Despite the dryness, we still must eat

Not only do we try to grow it, but historically, we have been pretty good at processing, packing and packaging our produce.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

There is an old saying, batted around in farm circles, that it is so dry in eastern Colorado that the water is wet only on one side. The rest of the state is not that much better off, though you wouldn’t know it from a few weeks’ afternoon storms. Colorado’s annual average rainfall is somewhere near 17 inches a year.
But that doesn’t stop us from trying to grow things.
Irrigated farmland in Colorado – with acreage that trails only California, accounts for wheat on the South Platte and Arkansas drainage, potatoes in the San Luis Valley, peaches in Grand Junction, wine grapes near Palisade, corn in the Olathe Valley and sugar beets in several locations.
Colorado led the nation in sugar beet production for decades until the 1960s with giant firms of Holly, Great Western and National prominent and prosperous locally and nationally.
Not only do we try to grow it, but historically, we have been pretty good at processing, packing and packaging our produce.
As early as 1867, the Rough and Ready Mill opened in Littleton. Irishman John K. Mullen, who was known to be proud of his calloused and stone chip-embedded hands (from years of toiling in the flour mills) built an inland empire of mills, grain elevators, wheat fields in the form of the Colorado Milling and Elevator Company. The company is famous for marketing Hungarian High Altitude Flour that is still popular.
Until high labor costs, coupled with cheap imported sugar cane, virtually killed the sugar business in Colorado in the 1960s, the sweet spot encouraged the establishment of related businesses. Candy makers such as Jolly Rancher in Wheat Ridge, Enstrom’s in Grand Junction, Rocky Mountain Chocolates in Durango, and Russell Stover’s in Montrose can all trace their origins to a strong Colorado sugar industry.
The state is also excels in making beer. Hundreds of breweries have called Colorado home. The first one, Rocky Mountain in Denver, eventually became the Zang Brewing Company and was the largest brewery in the Rockies until prohibition. Only four survived the long dry spell between 1916 and 1934. Of those four, only Adolph Coors has survived continously and is around today. Tivoli, from Denver, Walters from Pueblo, and Schneider, from Trinidad were all gone by the 1970s. Tivoli was resurected a few years ago.
But milk drinkers were not forgotten either. Sinton Dairy, which began in Colorado Springs in 1880, is still with us today; as well as Robinson in Denver, Meadow Gold in Englewood, and Hillside in Pueblo.
“The development of inexpensive tin cans around 1900 gave rise to giants such a Kuner, which started out pickling in Denver in 1872 and merged in 1927 with the J.H. Empson Company,” according to Historical Atlas of Colorado by Thomas Noel, Paul Mahoney, and Richard Stevens. Other local canners include Stokes, specializing in chili, which started in Colorado Springs and later moved to Denver.
In this state, I guess it is not really how much water you have, but what you do with it. We all need to eat.
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Cheaper to use the horses?

Today there is a substantial movement back to horsepower 

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
On the ranch, my father said it was sometimes easier and cheaper to use the horses than to get the tractor going, especially for mowing hay. Today, with gasoline headed higher once again, maybe we are getting closer to a time when a bag of oats makes as much fuel sense as feeding the John Deere.
If a person drives around the Tri-Lakes area, there is plenty of horse-drawn equipment now serving as lawn ornaments that once plowed, raked, bailed, cultivated, threshed and dug potatoes.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to know a few of those antique implements’ story? Perhaps there are a few of you out there that know those stories?
Perry E. Gresham tells of a close call while raking hay in “The Divide Country” near Elbert in his book “Growing up in the Ranchland.”
“Ranching and farming in those early days was much more rugged than it is today. The technological revolution has influenced the rural way of life. We did many things that are mechanized today.”
By way of example, Gresham talks of the potential danger. “We had mowing machines drawn by horses. The sickle needed sharpening from time to time, which was accomplished by stone wheel or a hand tool. After the hay was cut, we allowed it to dry for a day or two before we moved in with a horse drawn hay rake. When we worked frisky horses, these were dangerous occupations. I had a team run away when I was raking hay. The bumpy ride knocked me off my seat and down to where the tines were about to roll me over and over. I held on to the reins with the grit of a strong young country boy, and by the grace of God, the horses came to a standstill. I was fortunate enough to avoid an accident with the rake.”
The first half of the 19th Century was an age of discovery for farm implementation. Men like Jerome Case, Cyrus McCormick and John Deere successfully developed huge manufacturing facilities that began producing equipment that made the farming job that much easier than the old “scatch” endeavors up until then, writes Sam Moore in the “History of Horse-Powered Farming in America.”
“By 1900 sophisticated farm machines became available that embodied the principles of many of today’s modern implements. They performed nearly all the tillage, cultivation, or harvesting operations on progressive farms of the day. In some areas steam traction engines were being used for threshing or plowing, but they were too large, heavy and expensive for most farmers. The new implements were virtually all animal-powered. Even after the introduction of gas tractors, automobiles, and trucks during the first decade of the 20th century, the horse and mule population in the United States continued to grow until it reached the all-time high of 26.4 million animals in 1918,” writes Moore.
But for the next two decades, a real push to the gasoline tractors by agriculture colleges, extension agents, and equipment salesmen took its toll and by 1950, hardly anyone was still using draft animals.
Today there is a substantial movement back to horsepower in some organic farming circles as modern-day draft farmers claim farming with horses does less damage to land than gas-powered heavy machinery and reduces reliance on fossil fuels.
But before we get all fired up to switch to back draft-horse farming is this area, we need to consider some other factors.
The historic record indicates that it was a bit cooler and wetter back in the days of horses and hand implements in these parts. Rogers Davis, long-time director of the Lucretia Vaile Museum notes that you couldn’t hope to grow three-pound potatoes and get 383 wagonloads full with dry-land tactics in the modern age. All we need is a little water, and cool weather to go with our horsepower.
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