So in 2016, we essentially got a letter from the Air Force and the CDPHE saying that there was a major contamination that that's where we draw all of the water for this property.

And we have been watering this, farm with that water for decades with this PFAS contamination.

And so it means that our water has PFAS our plants have PFAS, our soils have PSAS, and PFAS is what they call a forever chemical.

It's really hard to eradicate.

When we watered plants with that water that PFAS stayed in those plants.

And so it concentrated and things like poultry and eggs and spinach and all the things that you would eat.

it meant that this community had a lot of fear.

I mean, not only was this affecting the farm, it was affecting the entire Foun Valley.

People found out their drinking water was contaminated.

That's a really bad day.

But it also meant that people had a hard time understanding exactly what the impacts on the farm would be in it.

It felt like tha this thing that people cherish, that really told the stor of who we are, was under threat.

and meant that we couldn't sell organic vegetables because the PFAS woul concentrate in those vegetables as we watered, those plants with that water.

It was kind of a total faucet turn off in every sense of the word, from finances to the use of the water.

We are at Gather Mountain Bloom and we are on the Venetucci Farm My origin with Venetucci Farms is that six years ago we started leasing the property.

It had just gon through the water contamination, and they were looking for new life on the farm.

So knowing that food could no longer be grown on a Venetucci farm, we were a flower farm.

So all of the things that we were going to be growing would not be edible.

We reached out to Pikes Peak Real Estate Foundation and just aske if there is a possibility for us partnering up and bringin a vision of flowers to the farm.

A big part of our vision for Gather Mountain Blooms was growing community and inviting people back to the farm, than it had been closed for a number of years.

And it has such a legacy of people and families coming to visit.

And that was wha we really wanted to see as well.

We wanted people to come and experience the farm through a different light, through flowers, but we wanted them to have memories and make new experiences.

And I think that that really gave Pikes Peak Real Estate Foundatio the confidence to say, yeah I think this is a really great future for what the farm can become.

it too a lot of community engagement, learning, understanding the science, understand the community impact, understand the history to reimagine how do we make good on the magnitude of legacy in a way that speaks to who we are as a community.

we sort of rejuvenated this place with flowers.

It shows that people really want and treasure community assets and they'll keep coming back.

If you have something that's really attractive and feels like it's for bringing people together and we've been lucky to just have a place that's thrived since then.

It's been really hard But we've had a lot of support.

We continue to make it a plac where kids get to come and learn and where people get to come and celebrate each other.

And, the natural environment that we get to steward