How whiskey saved this Colorado family’s 118-year-old farm

Despite growing up on a multigenerational farm in eastern Colorado, Stephanie and Felicia Ohnmacht never planned to go into the family business. From a young age, their parents insisted they enroll in college and pursue careers outside of agriculture, in fields that weren’t subject to the whims of Mother Nature.

They both did for a while. After attending the University of Colorado in Boulder, Stephanie, the middle of three children, went into the telecommunications industry and Felicia, the youngest, worked in project management for a semiconductor company. For a time, the family estate in Burlington, called Gergen Farms, felt like a relic from their past that they’d have to handle once their parents passed.

“We were pretty disconnected from it,” Felicia said. “We toss ourselves under the bus because we don’t know how to drive a tractor.”

But in 2015, the two sisters returned to the family farm with a bottle of whiskey and – Felicia’s words – a “hairbrained idea” to sell local grains to the increasing number of craft distilleries popping up in Colorado. The two founded Whiskey Sisters Supply to help turn local corn, wheat, and rye into locally made spirits.

They had no idea that they would save their family’s heritage in the process.

The Ohnmachts’ ancestors first laid roots on the Eastern Plains around 1907, when their great-grandfather’s wagon broke down near the border of Colorado and Kansas. As legend has it, he threw down his hat, stomped around and decided this spot was the perfect place to end his journey west. The original homestead still resides there, though it’s undergone many additions and renovations over the years, Felicia said. Some of the original wagon wheels have been repurposed as light fixtures inside.

Stephanie, Felicia and their eldest sister Renee grew up in a separate house built next door to the original homestead, at the edge of the 2,200-acre plot. The two youngest girls, who are three years apart, were known to fight often in their youth, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by the jesting rapport they have now.

For more than 100 years, Gergen Farms’ main crops were wheat and corn, the latter of which is what landed the Whiskey Sisters Supply their first client, Al Laws of Laws Whiskey House in Denver. Truthfully, Stephanie said it was a conversation with Laws, who was looking for locally-grown grains, that inspired the entire concept for her company.

“We had locked down all of our small grains for flavor, but we couldn’t find corn. No one would sell us local corn,” said Laws. After meeting Stephanie and distilling a few test batches, Laws Whiskey House became the Whiskey Sisters’ first client, even before they inked their brand name.

Ten years and innumerable pounds of corn later, Laws Whiskey House still uses the plump and sweet grain from Burlington. “We like to do business with people that we like and have great, ethical backgrounds,” Laws said. “We consider them like family.”

Once Whiskey Sisters Supply was up and running, its owners let local distillers dictate what to plant. That’s how they ended up with robust rye fields, much to the surprise of their neighbors.

“People were very skeptical of us growing rye,” Felicia said. “Rye, in our area, is considered a weed. It’s hard to control. If you get too much of it in your wheat, the co-op will dock you and you will get less money for your product.”

Today, the company sells a variety of grains – including blue corn, red winter wheat, oats, and gluten-free options like millet and sorghum – to more than two dozen Colorado spirits makers from the Front Range to the Western Slope. The farm also grows some edibles, such as kidney beans and popcorn.

Felicia, who oversees the farm’s day-to-day operations, said that Whiskey Sisters Supply accounts for about a third of the grain allocation. Most of the roughly 16 million pounds it harvests each year is sold to the local co-op, ranchers and feed lots.

Still, Whiskey Sisters Supply helped bring Gergen Farms back from the brink of bankruptcy – unbeknownst to Stephanie and Felicia at the time they got started.

Thinking back to childhood, the sisters could sometimes tell things were tenuous, especially when storms were in the forecast. They recall joining their grandmother in a ritual of praying around burning palms, clutching rosaries in hopes the hail would circumvent their fields. But it wasn’t until 2020, when Felicia started managing the farm, that she realized the finances were in dire straits.

“We did not sit around the table drinking whiskey figuring out how we can make more money for the farm,” said Stephanie, who also still works in telecommuncations. “We joke that grandma had been dead for almost exactly five years at this point, so we needed some divine intervention on that one.”

The fact that whiskey saved the farm is ironic, to say the least. Alcohol was forbidden in the Ohnmacht household, a standard set by their grandfather, a churchly man, and carried on by their mother. Plus, their father was the deacon of the local Catholic congregation – all the more reason to maintain a saintly lifestyle.

When Stephanie and Felicia first pitched their mom on the idea of selling grain to distilleries, she explicitly rejected the proposition. “Having grandpa’s grain in booze … seemed against how she was raised,” Stephanie said.

The ever-tenacious sisters, however, continued with their plan anyway. It wasn’t until they presented the matriarch with a plan to sell grain for a test run with Laws Whiskey House – and the corresponding check – that she came onboard.