Posted inNews

A Colorado family tried to save their cattle ranch by betting big on rare birds. It’s paying off.

LAMAR — The day that Dallas May started to feel his family ranch’s fortunes solidify, after more than 40 years of raising cattle, was the day he got in his pickup to chase what appeared to be two poachers carrying weapons the size of rocket launchers.  It turned out they were international bird experts from […]

Posted inColoradans, Economy, Education, Health, News

A Colorado school district wants its students to know where their food comes from — and how to scramble an egg

HAYDEN — In an eighth-grade health class, in a community surrounded by grazing cattle, chicken farms and fields of spinach, some students had no clue how to make a scrambled egg. A few had never even cracked one into a bowl.  There was a clear division in the class of 13- and 14-year-olds. Some milked […]

Posted inBusiness, Climate, Coloradans, Economy, Environment, News, Water

As drought in the West worsens, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Colorado faces a dwindling water supply

TOWAOC — In late June, Simon Martinez drove along one of the dirt roads crisscrossing the parched rocky shrubland on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Farm & Ranch Enterprise, a 7,700-acre agricultural operation owned by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in the far southwestern corner of Colorado. In normal times, he would be driving past […]

Posted inNews

Colorado ranchers are selling off cattle to survive another year of dried-up grass and parched soil

Janie VanWinkle can hear it in the discontented way her cows call to their calves, the way the dried grass crunches into powder under her boots. It’s the sound of drought. The landscape where her cows graze in Grand Junction doesn’t have a green tint this spring. It’s gray and brown, ugly and parched. “And […]