{"id":16241,"date":"2025-10-06T18:15:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T00:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmers-market-turtle-lake-refuge-fosters-connection-with-the-land\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:55:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:55:58","slug":"farmers-market-turtle-lake-refuge-fosters-connection-with-the-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmers-market-turtle-lake-refuge-fosters-connection-with-the-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmers Market: Turtle Lake Refuge fosters connection with the land"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Nate
Nate Reynolds represents Turtle Lake Refuge at the nonprofit\u2019s booth at the Durango Farmers Market on Sept. 20. (Nick Gonzales\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Nick Gonzales<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

While most of the agricultural vendors at the Durango Farmers Market focus predominantly on selling what they\u2019ve grown, Turtle Lake Refuge\u2019s mission is largely community outreach and recruitment.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes we really put the \u2018non\u2019 in \u2018nonprofit,\u2019\u201d said Nate Reynolds, a member of the Turtle Lake community. \u201cSo bringing in people who are interested in volunteering or donating or getting involved at some level \u2013 it\u2019s probably about 50% of what I do here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The refuge, started in 1998 by Katrina Blair on four acres northwest of Durango, grows, harvests and prepares \u201clocal, wild and living food\u201d through its Turtle Cafe and Turtle Lake Community Farm, according to its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a community that focuses on \u2013 I\u2019d call it connection with the land,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cWhat that means is raw, organic, local agriculture; regenerative agriculture. We forage as much as we can \u2013 so every one of our products has some kind of wild harvested ingredient in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the farmers market, Turtle Lake sells: microgreens, kombuchas, distillations of wild harvested ingredients, fermented products such as kimchi and kraut, dehydrated foods, granola bars and other kinds of treats, he said. They are mostly prepared at the cafe at 848 East Third Ave., a converted Victorian house that also hosts lunches on Tuesdays and Fridays from 11:11 a.m. to 2:22 p.m.<\/p>\n

Turtle Lake Refuge also teaches classes and organizes events, including the Dandelion Festival<\/a> in May. For more information, drop by the booth at the farmers market or visit turtlelakerefuge.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ngonzales@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nonprofit promotes sustainable agricultural practices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[281,1934,1587,438,439,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-farmers-market","tag-farms","tag-food","tag-food-drink","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20091,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16241\/revisions\/20091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}