Alison Gannett: From Daredevil Skier to Sustainable Champion

Much has hap­pened in the time fol­low­ing this fun­da­men­tal change in Gannett’s life. She has founded four non­profit orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Save Our Snow Foundation, which is ded­i­cated to the rever­sal of cli­mate change through edu­ca­tion of school chil­dren, and has toured exten­sively in sup­port of this cause. Her work has def­i­nitely been rec­og­nized: she was named Hero of the Year by Ski mag­a­zine and Green All-Star of the Year by Outside magazine.

Gannett’s most recent effort, however—and the one where she is now spend­ing the most time—focuses on a sub­ject near and dear to us all: food.

Holy Terror Farm

“For at least the last 10 years, I have been cal­cu­lat­ing and reduc­ing my car­bon foot­print, start­ing with the biggest one for me, which was travel,” Gannett told Organic Connections. “Next I worked on my house and trans­porta­tion. But lastly I have con­cen­trated on food, which was the giant ele­phant in the liv­ing room. I began work­ing to pur­chase all my food within 100 miles in 2007, estab­lished the online farm­ers’ mar­ket LocalFarmsFirst.com in 2009, and then moved to full-time grow­ing and rais­ing our own food at Holy Terror Farm in 2010.”

Holy Terror Farm is a 75-acre home­stead dat­ing back to 1889, located in a hid­den river val­ley near Paonia, Colorado. “The name Holy Terror refers to the river that runs through our farm,” Gannett explained. “It gets crazy scary when the snow melts in spring.” On the farm are grown over 300 vari­eties of heir­loom fruits, nuts, veg­eta­bles, grains and beans. Gannett and her part­ner Jason Trimm also raise Scottish Highland beef cows, rare-breed chick­ens, and pas­tured pigs. Produce that they don’t uti­lize themselves—by pre­serv­ing, can­ning, freez­ing or storing—is sold at their non­profit online farm­ers’ market.

Gannett has taken her farm beyond organic, and reg­u­larly pushes the enve­lope in the effort to be ever more sus­tain­able. “There is really no word in America for the type of method we use,” she con­tin­ued. “In Europe they call it ‘inte­grated farm­ing.’ In short, we are aim­ing for clos­ing the loop com­pletely, as well as striv­ing toward hav­ing the orchards, gar­dens, and ani­mal sys­tems work­ing together. For instance, our chick­ens debug and fer­til­ize the orchards, while the Akbash live­stock guardian dogs keep the chick­ens safe from preda­tors and also pre­vent the birds, deer, elk and bears from eat­ing all the fruit. The chicken bed­ding then goes into the com­post, which along with pig poop makes the best com­post for the gar­dens. The gar­dens grow our veg­gies, grains and beans, includ­ing some for the ani­mals, while the weeds from the gar­dens along with dam­aged or excess fruit and veg­gies get fed to the pigs and cows. The turkeys eat the fly lar­vae out of the pig poop and the chick­ens clean the cow pat­ties from the fields, spread­ing that fer­til­izer so we can increase the health of our grass for graz­ing. The ani­mals pro­vide not only food for win­ter but essen­tial oils for cook­ing and soap making.

“Each year we try to increase our self-sufficiency even more.”

Indeed prior to the farm, Gannett was con­stantly work­ing toward that goal. Before mov­ing to Paonia, she designed and built an eco-friendly straw-bale house and designed a solar-powered SUV.

Gannett isn’t keep­ing all of this to her­self. She also uses Holy Terror Farm as an edu­ca­tional tool. “We do lots of edu­ca­tional projects at the farm—from farm camps to farm tours and more,” she said. “We hope to inspire and spread knowl­edge of what is pos­si­ble, but also to learn from others.”

Click any image to enlarge.

Capturing Carbon

Part of the research Gannett is con­duct­ing on her farm deals with the sub­ject of car­bon sequestration—a fancy term for a sim­ple con­cept that means the uti­liza­tion of soil to cap­ture atmos­pheric car­bon. “Next to the oceans, soil has the most poten­tial for absorb­ing car­bon,” Gannett pointed out. “If I remem­ber cor­rectly, that poten­tial is so great it is esti­mated that if all farms in the US moved away from indus­trial agri­cul­ture toward farm­ing prac­tices that build organic mat­ter in the soil, we could sequester 23 per­cent of the world’s excess carbon.”

This would cer­tainly be no small feat—and Gannett would like to see farm­ers rewarded for mak­ing such changes. “Eventually I believe that farm­ers will be paid for their ecosys­tem services—absorbing car­bon,” she said. “This greatly depends on the type of farm­ing prac­tices along with soil and water vari­ables. I hope that I can team up with some sci­en­tists to do stud­ies on my farm and on sev­eral local farms nearby.”

In It from the Beginning

Although she became known far and wide for her dare­devil ski­ing, revers­ing cli­mate change and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able lifestyles were with Gannett from the begin­ning. “I think my path toward mak­ing the world a bet­ter place began at birth, fol­low­ing the foot­steps of my grand­mother and mom,” she related. “My mom ener­get­i­cally fights for regional envi­ron­men­tal issues, while my grand­mother fought to pro­tect Boston’s water sup­ply and fought for all kinds of envi­ron­men­tal issues while in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in the late 1960s and early ’70s.”

Gannett never for­got her envi­ron­men­tal roots. She grad­u­ated magna cum laude with hon­ors from the University of Vermont in 1987, with a BS in envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence and botany, then went on to study alter­na­tive energy and energy effi­cient build­ing design at Solar Energy International. In 1991 she opened her first busi­ness ded­i­cated to cli­mate change.

From her farm, Gannett hopes to gen­er­ate the pos­si­bil­i­ties for our future.  “We all need to live within our means,” she con­cluded. “Local, regional and global ecosys­tems all have a car­ry­ing capac­ity. We need to live in a man­ner that respects that there are many gen­er­a­tions to come after us. Our farm is an exper­i­ment to see what is possible!”

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.alisongannett.com.