We met at the Historic Union Depot/Chamber of Commerce in Greeley to begin our tour of the Best of Weld County! We saw some history, including Rattle Snake Kate’s gorgeous flapper dress, tour the Weld County agricultural community, and visited the world renowned Greeley Freight Station Museum.
Weld County is in the top 10 counties in the USA for livestock and many agricultural categories. We toured a potato and onion bagging company. To round out the Ag tour we had lunch in the offices of Colorado’s largest feed yard, Kuner/5 Rivers Feed Yard, just east of Greeley.
During the heat of the afternoon we cooled off at the Greeley History Museum for a Rattle Snake Kate presentation followed with a visit to the Greeley Freight Station Museum. GFSM houses America’s largest HO model train set along with over 1,000 railroad artifacts. Michelle Kempema, Museum Director, will give the group a behind the scenes tour.
Greeley and Weld County
Railroads, History & Agriculture in Weld County
Guide Line Review
Greeley, Colorado
We traveled together in a Greeley Stampede visitor’s van and the first stop on our agriculture tour was at Fagerberg Farms, where we met Lola Mundt with Colorado Potato and Tanya Fell with Colorado Onion. This company is the largest onion provider in Colorado. About 80% of the onions sold in Colorado come from this facility and the National Onion Association headquarters are in Greeley. This company has contract farmers in the area to supplement their own onion growing acreage. Ryan, the son of the owner of the company, showed us around the sheds. The company is known for food safety. They have farms that grow corn, beans, wheat, and onions around Greeley as well as farms near Eaton, Windsor and also 12 other farms providing produce for the company. The company supplies onions to many grocery stores and restaurants, including King Soopers, Safeway, Albertsons, Wal-Mart, Taco Bell and the Outback. Weld County is the 6th largest producer in the US of onions, 5th in potatoes including such specialty potatoes as fingerlings and purple potatoes. Weld County ranks 7th in the US in the production of sweet corn and lettuce and produces 8 million barrels of barley as well. Carrots are also a major crop in the county. The mini-carrots that you get in the grocery have been adapted so that the carrots do not have a hard core and are processed here as well. Weld County is also #1 in lamb production, producing over 100,000/year. Lambs raised here often weigh 30# more than those raised in other locations. Greeley also produces hides.
The storage shed has 1,450 micro bins that each hold 1000# of produce and are used for temporary storage. The harvest starts in late July and continues until November. Onions can be stored as long as six months so those harvested late in the year may be in storage as late as March the following year. The shed also has 21 bins in the storage shed. These bins hold 40 semi loads each and are used for the longer term storage. The sheds maintain a constant temperature of 36 degrees and there is an employee who monitors these sheds 24/7 to be sure that the temperature does not vary. If the temperature changes, his phone notifies him so that he can instantly make adjustments to preserve the stored crop.
At the beginning of the harvest the onions are bagged and shipped the same day as they are harvested. We saw bags of onions in the fields waiting to be shipped. The irrigation water for these fields comes from wells because water is needed in March and April and no ditch irrigation water is available until May. The company uses coffin wells. Water compacts that control the flow and use of water may be voided in the near future – this issue is currently before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Water is always an issue in Colorado since our rainfall is so limited even though Colorado is home to the headwaters of six rivers.
Greeley is also the home of Noffsinger Manufacturing which created belt chain to dig the potatoes out of the ground. They provide belts and chains for potato harvesting worldwide. Michelle’s father designed this belt chain about 25 years ago.
Aurora Organic Dairy is in Weld County. This is America’s largest organic dairy and supplies all organic dairy products for Walmart, Sams Club, and Costco. Their products have a shelf life of 75 days.
We went to Strohauer Farms, Inc. to see the potato shed. Strohauer grows many types of potatoes: Russets, Yukon, and Finger Links (4 sizes of these). The entire shed is sanitized every night. Most of their sales are to retail stores and their products are shipped all over the US. They supply King Soopers/Kroger and H E Butt in Texas. They deliver one semi truckload a week of finger links to Pennsylvania. They ship bulk potatoes and have shipped over 300 truckloads this year. The company owns about 800 acres and the potatoes are harvested from the end of July through mid-September.
We also learned about their specialty onions – they produce boiler onions, large pearl onions, also pearl onions (red, gold, and white) as well as shallots and chipollini (a sort of flat onion with a mild flavor).
Then we were on our way to JBS (Jose Bates Sabrino family)Five Rivers / Kuner feedlot. We were greeted by Brett Ulrich, the assistant general manager who has worked here for the past 35 years and by Cody Shaddoc, special program coordinator who has been with the company for the past two years. We were treated to lunch there while we watched two short videos of how the company developed and how a feedlot actually works. The company is Brazilian and was started in 1855. They do give tours, however, the company does need advance notice and most of their tours are corporate groups.
Eight hundred fifty thousand ranches in the US supply 25 million cattle/year to grocery stores, restaurants and other businesses. Cattle first came to the area with Coronado in 1540. In 1821 Mexico split from Spanish control, 1832 saw Bent’s Fort built, 1851 – Sangre de Cristo established in San Luis had the first cattle here. In 1878 Mr. Henderson turned his cattle loose and they fed on grass through the winter. In 1866 Goodnight originated the first chuck wagon, 1874 saw the first barbed wire patented. In 1887 over 1,000 cattle were lost in a blizzard and so the cattle were fed in the winter. By 1900 there were fences everywhere and the government then created the BLM and Forest Service. Greeley was established in 1870, the first planned community and also an entirely fenced community.
This feedlot was built in 1974 by Monfort. It now uses Temple Grandin’s guidelines for efficient and humane animal handling in the feedlot, producing nutritionally better animals. All their programs are USDA certified. This feedlot also is green, using their waste water efficiently and recycling it. They try to be good neighbors and practice environmental sustainability. They use manure to generate steam to run the plant. The pens are sloped so that water runs off; the animals need to be kept dry. Currently they run 81,000 head of cattle. They use 1.5 million pounds of corn/day which is steamed and crushed to make it more easily digested by the cattle. This tactic gains about 15% better utilization of the feed. They deliver 2.5 million pounds of feed/day. If the animals are comfortable they grow better, they do use growth stimulants on animals to help produce more beef. Current cost is $8.50/bushel (56#) and $16/hundredweight.
The business strategy in use today is to make money on the feedlot. There are several divisions to the management of the feedlot: office/administration, mill/elevator – receive feed, feed department that delivers feed to the pens (the feed truck drivers are required to be within 50# on their last run each day. There is also a yard/manure department which maintains the facility and equipment, a cattle crew that ships, receives and checks each head of stock daily and a vet tech crew that treats, checks any animal that may need care. Any medications provided need to be completely cleared from the animal before it is shipped. A parasitic wasp is used in the feedlot to control the fly population. The pens are totally cleaned with every turn of cattle (about every 5-6 months).
The feedlot uses a gasifier to transform dried manure into ash which is used as fertilizer, soil stabilizers and also is used in concrete. They use $30,000-$40,000 worth of natural gas each month. The lot produces 100,000 tons of manure and the company needs to capture 100% of the runoff here and must account for all of it. Water comes from wells under the feed yard and they also have 900 – 1,000 acre feet of water/year/yard from shares they own in several ditches. There are 350 water tanks on the yard, run continuous flow of 1 gallon/minute to keep from freezing in the winter. This water is recaptured, run through two sand filters, ultraviolet light, and reused. They recycle 40 million gallons of water each year. (Three acre feet equal one million gallons). Cattle drink 10.5 gallons/head/day as a yearly average. The company has 550 acres for feedlot, 400 acres of farm ground used to dewater which is regulated on the nitrogen level. Culverts are used for runoff.
The animals come from all over the Western US. Each animal arrives at approximately 850# and leaves weighing 1350-1425#. They are in the feedlot for approximately 167 days. The cattle gain 3.4-4.5#/day, based on 6.5# of feed/day. The feedlot sends 5,000 head of cattle/day to the processing plant. The cattle must be delivered on time and ready to be processed. Any delay in the processing chain costs a tremendous amount of money. Thirty years ago this cost was $35.00/second. JBS owns the processing plant as well as the feedlot. They are paid of the grade of beef and the yield (carcass). A heavyweight carcass goes at 1025 pounds and they get a discount if it weighs more and a bonus if under to equalize. Beef production is vital to feeding the world. The world population has doubled in the past fifty years and is expected to double again in the next twenty-five years.
JBS has a niche program of natural beef that has been raised without hormones, antibiotics or animal byproducts in the feed. They currently run about 30,000 head in this program. If an animal gets sick and needs care it is out of the program because antibiotics may be needed to heal the animal.
We went to see Rattlesnake Kate at the museum. She lived near Ione in the 1920s. Her husband left her and she lived alone with her small son. They had no meat to eat so she and her son went hunting. They did not find any deer or other large animals for food. She did find herself in a rattlesnake winter home as she was returning to their cabin and shot some of the snakes. They just kept coming and she beat them with a shovel and then they escaped and went home. Kate then realized that the rattlesnakes were “meat” so the next day she went back and collected them for food and the skins. She had killed 140 of them without being bitten. She made the skins into clothing and wore her rattlesnake skin dress and shoes for special events.
Our last stop was the Greeley Freight Station Museum which houses a huge model train layout. This train was Dave Trussel’s idea and was twelve years in the planning and five and a half years in the actual construction of the layout. Volunteers come in and clean the track, and run the trains. The layout includes 16,000 miniature pine trees, 8,000 fir trees, 4,000 aspen trees, many trestles and many complete trains. It is a kids of all ages delight and has 15,000 visitors each year. Michelle is the Executive Director and is the only employee – all the rest of the upkeep and work is done by volunteers!
University of Northern Colorado is located in Greeley as well. UNC was formed in 1889, started classes in 1890 and currently has about 20,000 students. Its main focus is on teaching, nursing, and business degrees.
---Nancy Brueggeman