A dry winter that led to an even drier summer had many farmers in Durango and Mancos worried they may have to cut back on operations or cease growing entirely.
Thankfully, that was not the case.
Tyler Hoyt of Green Table Farms, who also helps organize the Mancos Valley Farmers Market, said smart water practices and enough reserves allowed him and his fellow farmers to squeak by and complete a full growing season, despite the lackluster snow year. The Mancos farmers market encapsulated that luck, he said, as most growers have been able to stock their booths and sell produce all summer long.
“What do you talk about when you’re a farmer? You talk about the weather,” Hoyt said. “Everyone was starting to get pretty worried, even by February when we were looking at the snow forecast coming down.”
By that point, Hoyt said, many farmers he knew were discussing what they would try to grow, if they would need to irrigate, and how long they would be able to last with water levels in the nearby Jackson Gulch Reservoir and the area’s snowmelt-fed streams.
With some trepidation, Hoyt forged ahead as he usually would, which proved to pay off in the end. Still, the anxiety over water availability remains, even as the season begins to wind down with the arrival of autumn.
“I pretty much went ahead with a pretty conventional strategy as far as the year goes,” Hoyt said. “But if we have another year like this past one, then yeah, we’re in trouble.”
According to data released on Sept. 23 from U.S. Drought Monitor, much of Southwest Colorado is either in severe or extreme drought – including La Plata and Montezuma counties. In winter 2018, the San Juans received little snow according to the Natural Resource Conservation Service, meaning there wasn’t much water to go around for farmers during growing season.
Because of that, Hoyt said, he had to let some crops – like his squash and pumpkins – die off to conserve water and instead pay copious amounts of money to use city water for his main money-making produce, like leafy greens and tomatoes.
“We actually had a zero percent lake allotment that year, which was really bad,” Hoyt said. “That year we were able to use our river water allotment until that ran out in July. But that’s not very far into the season. So we watered with city water for about three, four weeks, which was really expensive, and I just had to let stuff go.”
Fortunately, 2018 had a robust monsoon, which saved Hoyt’s season. While that was seven years ago, the memory was still fresh in early 2025, he said.
2025 allowed him to pay the bills for another season, Hoyt said, thanks to his ability to grow his normal crops and sell them at the Durango and Mancos farmers markets. However, some were not so lucky. Hoyt said some growers did not have enough water to produce enough to sell there.
“We lost three consistent produce vendors this year because they just did not have enough water to really produce,” Hoyt said. “They’re kind of crossing their fingers for a big snow year this winter to get us going again next year in the spring.”
Mark Nolan of Mountain Roots Produce, also in Mancos, was one of those vendors. Because of the low water year, Nolan and his partner, Mindy, had to stop selling at the Mancos farmers market and focus solely on one in Telluride.
“It’s disappointing to me to disappoint my community in that manner,” Nolan said. “But at the end of the day, we barely had the product to go to Telluride. So it was a tough decision, but it was more financially feasible so we could start over next year and try again.”
Usually, Nolan said, they are able to sell 10 to 12 times as much produce in Mancos compared with Telluride. But this year, they simply could not grow enough to vend in both places. Aside from changing where they sell, they have diversified what they grow; this summer, Nolan said, the farm grew a lot of flowers like Dahlia tubers and garlic chutes, which they sell nationwide.
“We diversified the farm into a multitude of things so we’re not fully relying on main summer vegetable income anymore,” Nolan said.
Luckily for Nolan and his partner, who have 35 years of farming experience between the two of them, their business was established enough to weather not selling at the Mancos farmers market, and they hope to return next summer.
Hoyt, who spends his off season coaching ski racing, is hoping for a good winter, both for recreation and being able to water his crops next summer.
“Everything relies on that snowpack and then how much we can store in the reservoirs and how long the creeks and rivers go,” Hoyt said. “So it’s always kind of that balancing act out here in the Southwest. It’s tricky, but it’s manageable.”
For Nolan, the best way to help local growers through tough years is to support them whenever possible.
“Support your local farm,” Nolan said. “Agriculture is a pretty major backbone of all the counties around us.”
The Mancos Valley Farmers Market is held every Sunday from 4 to 7 p.m. in Mancos’ Boyle Park through October.
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
