(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Larimer County had a little fire today. The Colorado State Open Thread, 7/13/2026 [1] [] Date: 2026-07-13 Thankfully, the title image was not today’s new fire. Today’s fire was apparently only a couple of acres and was along the west side of Fort Collins. I haven’t heard anything about it other than it was either a grass fire or a brush fire and it was put out fairly quickly. I received the alert on my phone about the mandatory and stand-by evacuations since it’s within my county. I’m thankful that the Fort Collins fire crews still had enough staff to put this out given that Fort Collins was at 99 degrees today and everyone across the state is spread thin. There are two new fires burning up close to Winter Park now. I feel for all the folks around Colorado who are sweltering under the heat, smoke and nervousness of the fire danger because any spark can start yet another conflagration that can burn more tens or even hundreds of thousands of acres of our beautiful state and we’ve got months to go before we can perhaps breath easier. The picture above is from September and the two fires that threatened Estes Park in 2020 weren’t put out until October. The Marshall fire that was the state’s costliest fire that burned through Louisville and surroundings was, IIRC, around December, so keep on the alert, keep your go-bags ready, and remember that fire season is now 12 months of the year in Colorado. Now, on to some other stuff. Have any of you started exploring Palisade peaches and other Colorado produce? I bought a flat of peaches the other day from a roadside stand in Loveland the other day and it wasn’t until they totaled up my order that I realized that it came out to about $2/peach. Ouch! The peaches taste good and will make good preserves, don’t get me wrong, but that’s a very expensive delicacy. Safeway is now advertising them for $2/pound. Still, a roadside stand makes me feel slightly better. Slightly. On that note, From the Colorado Sun: The North Fork Valley where a number of Organic Fruit are raised in Colorado had a devasting freeze this spring. For businesses built entirely around fresh fruit, there are few ways to replace a lost harvest. Packing sheds can’t pack fruit that doesn’t exist. Farmers who rely on wholesale sales have little to sell. Unlike vegetable farmers, orchardists cannot plow in a bad crop and replant. Their expenses remain whether fruit grows or not. An overnight freeze April 17 decimated fruit production across Colorado’s North Fork Valley, where most growers have reported a total loss of their crops. While the region produces only a fraction — estimated at 10% — of Colorado’s total fruit harvest, it is home to many of the state’s organic orchards and supplies farmers markets, wholesalers and retailers, as well as community-supported agriculture programs across the Western Slope and Front Range. Yet while the fruit may be gone, the business of fruit farming continues. Orchards still must be irrigated, fertilized and maintained. Year-round employees still need paychecks. Relationships with farmers markets, wholesale buyers and CSA members must be preserved. The effects of the freeze have rippled far beyond the orchards themselves, affecting seasonal farmworkers, packing sheds and businesses that depend on a harvest that will never come. Now, growers across the valley are confronting a difficult question: How do you survive a year without the crop that normally pays the bills? Finding another way to make a living For businesses built entirely around fresh fruit, there are few ways to replace a lost harvest. Packing sheds can’t pack fruit that doesn’t exist. Farmers who rely on wholesale sales have little to sell. Unlike vegetable farmers, orchardists cannot plow in a bad crop and replant. Their expenses remain whether fruit grows or not. The loss reaches the Front Range The effects of the freeze extend far beyond Delta County. For decades, North Fork Valley growers have been among the cornerstone fruit vendors at the Boulder County Farmers Market, where shoppers have come to expect peaches, cherries and apples from farms like First Fruits and Ela Family Farms every summer. Makes my $2/peach, even a non-organic peach, seem like a small price to pay when the growers are facing some hard times. I do miss my peach trees in my back yard when I lived in Denver, though. Picking them right off the tree and eating the sun-warmed fruit were the best. Also, from the Colorado Sun: https://coloradosun.com/2026/07/13/ice-contractor-to-open-new-detention-center/ As usual, ICE is hiding their intent to open a new 1200 bed facility in a former private prison in Hudson, northeast of Denver. Here are some quotes from the article. The GEO Group, which already runs an immigration detention facility in Aurora, announced plans Monday to expand to Hudson in a shuttered facility they used as a prison until 2014. Federal securities filings show the building is owned by a subsidiary of a Chicago company, Highlands REIT, a real estate investment trust. They will be paid $250,000 per month to start on Aug. 1, with that rent going up to nearly $1 million a month in six months, or as soon as the facility is occupied. … The Aurora ICE Processing Center last year expanded its capacity to 1,530 and officials reported to Democratic Rep. Jason Crow’s office that they were nearing capacity. That means it’s among the 10 biggest populations of immigrant detainees in the country, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. … Andrea Loya, who runs Casa de Paz, an organization that helps immigrants reunite with their families, said she’s been tracking progress at the Hudson building since February. … Loya said she’s concerned about the proximity of emergency services to the Hudson facility. The Casa de Paz office is across the street from the Aurora detention facility and she said they see daily calls for emergency vehicles. “This GEO Group does not have the capacity or the ability to house human lives safely,” she said. “They’re putting a facility miles and miles away with less transparency and less oversight.” The nearest fire station from the new Big Horn facility is two miles away and the nearest hospital is 12 miles away in Brighton, according to documents obtained by the ACLU of Colorado. DIA is 30 miles away, the documents said. I cannot recall this kind of rule bending and rule breaking just two years ago under a Democratic administration. If there was a law against something, or citizen outrage against something, there would be hearings, there would be efforts made to try and figure out a way to come up with a solution. There wouldn’t be strong-arm tactics or hiding what was going on until it was too late. If there was a council of a town trying to get their way on something such that they would be going behind peoples’ backs, there would be someone higher up the people could appeal to and the council would be slapped down. The FBI or DHS wouldn’t come in and make Gestapo noises and force people to accept what people didn’t want. Get out and vote this November and kick these people out! Until November, Make Good Trouble and Don’t Let These People Have Peace! Until then, the floor is yours. Let me know what further injustices you’ve heard of. Grrr! I could have written more, but I’m going to go out and walk my dogs and be happy with them. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/13/800069504/community/larimer-county-had-a-little-fire-today-the-colorado-state-open-thread-7-13-2026/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/