Mountain Sky Ranch and CEED have partnered to be just like Thomas Edison! That’s right, Edison said when he was asked how he invented the light bulb – “I didn’t invent the light bulb, I just failed 9,999 times trying to invent the light bulb, and one time I got lucky”.  His point was that he succeeded once because he was willing to try – fail, try – fail, try – fail, over and over and never quit.

We try to take the same approach and attitude here at The Ranch.  Clearly, we are not Thomas Edison, but we do try many different experiments to see if we can be ecolonomic – “make the planet better and make a little money doing it” as Dennis Weaver would say.

We are “addicted” to research and development to try many approaches to improve small farm/ranch food and fiber production methods.  We are very willing to be out on the “edge” with ideas almost everyone thinks are “crazy”.  We fail a lot, but every once in a while we succeed. In the last eight years here are some examples of some “crazy’ successes here at The Ranch:

• Producing 1200-1500 lb. a day of hydroponically grown baby wheat or barley for primary diets of elite alpacas – we lost some animals, but we also have a “World Champion” and numerous other production success stories – “I’m just sayin!”
• Using John Martin Fortier’s model and producing over 80 varieties of edible plant foods on less than 2 acres with profitability better than farmers traditionally row cropping monocultures (oh yes wheat, barely, corn, etc.) on thousands of acres – “just like may dad did and my granddad did”.
• Growing Pacific Marine White Shrimp 1000 miles from the coast in Colorado in commercial quantities.
• Building 4 season loafing sheds from used pallets for less than $160 each that protect livestock from the weather better than $1000+ commercially build sheds.
• Turning an old mobile home into a highly effective small livestock barn.

We do this research by encouraging aspiring ecopreneurs to follow their dreams with access to and sharing of few of our abundant resources that are otherwise underutilized.  Yes, you hear again about our passion for the Access and Sharing Economy Model.

We informally operate the first (to our knowledge) GreenHackerspace, an primarily outdoor “playground” for inventors, developers, researchers and tinkerers.  Maybe the next one of those is you?

Get in touch with us by clicking here and let us know of your interests to “make the planet better and make a little money doing it”.  That’s right, ecolonomics.