Four Front Range millennials are tasting wines at Sauvage Spectrum winery in Palisade following a morning of river rafting and hiking. As they work their way through plastic cups of unfiltered and sparkling wines nestled in muffin tins, the conversation around their outdoor table goes like this: “This reminds me of kombucha, which I love.” […]
Nancy Lofholm
Special to The Colorado Sun
Email: nlofholm35@gmail.com Twitter: @nlofholm
Posted inNews
How is Colorado’s new farmworkers’ rights bill being received by migrant farmworkers? With a shrug.
OLATHE — Erasmo Cano downs a bottled drink and dumps the dregs of packaged cookies into his mouth before he climbs out of the van where he and his coworkers have been taking a 15-minute shade break. It was a brief escape from pulling weeds in a 14-acre field where his crew has been toiling […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Economy, Environment, Growth, News, Outdoors
Off-highway vehicles are revving up locals (in a bad way) in Colorado’s remote mountain towns
When Teri Havens bought two acres tucked in a thick stand of aspen on a hill south of Marble in 1995, it was her bit of backcountry nirvana. Yes, it sat along a popular jeeping trail ̶ a county road leading to the historic Lead King Loop. But she could live with four-wheel-drive vehicles jouncing […]
Posted inEducation, Health, News, Politics and Government
“Everyone is being crazy”: Conservative Delta County erupts over an effort to teach sexual education
DELTA — Sex. Couple that with education. Link it to anything other than heterosexual unions. Bring the Bible into it. And, in Delta County, expect a volatile civic tempest. The latest controversy over sex in this conservative Western Slope county has been sparked by a progressive push to add state-recommended comprehensive sex education in the […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
A solid No. 2 surveillance tool: How a year of testing Colorado’s coronavirus poop has gone
A year ago, testing sewage for COVID-19 was a new fringe science with an attention-grabbing gross-out factor. The words “poop” and “coronavirus” were making headlines across the country. So, what has happened in the interim to all that human-waste sampling and its potential to predict where COVID-19 is spreading? The short answer is that it […]
Posted inColoradans, Crime and Courts, News
“The reading man” of Grand Junction was killed by a stranger. His friends in downtown aren’t done telling his story.
GRAND JUNCTION — To those who never knew his name, Warren Barnes was simply “the reading man.” He was as much a fixture in downtown Grand Junction as the sculptures that line Main Street. For years, the grizzled old man could be found most days hunched over a book on a bench in a breezeway […]
Posted inClimate, Coloradans, Economy, Environment, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government
Hard-right rooted group has made inroads in Colorado opposing Biden’s vision for public lands
Land grab or precious-resource preservation? The battle over where the truth ̶ and where Westerners’ hearts ̶ lie on that matter is rumbling through Colorado counties as a federal government initiative nicknamed 30×30 gains momentum, and opposition. Colorado has become the beachhead in a Texas-based group’s efforts to use local governments to thwart the Biden […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Environment, News
Mother Nature sucker punched a Western Slope peach orchard. Now the farm is putting trees up for adoption.
When Steve Ela walks through orchards that are usually blossoming with promise this time of year, he comes up with one word to describe his feelings: Sad. This week, he is also beginning to feel a tinge of hope as he starts to rebuild a 114-year-old weather-devastated fruit operation on Rogers Mesa near Hotchkiss with […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Environment, News
Harry Talbott, who gave his life to Palisade’s prized peaches, has died at age 86
Blossoms are popping out on the peach trees at Talbott Farms. Crews of workers are out thinning those buds. Preparations are underway to start up irrigation water. It is the same work that has been going on for more than a century on a fertile mesa above Palisade. But this season, there is a giant […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Economy, Growth, News, Politics and Government
How divided is Silverton? Just ask one of the town’s six administrators who came and went in the past seven years.
The town of Silverton has a marketing slogan; “Real Town. Real People. Real Fun.” Add to that: Real Turmoil. One of the highest-altitude municipalities in the country and most remote communities in Colorado is in the midst of its latest spasm of small-town tumult. The sixth town administrator in seven years is stepping down this […]