Dear Friends and Partners,
Welcome to Alderspring’s weekend edition newsletter!
In this letter is Glenn’s weekly story, a suite of pics about work on the ranch this week, what’s happening in our freezer, and a recipe to cook!
Want to follow along more day-to-day? Find us on Instagram and Facebook.
And, as always, if you have any questions, observations, or comments, just shoot us an email to Kelsey at help[at]alderspring[dot]com.
Next shipping day is Oct 4!
Place your order by Sunday at midnight to get it shipped out on Monday!
Looking for this week’s featured cuts? Head to the page below. Scroll on down for Glenn’s story and other newsletter stuff!
This week’s cuts include all the sausages and our extra lean ground round. Also back this week: the original 3F package and ground lamb!!!
This Week on the Ranch
With horses and cattle home on the ranch for the fall, work has reached a slightly less hectic pace. There is still the daily movement of cattle from paddock to paddock, the sorting of finished animals every couple of weeks, the weighing of each animal to determine daily gains over the summer, and then the general ranch upkeep that always keeps us somewhat busy. It’s nice to calm down a bit…and very nice to feel that welcome bite of coolness in the air as fall hits at last!
Quote of the Week
“No matter how good you are at reading the animal, the animal will always be better at reading you.”
―Bud Williams, considered by many to be the founder of today’s low-stress stockmanship and animal handling methods. We practice many of Bud’s methods here at Alderspring.
Glenn’s Story This Week: Why Cheaters Rarely Prosper in Organic
We had our organic inspection this week. I got out the record books, the photographs, the spreadsheets, the receipts, the weight manifests, the tag records and the maps. Thankfully, it was nice weather, and my inspector would not freeze to death in rain or sputtering snow as she carried out her documentation drama.
I think it was one of the most grueling inspections I’d been through; she left no stone unturned. Neighbor’s fences were thoroughly checked for buffers against possible chemical spray use (all buffers were in place and maintained by two layers of fence). Our freeze and fulfilment center were even checked out for cleaning products we use and possible contamination for our organic products (there were no vectors for such). .Records were exhaustively checked with math equations to determine that we produced all the grass and hay that our beeves consumed for the past year (they balanced).
Organic is for real. People joke about it, as if there is some shady deals going on, and it’s a government boondoggle. But the reality is that when you don’t know whether or not you can trust where your food comes from, you need someone to verify it for you.
Here’s a story I wrote a few years ago; the names have been changed, and the locations slightly altered. But it really happened; it’s for real. Happy Trails!
Featured Weekly Cuts
A quick summary of this week’s deals
(As always, only you newsletter readers have access to these discounts)!
This week you can get 10% off on both the following cuts:
- All the sausages. All of our fresh sausages, as well as our no junk real hotdogs!
- Ground round! For you lovers of lean protein.
Also note: 3Fs and ground lamb have both been restocked!
Remember, our inventories are VERY dynamic! Our goal is to turn it over 2 times a month to offer you the very freshest product right off of Alderspring’s pastures.
Weekly Happenings: Photos from the Ranch
Just because we’ve slowed down on the cowboying with winter approaching doesn’t mean the learning stops! Melanie has been interning with a local horse trainer, Andy Keys, the last few weeks and has already learned so much. He’s an excellent horseman and cowboy, having grown up working on big ranches across the Great Basin. When he offered a horsemanship and ranch roping clinic last weekend, Annie, Maddy, and Linnaea were excited to participate. They hauled several horses down to Salmon for three days.
Maddy brought Flint and rode him the first day in the horsemanship portion. She worked on helping him to soften through the face and move forward willingly. He’s a quiet horse and bit on the lazy side, so getting him freed up is a bit of a challenge! By the end of the session, he was much softer and more balanced.
The first day was focused on roping sans horses, throwing loops on the roping dummy from the ground while Andy critiqued our swing and delivery. The second day, however, we roped the dummy horseback.
As we roped, we learned how to better position our horses around the dummy, depending on the shot we were planning to throw. The horsemanship that we’d worked on the day before came in handy, because our horses were softer and more maneuverable when positioning them around the dummy. Andy also described multiple scenarios that we might run into while roping and how we could help each other out as a team to keep our horses out of trouble and to reduce stress on the cattle.
We all learned so much and had a lot of fun! I think even ol’ George enjoyed learning something new! We’re excited to practice and apply this new knowledge to help our horses get a little better and to better manage our cattle in a low stress manner. We never stop learning from our animals; they have so much to teach if we’re willing to pay attention.
And that’s it for this week! Thanks again for partnering in what we do!
Glenn, Caryl, cowgirls and cowboys at Alderspring
We’ve been crafting our pastured protein here in Idaho’s Rocky Mountains for nearly 30 years and delivering it direct to our partners for nearly as long. This is wild wellness, delivered from our ranch to your door.
Your partnership in Alderspring helps us maintain what is unique in today’s agricultural world; Alderspring is a Carbon NEGATIVE and Climate POSITIVE operation. We ran the numbers, and our cows help us capture more carbon in the ground each year on our irrigated pastures than we release!
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