Third Year of Community Garden

In July 2019, I posted a blog about a new community garden located in Grand Junction. How have they been able to support the community over three summers impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic? Ann and Walt Trout, who are the directors and primary gardeners of the non-profit known as Two Fishes Farm, have incredible experiences over the past three years and likely have kept many people alive by donating food to the Grand Junction Community Food Bank!

The first year of getting the organic garden started focused on improving the silty soil by adding nutrients and compost as well as developing the irrigation system. Very few people volunteered to help at first due to the new location. Despite the light turnout, the Trout’s persistence demonstrated the potential and provided a decent harvest which prepared the community for the unforeseen pandemic.

Last year with Covid-19 raging, people wanted to get outdoors and the community garden saw a great influx of volunteers. That allowed for more planting, weeding, and harvesting to support many more people. However, increasing seed prices incentivized creating heirloom tomatoes. Instead of buying tomato plants, the farmers save unpatented seeds from the prior year and new plants are grown and pollinated naturally. Other challenges involved finding better solutions for crop irrigation.

Instead of using traditional drip irrigation with a emitter at every plant, the garden adopted a new method this year for irrigation. Flexible fabric hoses connected to main water lines are placed along rows. The fabric hoses have holes at regular intervals of one to four feet allowing for planting at each hole. That eliminates the need for emitters and is buried in the roots but clogging can occur if the water is turbid. Therefore, the main water supply is treated with a sand filter and other chemicals may be needed to remove dissolved solids.

This year the community garden is struggling for volunteers as people are getting out of town. Ann and Walt show up most every day to keep up with the many needs but feel their inspired service making a huge difference to many people. Small grants of about $1,200 have been provided by Western Colorado Community Foundation to support purchasing seeds and weed control fabric.

Just this year so far over 200 pounds of vegetables and eggs have been grown and more than half donated to the food bank! If you would like to support the community garden with your time, labor, or donations please contact Ann Trout at atrout@twofishesfarm.org.

Update August 9, 2021

Ann Trout provided totals of donated vegetables for the three years:

Year 1, 3,400 pounds

Year 2, 6,400 pounds

Year 3, 500 pounds so far this year with an estimate of about 6,000 pounds of vegetables to be donated.

So the total estimate for the three years is 15,800 pounds of vegetables. It is recommended we eat 3 cups of vegetables per day. One pound equals about 1.9 cups so 15,800 pounds equals over 30,000 cups which translates to 10,000 daily servings of vegetables!

Washington Post reports Grand Junction Area is in Climate Change Hot Spot!

Today, the Washington Post reported that the Western Slope area of Colorado and Utah is warming at twice the world’s average due to climate change!

“This cluster of counties on Colorado's Western Slope — along with three counties just across the border in eastern Utah — has warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius, double the global average. Spanning more than 30,000 square miles, it is the largest 2C hot spot in the Lower 48, a Washington Post analysis found.”

“Dry areas warm faster for lack of moisture to cool things down, said Chris Milly, a senior resource scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. Land use, irrigation and natural variability could also help explain part of the disparity. Milly and another colleague recently found that much of the Colorado River’s climate-induced decline — amounting to 1.5 billion tons of missing water — comes from the fact that the region’s snowpack is shrinking and melting earlier. That’s as much water as 14 million Americans use in a year.”

“The city of Grand Junction recently analyzed whether it has enough water to supply its 30,000 customers even if the drought persists. In the near term, according to its utilities director Randi Kim, the city is fine. But it also looked over the next 50 years — and came up as much as 3,300 acre feet short, which would force it to tap water directly from the Colorado and Gunnison rivers. And that was without calculating the full impacts of climate change.”

To read more about this work from Chris Milly at USGS and predictions for the future of the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), see this website and quote: “Continued warming in the UCRB will drive further loss of river flow. Another factor, which might add or subtract available water, will be changes in precipitation, which could either increase or decrease. Considering the effect of warming alone, and using estimates of the rate of warming from global climate models, it is estimated that by 2050 the flow will have decreased by 14 to 31%, relative to the historical average. When the possible changes in precipitation are included, the range of this estimate widens, with losses as great as 40% and, at the other extreme, a flow gain of 3%.”

When we moved to Grand Junction 8 years ago from Las Vegas, Nevada we were shocked at how people wasted precious water resources. In Las Vegas, water conservation is enforced with water recycling systems and expensive utility bills. In Grand Junction, many people plant grass landscapes using irrigation from the Colorado River that is not metered, low cost, and over watered running down the curbs. We’ve discussed water conservation for many years and many people just think if they don’t use it they will lose their water rights which is not true.

Due to the oil and gas industry dominating the area’s economy for many years, climate change has not been a subject many people wanted to discuss. In fact, the local university invited climate deniers to speak on campus a few years ago.

We purposely moved to a subdivision of Grand Junction that is not on the City water supply and obtain water from Grand Mesa lakes providing drinking water and drip irrigation. We planted native plants may of which do not need much water including lavender and trumpet vines. Water conservation is critical more then ever and it is time for public officials to mandate water restrictions as is being done in many other locations.

Grand Junction Water Restrictions Imposed

The City of Grand Junction began requiring residents to restrict outdoor water use to twice per week. This changes to once per week in October. More details are available as discussed in the The Daily Sentinel.

This restriction does not apply to my neighborhood located in Mesa County with water supplied by Ute Water. At my home, we changed from less frequent watering with a longer duration to move the water deeper into the root zone of native desert plants. We've cut our water bill in half as compared to last year and our plants are doing just fine! 

Local Medical Professionals Link Improving Our Health To Cleaner Air

Today I learned that Mesa County residents have much higher rates of respiratory illness, including lung cancer, than anywhere in the state. Paula Anderson with Primary Care Partners wrote an article in this morning's newspaper titled: Save the planet by improving life in the valley.

While we live in a small new community with homes on central air and we do not burn wood, I've noticed many homes in the surrounding area burning wood and the smoke has been getting into our home! Several nights I awoke to smelling smoke and coughing. A room sized air filter helped to clean the polluted air once inside but did not stop the problem. This week we cut the outside intake pipe to the HVAC system and now suck air in from the garage. We also added some air filters at the intake and in all the vents. Obviously, we must be careful not allowing car fumes to enter the home. Our next option is to purchase an expensive electrostatic filter system.

We also notice the air pollution from wood smoke getting into our car as we drive and must make sure we are recirculating inside air.