Bone dry: Farming in Colorado's extreme drought
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NUNN, Colo. — A chorus of snorts, bleats and barks filled the air. As the sun inched over the horizon, Mark Wisner squashed the morning rush like a short order cook.
“I know. You guys are hungry,” he said as he poured a bucket of feed to his pigs.
At dawn, Wisner is a rancher. He, and his wife, Lori, and their two teenage daughters tend to an assortment of pigs, poultry and cattle. They sell meat and produce at farmers markets and through their website. But by 7:30 a.m., Wisner is on the road to Denver, for his 9-to-5 as a news manager at Denver7.
“I don’t think we’re a hobby farm cause we’re working too hard for it to be a hobby,” he said. “But we’re not the Duttons in ‘Yellowstone’ by any stretch.”
Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
Five years ago, the Wisners didn’t know a thing about livestock.
“We were living in Brighton, had our dream home and all of the amenities for the kids, the nice rec center with the pool, and then COVID hit,” said Wisner.
Shortages and supply chain failures brought on by the pandemic shocked the Wisners. They felt disconnected from their food — both in terms of how it was produced and how it reached their plates.
In 2020, the Wisners traded their home in Brighton for 126 acres of dryland prairie, just east of Nunn. They named it “Big Leap Ranch.”
Since then, the Wisners have become expert problem solvers, but there’s one issue they can’t fix: drought.
Much of Colorado sits at or above normal precipitation levels, but the U.S. Drought Monitor characterizes portions of Larimer and Weld County as experiencing “extreme drought” as of February 20.
“That is something that is supposed to happen only one out of 20 years,” said state climatologist Russ Schumacher.
Dry conditions have added to the Wisner’s financial and emotional stress.
“This is only the second snow that we’ve gotten. With the wind, it just blows all of the snow that we do get away or dries things out super fast, so even the moisture that we do get doesn’t really soak into the ground,” said Lori Wisner in mid-February.
When looking for their ranch, the couple initially hoped to find an irrigated property.
“If we could have afforded less acres, but irrigation, or lived in an area that gets more rain, less drought conditions, obviously we would have chosen that,” said Mark Wisner.
Properties along the South Platte River were too expensive for the Wisners, a problem made worse by cities buying up water rights for their own use.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average price of irrigated crop land in Colorado was $6,620 per acre in 2024, compared with $1,950 for non-irrigated land.
The Wisners decided to dig a well. Today, they exclusively use groundwater to water livestock and irrigate an acre of crops.
They hope to eventually restore some of the natural grasses to feed their stock. Until then, they are left buying bale after bale of alfalfa.
“When we first started doing this, I mean, the price of hay for just a standard little square bale was like $6 or $7. It’s $12 now,” said Mark Wisner.
After feeding the animals, Wisner attacked the ice that had formed on water troughs with a sledge hammer and pitchfork.
He threw chunks of ice to the side.
“All of that layer just went to waste,” he said.
While some ranchers use heated stock tanks to prevent ice buildup, the Wisners don’t have electricity near the animals’ pens.
The couple said they have tried everything to prevent hoses from freezing. The only thing that works is meticulously wringing out the line after every watering.
In the future, they hope to employ water on-demand systems, like Drinking Posts, which allow the animals to push a lever that dispenses water only when they need it.
Their well pump runs on electricity, meaning they have no way to water the animals when the power goes out. The Wisners fill up bathtubs and buckets as a reserve before bad storms.
“There are so many unknowns and things you can’t plan for,” said Lori Wisner.
It’s that uncertainty that distinguishes drought from other extreme weather.
“Even the biggest rain event lasts a few days and then it’s over, right? Drought is a lot more insidious. It gets going and you really never quite know when it’s going to end. It might be a month from now and you get a big storm, or it may not be for years until the drought gets alleviated,” said Schumacher.
Although agricultural producers can’t make it rain, experts like Retta Bruegger, a rangeland specialist with the Colorado State University Extension, hopes to empower farmers and ranchers with tools to make better decisions, in spite of uncertainty.
In 2020, as Bruegger responded to one of the worst droughts in state history, she recognized the need for better drought planning. Bruegger joined forces with Harrison Topp of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. The pair formed Colorado Drought Advisors.
Today, Colorado Drought Advisors provides personalized advising to agricultural producers around the state.
Rather than focus on “silver bullet” solutions, Bruegger said drought planning works to identify “individual vulnerabilities” since each operation is different. Advisors work with producers to identify thresholds when producers need to make important decisions, like reducing herd size.
“How can we use reasonably reliable information to make good decisions?” said Bruegger. “And at what point in time are we making those decisions?”
Producers in the region have faced drought for hundreds of years. But Schumacher said climate change could lead to more extreme conditions on both ends.
“When it rains, it might rain harder, but then you get longer periods in between,” he said.
Lori Wisner said that it’s scary knowing conditions could worsen.
“My grandparents had a farm out in Weld County and their well dried up and they had to re-dig another well. That’s an option for a while, but what if it gets to the point where you can’t re-dig wells? What if the water levels are so low that we don’t have any water period?” she said.
Warmer temperatures can also increase “evaporative demand,” or how much water the air is sucking from the landscape.
“All else being equal, if it's warmer, that air is thirstier for that water,” said Schumacher.
While some researchers are interested in supply-side solutions, like cloud seeding, Schumacher thinks that decreasing demand for water is a more viable approach. He points to research by colleagues at Colorado State University who are working to develop drought tolerant crop varieties and methods for limited irrigation agriculture. Currently, agriculture accounts for 89% of the state’s consumptive water use.
Despite the challenges drought has created, the Wisners have no plans to jump ship.
“We’re in this full time and sometimes we wonder why we do it and whether we should quit, between not having any time, being so tired and the expense of it all,” said Lori Wisner. “But it brings a lot of satisfaction to know that we’re raising healthy food and healthy animals.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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