That's Cotton in the Blog Stew -- Don't Eat It

Marco checks out a muddy arroyo in Huerfano County.

I let March go by without posting. That's bad. I was deep into the most annoying book-edit of my life. Kind of like "Who's on first?" but with different drafts and different sets of corrections from different proof-readers.

That said, I did get out in the weirdly warm and dry weather to investigate some public hunting lands-mostly Colorado state trust lands that are also grazed, but opened during hunting seasons. 

I may live in the foothills and love mountains, but the High Plains, mesas, and canyons call me too, Chad Love, who lives in Woodward, Oklahoma (touched by one of the big prairie fires this spring) says it well. He talks about autumn here, but early spring as upland seasons end is just the other side:

If you really want to hear the world creak and groan and slip from one epoch into the next, walk out into the prairie in early September. Find a hill to sit on, turn your face up to the sky, let that ancient celestial light strike your eyes, and listen to the ancient gods whispering in your soul’s ear; old thoughts, old yearnings, old fears, old hopes, all welling back up from within on the tendrils of that first softly keening fall breeze that marks the trembling of the seasons and the dimming of the summer light. 

And it's dry, so dry. What can farmers do? Some people suggest that the future is less corn and more cotton, even here in Colorado. 

For decades, the Wertz family focused on corn and alfalfa in the Arkansas Valley. But in recent years, the economics became harder to ignore. Water supplies dwindled, and production costs climbed. They needed a crop that used less water but still offered a solid return.

Even though cotton had never been grown successfully in Colorado, Wertz believed it could be the right fit for their operation.

“Finding a crop that cash flowed better and something that conserved water, we decided cotton was the way to go,” he said. “Cotton does all of those things. It just fit a niche that we were looking for.”
Cotton brings in similar revenue per acre as corn, but requires far less fertilizer and water. That makes it a natural choice for hot, dry areas and more sustainable in drought conditions. 

 Maybe parts of Eastern Colorado will start resembling West Texas—wisps of cotton blowing in the wind.