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A new seed store and bakery is opening its doors in Cortez for the first time on Saturday. Pueblo Seed & Food Company sells seeds that originated in and are adapted to the desert Southwest, as well as curated seeds from different arid regions all over the world. The company’s farm is located in McElmo Canyon on land protected by a Montezuma Land Conservancy easement, and grows crops like heritage wheat, rye and barley. Nanna Meyer, a baker and co-owner of Pueblo Seed & Food Company, says that she hopes the store will help provide a return to food culture for the residents of Montezuma County after years of isolation during the pandemic. And a new Colorado gun-control law that’s on hold due to a court challenge won’t be going into effect anytime soon.

Colorado’s Division of Water Resources held a meeting in Cortez on Wednesday to seek input from irrigators on the division’s proposed water measurement rules. The rules would mean that farmers in the San Juan and Dolores River basins must begin using measurement methods in order to better record the storage and releases of their water. The Division of Water Resources meeting comes after the Yampa and White basins went through a similar rule-making process to crack down on water users diverting from streams without proper measuring devices. And Congress is considering eliminating federal funding for public media. A House subcommittee recently approved legislation that would zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

On Tuesday, the Cortez City Council will hold a meeting and make a decision about a rezoning application for a parcel of land near Carpenter Natural Area. The parcel to be discussed during Tuesday’s meeting is located off of Highway 491 and is owned by Independent Log Company. The land does not border residential properties but is adjacent to the park. And Indigenous communities are calling for a million acres of land surrounding the Grand Canyon to be declared a national monument. The Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni national monument would leave in place a moratorium on uranium mining in the region that tribes like the Havasupai say is important to protect sacred sites like nearby Red Butte.

Montezuma Land Conservancy, or MLC, announced the conservation of two new parcels of land in Montezuma County on Monday, including one bordering Mesa Verde National Park. The other parcel is located near the Boggy Draw trail system. MLC is a nonprofit trust that works to protect land in southwest Colorado for its wildlife habitat, agricultural potential or public trails. Travis Custer, executive director of MLC, says that the addition of the conserved private land near Mesa Verde to an already existing public lands corridor in the area means more habitat protection for mule deer and certain species of birds listed on the state’s threatened and endangered list. And Colorado state lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and their caucuses have more time to respond to alleged violations of open meeting laws.

On Thursday, a coalition of local government agencies and nonprofits is dedicating a park bench to those in the Cortez community who have died in the area while experiencing homelessness. The Montezuma County Homelessness Prevention Coalition is a collaboration between groups like The Piñon Project Family Resource Center and the city of Cortez to help unhoused residents of Montezuma County. Lucia Bueno-Valdez is the homelessness prevention coordinator for The Piñon Project and a key member of the coalition. She says one of the problems the group faces in assisting unhoused people is a lack of available data on how many have lived in Montezuma County, historically. And Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold is speaking out against a proposed merger between grocery store giants Kroger and Albertsons.

Fallow sugarcane plantation fields may have fueled the devastating fires in Maui, a California law that sets confinement standards for pigs and poultry gets push back amid calls for changes from animal advocates, the 2023 Farm Bill is languishing in Congress, and sales of plant-based meat alternatives are slipping.

Environmental groups that work to protect the Black Mesa region in northeast Arizona say that Peabody Energy has not done a sufficient job of reclaiming the now-defunct Kayenta coal mine, and shouldn’t be refunded millions of dollars in bond money. Recently, the coal company Peabody Energy applied for the release of $17.3 million, part of a larger bond held by the Office of Surface Mining, or the OSM, for parts of the Kayenta Mine that have undergone some phases of reclamation. The office is under the Department of the Interior, and is tasked with ensuring coal mines adequately restore land damaged during strip mining. The bonds were posted with the OSM by Peabody to be returned only after the mine lands had been reclaimed to certain standards. In late August, the OSM held a public meeting on the bond release at the Navajo chapter house in Forest Lake where some community members also raised concerns about the long-term impact of mining on local water resources.

A group dedicated to protecting water sources in the Black Mesa region of northeast Arizona has filed resolutions from eighteen different Navajo chapter houses to a federal agency in opposition to proposed water storage projects. Tó Nizhóní Ání, or Sacred Water Speaks, is a Navajo nonprofit that works to protect water sources on Black Mesa from misuse and contamination by energy companies. Adrian Herder, a campaign lead for Sacred Water Speaks, says that his organization has submitted resolutions to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission opposing the three Black Mesa Pumped Storage projects. And more money than ever before is being spent on lobbying in Colorado. The Colorado Sun reports more than $50M went to lobbyists from July 1, 2022 to the end of June this year.

Last Wednesday, Montezuma Land Conservancy, or MLC, was awarded a grant to help protect a 3,000 acre ranch in Dolores County. The grant from the nonprofit Great Outdoors Colorado will help with the costs associated with conserving land like the Ivins Ranch, which is located near Groundhog Reservoir. The conserved land would directly border public lands like the Lone Cone State Wildlife Area and the McKenna Peak Wilderness Study Area. According to James Reimann, the conservation director for MLC, the newly protected area could help provide wildlife like elk and lynx with a corridor to safely travel across.

National Farm Safety Week runs from September 17th through the 23rd, rural areas suffer from a shortage of veterinarians, new research finds that yields for some organic crops are sometimes higher than conventionally produced crops, and a look at the chocolate candy cycle with diary cows.