Our plan for January? focusing on water for a while.
We even started a light-hearted introduction to it as our social media focus for January. Wouldn’t Dry January be an ironic theme for a business that depends on the beer and spirit industry? We could make a clever link between the sober (beer-less) Dry January that many participate in and the sobering drought that we are facing this January as farmers. We would approach a serious theme with an optimistic take and show our community what we’re doing to tackle water issues with creativity, hard work, and an occasional Dry January pun.
Then, days before we launched our posts, wildfires tore through suburban Boulder County, destroying hundreds of homes, displacing countless people, and leveling entire neighborhoods, all in areas that should never have been prone to wildfires in the first place. The fires were started by downed power lines landing in tinderbox-dry grasses and then fanned by record-high winds.
Suddenly, a lighthearted intro to drought seemed inappropriate.
We scrapped our planned intro and pulled this one together. We need to tell it how it is. We need to face the situation in the Front Range, in Colorado, in the entire expanse of the Western US, head-on.
We don’t have enough water.
This past fall of 2021 was the first official autumn with no snow for the Denver area. It was also the driest and warmest summer and fall combined on the record books. As farmers, we are very much feeling the impacts of the bone-dry weather in our fields.
Winter wheat, which we grow annually both for distiller’s grain and to malt, is planted in the fall and relies on winter snows as precipitation in order to germinate. This year, the ground is so dry, that the winter wheat fields are way behind schedule. They may not make it at all if we don’t get significant precipitation. Additionally, for any field growing any crop, a base level of moisture is required to keep the soil healthy and “living.” Without it, microbes die off, and soil fertility plummets, affecting both current and future plantings negatively. Soil is life, and life cannot happen without water.
While climate change is a term almost casually tossed around by politicians, activists, and the general public alike, for farmers it is a very real force to be contended with, and during this dry summer and fall, long before these fires, we have been acutely aware of the looming water crisis in the west. This year, the Colorado River reached its lowest level since the 1930s, leading the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to declare a shortage, resulting in water supply cuts to Arizona farmers. Those were labeled as “Tier 1” cuts. Tier 2 cuts are expected by 2023.
Colorado is, as one might guess by the name, inextricably tied to the Colorado River with the Front Range pulling between 30% and 50% of its water from the Western Slope in areas that would otherwise drain into the Colorado River. If you’re truly interested in learning about where our water comes from and the complicated system that provides it this article is a great start.
However, our intent this month is not so much to post and repost heady academic articles and policy declarations. Rather, we hope to show you what farming during a drought looks like with one’s boots on the ground, and how we’re trying to make our land (and your craft malt) more resilient in the face of a changing climate. So, be on the lookout for water-related posts on our social media sites this month, or just follow the hashtag #rootshootsdryjanuary to see what we’re up to.
In the meantime, hug your neighbor, donate to fire relief, toast to being part of the solution, and then follow through on your word. As a business and as community members, we’ll be looking for ways to do our part as well.
We’re glad you’re with us for this journey and all the challenges…and the successes that it brings.
Be well. Stay safe. Support local.
— Root Shoot Malting
