In a cornfield just before dawn, the morning chill surrenders to the light. The stillness of the night gives way to chirping birds mixed with the sound of flowing irrigation water. Insects are buzzing nearby as two dozen workers with the Tuxedo Corn Company are about to begin their day harvesting corn.

Tuxedo Corn Company founder and farmer John Harold has chosen a field about three miles west of Delta, Colo., on a bluff overlooking the Gunnison River, as the site for the first day of the 2025 Olathe Sweet brand sweet corn harvest.

As Harold walks through rows of the petite corn plants he notices some ears have already been eaten by deer. He turns to find a skunk crawling through the same field looking for food. He then uses his fingers to check the length of the ear before tearing open the top of the ear to find the golden kernels his corn is famous for.

“It has to be right,” Harold said of his corn. “We don’t want to pick anything damaged or isn’t good.”

As workers climb aboard a large mechanical harvesting machine powered by a Ford F-350 truck engine, other workers begin to rip the top ears of sweet corn from the delicate corn stalks and gently toss them into metal baskets. The ears are then packaged 48 at a time, into large plastic crates which will then be iced before shipment.

Millions of ears from the Olathe and Delta countryside will now begin their journey to supermarkets across the United States. In normal years, Tuxedo Corn, the largest sweet corn producer in Colorado and one of the largest in the United States, would ship around 600,000 boxes of corn to Kroger supermarkets nationwide.

With 48 ears per box, this calculates to around 28.8 million ears of corn. Harold reports that this year, 2025, the yield will be lower than in years past with the company estimating to ship about 400,000 boxes, or 19.2 million ears of hand-picked corn, which will arrive in stores from Alaska to Virginia in the coming days and weeks.

But on this day, the first truck always heads to Denver.

Rhoades, 69, said the Hardrockers’ Holidays is his favorite weekend of the year, and has competed in each year’s competitions since 1974.

The Hardrockers’ Holidays celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, and festivities were held Aug. 10-11. The weekend-long holiday featured competitions that emulate work deep underground in active mines. Men and women of all ages compete for cash, prizes and bragging rights following a contests that tested the mental and physical limitations of the competitors.

In the Single Jack, men and women must hold a single driving spike in place with one hand, and use the other hand to drive the spike into the rock using a heavy hammer. Whoever reaches the greatest depth at the end of 5 minutes is the winner. In the team event of Double Jacking, one person holds the drill’s steel spike in place while the other uses their full force to swing a 10-pound sledge hammer to drive the dill spike into the rock.

There isn’t much room for error. Missing the steel with the hammer could mean broken bones, muscle contusions or the loss of fingers. In past years, injuries were so severe competitors needed immediate medical attention. Other minor injuries are treated with cold beer, laughs, camaraderie, or by rubbing a little dirt over the wound.

Mining is an identity for many here, and while the business of mineral extraction may be shut down in these mountains for now, the legacy of hard rock mining in the San Juans is as deep as the ore veins that still run through them.

And the techniques to drive steel into hard rock, or mucking loose rock and debris from mines are skills passed down from generation to generation. Like the ore veins themselves, this heritage has solidified into a legacy that the locals here keep close to their hearts. For some of the old timers, just having these competitions going is reward itself. For the younger competitors, having events like Silverton can be used as practice and qualifiers for other larger events that are held around the country.

There is a saying that has even become a popular bumper sticker in Colorado: “If it’s not grown, it’s mined.”

Long before the mountain towns of Colorado became destinations for million-dollar homes, ski hills and film festivals, the first prospectors traversed these towering ridgelines in search of gold, silver, zinc, copper and lead. Years after silver was first discovered here, the town of Silverton was formally founded in 1874 by mining entrepreneurs Thomas Blair, William Kearnes and Dempsey Reese.

Fueled by the silver boom of the 1880s, Colorado at one time was one of the richest places on Earth. And Silverton would become one of the state’s most productive gold and silver communities well into the 20th century.

The Hardrockers’ Holidays, formally known as Sheepmen’s Days, was first held sometime in the 1930s. By 1953, mining was shut down and the festival was all but forgotten. By 1955, the town’s last hospital closed due to a lack of patients, according to Silverton native Tom Zanoni.

“The heart and soul of the town was mining, and to lose that was hard,” Zanoni said.

Sometime in 1973, Tom and his brother Zeke, who passed away last year, began an effort to revive the games. In 1974, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the original platting of the town, this group of citizens revived this cherished local celebration.

“It brought back some healing to the community, it allowed us to show our pride again, to celebrate our history and who we are, so that’s why we brought it back,” Zanoni said.

Rhoades said preserving the Hardrockers’ Holidays is important to maintaining the identity of the greater San Juan region. Following the Hardrockers’ Holidays, Ouray hosts its own Highgraders Holiday in Ouray Miners Park, Aug. 23-25. In Colorado, there are only four of these events still operating, with the other two held in Leadville and Creede.

Just before sunrise on Monday, July 22, about three dozen workers of the Tuxedo Corn Company enter a corn field, cooled by overnight air, to begin the first full day of harvesting the popular Olathe Sweet brand sweet corn from a field off Falcon Road southwest of Olathe, Colorado.

The workers rip the top ears from each plant and gently toss them into a large mechanical harvester where awaiting workers sort and package them into boxes, four dozen ears of sweet corn per box. From there, the boxes are iced and shipped to Kroger stores across the United States. Colorado residents may see the corn at their local Kroger stores as soon as the following day.

Tuxedo Corn Company farmer John Harold said 2024 harvest numbers are below normal, but he still expects to ship around 300,000 boxes, or about 14.4 million individual ears, of sweet corn from the Olathe countryside. According to Harold, this years operation is dealing with factors like insect infestations that have hindered the farm’s ability to produce the quantity of quality corn they’re used to. An average year’s yield would be roughly 600,000 boxes of corn.

According to Harold, the most they’ve ever shipped in a growing year is 750,000 boxes, or 30 million ears.

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This season Tuexdo Corn Company founder and farmer John Harold had planned to ship 600,000 boxes of corn to deliver his large Kroger contract. At 48 ears per box, the estimated yield in 2023 was 28.8 million ears. An infestation of ear worms has curtailed that estimate. Harold said he expects to ship about 100,000 fewer boxes than normal, with crews picking around the infested plants.

The company is the largest grower of sweet corn in Colorado, with tens of thousands of acres of rural Olathe countryside planted each year. The corn is usually picked by hand due to the tenderness of its kernels, but this year workers are inspecting every single plant carefully to avoid the ear worms.

Once the corn is harvested, it’s boxed, iced and ready for delivery. Consumers can expect to see the corn in Colorado grocery stores in the coming days and weeks.

The 50th Telluride Bluegrass Festival opened Thursday, June 15 with a mix of new and veteran artists from Bella White to Del McCoury to Béla Fleck and the Flecktones to Colorado’s own the String Cheese Incident. Other notable Telluride favorites like Sam Bush sat in with various groups during the afternoon.

As fresh snow fell on the towering peaks of the San Juan Mountains overlooking the valley, opening day weather saw sporadic rain showers mixed with short periods of sunshine as temperatures barely cracked 50 degrees. It was certainly different in past years where hot, sunny days brought thousands of music fans twirling around Town Park. The four-day 50th Telluride Bluegrass Festival runs through Sunday.

The venue, about 50 miles southeast of Grand Junction, is a small grange hall located where Colorado Highway 348 and Banner Road meet on the Western Slope, and it has become one of the state’s most random and remote destinations for old-time Americana music.

Before that pandemic shut it down, audiences came from hundreds of miles away to attend the vintage folk and bluegrass music show. Now, three years after the last performance, Pea Green Saturday Night has returned this winter on the last Saturday of each month.

Attendees show up early as the Pea Green Community House fills up quickly, and everyone knows to bring a potluck dish. Onstage before the show is a microphone bearing the letters KPEA, call letters are for a fictional radio station that emcees Dean Rickman and Len Willey — musicians and “sophisticated hillbillies” known as the Pea Green Brothers — have created as part of their act.

Think “A Prairie Home Companion,” but instead of stories from Lake Wobegon, Willey and Rickman tell tall tales from Delta County and the greater Western Slope.

For now, the show’s format will remain the same as it has been for the past 16 years: an opening band, followed by refreshments and a potluck, a short comedy routine and more music. The shows, held January through April, usually sell out. Doors open at the Pea Green Community House an hour before the 7 p.m. showtime. Cost of admission is $15.

Farm humor is an integral part of the Pea Green Brothers’ identity, along with “the redneck book of manners,” notes from “the very brave man contest” and the “male advice column” for on-stage skits composed of, as they call it, “useless information.”

Even if you haven’t heard of Pea Green (which is really just a rural crossroads), you’ve probably tasted the food that is grown nearby, as each July, the famous Olathe brands of sweet corn are harvested here. The town of Pea Green’s first building, the schoolhouse, was built in 1887 with supplies from a local timber mill. Just after the schoolhouse was completed, cans of paint — a “fresh peas” color — arrived from the federal government. The name Pea Green stuck.

The Pea Green Community House followed in 1927, and was renovated in the 1990s to provide indoor plumbing. The building now is on the State Register of Historic Properties. During the pandemic, the inside of the community house has had some work done. A  fresh coat of green paint has been applied to the building’s interior, and there’s new carpet on stage. Rickman built a stage extension using recycled wood from his farm and said the stage will also have new lighting.

But one of the show’s biggest investments came in the form of green sport coats for the Brothers that were recently purchased from a Delta thrift store.

During the winters of 2021 and 2022, in the thick of the pandemic, the Brothers had to make the difficult decision to postpone the series due to public safety.

“We are told that winters have been especially bleak and long without a PGSN show to look forward to,” Willey said. “We sense that folks are delighted for the return of PGSN. The bands are especially happy for the return of the show season and quickly add that PGSN is their favorite venue to play at.”

Both men are thrilled to have the show finally return and look forward to many more years of delivering rarely-heard music. For Rickman, the show’s growth and authenticity is comparable with fixing farm equipment. For example, an engine can’t run for very long with cheap parts.

“Len and I are the real deal. We perform for the fans because we don’t know how not to. To us, this is not an act … this is authentic Pea Green,” Rickman said.

Willey, the show’s original founder, is a lifelong musician who traces his musical knowledge to the hollows and hills of Appalachia, to  music “before electricity, before bluegrass,” mostly old-timey, ancestral tunes that have been passed down through generations.

“Sure, we are elderly and yet we yearn for the older times of simple music and humor. And the food was better back then,” Willey said. “We purposely and carefully chose an era and a style to perform within that we believe complemented PGSN as well as our own lifestyle. We both own and operate small farms and play old-time music ourselves, so the presentation of a 1930s-era event” made sense.

“It does take considerable effort to remain the same with this era of the past,” Willey said. “But this effort is necessary to preserve and present a unique and memorable experience that is outside the standard of today.

“We believe that we are true to the times and to the grange hall building itself. We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

But the group did make one concession to modernity: Pea Green Saturday Night now has a Facebook page where attendees can get news on future headliners and musicians.

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