“Something has got to change” ...Middle East

Happy Colorado Sunday, friends.

Long-time readers of this newsletter will recall my constant lament about how the open spaces in my circulation area are rapidly filling with housing, the farmers and ranchers in southeastern Boulder County having moved on as the value of their land began to massively outstrip the value of their professions. It is to be expected in the metroplex. But similar things are occurring in the more rural parts of our state where the rush to attractive small towns, some anchored by recreational amenities, is making the cost of earning a living in agriculture zoom.

This week’s cover story by Jason Blevins takes a look at one ranching family in Chaffee County that availed itself of a conservation tax credit program a decade ago, but now finds that what seemed like an adequate solution back then feels like nothing today as the value of their property rises.

Dana Coffield

Editor

The Cover Story

Once a lifeline, conservation easement now seems a burden

It was a good deal back in 2010. An easement that would prevent development on a high pasture of green between Salida and Poncha Springs and give the ranching family that owned the land a bit of cash. The Hutchinson family, who homesteaded the land in the 1860s, got 50% of the land’s value, up to $750,000 for those conservation easements.

But, as they say, that was then. Today, townhomes are sprouting faster than hay in the fertile pastures outside Salida. Land values are soaring. So are the costs of running a ranch.

Art Hutchinson and his daughter Abby thought they had a good plan to help ease the pressures of running cattle amid a flourishing playground of tourists and recreation-minded residents. Why not host a bluegrass concert and let folks camp on the ranch for a couple nights a year? The revenue they gleaned from that weekend could carry them for many months.

But after tickets were sold for the September Campout for the Cause festival, the land trust that holds easements on the venerable Hutchinson Ranch denied the event. The 30-year-old Colorado Cattlemen’s Land Trust said it was the largest and most intense proposal the group had ever considered.

Art Hutchinson isn’t necessarily angry with the land trust. He knows their work is critical in protecting local food producers struggling amid this seemingly endless Colorado boom.

But he wonders if there’s a way to return to old easements and negotiate new ways that ranchers can maneuver in this shifting landscape. He and his daughter were not planning to build anything to accommodate the festival. No structures, no fires, no fire rings and all parking outside the reach of the pivot sprinklers.

“There are not many farms in this nation that last past four generations,” 73-year-old Hutchinson said. “There’s a reason for that. I’m not saying we are going to go bankrupt, but the way we are going is no longer sustainable and it’s keeping us up at night. The money is running out. Something has got to change.”

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Jason Blevins | Outdoors/Business Reporter

The Colorado Lens

Our photojournalists traveled from one corner of the state to the other last week. Here are a few of our favorite images from their journeys:

Dana Coffield | Editor

Flavor of the Week

The Bard comes to a rustic backyard stage in the Sangres

At Shakespeare in the Sangres in historic downtown Westcliffe, the Bard’s tales are shepherded to life in the unlikeliest of places — a small stage in the leafy backyard of an old Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad depot, with spectators fanned out on lawn chairs under sprawling trees and a few canopies for shade, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains towering in the distance.

During a June 15 matinee performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” an all-ages crew from the Westcliffe Center for Performing Arts gamely vied with 80-degree temperatures and interruptions from a car alarm and a revving motorcycle to coax steady laughs from an audience of a few dozen people. Cast members Blake Narcisian and Cipa Frost put a dashing spin on Lysander and Hermia, pumping energy into the central love story, while Amber Woolsey’s antic, bumbling Bottom the Weaver kept my 8-year-old groundling smiling through the two-hour run time. Elementary school-age children danced around the stage in the roles of Titania’s fairies, eliciting a chorus of “aww’s.”

Part of the fun lay in watching the players scramble to prepare for their next scenes, sometimes dashing off stage into a restored railcar perched in a sideyard for rapid wardrobe changes.

While the troupe concludes its Shakespeare performances for the season Sunday, it’s set to present ensemble performances of the new comedy “Yo Ho Hum: A Pirate’s Midlife Crisis” at the Jones Theater in Westcliffe, 119 N. Main St., on June 27 and June 28 at 7:30 p.m. and June 29 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for active military members and teenagers and $5 for children 12 and under.

We broke up the scenic drive through the high-desert breaks of southern Colorado with a stop at Coyote’s Coffee Den in Penrose, 675 State Highway 115 — I can vouch for the espresso — before venturing on to Westcliffe, where we had a leisurely and tasty diner lunch at Sugar Lump Co., 202 Main St., one of several restaurants in the bustling downtown area.

The Westcliffe Center for Performing Arts will also present “Yo Ho Hum” at the Rialto Theater in Florence on July 5 at 7 p.m. and July 6 at 2 p.m. Tickets for those shows are available here.

Lance Benzel | Team Editor

SunLit: Sneak Peek

In “Mary’s Place,” a rural, small-town bank meets its demise

“J.C. Espy was looking out the window that Thursday, August 15, 1985, when the shiny black cars rolled into Gateway City. His mind numbed up and blanked out the metallic gleam.”

— From “Mary’s Place”

EXCERPT: The agricultural disaster of the mid-1980s provides the backdrop for author Charlotte Hinger’s story of two western Kansas families — farmers and bankers — struggling to weather the storm. In this slice of her Colorado Book Award finalist for Historical Fiction, she focuses on the banker family, and the falling out between father and son that ultimately ruins the small-town bank that made the family pillars of the community.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: For Hinger, this book hit close to home because she lived in a community where agribusiness suffered during the ’80s and dealt with both bankers and farmers reeling from the fallout. Here’s a portion of her Q&A:

SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?

Hinger: The day the bank closes in a rural community is a heart-stopping event. It’s like a bomb has dropped on a town. Selecting my excerpt was difficult! I knew which one was my favorite, but I didn’t want to expose too much of the plot for the reader. Both fathers have sons who have contempt for their values. The sons want to make money.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH CHARLOTTE HINGER

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

? Is fast fashion flaming out? Alyte Katilius and Tracy Ross went to Outside Festival last month to find out whether fashionistas have given up the habit of buying cheap clothing that is a massive source of pollution worldwide.

? If the weekend forecast holds, it will be no surprise to you that Western Slope farmers are already worried about drought conditions. Shannon Mullane caught up with growers of Colorado’s fabled Olathe Sweet corn who told her the runoff conditions have been worse this decade than during the Dust Bowl.

? Parker Yamasaki visited the little grocery store that could last weekend, learning how the classic agricultural co-op business model has been applied to keep Walsh Community Grocery Store stocked and feeding about 500 people in extreme southeastern Colorado.

? QR-code enabled signs have gone up at all of the country’s national park sites, encouraging visitors to report if they’ve seen anything negative about an American, living or dead, in official exhibits. Kevin Simpson reports on the implications for the Amache and Sand Creek historic sites, which deal with some of the ugliest moments in U.S. history.

?About 15 people fall from Colorado chairlifts each year, about a third of which are children. Jason Blevins reports on how industry officials hope to encourage a culture shift to get riders to always put the lift safety bar down.

? Though it seemed like we were done worrying about the state budget for a year, it’s back and the news is bad. Jesse Paul sat in when nonpartisan economists forecast that under the best-case scenario, the legislature will start the new session in January $700 million in the hole.

? Tax credits for electric vehicles and clean household heating and cooling systems have already been slashed by half because of that bad budget forecast. Taylor Dolven has the details.

? Voters in Colorado Springs overwhelmingly rejected the huge Karman Line Addition annexation request. Jerd Smith reports on what comes next for the 1,800-acre project that stirred concern about water supplies and city services.

? In the latest story in our Aging in Colorado series, Brian Eason looks at the intersection of our rapidly aging population and the extreme shortage of available housing for people who don’t want stairs in their homes.

? Good news! A tiny barrel cactus with glorious pink blossoms has made it off the federal endangered species list, despite being very popular among poachers. Michael Booth talked with some of the botanists who helped make the recovery possible.

Dana Coffield | Editor

Thanks for hanging out with us, friends. It hardly seems possible, but we marked our seventh anniversary last week, observing the day we announced our plans to publish under The Colorado Sun banner. If I’ve not said it enough before, let me say it again: We would not be here today were it not for loyal readers and supporters like you. We appreciate you all so much!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

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