Meet Avalon & Ross | Vibrant Earth Seeds

We had the good fortune of connecting with Avalon & Ross and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Avalon & Ross, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
About Us: Vibrant Earth Seeds is a small family farm and seed company in Southwestern Colorado near Cortez. We are passionate in our commitment to grow a diversity of open-pollinated, chemical-free and regionally-adapted seeds including vegetables, legumes, grains, flowers and herbs. Our focus is selecting and breeding drought tolerant, low water needs, short-season adapted & hardy seeds that thrive in the Mountain West and beyond.

Work Life Balance:

We no longer think about work-life balance after starting our farm and seed company, because our farm and seeds ARE our life. When we lived in the city, work and life were definitely two separate categories. Work was mostly about making money and life was everything else! That separation caused us to feel stress, anxiety and lack of meaning. The desire to create wholeness and meaning in our lives motivated us to move to a rural area and start a farm. Now each morning we wake up, make tea, let the dog, goats, chickens and kittens out, feed and water them, and milk the goat. We bring fresh eggs and goat milk back to the kitchen and cook a farm-fresh breakfast. We get the majority of our food from our land and animals plus our regional farmer’s cooperative, including grass-fed meats, dairy, grains, lard, fruits, beans and more.

After breakfast we work on the land and on the seed company. Right now it’s spring so we are clearing land for planting, forming garden beds, filling our ponds with irrigation water, digging ditches, constructing a hoop house, watering our tomato and pepper starts, planting peas, lettuce, arugula, potatoes and onions, and all manner of other farmy stuff. To run the seed company, we’re filling and labeling seed packets, fulfilling seed orders, germination testing the seeds, keeping the website updated and writing newsletters.

We “work” all day, which often feels like play because we love what we do and constantly get to make choices about what we are doing and how we are doing it. If something feels like a big stressor, we make a change. Running our own farm and company gives us the ability to be flexible and respond quickly. When the sun sets we make a big dinner and start to get pretty sleepy. In the evening we like to play music, watch a show or meet up with friends in the “big city” (small town). Sometimes things aren’t pretty or comfortable, like dealing with the septic system, a mouse infestation, goats escaping or sweating the intense summer heat. But there is not much we really miss about city life, which is surprising since we thought it would be such a challenging transition to go rural. We love our life-work and wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
See “about us” in the first question.

Through focusing on environment and agriculture in college and witnessing global environmental/social/political/economic problems escalating, we came to see how fragile our current food production and distribution systems are. Our regionally-adapted seed company is our response to these problems.

Distributing hardy seeds creates more food security for ourselves and our communities and brings people together in celebration of life instead of in fear of demise.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many good people who have shaped our lives. The Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance and John Navazio sparked our passion for growing seeds.

Website: www.VibrantEarthSeeds.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vibrantearthseeds/