PALISADE — As the pink promise of peach blossoms spreads across the Palisade area this week, one of the top fruit-growing areas in the Rocky Mountain region has a new guarantee that fruit growing will continue, despite increasing development pressures.
The Mesa Land Trust has placed four orchards and vineyards totaling 115 acres under conservation easements in a new effort to save prime farmland. The Land Trust's Fruitlands Forever Initiative is targeting another 500 acres of orchards and vineyards for conservation over the next five years.
That may not sound like a significant amount of land when compared with conservation easements of thousands of acres in other parts of the state, but only 2,200 acres of prime farmland is still in fruit production in the Palisade area. Most of those acres are considered endangered by subdivision development.