Mid-August in Boulder means that local peaches and corn are now readily available. Tomatoes here don't come into season until the end of August and they don't hold a candle to the wonderful ones we got so easily in Maryland. Having good corn isn't surprising; we had great corn in Maryland in the summer. But peaches, well that's something else.
Peaches here come from the western slope of the Rockies, from the area around Palisade which has a unique climate perfect for growing fruit. First to ripen are the non-cling-free varieties, but by the end of August and into September the cling-free ones are at the farmer's markets, grocery stores, and at the many peach festivals and fundraisers. They are all delicious. Have you ever grilled a peach? So good in a salad with some arugula, goat cheese, and prosciutto!
We get most of our corn from Munson's Farm, just a few miles away. On Friday we went to a Farm to Table dinner out at the farm, a fundraiser for the https://hopepantry.org. I've never been to one of these types of dinners and found the whole experience very pleasant.
We were given a tour of the fields where corn, squash, pumpkins, and tomatoes are grown and learned about how the crops are irrigated. No sprinklers here, it's all row by row irrigation, with much smaller ditches than I had imagined. Munson's land came with water rights, which means they have the right to have water directed to their main ditches. These old ditches have recently been lined with concrete and are outfitted with wheel-driven gates that control how the water is allocated to the specific fields. If there's not enough water from the main system, the Munsons buy extra from a supplemental reservoir. How the west gets its water is an interesting and important subject which I'm just beginning to get a handle on.
In the photo below you can see just how narrow the irrigated rows are when the reach the crops.
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