Posted inColoradans, Crime and Courts, News, Outdoors

It took volunteers 8 days to wrangle 6 abandoned horses from Colorado’s rugged backcountry near Dolores

DOLORES – While many were ringing in the New Year, a team of volunteers in Dolores and Montezuma counties were engaged in an eight-day effort to save horses abandoned in the backcountry of southwest Colorado. The Dolores County Sheriff’s office received a call Jan. 1 from a remote subdivision near Groundhog Reservoir reporting that six […]

Posted inEnvironment, News

As Western drought leads to grasshopper outbreak, officials launch what could be the largest killing campaign since the ’80s

By Matthew Brown, The Associated Press BILLINGS, Mont. — A punishing drought in the U.S. West is drying up waterways, sparking wildfires and leaving farmers scrambling for water. Next up: a plague of voracious grasshoppers. Federal agriculture officials are launching what could become their largest grasshopper-killing campaign since the 1980s amid an outbreak of the […]

Posted inClimate, Culture, Food and Restaurants, News

Colorado restaurants are funding farming and ranching projects that suck carbon from the atmosphere

By Michael Elizabeth Sakas, Colorado Public Radio On an early weekday morning in Longmont, the co-owners of the boutique catering company Whistling Boar are busy in the kitchen getting their weekly meal boxes ready for delivery. David Pitula and Debbie Seaford-Pitula moved to Colorado from Brooklyn five years ago with dreams of living closer to […]

Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Culture, News

Colorado ranchers already had beef with Jared Polis. Then came “MeatOut Day.”

LIMON — When Kelsey Pope watches her kids doing after-school chores, scattering hay for some of the 1,200 head of Red Angus cattle on their high plains farm, a beef-bashing proclamation from a governor 70 miles away doesn’t feel like a distant nuisance.  Colorado’s official embrace of “MeatOut Day” on March 20 feels like a […]

Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit

Beautiful, self-confident and hot tempered, “Queen” Ann Bassett stood up to Colorado’s powerful ranchers

Award-winning author and historian Diana Allen Kouris grew up a cowgirl along the famed Outlaw Trail in the region where Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah converge.  Decades of research and writing have rendered Kouris an authority on the spellbinding history of the area.  She’s authored three nonfiction books including “The Romantic and Notorious History of Brown’s […]

Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, News

Coronavirus collapsed America’s food system, but created “a pivotal and magical moment” for locavores

MOSCA — Sheldon Rockey weaves through pallets of potatoes in a long-retired high school gym as a small team of workers wash and package his trademarked fingerlings.  “We just weren’t prepared for this, so there will be some livestock that will eat some gourmet potatoes this year,” says Rockey, who saw his innovative and competitive […]