Life & Work with Christina Giordano of Sterling

Today we’d like to introduce you to Christina Giordano

Hi Christina, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m a Colorado native that grew up in Colorado Springs. My favorite show growing up was Little House on the Prairie and all I dreamed of doing was having a little farm some day. As life takes us on its many winding roads and we discover ourselves and our passions, that dream seemed further and further away. Life was just expensive! A few years into getting married and raising my own family, I and my kids began to get sick. After many doctor visits and being told it was in my head, I began the journey to growing my own food and trying to get off highly processed foods in the hopes of getting better. I spent most of my kids’ childhood hunting for foods that had just the fewest ingredients or trying to hone my skills of growing my own food and preserving it. While utilizing some of the assistance programs for lower income families, I noticed fairly quickly that there was a huge discrepancy in the healthy food I wanted and needed verses what i could get. These foods were often not covered by the assistance programs, or they were always more expensive so our checks wouldn’t stretch nearly far enough. I craved good food but at affordable prices, so my journey took me to learning so I could do it for myself. I grew and grew, studied and failed, cursed Colorado hail, drought, and short growing seasons, and I got pretty good at growing stuff in spite of setbacks. I then upped my learning to embrace flowers so I could draw pollinators to my yard so that my food production could be even higher. The next evolution to my learning was soil, learning how to make it healthier by raising backyard chickens and rabbits. I jumped into the understanding of the interconnectedness of life and really embraced permaculture and sustainability by mimicking natural processes. I was in love with my urban back yard but still craved my farm…and I was still very sick. I hated watching my 3 kids following the footsteps of me and my parents with our health and I desperately needed change for all of us. We prayed for change and affordable land here in Colorado which is a rare find on a limited income. Finally,
4 years ago my husband got a new job with a significant raise that afforded us the opportunity to renovate our first home and sell so we could buy and move to a rural property with 3 greenhouses on it. It was my unicorn. The space was unimaginable!! The greenhouses though daunting were an exciting adventure. It was everything and more! That first year was selling the old house, moving, settling, navigating a new community that was 3 hours away from everything I had known my whole life, and adjusting to rural living. Tractors at traffic lights still delight me. We added a pig and 2 lambs to our farm that first year and spent the rest of the winter dreaming and playing in the greenhouses…well just 1 of them to start. We began pulling up the plastic fabric cloth inside the greenhouse because I knew the importance of soil and wanted to grow in ground. The removal of the plastic showed dirt, dirt without evidence of life. We put our years of practice to the test and got the chickens and bunnies to work after tilling the ground. I added mulch and leaves and added lamb manure as well. The winter went fast as we worked to learn about the greenhouses and acclimate to winds and temperatures we were not used to.
That first spring quickly brought people knocking at our door asking if we were selling tomatoes. I was growing tomatoes…a ton of them, as I had germination beyond what I had ever experienced but I wasn’t selling. Knock after knock and after meeting a few locals we learned our property was once a hydroponic tomato venture and then a small family nursery and spice shop. Needless to say after planting the tomatoes I wanted for our own family (which had at least 11 varieties and 40 or so plants) I reached out to our community that I had seedlings that could be adopted. People were ready to pay but I wasn’t selling so I told them to donate to new seeds if they would like but mostly to just give the plants a good life at no cost.
The season had its ups and downs, major repairs, and a learning curve that knocked us for a loop, but man did those plants produce! Of course the high was followed by a low of my husband getting laid off and all of us getting covid. It was so bad I was sick for a couple of months. I barely had the energy to water and keep things alive. Out of desperation and not wanting food to waste I again reached out to our community to come and pick tomatoes. We had so many people! That fall and winter we began discussing growing food that people could come pick when they wanted.
That was the season our business was born. We are still in the throws of figuring things out and fixing one thing after another…but the need for our services and knowledge is real. Our second year here was spent building relationships and trying to get the community to know we were up and coming! There has been so much to learn and change and to try and to fix but we are getting known. All 5 of us and my parents work to make things better while catching up at the same time. I’m the only full time person at the moment but I have lots of back up support from the family when they aren’t working their jobs outside of our business. It’s exhausting but it’s exhilarating. Rural communities are often food deserts, so being able to hope and dream for another option makes us excited for the future. We aim to provide seedlings in the spring, flowers and food grown to season, and classes in the fall and winter (art/crafts and growing classes). We are trying to make everything we sell but we will see if that’s sustainable or not 😉
This year the weather has been our nemesis as 2 of the 3 greenhouses were ripped open by 100mph winds. The damages set us back a month and a half in our hopes to open a month earlier this year for seedling sales, and the cool temps and grasshoppers made everything else feel insurmountable at times. Ironically last year we had the produce and not the people, while this year we had the people but not the produce. It’s still been a good year. We are taking the lemons the storm gave us and making lemonade! By not repairing the 3rd greenhouse, we will use it for pumpkins and squash so that local pollinators can get to the plants and reduce my hand pollinating efforts. We are still going to repair the front half of the first greenhouse this fall and then hopefully can replace the plastic on the second greenhouse next year.
In all of this I am actually feeling a little better, and am getting stronger. The kids that aren’t really kids anymore are also doing so much better. We still have chronic health issues but they aren’t nearly as debilitating as they were, so something has shifted or changed.
And after pondering my dreams from a little girl to now…I quite literally got my little house on the prairie that has all the farm I could need…and I couldn’t be happier building a business that will hopefully be a legacy to our children and a blessing to our community.
The high Plains of Sterling Colorado have my heart and the journey was worth every bit of the heartache and growth needed to get us to this place!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Health, finances and lack of infrastructure, as well as ancient greenhouses that can’t really be supported by today’s industry are the biggest obstacles. After my husband lost his remote job… finding something comparable in pay did not happen. It was almost a year before he found full time work. We are no where near being able to hire help yet either, so that slows us down. We had 3 leaks that had to be repaired and 1 that required heavy machinery. The 5 water hydrants needed repaired or replaced. Last year a pump went out in the swamp cooler and then this year the other one died as well. The cheap hoses melt and burst in the greenhouse temperatures, that even with the coolers going, reaches into triple digits. It’s hard to work in those temps, so early hours and late nights are not the fabled stories of the farmers of yore. We walked through sickness and lost a family member in all of this and have another fighting cancer. It’s been a lot… but we’ve never questioned if it was the right decision or not. We absolutely love this adventure.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have always been the perpetual student and have raised my kids to be so as well. Learning keeps us young and helps us connect with others in so many ways. I started out my life loving art and crafts and dabbled in all of it so I could learn and eventually so I could share experiences with my kids. I also loved animals so we raised many over the years. The plants came much later as I always believed myself to have a black thumb. I once again learned that just like everything in life, growing takes practice.
We use everything we learn and we love sharing with anyone that wants to learn with us. As we are still such a small business I can’t speak to what we are known for in the future I hope we are known for healthy plants grown without pesticides and flowers and produce grown in season. I am proud of our resilience in spite of all the setbacks we’ve seen these last 3 years and I’m thankful for amazing community support. We truly have a tribe that stands by us when things get tough. I hope that letting people come and pick fresh food when they want or need it sets us apart from others. It makes me feel good knowing that the food our community picks in our greenhouses is truly the freshest they can get outside their own gardens, especially in rural Colorado.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
The biggest piece of advice we have have on repeat in our minds is that it takes 5 years for a business to “make” it. There’s a reason for that and embracing the growing pains has been so important to the “why” we are doing this. There have been many days we’ve wanted to give up, but the community keeps reminding us that what we are doing is such a value. We couldn’t do this without the community buy in!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegiocache?igsh=MXBneDQ2OThmbDBldA==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086928147104&mibextid=ZbWKwL
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@thegiocachefamily4585