Growing peaches in western Colorado is a “high-risk game,” says farmer Greg Walcher, who, with his wife, Diana, has been in the game for years. High-risk and just plain high. At elevations of 4,700 to 6,850 feet, peach farms here are the highest in the country, perched precariously between glory and disaster. The spring frosts of this rugged land can destroy a crop in a heartbeat. And yet for about 100 years a group of hearty orchardists have been farming here. Why? Because this is a gamble that pays off—when it does—with peaches so good they fetch three times the average wholesale price of their more earthbound siblings.
Grand Junction, the largest city in western Colorado, sits in the broad Grand Valley, rimmed by spectacular cliffs and surrounded by desert scrublands. From Fruita to Fruitdale the valley is dotted with houses that would fit easily into any suburb. But at the eastern end, threaded by the narrow Colorado River, lies the green carpet of Palisade, and it is here you find the state’s top-producing orchards—1,500 acres that produce three quarters of the state’s peaches. (East, over the Grand Mesa, lie the second-largest growing areas of Hotchkiss and Paonia.)
Palisade itself is sprinkled with fruit stands; even private homes here have signs in their front yards advertising “Tree-Ripened Peaches.” On a 90-degree day in August, the air is sweet with their aroma.
The days may be hot here, but Colorado nights are cooler than those in California’s Central Valley, home to most of the nation’s peach crop. This allows the trees to respire, producing fruits with higher sugar, acids, and flavor. The dry climate (average rainfall around here is just eight inches a year) helps, too, keeping the trees healthy and the fruit’s flavor intense.
“Our peaches thrive on our hot days and cool nights,” Diana Walcher says as she walks the rows of the 15-acre orchard that she and Greg own. The majestic striated 6,765-foot cliffs of Mount Garfield rise up behind her.
To prove her point, Diana selects two velvety orbs so soft they show slight thumbprints when picked, and cuts samples: first a fragrant Glohaven, with a rich, classically balanced flavor, then a Redglobe, which is sweeter, with lower acidity.
In August, the high-risk game gets even riskier, but unless it’s played this way quality is compromised. “We leave the peaches on the tree much longer than anyone else,” says Greg, a fifth-generation Coloradan whose father and grandfather were also peach growers, and who is now running for the area’s seat in Congress. “They’re extremely perishable, so you lose a lot of the crop, but you get more money for them. That’s our strategy.”
After the peaches are picked, the Walchers take another risk: Unlike huge commercial operations, they never expose their fruit to refrigerated storage. Refrigeration makes peaches last longer, says Diana, but ruins the flavor and texture.
It’s not just the fruits but the trees themselves that must be protected from the mountain cold. Peach trees are injured when the temperature falls below minus 12 degrees. This seldom happens in Palisade, which is practically a banana belt compared with the rest of Colorado, but in December of 1963 the temperature fell rapidly and hundreds of thousands of trees were killed. While that was a rare catastrophe, the cold snaps of spring are an almost annual problem.
“We don’t go anywhere during April,” says Brant Harrison, of Kokopelli Produce. He and his wife, Carol, grow 24 acres of organic peaches on a farm they named for the Hopi figure that represents good harvest. The name may seem like wishful thinking during the spring, when temperatures barely below freezing can utterly destroy buds and young fruit. Harrison is awakened several times during the month by a temperature-controlled alarm signaling that it’s time to crank up the sprinklers and propane heaters. Other growers use windmill-like machines to temper the cold air that settles near the ground with warmer air from above.
In his 1951 “orchard hoopie” (a custom-fitted flatbed truck) Brant tools around his new planting at the mouth of the De Beque Canyon, which begins to narrow east of Palisade. Two phenomena occur in Brant’s orchards: Cold air drains downhill, so slightly higher elevations with good airflow are safer from frost than dips and plains. Second, the air travels down the canyon, compressing and warming it to create the celebrated “Million Dollar Breeze” that rescues farmers from devastating frosts.
“Once during a freeze I went to our ranch in the canyon and the leaves on the trees were starting to rustle,” said Brant. “The breeze had begun, and I went back up to the home ranch in Palisade and fifteen minutes later it was fifty degrees.”
Brant tears open an aromatic Suncrest peach, the old-fashioned variety made famous by David Mas Masumoto’s Epitaph for a Peach. Juice sprays everywhere; it is just as sugary and intense as a peach can be.
Although this is a great peach, Suncrest has become a rarity in California because it is too soft for long-distance shipping. But here in Palisade it’s the top variety. No one is breeding new varieties for Colorado conditions, so, in addition to Suncrest, local growers rely on the classics, such as the yellow-fleshed Cresthaven and J.H. Hale, which, shortly after it was introduced, in 1912, was called “one of the sensations of the pomological world.” (Its almost perfectly spherical shape allowed it to be easily packed and shipped.) The top peach varieties grown in Colorado all originated years ago, before size, redness, and firmness became more important than taste. Compared to fruits from California, where growers race to plant the newest models, Colorado peaches are like cars with tail fins.
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