Early August, our team of students and researchers spent a morning at Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, on a guided tour with the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center (CALC). Agrivoltaics is the practice of growing crops or grazing animals underneath and around solar panels, and this visit helped shape how our team thinks about land use, energy and what “sustainability” actually looks like in practice.

Jack’s Solar Garden sits on 24 acres that had been a hay farm for decades before it became one of the largest agrivoltaics research site in the country, home to 1.2 MW solar array alongside active crop production. The CALC, the nonprofit that runs the educational side of things, now leads regular tours for students, researchers, policymakers, and curious members of the public.

On our tour, standing underneath the solar panels – which tilt to follow the sun through the day – it was immediately apparent the microclimate they create. The moving panels help to reduce evaporation and heat stress on the plants below, which impacts how much water the site needs. What’s equally striking is how much engineering judgement goes into things like panel height, spacing and connecting back to the grid.

A large part of the tour was spent on what’s happening just below the panels: how the site is used for soil health research, tracking crop yields and water use efficiency, and how different plantings respond to the shifting light and shade patterns the panels create throughout the day.

The property also played a role in updating Boulder County’s land use code to actually permit agrivoltaic development, which means this is also shaping policy that other communities can build on. The visit showed a living system where mechanics, soil science, water conservation, and animals all work together. It’s the kind of place where genuinely interdisciplinary work is happening.

A huge thanks to Jack’s Solar Garden and the CALC for a tour our team won’t forget.