DiSanti Farms keeps family tradition strong through generations
With an agricultural presence on the St. Charles Mesa spanning five generations, DiSanti Farms at 29114 South Rd., has gained a reputation for attention to detail.
“We get more and more positive feedback on the girls that are roasting chile,” said Dominic DiSanti of DiSanti Farms. “They take it so seriously. They’re perfectionists and the chile is 90 percent peeled when they’re done.”
From May until November, DiSanti Farms is home to over 24 different crops including Pueblo Chile, watermelon, tomatoes, pickles, and pumpkins. What started as one of many small turn-of-the-century farms in the area has grown into a 70-employee operation as DiSanti chiles find their way to King Soopers, Wal-Mart, and Safeway store shelves statewide.
“Each family member within the DiSanti family has a main part,” Dominic’s sister Sara said. “Everyone works together and not one person is carrying on everything… We each have our own thing that makes it run smoothly.”
Sara is in charge of sales while her brother Justin oversees the spraying and planting of crops. Dominic leads harvest crews and his wife Jayme handles food safety. The three siblings’ mother RoseAnn manages the farm stand.
The DiSanti Family can trace their tradition of farming in Pueblo County to 1890, when Dominic, Sara, and Justin’s great-great grandfather immigrated to the area from Southern Italy.
“When our ancestors came from the old country, they started farming when they got here,” Dominic said. “Mainly it was just garden stuff and then it turned into sugar beets. When the sugar factory went down, we had to do more truck farming with our vegetables.”
Dominic’s grandfather John bought the current location near the corner of 29th Lane and South Road in the mid-1940s. DiSanti farms broke into the wholesale market in the 1970s, which has been a key source of income for the family farm ever since, Dominic said.
“Sometimes we don’t have the scale and capabilities as national shippers,” Dominic said. “It is important that the produce stores recognize local produce and want to transition their supply chain to us for a few months out of the year and that is all consumer driven. We’re lucky that Colorado consumers buy local.”
Dominic and Sara said they were not only grateful for Colorado grocery stores’ willingness to stock the shelves with local produce, but also for the staunch supporters of Pueblo produce they see every week at their farm stand.
“We get customers every Sunday that are like ‘We are going to DiSanti’s now, but then we are going to Musso’s next Friday,” Sara said. “That’s what I love. They are not all about just supporting one farm. We’ll get some people that are like, ‘Oh, we’re going to make our rounds’ and just really love local farms.”
The month of October will put a special emphasis on pumpkins at DiSanti Farms with upcoming specials on various sizes of pumpkins. DiSanti Farms is also planning to install a 32-kilowatt solar generation system by the end of the year. Justin DiSanti said the system will be a clean way to cut energy costs.
“The estimated energy costs were just getting out of hand so if we can do something like this, it will pay us back in three years,” Justin said. “The lifespan of those panels is roughly 20 years so that will be 17 years of just saving. We will save about $6,000 a year based on the rates of today.”