Minoru Farm and the Persistence of Jade Sato
Minoru Farm in Adams, Colorado, was recently awarded a Zero Foodprint Restore Grant for compost application, windbreak establishment, mulching, and cover cropping.
Jade Sato loves a Challenge
In January 2020, Jade Sato set out to start her first farm. She had spent the previous six years working for multiple growers simultaneously, preparing physically and mentally for the long hours and demanding work of this moment. She had launched a Kickstarter, secured land, and planned her crops. But by March, the world had halted to the COVID-19 pandemic, and her vision felt nearly impossible. “Should I give everybody’s money back? What are we doing? Is everyone okay?”
To quote Jade, “it was weird.”
Despite the lockdown, isolation, and uncertainty, she launched Minoru Farm with just 5 CSA members that season, and secured additional acres and support in 2021. A self-described workaholic, Jade loves a challenge and has worked to scale the farm’s community impact for the past four years. Today, Minoru covers 9 acres in Adams, Colorado, and supplies fresh ingredients to Sato’s culturally diverse local community. She focuses on growing a wide diversity of vegetables common throughout Eastern and Southern Asia, and delights in experimenting with new varieties each season. In her words, she “grows food with flavor.”
”My farm is pretty intensely focused on growing Asian varieties of things. Of course, you have people out there growing Hakurei turnips and red curry squash. I have experience with those on other farms, but there are a lot of other kinds of greens … there are thousands of varieties of all these things. I like to really nerd out and see what parallels on the planet line up [with] the latitude of Colorado. So that's been really fun to see what greens in China would do really well here, or greens in Korea, or greens in Japan. And then I'm slowly branching out to the rest of Asia, like India and Iran and really looking at the whole of Asia as my inspiration. “
JADE SATO
Four years after the farm’s launch, Minoru supplies vegetables to both farmers markets and restaurants around Colorado, including participants from Mile High Asian Food Week which she cites as a rewarding experience.
“It's just fun to encourage people to try new things or locally grown things that they already know. And especially when they're, like, an Asian elder who only goes to H Mart or Pacific Ocean or Great Wall, they are getting varieties of things that aren't as fresh. Not to say that the grocery stores aren't fresh. The’yre doing a good job, but it's just not locally fresh. And so when they get our vegetables and they go home and eat it and cook it and they come back and they're like ‘that was the most amazing flavorful version of that I got that's like feeding the reason why we do this… It’s like a nice cultural hug”
JADE SATO
The farm is named after Jade’s grandfather, whose Japanese and Buddhist name is “Minoru.” He settled in Colorado after the war and ran a flower shop and nursery, where Jade grew up watering huge greenhouses full of plants. They’d open up shops in empty lots around Littleton, “pop-up style” (long before that term became popularized from Mission Street Food). Now, Minoru Farm continues her family’s intergenerational passion for agriculture and provides ways for Jade to reconnect with her ancestry and culture.
Finding new opportunities
Minoru Farm was recently awarded a Zero Foodprint Restore Grant for compost application, windbreak establishment, mulching, and cover cropping - practices that will grow better food and help restore the climate through carbon sequestration. Although these practices are understood to support a wide range of environmental and nutritional benefits, many growers struggle to access the funding, resources, and labor to implement them sustainably. For Jade, ZFP’s grant application process was a breath of fresh air:
“Grant writing is not my forte. I'm really bad at it. But then when I looked at this grant, it seemed more like practical questions … It seemed a lot more supportive. I wish there were more grants [like this] out there that were super accessible for other farms. And more grants that also continue over time. That would be cool to see.”
Implementing these practices has helped Jade continue deepening her relationship with the earth. Rather than growing food through extractive processes, Minoru Farm Farm is cultivating a community with both people and the planet.
”I want to have a relationship with the earth. If I didn't have the farm, I'd still be gardening, and it would probably still get a little bigger every year, and then it would probably just turn into another farm.”
JADE SATO
Find Minoru Farm Vegetables
Denver area residents can find Minoru at City Park Farmers Market every Saturday from 8am-1pm at the City Park Esplanade.
You can also taste some of their veggies at Denver restaurant Yuan Wonton.
What are Restore Grants?
Zero Foodprint awards grants for projects that take carbon out of the atmosphere and put it back where it belongs: in the earth, creating healthy soil and better food. To do this, we focus on regenerative farming practices like composting, cover cropping, and managed grazing that can restore life to our soil while removing carbon from the atmosphere. Together, we have the power to grow more nutritious food, heal natural water cycles, and create habitat for biodiversity to thrive. Explore previously funded projects to see what this might look like on your farm.
For more information, read through other Restore Grant FAQs.
About Zero Foodprint
Zero Foodprint (ZFP) is a nonprofit organization restoring the climate, one acre at a time. We believe that by regenerating soil, local food economies can play a critical role in reversing the global climate crisis. We work with food and beverage businesses, philanthropy and government to bring the next dollar to implement the next regenerative practice on the next acre. This regenerative economy benefits every person who grows food, every person who sells food, and every person on this planet who eats food.
