Shining Mountains Farm (SMF) is a working farm in Snowmass, Colorado that serves as a testing ground for nonconventional management practices. This is where the SMF Land Management Consulting team tries out new ideas and techniques to better serve their clients.

The land is leased from Pitkin County as a part of their “Agricultural Lease Program”. The project began in 2016 and since then has trialed 55 varieties of cereal grain 16 varieties of bean, 18 varieties of squash, 10 breeds of chicken, 4 breeds of duck, 1 breed of sheep, 20 varieties of forage crop, 6 varieties of mushrooms, 5 varieties of grapes, 12 varieties of hops, and 50 varieties of fruit trees.

Shining Mountains Farm has also experimented with soil conservation techniques including rotational grazing, green manure and cover cropping, no-till seeding, and keyline plowing while becoming one of the only current food-grain producers in the valley. The strict exclusion of pesticides and herbicides, along with minimal tillage, careful crop planning, intentional irrigation, and animal integration has greatly increased soil fertility.

Over the last 4 years under management by the SMF team, organic matter in some fields has nearly doubled with an 89% increase in the last four years while respiration (a measure of life in the soil) has increased by 40%. Even in fields where heavy cropping has been practiced, organic matter has increased by 60% while soil respiration has increased by 16%.