Rae Solomon
Reporter, Rural and Small CommunitiesEmail: rae.solomon@kunc.org
I am the Rural and Small Communities Reporter at KUNC. That means my focus is building relationships and telling stories from under-covered pockets of Colorado.
Working in public radio is a huge passion that dates back to my youth in the suburbs of NYC, where I was surrounded by a wealth of great public and free-form radio stations. I love the immediacy of radio and I pride myself on quickly gathering information and finding ways to frame stories for maximum impact and engagement.
Before coming to the radio light, I was a licensed architect, practicing in Los Angeles, New York and Colorado. I launched my radio career as an avid volunteer KGNU, community radio for Denver/Boulder.
When I’m not at work, you can find me hiking, camping, fussing over my houseplants and doing strange art projects with my kids.
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In the midsts of endless cornfields in Yuma, high school music teacher Robert Zahllerr has carved out a special place in the Yuma High School's music program. -
Last week, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was in Denver to discuss significant federal funds coming to Colorado to support Climate-Smart Agriculture – an initial investment of $2.8 billion.With all that funding coming in, KUNC’s Rae Solomon wanted to get the low down on what Climate-Smart Agriculture means. She did some digging, and recently sat down with All Things Considered host Beau Baker to share what she found.
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Mushroom experts are vastly outnumbered by fungi they study. That means amateur mushroom hunters discover lots of new species, adding significantly to scientific knowledge.
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In spite of ongoing drought in parts of the state, it was a very wet August in Colorado’s mountains. Heavy rains brought an abundance of wild mushrooms, including some that are new to science. But novel mushroom species are more common than you might think. And a lot of them are found by citizen scientists – amateurs - with a passion for foraging.
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Late summer is county fair season around the country and in Colorado, and the festivities are finally returning to normal this third summer of the pandemic. In the coming weeks, Lincoln and Routt counties, among others, will have their fairs, and it all builds up to the state fair at the end of this month in Pueblo. But in Yuma, the focus is on the farm and future farmers.
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Dryland wheat farming on Colorado’s Eastern Plains has never been easy. But there’s a new and growing challenge. A native bug that has lived on the plains for at least 150 years has now become a scourge of the wheat fields.
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Emerging advances in renewable technologies could help extend the operating life of aging oil wells and help address Colorado’s orphan well problem.
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Kari Williams owns Snow-Capped Cider outside of Cedaredge, Colorado, where she crafts hard ciders exclusively from Colorado grown apples. She has a unique advantage as a local producer of hard cider: her family grows all of the apples that go into her brew. But as the climate changes, more extreme temperature swings are impacting fruit growers on the Western Slope.
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Early childhood educators are leaving the field due to issues ranging from low wages to stress that were exacerbated by the pandemic. Now, it’s harder and more expensive for working parents to find spots for their young children.
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What happens when oil and gas companies go bankrupt and can’t afford to properly shut down their wells? The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is trying to decide.
