on the momentum that we are generating by directly purchasing even more in 2023. We share a vision of giving priority to farms who demonstrate sustainable agricultural practices, and of getting the freshest, most nutritious food directly to our community. If more produce was available through the Nederland Farmers Market, with more variety during more of the calendar year (especially earlier spring and late fall harvests, locally grown winter crops, and hydroponic lettuces, tomatoes, sprouts, etc.) we guarantee that we would prioritize purchasing directly from NFM first!

HOW YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE TODAY!

stay tuned for our 2023 Homestead Farmers Market season dates!

JOIN THE HOMESTEAD as a Member, and sign up for your monthly share of fresh, local produce! Produce shares are pre-paid $40/month for Full Shares and $20/month for Half Shares. Pay once, pick up twice a month, and get your shares any time we are open! Pick from the freshest selection of always organic and as local as possible produce – no pre-packaged boxes, here, and you’re not going to get 10 pounds of potatoes (though we may encourage you to take an extra bunch of turnips)!

SPONSOR THE HOMESTEAD Corporate sponsorship is absolutely critical to our ability to keep the doors open and lights on, and to continue putting on amazing community programs like the Pay-What-You-Can Farm-to-Table Cafe and the Homestead Farmers Market! Click here to read more about becoming an official sponsor of the Homestead.


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