Routt Ranchers Test Drought Resilience at July Field Day

Steamboat Springs —Will my ranch survive the next drought?

That is the question rattling around North Routt as the summer heat sets in. The 2026 Soil Health & Adaptive Grazing Field Day, hosted by the Routt County Conservation District (RCCD) on July 25, tried to answer it. The event gathered landowners and managers from across the county for a day of walking pastures, measuring soil temperatures, and comparing grazing rotations.

The workshop was led by Fernando Falomir, a fifth-generation rancher from Chihuahua, Mexico. To hear him tell it, his family’s operation in the Chihuahuan Desert was struggling with low productivity and economic viability. He applied regenerative principles to improve soil health, which increased forage production enough to multiply the number of cattle his land could sustainably support.

He brought that story to a room full of locals facing their own record-dry season. The message was direct: you can do the same here.

The field day took place at the Murphy Larsen Ranch, leased by Davey Baron, an RCCD board member and owner of Elk River Livestock. Baron walked attendees through the management specifics — grazing density, duration, and seasonal timing — for each pasture. He paired those details with his goals for the future, working alongside Falomir to demonstrate how topography and species diversity interact with nutrient cycling.

The math holds up when you look at the six principles of soil health: understanding landscape context, minimizing disturbance, armoring the surface, bolstering diversity, maintaining living roots, and integrating livestock. These aren’t abstract concepts. They are the tools used to keep water in the soil and improve drought resilience.

RCCD’s work is part of a longer history. Conservation districts formed across the United States after the Dust Bowl, following President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 Standard State Soil Conservation Districts Law. Today, RCCD is run by a volunteer board of community members focused on working lands conservation.

The event was sponsored by the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust (CCALT) and the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. CCALT partners with farmers and ranchers to enhance conservation values on working lands, mirroring RCCD’s mission. The goal is to keep ranchers on the land and land in agricultural production, generating benefits for both private owners and the public.

The question is whether these local efforts can offset the broader climate pressures hitting the Yampa Valley. The district’s approach is grounded in local leadership and democratic organization, but the results depend on consistent application by individual landowners.

Falomir left attendees with a perspective shaped by decades of adapting to harsh conditions in Mexico. He told the crowd that regenerative practices are not a luxury; they are a requirement for survival in arid landscapes.

"The land gives back what you put into it," Falomir said, looking out over the dry pastures of North Routt. "You just have to be patient enough to see it."