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 […]
Talbott Farms
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, Economy, News, Wildfire
Grape disappointment: Colorado vineyards say an October freeze will chill their 2021 vintage
The grape vines lined up in rows throughout the Grand and North Fork valleys look promising for a 2021 vintage with their usual winter-brown foliage bunched neatly on trellises. But cut into a bud, or scrape a stalk, and there are hints of the underlying damage done by a severe late-October freeze. An estimated 70% […]
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 […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Culture, Environment, News
An early freeze loomed for Colorado’s grapes, but wine drinkers’ evolving taste is the real threat
It’s grape harvest season in the Grand Valley, and that means it’s time to ponder an emerging wine-country dichotomy. Vintners were recently scrambling to save their grapes as an early freeze settled in and temperatures plunged into the low 20s. But, in the next few months, some of these same growers will be struggling to […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, News
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, 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 […]