In normal times, he would be driving past giant circular fields of corn and alfalfa irrigated by 110 rotating sprinklers called pivots.īut most of the fields are barren this year, casualties of an unprecedented drought - “the worst in 30 years,” said Martinez, the general manager of the Farm & Ranch Enterprise and its subsidiary, the Bow & Arrow Brand LLC, which produces corn products.īorn in Grants, N.M., Martinez has been here since the beginning of the farm three decades ago, when the land was still barren and the newly created Towaoc Highline Canal began delivering water from McPhee Reservoir, 40 miles north, to its terminus on a hillside overlooking the Farm & Ranch Enterprise. TOWAOC - In late June, Simon Martinez drove along one of the dirt roads crisscrossing the parched rocky shrubland on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Farm & Ranch Enterprise, a 7,700-acre agricultural operation owned by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in the far southwestern corner of Colorado. Meet Colorado’s Congressional delegation.
As drought in the West worsens, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Colorado faces a dwindling water supply - The Colorado Sun Close
