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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, 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 […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, News
Even with beef plants staying open, reduced capacity means Colorado ranchers feel the coronavirus pinch
To be a cattle rancher in Colorado is to expect setbacks. There are droughts and fires and economic volatility. There are snowstorms and tornadoes and tricky equipment. There are changing consumer demands. But rarely do the stumbling blocks line up one after another and all at once the way they have now with the crisis […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, News
How the closure of two Vail restaurants shows coronavirus’ domino effect on the food-service economy
EDWARDS — The cows are calving, and of course they come during a surprise blizzard. “That one there about froze to the ground last night,” says Mike Eaton, pointing to a calf huddling in the mud beneath his mother’s hooves as the morning sun melts spring snow. Eaton is dumping fresh hay on a trailer […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Health, News, Technology
America trashes 40% of its food. A Colorado startup is connecting the discards to dinner tables.
Occasionally, at Regis University’s school cafeteria, there are dishes that sous chef Grant Ruesch calls “monotony breakers.” A recent one? New York Strip steaks. “I bought the steaks for a really awesome deal. I can’t remember, but like $3 a pound,” said Ruesch. “$3.49,” someone interjected. “We ran a steak night special at the college […]