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Overview of High Altitude Rhubarb - Organic Nursery and Farm
 Welcome to our website. The 2008 harvest has ended. We'll be back in spring 2009 with more rhubarb, roots and plants. Please contact us if you'd like to receive notification of future pick-your-own days, farmer's markets and similar farm events.High Altitude Rhubarb is a small-scale, family-owned organic farm and nursery in Black Forest, Colorado, about an hour south of Denver and 20 minutes northeast of Colorado Springs. Production for 2007 was 1000 pounds of high quality, victoria rhubarb. Our product and farm is 100% organic in full compliance with USDA guidelines for organic farm products. Our current products are rhubarb stalks, roots and seeds with plans to expand to include mature rhubarb plants by 2010. Also, our fields were expanded in 2007 to double the quantity and add variety to our rhubarb products beginning in 2010. New varieties will include several pure red varieties of rhubarb. We offer our products both wholesale and retail. The remainder of this page outlines our operation and the information to be found at the other links to left.
Our Products We grow and sell organic rhubarb stalks, roots and seeds. Currently, all products are from a victoria-like variety of rhubarb. It is an extremely hardy, large plant well suited to our Colorado mountain climate. Mature stalks are green on the inside and transition from red at the base to green at the leaf on the outside. This is the most common variety of rhubarb in the United States. We have recently expanded to include several other varieties, including pure red. They will be in production by 2010. The stalks of the pure red plants are dark red inside and out. Nutritionally they are the same. The red plants, however, are much smaller than the victoria. Our nursery is just beginning. Our plans are to eventually offer mature rhubarb plants in addition to the roots and seeds already available.
Overview of the Website This page describes our products and business. The content of the other pages are outlined as follows: Recipes defines some unique and tasty uses of rhubarb that we're confident you'll enjoy. It also provides important information about cooking rhubarb. Rhubarb's main contributions to your nutrition (vitamin C, calcium, dietary  fiber) are detailed in Nutrition. If you're in the Denver/Colorado Springs area and would like to stock up on fresh, organic rhubarb then check out our Pick-Your-Own program and come visit food in the making! You may be surprized to learn that rhubarb was primarily a medicine throughout virtually all of the 5000 years of documented use. Prepare for your next rhubarb debate and impress your friends with the information to be found at the History of Rhubarb. Details and photos of our unique approach to organic growing are to be found at Organic Technology. You'll also find details and photos for planting, growing and harvesting your own rhubarb at Growing Rhubarb. Freezing & Storage explains various ways of preserving rhubarb beyond its normal shelf life, including drying and freezing. Lastly, you'll find information about participation in our seed experiments and how to contact us at Seeds and Contact Us, respectively. We'd love to hear from you! Official certification as a 100% organic producer is not required for operations our size. Nevertheless, such certification is an important way of protecting the consumer from fraud and mistakes. We fully support the goals of the certification process and are therefore applying for official USDA certification. As mentioned, we have worked to fully comply with all certification requirements and therefore are entitled to sell our product as 100% organic even without official certification. Therefore we anticipate no problems. As soon as the process is complete we will indicate so at this website.
What is Rhubarb? Only the stalks are consumed for food. Rhubarb is classified horticulturally as a vegetable and culinarily as a fruit. It is very high in nutritional value and played an important role in the development of our country. It is one of the first vegetables to ripen in the spring. Even more important today is its unusually high concentrations of calcium, vitamin C and dietary fiber. Its appearance was anxiously awaited in days of old and today it is an ingredient in many delicious recipes. It can be frozen and kept for years without lengthy preparation and thereby provides healthy eating throughout the year.
 The Quest For SeedsWe experiment with propagation through seeds. Seed propagation is generally unsuccessful due to the unpredictability of the new plants...they do not tend to grow true to form with the parents. (true of many plants) We hope to develop a more reliable seed. Seeds are available free to anyone interested in participating in the experiments. Contact us. |
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