Corn meal, whiskey help save Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch
TOWAOC, Colo. – Drought in much of the West, 22 years running, has struck Colorado’s Four Corners tribal lands with bitter force. This year, the Ute Mountain Ute’s celebrated 7,700 acre farm and ranch operation had to lay off half its workers as thousands of acres lay fallow.
The devastating loss of water has meant that the Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch Enterprise could only plant 2,500 acres of corn, a tenth of the 25,000 acres they have planted in wetter years.
The Farm and Ranch is the crown jewel of the Utes, a tribal success story which, more than sixty years ago, saw Indigenous farmers turn miles of barren land into waving green alfalfa and corn fields. In addition to the farm project, there are 700 cattle roaming the grounds, descendants of the original herd brought here in 1962. In the winter, they drink from what is left of water that has been used for the crops, saved in a glistening canal and monitored fiercely.
The Farm and Ranch operation includes fertilizer applicators the size of a house that are controlled by satellites and miles of water pipelines that feed center irrigation pivots.
This year, because of the water shortage, only 8 of the farm’s 110 pivots were needed, with the rest perched flat-footed and spider-like on the dry fields.
Water for Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Land originates with snow on the peaks of the San Juans, which thaws in the spring and flows into the Dolores River. Some of the water ends up in Colorado’s second largest reservoir, the McPhee, which almost didn’t get built.
The Dolores Project was on the chopping block, on a list of western water projects set to be cut by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. However, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe was entitled to senior water rights as a result of a 1908 decision by the Supreme Court in Winters v. United States.
While the tribe owned these rights, they had historically had difficulty in accessing the water.
“Recognizing that the Dolores Project offered perhaps the only feasible alternate water supply for the reservation, the administration ultimately agreed to provide the Dolores Project funding pursuant to the Ute Indian Water Rights Settlement to satisfy the senior water rights held by the Tribe,” wrote the Dolores Water Conservancy District engineer Eric Sprague, adding that in 1987 the Colorado Ute Indian Water Rights Settlement Act allowed the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe to build a 39.9 mile channel, which ends at Farm and Ranch and services hundreds of thirsty fields along the way down.
This year the area’s water entities reduced the water allotment to all of the full-service farmers including the Ute Mountain Ute to 10%.
“They’re struggling just as bad as we are,” said rancher Zane Odell, who runs his own cattle operation on federal lands on the outskirts of Cortez. Odell knows without the federal governments late intervention, there would be no irrigation system for anyone. “Everybody rides the backs of these Indigenous people. The settlement was the only way we could get help.”
On a cloudless November day, farmers weeded and irrigation crews serviced sprinklers as crows watched from two of three empty silos.
“The crows are survivalists,” said the farm’s general manager Simon Martinez. “They survive and we will survive.”
March marked Martinez’ thirtieth year helping realize the tribe’s vision for the Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch. This year has been a mixed bag of blessings and curses.
The drought has meant layoffs, but the corn product is exploding online under the “Bow and Arrow” brand. Even though they’re sister operations, Bow and Arrow pays the Farm and Ranch for the corn they use to manufacture a variety of products which range from polenta to livestock grain. Colorado companies use Bow and Arrow corn for tortillas, snack chips and moonshine.
It’s no surprise that local distilleries have discovered Bow and Arrrow’s nonGMO, gluten free product, including Broomfield’s Whistle and Hare, Durango Craft Spirits and Snitching Lady Distillery, which makes a 100% blue corn whiskey called “Button’s Blue Corn,” named after the owner’s cat.