[Community_garden] Community gardener named sustainability coordinator in Colorado town

[Don Boekelheide]

Daily Planet
Telluride, Colorado, USA

January 15, 2007

Holstrom aims at a more self-reliant region
Tomten farm founder hired as first sustainability
coordinator

www.telluridenews.com/articles/2007/01/16/news/news01.txt

By Katie Klingsporn

Kris Holstrom was a driving force behind Telluride’s
new community garden. She grows organic food at an
improbable elevation of 9,000 feet, and peddles mixed
greens to the community at the farmers market. She
passes her knowledge along to farm interns, and the
public learns from her writings and presentations.

Considering the paths she has already forged toward a
more localized, self-sustaining community, it comes as
no surprise that Holstrom has been hired as the
region’s first sustainability coordinator.

“I’m really excited,” Holstrom said. “There’s a huge
amount of ideas and power and creativity in the
community, and I’m excited to tap into that. We’re
heading into a time when we’re really going to have to
think outside the box, and this is a great community
to do that in.”

The position of a sustainability coordinator has been
conceptualized, discussed and formed over a period of
about two years. All the talk came to fruition this
fall, when the towns of Telluride and Mountain
Village, as well as San Miguel County and the
Telluride Foundation, came together to fund the
position.

Although Holstrom will work with all the entities, her
position is not a governmental one. She will head up a
non-profit organization with its own office and
working board of directors.

Holstrom and the board will be charged with creating
an annual action plan for regional sustainability in
the areas of culture, economy and environment, and
will see through the implementation of programs geared
toward that end.

Holstrom beat out roughly 40 other applicants to nab
the job, and said the competition was formidable.

“They had people from all over, and they had some
really strong candidates,” she said.

However, Holstrom made the cut of nine candidates that
were screened by a hiring committee, and emerged as
one of the three who were interviewed.

All three were very qualified, said Telluride Town
Council Member Roberta Peterson, who was on the hiring
committee. But when it came down to it, Holstrom’s
background and local experience were unparalleled.

“We were very happy with Kris,” Peterson said. “She
knows a lot about the environment, she’s very
knowledgeable about the area and she’s very involved
in the community.”

Very involved, indeed. But Holstrom said she’s willing
to hand off some of her other responsibilities in
order to make this job her chief focus.

“This’ll be my No. 1 priority,” she said.

She has a capable manager and interns to hold things
down at Tomten Farms and at the Colona grow dome, and
the community garden manager, Jeanne Walker, will
oversee operations there.

Holstrom pointed out that she will still have a role
in these things in her new position. Plus, she said,
this sort of signifies a next step she feels the
calling to make.

“It’s time for those of us who have been involved in
sustainability in various ways for a long time — since
everyone else is kind of getting the picture — to step
it up, to make a bigger dent,” she said. “It’s really
about community, about doing everything I can for this
place. It’s an amazing place, it’s a privilege to live
here, and with that privilege comes responsibility.”

The first order of business, Holstrom said, is taking
the necessary steps to achieve non-profit status. Then
she and the board — which is so far comprised of
government liaisons and knowledgeable members of the
public — will get started on a projects in areas such
as renewable energy, recycling, waste as resources,
food production and “just all the different ways we
can become self-reliant,” Holstrom said.

Holstrom, whose farm is located on Hastings Mesa, has
lived here for 20 years, has been running Tomten Farms
for 14 years, and has been growing food most of her
life.

Long before the general populace becomes clued into
the most emergent developments in the realm of
sustainability, she’s living them. Renewable energy,
permaculture, worm composting. You name it, she knows
it.

Nevertheless, Holstrom welcomes all and any public
input. Her email is kholstrom at gmail.com, and she
encourages anyone interested to contact her.

Reporter Katie Klingsporn can be reached at katie at telluridenews.com