Azuraye shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Hi Azuraye , thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What do you think is misunderstood about your business?
The whole thing! But that’s just because it is complex! When people ask “how are you juggling so many different businesses?” yet to me it’s all just one ecosystem – all parts of the whole. And sometimes that whole is hard to see in its totality from the outside. You have to come inside and explore this world we’re creating with slow intention…it takes time to get to know all her facets!
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Azuraye – pronounced “aw-juure ray”, meaning “Blue Skies”. Yes, that’s my given name. And no, I haven’t met another Azuraye either.
I run the Yellow Barn Farm. And Small Haul Movers (in Colorado), Stalk Market Distributions, and Picky Pig Compost. Yes, that’s a lot of separate businesses, but funny enough, they all actually work together.
Yellow Barn is a regenerative demonstration hub for land, social, and economic design. We’re really a petri dish for testing all kinds of methods for regenerating community in harmony with nature.
I cannot take the honorable title of Farmer though. I am a systems and business lady. My Sparketype is an Advisor/Essentialist – meaning what lights me up is to deeply understand one individual at a time, and my intrinsic skill is organization, systems, and process – particularly when paired up with helping to give someone clarity on who they are by distilling who they believe themselves to be.
I love my work. And the greatest gift is getting to share its evolving nature with the world
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
That I am lazy and unintelligent.
That was a deeply rooted belief that stuck with me for a very long time. It wasn’t until I really got my a** kicked building up Small Haul with my partner, Charles, that I finally felt my brain really click on. And that was a wild and eye-opening realization – I could THINK! My attention felt like a laser, and my ability to accomplish things made me realize I wasn’t ever really lazy – I just hadn’t been motivated by the grades in school, or the monotony of working for someone else.
I thrived on being my own boss. Of figuring out how to do something on my own. Of not following the cookie-cutter rules, but asking “why was this done this way and not some other way?”
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Nearly every year for the last 8 years. There is always a point in the year that everything just weighs too much and the big question becomes “Am I really up for this….?” And it has gotten dark before. Just six months ago I was in the deepest part of despair that I have been in in many many years. Health was completely run down. Fractures in the community I’d worked so hard to build. Completely sure we were going under financially. I hit a wall, and just wanted to give it all up.
And yet there was always someone around me that just kept nudging me to the next day. Kept reminding me that “if it were easy, everyone would do it”. So you just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And here we are, around that corner. It’s just the continuous remembrance that the only constant in life is change.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
Definitely. And it took a while to get my inner and outer persona to match up.
Exterior was very masculine, very serious, very black/grey colors.
Interior was intergalactic dragon-warrior space princess.
Those two did not match up for a very long time, until just about this year, when it finally felt safe enough for the inner version to emerge. And now, it’s all I really can be: colorful, bright, ridiculous, and a little ferocious.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What are you doing today that won’t pay off for 7–10 years?
Pretty much everything.
From planting the trees in 2021, to building a full-fledge distribution & compost business having just started with 50 donated buckets, to laying the groundwork for a stable circular economy and legal structure.
Everything we have done here is slow and intentional. Organic growth. It has not been easy, but it seems to have been what was required. We weren’t able to scale quickly. We couldn’t take donations or grants. We had to boot-strap everything, which meant that most of the vision I was holding in my head wasn’t going to be visible to most people until 7-10 years from start.
It takes a lot of grit to hold on to a vision for that long while everyone around you thinks you’re crazy or just full of hot air.
But I knew that 7 years would be the minimum requirement to see this vision come to fruition. Regeneration is one of slow, organic progress. Nature does not like to be rushed, and all good things take time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yellowbarn.farm
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yellowbarn.farm/#
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azuraye-wycoff/
Image Credits
Devon Wycoff
Rhianna Truex
