Originally Published in
Aspen Business Journal.
by Karen Connington
Farm to Table. Slow Food. Community Supported Agriculture. However you call it, one thing is certain: the locavore food movement is thriving in Colorado’s Western Slope. As consumer demand for sustainable cuisine increases, regional farmers, distributors and retailers face both new obstacles and new opportunities.
In this second of a six-part series, Aspen Business Journal’s Karen Connington traces the history of Dava Parr, who like Brook LeVan of Sustainable Settings, is a genuine pioneer in this movement to nurture our region’s passion for locally-grown and locally-produced food.
PAONIA, Colo.—Not too long ago, Paonia was a quaint place to pick apples from a roadside farm, or stop for gas en-route to Telluride. Today, the town is the North Fork Valley’s hub for fresh foods, gourmet eateries and local spirits.
One woman almost single-handedly reconfigured that dynamic, a mission she assumed largely by default.
Dava Parr, owner of Paonia’s Fresh and Wyld Farmhouse Inn, landed in Colorado at 19, fresh off a farm in the north central hills of California. She grew up milking cows and picking produce in the fields, childhood toil she doggedly dismissed as she headed to Aspen in 1982.
Parr grew up on ethnic fare, bounties of paellas, fried rice and tortillas, prepared by her grandmother and aunts—Caucasian women who married Filipino, Chinese and Mexican men respectively. Family gatherings were festive affairs in Parr’s kitchen, where cousins, aunties and uncles gathered to hang out. The menus were diverse, and the food always fresh.
“Cooking was in my blood, but I rebelled against it, hook line and sinker,” said Parr. “I grew up in the gardens, hating every minute of it. It was many years later that I looked back on that fondly.”
So it was hardly by choice that she began working for local chefs. Ensnared by Aspen’s infamous party scene, she needed something to boost her income as well her diminishing self-esteem. Cooking required the least effort—given her natural talent—for the optimal return.
As she matured and started traveling about, food assumed a new face, and old fragrance, luring her back to basic instincts.
“It was nostalgic for me. When I got out in the world, I’d smell the Mexican foods and Asian foods, in cities and outdoor markets. They’d bring back memories, and I wanted to go straight back into my kitchen. When I miss my mom, (who died when Parr was 16), I cook,” she said.
Her first formal venture was in London, where she owned a small vegetarian restaurant for two years while studying nutrition. The European culture of daily markets took her to the streets, asking questions and eventually hopping a train to tour the sweeping country sides outside the city.
Supplying urban clients with fresh crops was second nature to British farmers. They showed Parr how they consolidated their efforts, growing, packing and transporting food in collectives they called “box schemes,” predecessors to our current CSAs.
“They were pre-selling produce to people 15 years ago, and that’s when that idea entered my mind,” said Parr. “But it wasn’t my focus then. I was simply in awe of all these veggies coming out of the ground, and struck by just how beautifully the food was growing.”
Back in the states by 2001, she returned to Aspen with new inspiration and formal training, but no clear path. Her first niche was preparing meals for people with health problems, work that grew by word of mouth and morphed into cheffing for private clients, including several celebrities.
Bringing her early experience with local chefs to the table, she coined her gig “healthy gourmet,” and opened the first sprouts of “Fresh and Wyld” in the back of Mountain Naturals grocery at the Airport Business Center. She later moved into town for awhile, but grew weary of Aspen rents, and felt pulled again into the wild.
“Our Slow Foods chapter was just starting up, so I joined them. The Saturday market was very small and not even on my radar,” said Parr. “I wanted to go directly to the farmers, so I took trips to the North Fork and show up on their doorsteps, which they didn’t appreciate, of course, since they’re rather busy!”
Busy and remote—in terms of running businesses to feed the public—farmers were leery of this young chef from Aspen interested in their grub. Little did they know that they’d be fighting over her a year or two down the line. In the meantime, Parr found one grower, Monica Wiitanen of Small Potatoes Farm who “took me under-wing.”
In the beginning, Parr wanted food exclusively for her own business, to prepare for her own clients. Wiitanen leased her a van, a patch of land, and a corner of her barn to pack food into boxes. She’d created a data base early on, and as email messaging flourished her list burst into a mini blog, shaking her in her very boots.
“I went back out to the farmers and said grow as much as you can and I’ll sell it,” she said. “That was a stupid move, because they could grow a lot here. I got very nervous, but had to keep my word, so I emailed everybody to say that I was no longer going to cook dinner for them, but will bring them boxes of produce along with recipes so they can make dinner for themselves.”
Once over their grumblings over their losing their gourmet meals, clients bucked up, tripling membership in Parr’s CSA over the first three years. By then, of course, North Fork growers, who were multiplying in their own right, were eager to partake. By 2005, Fresh and Wyld had 12 farmers on board. At the same time, Parr was struggling to collect, pack and move their produce, grow her own fare, and chef for a few choice clients to make ends meet.
The field was a virtual chessboard at this point, and the queen looked safe. Then, the game shifted again.
“The farmers’ market scene in the valley started going bonkers. Saturday in Aspen and a day in Glenwood Springs suddenly surged to five markets in between. Farmers were deluged, and their constant supplies to my CSA dried up,” said Parr. “I had pre-paid customers and, once again, not enough food to fill their orders. Something had to shift.”
So Parr took a leap, leasing a seven-room, 1908 farmhouse just east of downtown Paonia with an option to buy. She signed the contract—at a top of the market price—precisely two months before the U.S. economy crashed.
“The owner gave me three years to purchase, and I took the rest of my money to paint the place, landscape the grounds, hire a farmer and recruit a few interns to help my grower. I put everything else on credit cards, and traded food for furniture to fill the empty rooms,” Parr recalled.
Her balloon payment due on April 1st of this year, Parr started a campaign on her virtual platform, initiating a “Save-The-Farm” drive last fall. Using one short article about raising funds for small community enterprises in an alternative magazine, she mapped out a model, created a gift-card component, spread investor payments over six years and got an extension on her lease option.
“We took a really great idea and sold it in the very worst of times. It worked only because the people really wanted it to work, and I wanted it to work for them,” said Parr.
Today the farmhouse is home to tourists, cooking classes, weddings, retreats, recovery programs, political seminars, Friday night dinners, and gatherings of local farmers who come to toast their neighbors. Parr calls it her “cash-cow.”
The B & B has won three awards for best destination in the past two years—one from Yahoo and two from Sunset Magazine.
This weekend, Fresh and Wyld celebrates their ‘We Bought The Farm’ victory with a party and pig roast, North Fork farm and vineyard tours, cooking demos and, of course, luscious meals at the Inn.
The drive to Paonia these days is more than a pit-stop. It is more than a weekend at the inn or a great meal in town, but in fact a bridge to a new locavore economy on Colorado’s western slope. It was built by a fierce community of farmers, many treading the tracks of a little white van full of fresh food, piloted by a reluctant female lead.
For more on Dava Parr and Fresh and Wyld visit freshandwyld.com.
Share your thoughts and experiences as growers, chefs and dedicated locavores through our comments section (below) or by emailing karen@aspenbusinessjournal.com.