Story: War Comes to Idaho; Also Ribeyes, Top Sirloins, Pork Chops, and more!
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, and an update on this week’s featured cuts!
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 DEc 6!
Place your order by Sunday at midnight on the 5th to get it shipped on the 6th!
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 deals include those lovely ribeye steaks, pork chops. sirloin steaks, and summer sausage! All marked down by 10% until this Sunday at midnight.
This Week on the RancH: Fall Grazing
It’s been a beautifully warm week on the ranch these last few days. Even though we’ve entered December, the bright winter sun makes these days feel pretty warm. The other day we were all working out in t-shirts and tank tops!
This warmer weather means that the cattle continue to graze. We saved up some “summer sunshine” in the form of grass we let grow out before autumn frosts hit. It still stands out in the field, traces of green hidden under the brown top layer, and the beeves are getting fat and full on it.
I (Linnaea here writing this) walked through them today for one of our frequent checks to make sure everybody is doing well. Most of them were relaxed and laying down in the sunshine for their afternoon break to chew the cud. I left the pasture feeling almost as content as them. As we often say around here, when the cattle are happy, we’re happy too.
Quote of the Week
“For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment the size of its income or even the statistics of its productivity but the good health of the land.”
―Wendell Barry, philosopher, farmer, and author
This Week’s Story From the Ranch: War Comes to Idaho
Today, Glenn is off making the case for regenerative agriculture in a presentation at Calvin University (fun fact: he went there many years ago…we won’t say how many). This means he’s not here to write his weekly story, but is instead off sharing many of his best to the audience at Calvin.
So this week’s story is one Glenn wrote a long time ago, but it’s a truly epic tale. It doesn’t, perhaps, have much to do with ranching, but when Glenn first heard the pieces of this story, it was one he couldn’t resist researching further and finally putting together.
After the ground crew pulled wheel chocks, Howard Thompson, Flight Officer aboard the B-17 Flying Fortress fired up the 4 Pratt and Whitney engines while Commanding Officer and First Lieutenant Joe Brensinger worked through the preflight. It was late Tuesday afternoon, on March 30, 1943. It wasn’t their first training mission, by any means; this one focused on local navigation skills. As they prepared for takeoff, all of the 9 young men on board knew very well their ultimate fate once their training was completed: it would most likely be over the skies of Germany, dropping bombs on Axis targets. It would happen soon enough; there was no imminent path toward victory in either the Europe or Pacific theaters.
As the Fortress taxied to the runway, an ominous and brisk northwest wind blew across the tarmac in Walla Walla, Washington. Gray moisture-bearing clouds coalesced over the airfield. The electric heaters had not yet actuated in their flight suits, and Joe could feel the cold in his bones….
Click below to read the rest on our blog!
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 the following cuts:
- Ribeyes…Glenn’s favorite steak and true marbled beauty.
- Top Sirloins…a great little steak with tenderness and some lovely pastured fat.
- Pork Chops! We love the way these caremalize when pan-fried in a cast iron on the stovetop…it’s simple and delicious!
- Summer Sausage…A great gift, stocking stuffer, or addition to a Christmas charcuterie platter!
Lamb, Pork, Chicken, and Sockeye Salmon are all still in
and 3Fs just back!
And then…THE HOLIDAY SCHEDULE!
If you’re thinking of giving Alderspring as a gift this year or just want to know when those shipping days will be over the next two months so you can get your beef when you need it, here are the details!
- We won’t ship the last week before Christmas. This means your last chance to get a gift order shipped before Christmas is to place your order by December 12! Leave a note in the comments at checkout if you place a gift order before then but you’d like us to hold your order and not ship it until December 12th.
- We’ve switched to 2nd Day Air shipping only starting after Thanksgiving and until the 1st of the year. This is to make sure your order gets to you quickly and still frozen even during typical UPS holiday delays!
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.
A beaver Bio….
As Glenn was off at Calvin University giving a speech today, one thing he talked about was beavers! And they’re worth talking about because they’ve recently returned to our rangeland for the first time in a very long time. That’s exciting stuff because when beavers make dams, they expand wet areas, improve soil health, and build habitat for a variety of other wildlife and plants.
But beavers won’t colonize an area unless if certain conditions are met. They need enough water, food, and woody plants to build dams with. When we first started here, there were no beavers because the streams and wet areas on our range had been grazed hard for over a century. There wasn’t much left over for the beavers.
Even though we tried to intensively manage our cattle, we simply couldn’t keep them out of streams altogether. We had one colony of beavers come in, but they left soon after. That’s part of why we started “inherding.” Once we switched to living with the cattle and controlling exactly where they grazed, we could avoid any impacts whatsoever in streams or wet areas and finally give those areas time to recover and become beaver habitat.
And we’ve been amazed at how quickly results happened. It’s a testament to the resilience of nature. Within one year, we had one colony come back. Then another, and 2 more the year after. Now we have 14 thriving colonies on our range.
So that’s the story of beavers on Alderspring! Glenn’s preparation for his talk this week has brought it to the surface of all of our minds, so we thought we’d highlight it in this week’s newsletter.
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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