2017 Annual Ag Tour- The Evolution of Agriculture in Weld County The West Greeley Conservation District (WGCD), along with Leprino Foods, Colorado Corn, Colorado Farm Show, First Farm Bank, Weld County Farm Bureau, Western Dairy Association, Flood and Peterson, and the Community Foundation Serving Greeley and Weld County collaborated with the Greeley Chamber of Commerce to sponsor this year’s annual Ag Tour titled: The Evolution of Agriculture in Weld County.
Over 100 people participated on Friday, Aug. 25th starting with a 7:30 a.m. breakfast at our Houston Gardens nature center, hosted by the West Greely staff and catered by Butters. We provided a guided tour of the beautiful grounds, exploring the four Colorado ecosystems represented there. While walking on the handicapped accessible trails, they observed the variety of trees, shrubs and flowers growing lushly throughout the landscaped areas, learned about the importance of keeping a pollinator garden and saw many bees and butterflies fluttering around the vegetation. There were citing of some lovely birds and critters who have habitats on the property. Visitors walked over bridges with water flowing beneath from the #3 ditch, which fills the ponds, and irrigates the 30 community gardeners’ plots growing vegetables and flowers on the south side of the property.
Information was shared about WGCD’s consulting services, cost share programs, equipment rentals, upcoming workshops, plus our commitment to education at all ages. We announced our 2017-18 college scholarship recipients and distributed information about our scholarship program.
Then it was off on two travel buses heading north to visit Hungenberg Farms, where we learned about carrot farming and processing and were fascinated when seeing orange water spraying out of the massive sprinklers.
Next, it was on to the LaSalle area to hear about the challenges of growing a wide variety of vegetables at Petrocco Farms. We found out finding enough workers to harvest their crops was equally as challenging as Mother Nature and weather’s untimely upheavals.
All relaxed, cooled off and enjoyed lunch at the historic White Plumb Farm off 10th Street and 39th Avenue where we compared farm implements from the 1800s to the large and impressive new tractors hauled in by 4Rivers Equipment.
As the temperature continued to climb we loaded back on the buses to visit George Maxey’s Flat Barn Dairy, to compare milking the “old-fashioned way,” which George explained; followed by our visit to Monte Vista Dairy’s state of the art set-up in Gill where they are producing volumes of milk that boggled our minds.
There were speakers from CSU and historical Ag facts provided by the Greeley Museum shared during our travel time to the five destinations on the tour. This informative day concluded back at Houston Gardens at 4:50 p.m.
