Meet Farmer John: Farmers Market Founder & Local Food Champion
To know Farmer John Ellis — lifelong farmer, advocate, and founding member of Boulder County Farmers Markets — is to know an encyclopedia of stories that together stitch together the history of agriculture in Boulder County.
The first thing to understand about John is that no last name is necessary to identify him; instead, saying “Farmer John” is as specific as you need to be (despite how many farmers are named John).
Once you know his name, he can be easily spotted at the farmers market. During peak summer time, you’ll find him behind the tables at Rancho Durazno’s booth at the Longmont Farmers Market, selling Palisade peaches and enjoying his weekly breakfast burrito from Amaizing Corn Tamales.
But even with all this intel you may wonder — who is Farmer John, and how did he become so synonymous with farming in Boulder County?
Farmer John was born to Martin Fredrick Ellis and Audree Dorothy Cooke Ellis in 1948 near the unincorporated town of Hinckley, Ohio, where he grew up on eight acres of farmland that included a small orchard. He remembers selling peaches on the side of the road when he was five years old. But despite loving the farm, his parents were eager to head out West.
While serving in the Armed Forces during WW2, Martin would use his breaks from service to ride his motorcycle west from central Kansas to as far as he could go on a three day pass and get back to his base. He quickly fell in love with the Rocky Mountains. In 1956 he secured a job offer at the Rocky Flats defense facility, bought a former bread delivery truck (a 1941 Dodge), packed up his family’s belongings and headed to Colorado — this time, for good. The trip took five days as the top speed of the truck was 45 MPH.
After two years in their first home in Martin Acres, they moved to a 2.5 acre property in a subdivision called Fairview Estates. Because there was no irrigation water on that property, in 1966 they moved to 7416 Valmont Rd, where they grew evergreen trees, sweet corn, and pumpkins. This property is now known as Cure Organic Farm.
They had a small farmstand on the side of the road, and customers would purchase sweet corn in the summer and pumpkins in the fall, paying and making their own change in a coffee can on the table under a willow tree.
John’s father tried to grow peach trees — a nod back to their farm life in Ohio — but struggled at getting them to produce in the fickle weather of the Front Range. Instead he grew Colorado Blue Spruce trees from seed and sold them to people all over the Boulder area. Many 60 plus foot high blue spruce trees in Boulder came from the Ellis farm, Evergreen Acres.
John pretty much always knew he wanted to be a farmer. After spending your whole life outside, tending to the land, how could you imagine trading it all in for a cubicle? But before he could start his own farm, he was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War and was sent to Germany. Not a fan of playing infantrymen in the first place, John quickly volunteered to be of service in the kitchen instead. His job was known as a “Ration Man” in which he managed the distribution of food between Mess Halls (kitchens) at the base he resided at.
When he was instructed to dispose of a large supply of dehydrated apples, John found the idea wasteful. Instead, he instructed the pig farmer who hauled their food waste on how to rehydrate the apples and feed them to his animals. The farmer was so grateful that he began sharing fresh produce with John in exchange for the apples. Eventually, his mess sergeant caught onto what was happening. Because this was not the “Army Way”, and perhaps the difference of opinion they had about the Vietnam War, he found himself shipped off to a small base 10 miles from Athens, Greece, where, he guessed, they sent people who did things a bit different.
There, he continued to work in the kitchen, and enjoyed the camaraderie among his unit. By the end of his service, John had travelled much of Europe, some of it in a 1963 Volkswagen microbus, gathered countless new stories, and was ready to return home and start a new chapter of adulthood.
In Boulder, John bought a tractor, rented a small parcel, and began harvesting and selling hay. To make ends meet, he worked a variety of side gigs, including water truck driving, logging, demolition, and eventually landing his best paying, although shortest tenure job at the University of Colorado. That extra money was enough for him to expand his farm.
He wanted to start selling his corn at the Boulder Valley Farmers Market, which began gathering in front of the Boulder County Courthouse in 1975. But his family friend and longtime neighbor, Bob Munson, was already selling sweet corn there. So instead, John went door to door in his former neighborhood, Martin Acres, selling corn. Several years later, when farmers began organizing around a new market — the Boulder County Farmers Market — John joined as a founding member.
He and a half dozen other farmers worked alongside city and county officials, a University of Colorado business class, and other stakeholders to create a plan for the Boulder County Farmers Market. Should it occur in a gas station parking lot on 15th and Pearl, or perhaps in the Crossroads Mall (now Twenty Ninth Street) parking lot? Where could the farmers set up and park? What would the rules for participation be?
“We always knew we wanted it to be a real farmers market with local farmers,” John recalled. They eventually settled on hosting the farmers market on 13th Street, and officially opened in June of 1987. They started with a small number of farmers, and John sold vegetables and flowers in addition to his sweet corn. He remained involved with the market by serving on its Board of Directors, and still serves as a Board Member today. Two years later, in 1989, they established the Longmont Farmers Market .
As part of his involvement with what is now Boulder County Farmers Markets, John attended many conferences for growers and market organizers across the country. At one of these events, he heard about a group of farmers markets that partnered with their local governments to provide coupons to WIC households. John left the conference knowing that he wanted BCFM to be the first market in Colorado to offer such a program, and quickly got to work to make it happen. Unable to get a funding partner, the program began with about $3,000 in vouchers — all contributed by vendors and growers. The program was so successful that over $10,000 was donated to WIC vouchers the following year.
At another conference, John made an entirely different type of discovery: a new business partner. He met Thomas Cameron, a peach grower in Palisade, and learned they had a lot in common. The two became quick friends and John suggested Thomas come to the farmers market to sell his peaches. Thomas, who had only done wholesale, wasn’t easily convinced. But, after visiting the market, he decided he would try it out for a season. That season has grown to over 25 years and now Thomas’s daughter, Gwen Cameron, is running the orchard with occasional sage advice and help from her dad.
A few years after meeting Thomas, John’s dad passed away. His mom had passed five years earlier. He ended up inheriting some money, and had to decide what he would do with it — and eventually landed on what his dad would have appreciated most. He picked up the phone and called Thomas. He pitched that if there was an orchard that Thomas would be willing to farm in Palisade, John would buy it and become a partner in the Cameron family orchard, Rancho Durazno. Two weeks later, Thomas called to say an orchard he had been farming for several years was for sale, would John be interested? John made a quick trip to Palisade and a month later, a member of the Ellis family would again own a peach orchard.
If you ask John, he would tell you that he isn’t much of a vegetable grower, although he loves to grow hay and pumpkins. “I much prefer to sit on a tractor,” he explained. But John’s superpower isn’t what he grows, sells, or even his expansive tractor collection, but his connection to people and passion for agriculture.
Through decades of work at the farmers market, he seems to know everyone in town (and their kids, too). Through involvement in Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, he has engaged with and supported advocacy that has benefitted growers throughout the state. When he inherited his family farm after his parents had passed, instead of selling it, he rented it out to another local farmer who is still there today: Anne Cure of Cure Organic Farm. And as Boulder County Farmers Markets enters its fortieth market season, it’s clear to us that BCFM wouldn’t be what it is today without Farmer John.
If you stopped by the Longmont Farmers Market this peach season, you’ve likely already met Farmer John amongst boxes of Rancho Durazno peaches. Behind all those boxes is a man with an incredible care for the agricultural community, an immeasurable impact on our local food system, and many more stories to tell. And maybe if we’re lucky, he will continue sharing them with us.
