High Country Farming
by Jonathan Staufer
It is not an easy task to produce crops in Colorado.
Winters are long and growing seasons short. The arid climate,
which accounts for Colorado’s “Champagne Powder,”
is also responsible for the fact that ours is a dry country.
Still, hearty souls have been farming in Colorado almost as
long as there have been people here.
The Anasazi, or “Ancient Ones,” who
built the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, captured what little
rain fell on the high mesas and watered their crops with an
ingenious irrigation system.
The first European settlement in Colorado occurred
in the verdant San Luis Valley, under the protection of the
Spanish Crown. There, the farmers’ relied upon the slow
release of snow pack captured in the forests of “La Sierra”
to ensure proper irrigation throughout the hot, dry summers.
The delicate balance continues to this day. Water
remains Colorado’s most precious resource and, as locals
in San Luis say “Sin agua, no hay vida,” without
water, there is no life.
Though it may be surprising to some, Vail and
Eagle County also have a generous agricultural heritage. Like
most of the West, much of western Eagle County was “cattle
country,” with large ranches producing world-famous Colorado
beef. Vail’s Potato Patch neighborhood was named for the
potato farms that used its dark soil and well-watered slopes.
At the Vail Nature Center in Ford Park, one can visit an old
root cellar that was used to store some of the crop harvested
here. Nearby Minturn was at one time known as “The Lettuce
Capital of the World” due to the fact that Minturn’s
lettuce farms supplied the markets of Chicago before the advent
of refrigerated box cars made shipping produce from the West
Coast by rail viable. Throughout the surrounding White River
National Forest, Greek and Basque shepherds carved their names
into many a tree. These gents used to drive their herds up Bridge
Street in the early years! Flocks of sheep can still be found
throughout much of the surrounding countryside during the summer
months.
Colorado’s short growing season has been
extended by the most acreage under greenhouse anywhere in the
world, and drawing both on new techniques and technology and
ancient ingenuity, Colorado farmers have overcome some of the
challenges of our drought-prone region. Many of these techniques
are studied at the world-famous agricultural school at Colorado
State University.
A fitting tribute both to their ingenuity and
to their sheer determination, Colorado farmers have developed
an international reputation as producing some of the best crops
anywhere in the world: Former Governor Roy Romer handed out
peaches at Harrod’s in London, much to the delight of
Londoners who thought American peaches came from Georgia!
The sheer variety of crops grown in Colorado is
remarkable - a glance at the Colorado crop calendar will attest
to this, and the Vail Farmers’ Market is delighted this
summer to showcase some of the delightful wines being produced in Colorado.
We hope you’ll visit the Vail Farmers’
Market weekly and watch as the earth’s abundance comes
into season!
