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 […]
peaches
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 inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, Health, News
Devastated by weather and the coronavirus pandemic, Western Slope farm workers try to hold on
Guadalupe’s job as an agricultural worker at a Palisade greenhouse is considered essential, which has allowed her to continue working during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the market for the greenhouse produce she harvests in the spring has dropped significantly. Typically, 75% of the lettuce, kale, spinach, arugula and basil are sold to restaurants in the […]
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Palisade peach freeze prompts Colorado governor to declare emergency
GRAND JUNCTION — Colorado’s governor announced he is seeking federal aid for farmers impacted by a freeze that wiped out significant portions of the state’s peach crop. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said he sought the aid as a result of an April 14 freeze in Colorado’s Western Slope region, The Daily Sentinel reported Saturday. Polis and state […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health, News
Colorado COVID diaries: A day in the life of people across the state as they navigate coronavirus
A teacher greets her students. An imam counsels his congregants. A firefighter reports for duty. New parents take their baby home from the hospital. These are routine moments in the lives of Coloradans. But the coronavirus has transformed the routine into the remarkable, upending how we live and interact with each other. As a heavy […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, Environment, News
A bitter freeze and coronavirus have sprouted big problems for Palisade’s peach season
Palisade-area fruit growers were out in their orchards the frigid night of April 13 and into the next morning, frantically cranking up wind machines, turning on irrigation water, and lighting burn barrels in last-ditch efforts to save crops from a bud-killing Canadian cold front that crept across Colorado’s premier peach country. But none of those […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, Health, News, Politics and Government
Colorado growers face “risk like we have never faced before” as coronavirus puts up labor walls
Like nearly all farmers, David Harold is well used to uncertainty. He grew up in his family’s Olathe-based business, Tuxedo Corn, steeped in the inevitable risks tied to weather, shifting markets and labor problems. But he is rattled to his roots by the risk posed by the novel coronavirus pandemic. “The amount of risk we […]
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In the age of “go back where you came from,” Palisade carries on tradition of thanking orchard workers before they leave
Francisco Pacheco is in his 39th year working the peach orchards around Palisade. He was 17 when he first took a bus from his home in Sonora, Mexico, to join a seasonal crew pruning, thinning and picking peaches. He is about to wrap up a year that has been particularly tough because of sweltering heat […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Environment, News, Outdoors
How a small Colorado town fought the Japanese beetle and won
PALISADE — In 2003, Brant Harrison needed a project. The Palisade peach grower was part of an agricultural leadership program and needed something good. Around the same time, he attended a meeting hosted by Colorado State University about a new insect found in the area: Japanese beetles. They’d found a few in 2002. “The next […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Culture, Environment, News
Peach growers are expecting an all-time bumper crop on the Western Slope, but there’s one problem
The plink and plop of tiny green peaches hitting the ground at a Talbott Farms orchard is the sound of exceptionally good news for Colorado fruit lovers. This season there have been no damaging freezes, no punishing winds and no bruising hail on the more than 500 acres of fruit trees at the Talbotts’ orchards […]