Meet Matt Croghan | Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matt Croghan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
My wife and I moved to Salida, CO, from Denver with our two month old daughter. I was a stay at home dad and looking to start a side business to keep myself busy outside of family duties. We started growing microgreens when I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease shortly after moving to salida in order to boost our diets nutritional content. We found them so helpful that we started Poncha Creek Gardens to share microgreens with our community and beyond.

We started with our local farmers market and have grown from there!

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
We are a small Microgreen Farm located just outside of Salida Colorado. Our vertical garden produces our tasty greens year round for our community and beyond. We started our farm 7 years ago after learning of microgreens ourselves. We started growing them to help our family recover. Soon after discovering the benefits ourselves, we started our vertical garden to share with our community.

We grow our microgreens in our converted 1 car garage. From that small space, we are able to produce a ton of microgreens! Our clients include local restaurants, small grocery stores, food banks, food hubs and of course lots of local neighbors and friends.

We started out at our local farmers market, growing 4 trays of microgreens a week. Now we grow upwards of 200 trays per week at our busiest time of the year. It’s been a wild ride growing over the years.

In addition to the farm, my biggest role is as a Father and stay at home parent. The microgreen farm allows for the flexibility requited to be a successful stay at home parent with a side job. My mornings are early and the nights are late, but the flexibility of the farm chores allows me to spend lots of quality time with my kiddos. We have three kids that love all things outdoors, so when were not in the garden, you’ll find us out skiing, fishing, camping and hiking all over our neck of the woods. They also really enjoy helping out with the microgreens. Especially with farmers markets and planting days!

The biggest challenges that we face are not entirely negative in our books. We love living in a small community, but that also poses challenges. Our client base is small because of our rural and small population, but it makes for intimate connections with the community. We know all of our clients personally and really enjoy the deep relationships that we have formed. We also work closely with food banks and food hubs to help distribute our products outside of our community.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Our town is a ton of fun. Most of our friends have kids so we would be keeping things kiddo friendly.

Depening on the season, we would spend most of the day outside. We would be hiking of skiing and enjoying some of the great trails around our area. Fishing would of course be on the itinerary. We would pack a lunch filled with local goodies. Our community has some amazing farmers and ranchers so we would make sure to cook up some local beef from our friends at Badger Creek Ranch. We would get all of our snacks from The Lettucehead Food Company in Buena Vista to keep fueled all day long.

After a long day in the mountains we would head back for a big meal and night on the town. There are many great local restaurants and bars to choose from. Then we would end the night at the Fun Street Family Arcade in town. Its a great throwback arcade with older arcade games, pool tables and ski ball. The kiddos would have a great day!

For day two we would make it up to Mount Princeton Hot Springs and hit up Eddyline Restaurant before heading back to Salida.

Our town is full of small family businesses and fun shops to explore!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Our small mountain community! We couldn’t do our thing without the support of all of our local friends, families and small businesses. Our small family farm relies on our regular customers to keep up and running. From day one we have been customer focused and continue to make them a priority.

Website: www.ponchacreekgardens.com

Instagram: @ponchacreekgardens

Facebook: @ponchacreekgardens