Dear Friends and Partners,
Welcome to Alderspring’s weekend edition newsletter! Thank you for partnering in what we do!
Below you can find our featured deals, Glenn’s weekly story, and a suite of pics about work on the ranch this week!
This Week’s Story: “The Range of Life”
Weekend flash deal: 15% off ground round and top sirloin!
Plus this week’s coupon cuts: get 15% off burger patties, hot dogs, regular ground beef, and individual chuck roasts!
Scroll down for Glenn’s weekly story and updates from the ranch this week!
this week’s coupon cuts
Remember, only you newsletter readers have access to these discounts!
Next shipping day is June 12th! Get your order in by Sunday the 11th at midnight to have it shipped the next day.
FLASH DEAL FOR THIS WEEKEND ONLY! 15% off ground round and top sirloin!
Also, get 15% off this week on summer grillers!
- Burger Patties
- Hot dogs
- Regular ground beef
- Individual chuck roasts
And, new + recently restocked…
A few restocks heading into the weekend. Click the button below to eat the rest!
If you have any questions, observations, or comments, just send Kelsey an email at help[at]alderspring[dot]com.
This week on the ranch…
Melanie captured this image back on the ranch after another storm cell passed over. In her words, “We’ve had a remarkable cool and rainy spring. Massive storm cells pass over the ranch, bringing the awesome clash of thunder and lightning at their head and cooling rain in their wake. The past few years, June has been marked by hot, dry and dusty days. Not this year.
With the unprecedented moisture and the decades long practice and process of replenishing and renewing our soil through regenerative grazing methods, the forage at the home ranch is so high in sugars and other nutrients that our horses had to go into the summer dry lot rotation yesterday. limiting their turnout will prevent them from gaining too much weight or developing laminitis on the rich grass, as even the harder keepers are fat and glossy.
The herd has been up there for just over a week now, and we’re beginning to settle into the rhythm as crews rotate on and off the range, planning their comings and goings around near-continuous rain storms and slick roads.
The crew this year is a great one, and the stock water and grass are superb up there this year. It’s shaping up to be a wonderful season.
Want to follow along more day-to-day? Find us on Instagram and Facebook.
Quote of the Week
“Never, no, never did nature say one thing and wisdom another.”
-Edmund Burke
This week’s story: “The Range of Life”
Dear Friends,
We have buckskins, roans, duns and palominos. Then there are paints, sorrels and bays. Those are the names of colors, but in our life, only on horses. In fact, when you name the color, you are talking about a very specific animal. My daughters get very particular about describing them. They’ll call one a “red dun” or a “gray roan.”
Some are unusual bents on normal coloration. One, for instance, is what they call a “red palomino” even though after much discussion, they call her a “flaxen chestnut.” She breaks the traditional palomino mold of light blonde/yellow hide with a whitish mane and tail. Her hide is deep red (usually), which usually means “chestnut,” but her mane and tail can go to platinum blonde (“flaxen” like cured flax).
And then there is this little phenomenon we call springtime. I don’t know what the mechanism is, but as the horses cruise spring grass, their entire hair coloration can literally shift gears overnight. Their light buckskin hair at sunset can shift to an astounding burnished bronze by morning. I’m guessing it’s the phytochemcials in the grass, but it still astounds me how fast their colors change. It’s like they stepped into a salon and picked a new color.
Once such mare is Ruby, and she shows up in this story I penned a few years back in the spring of our range tour that year. The range was hard for her at first, given her upbringing; now it is second nature. She’s a stalwart member of our range string now; read all about her and a day in the life at cow camp in the high and wild of Bear Basin in today’s excerpt.
Happy Trails,
Glenn
Read the story on our blog by clicking below!
And that’s it for this week!
Thanks again for partnering in what we do!
Glenn, Caryl, cowgirls and cowboys at Alderspring.
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Ed Gardner (Edward A. Gardner)
In today’s email (June 10) you mention the “sagebrush ocean”, and that appears more or less often in your blog postings. It reminds me of something I was told years ago. I would encourage your writing something on the subject, particularly with your emphasis on regenerative grassland agriculture.
Twenty years ago more or less, my wife and I, our then elementary school aged son, and my elderly mother spent a week touring Western Colorado. Anything within a days drive of Grand Junction, including several National Parks and Monuments, Dinosaur and others. One of the Park employee guides gave us a talk on human affects on prairie grasslands.
She explained how due to the suppression of grass fires, sagebrush was gradually taking over the prairie grass lands. Left to nature, periodic grass fires, typically started by lightening, would burn the grass and especially the sagebrush. The grass would begin to recover with the next rain, but sagebrush would be much slower to reestablish and spread. When grass fires were suppressed, sagebrush would continually grow and spread, each clump of sagebrush hindering grass underneath and immediately around it. As a result the surrounding grass lands had much more sage than decades ago.
Your occasional range photos often show what, to me, looks like a lot of sagebrush. I’m certain some of your lands have encountered wild fires. Perhaps you or your wife could write a blog on your observations of interactions between fires, sagebrush and the various grasses. I would enjoy reading about it.
Ed Gardner
Colorado Springs
Alderspring Ranch
Hi Ed, I’m sorry for the late response.
We’ll pass this along to Glenn and Caryl – thanks so much for sharing.