‘Absolutely rocked’: Storm destroys $500K worth of crops at Berthoud farm

Editor’s note: The headline for this story was updated to reflect the value of crops lost.

DENVER ( KDVR ) — More rain fell in Denver on Saturday than the entire month of June , leaving flooded roadways and 90 calls for service within one hour. Meanwhile, hailstorms swept through farmlands in Berthoud, destroying a season’s worth of crops on one malthouse’s farm.

Root Shoot Malting posted on social media about the storm that swept through Berthoud, which took out most of the crops and totaled around half a million dollars in damage.

“Our world got absolutely rocked last night from yesterday’s raging hail storm. It’s extremely devastating when a single storm can wipe out an entire season worth of crops, and even more devastating to walk the fields this morning with Todd,” the malthouse posted on its Instagram on Sunday.

The malthouse said the Berthoud fields were hit the worst, where 120 acres of distillers corn, 12 acres of their trial blue corn, 300 acres of alfalfa and 70 acres of Genie barley were destroyed.

“Over 512 acres, five months of fieldwork during the season, countless hours of irrigation, and only 30 minutes of hail,” said the malthouse.

While the farm is still evaluating its losses, the malthouse told FOX31 that the estimated crop value loss is just over $550,000 while the 132 acres of corn and 70 acres of barley allocated for our malthouse, about a quarter of the crops, are at a 100% loss.

“This is the first year we’ve ever had a total loss on an entire field of corn and barley,” the malthouse said.

Despite the crop losses, there will still be enough whiskey to go around the malthouse in Larimer County.

“As farmers/small growers for the whiskey and craft beer industries, we always plan for catastrophic weather events,” Root Shoot told FOX31. “Our current grain inventory will get us through until next year’s harvest, and we’ll be able to supply our brewers and distillers for the next several months. However, we’ll be extremely reliant on next year’s growing season to build our inventory up again.”

There were some crops spared. The farm said it could recover about 300 acres of alfalfa while one other Genie barley field and corn field is worth harvesting.

“Only time will tell what ‘getting back to normal means for us and our neighboring farmers who were also affected, but for now we’ll take it one day at a time with a whiskey in hand,” the malthouse told FOX31.

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