PALISADE • To be a farmer in any era is to live, unsteadily, with constant change.
On rural Colorado’s small family farms one thing is certain: the landscape of agriculture is shifting. And the tenuous balance is in for a new test as promises of mass deportations threaten to wipe out the labor force that small and large operations rely on to survive.
When Bruce Talbott began farming his family’s orchards in Palisade on the Western Slope, he used a shovel and tarps to irrigate vast acres of Standard Alberta apple trees. Now, it’s sprinkler irrigation and world-famous peaches. Apples were a profitable product — until they weren’t…