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This week on the ranch…

Here they are…the crew, back from the range and all piled up on a pickup for a quick group photo. We were blessed to have an incredible crew working here this year, and these people are just a few of them! Many of our summer interns and short-term summer employees have already left, headed back to college or on to their next opportunity. We miss them all and are so thankful for the time, dedication, and great attitudes they brought this year. This work isn’t always easy, but a great crew makes it fun.

That’s the beeves on the range this week, just a few days before we started them on the 6-day journey back to the home ranch from the high pastures of the range. Here, the crew is lining the cattle out down a steep and rocky hillside after a great morning of grazing high timbered meadows. On rocky hills like this, the crew backs off pressure and lets the cattle single-file their way slowly down. Pressure and stress makes for hurt hooves, where a quiet single-file line allows the cattle to pick their way.

Here’s a big steer with a mouthful of that green goodness. On the range, the crew gently guides the cattle over a grazing loop away from camp and back again. This way the cattle always have access to fresh grass, and changing topography means continuously changing plant communities and species. The result? Diverse forage of hundreds of plant different species in a given day. It’s what makes for flavor in beef, and we believe, wellness.

Here’s Jed, stopped with the horses at one of our temporary stock tank locations. We pump water out of creeks and into these stock tanks on the range so that our cattle never have a need to step foot in those streams. At this time of year it is especially essential that we avoid any impact in streams, because trout are spawning. Instead, a hose with a fish screen on it brings water from creek to tank. Cattle drink clean water, fish swim happily on, oblivious of their near miss of bovine encounter.

It’s the Janie mare. This is her first summer on the range. Daughter Melanie, who manages the horse stuff around here, brought her up to the range several weeks ago after putting only a few “rides” on Janie to get her going. We often bring green colts up here that have only just been started. They don’t know very much, but having a job teaches them a lot quickly. Janie is one who thinks a lot and quickly gets bored in an arena or a round pen. Up here, where she has a purpose, it wasn’t long before she became one of our reliable hands.

And here they are. The timbered meadows in the previous photos are a thing of the past, because it’s time to go home. We dropped over 3,000 feet of elevation this week, from timber through sagebrush and all the way down to the pastures of our ranch here in the valley bottom. Here the crew is lining the herd out on the 3rd day of the 6-day journey home. The sagebrush country has long dried out in the heat, but the cattle still foraged all the way down the mountain.

Just a table, a camp stove, and a pickup truck…and you have what we call “spike camp”! During the 6-day trip back to the home ranch, the crew would stop the herd in a given location just for one night, then continue on the next day. Here, Montana, Annie, Lily, and Josh are making breakfast in spike camp before it’s time to saddle up and trail the herd down the next stage of their journey home from the range.

So that’s it. Another summer on the range winds to a close. Yesterday, on the final leg of the journey home, we spotted a herd of bighorn sheep grazing on the hillside just above the cattle. And only a few moments later, a coyote dashed by, darting between sagebrush on a mission of his own.

It felt like a fitting reminder. We are guests out here for a few months out of the year. We ride in a landscape that is wild, surrounded by impenetrable dark forests and steep mountain peaks. We want to be good guests out here, to use our cattle as a tool to make this place better and add a missing link in an ecosystem that is adapted to grazing–and where their grazing won’t make it better, we turn the herd away to forage elsewhere. We find ourselves continuously awed out here. We pause sometimes just to admire a peaceful glade or a ridgeline view. Sometimes, riding hungry and tired back to camp under a full moon, one of us can’t hold it in anymore: “Can you guys even believe we get to do this?”

So here we’ve reached the end of another summer, grateful. And we’re grateful for all of you, readers and partners in the mission, who have followed this summer’s journey through the high country and even been part of it through the beef you put on your table.

Want to follow along more day-to-day? Find us on Instagram and Facebook.

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Quote of the Week

She asked him why does he ride for his money
Why does he rope for short pay
He ain’t getting’ nowhere and he’s losin’ his share
He must have gone crazy out there
But she’s never seen the Northern Lights
Never seen a hawk on the wing
Never seen Spring hit the Great Divide
And never heard Ol’ Camp Cookie sing

-michael burton, Night Rider’s Lament

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Dear Friends,

“Are you sad that it’s almost over?” As we bumped our way on the 2-track out of the backcountry from our last cow camp, I was asking my 26-year-old Linnaea about coming off the range with the cattle in the next few days. She, along with our other daughters and some great crew members, has been one of the main driving forces up there in the high country, crew bossing and doing most of the route-finding to new camp locations. It’s been a challenging summer. There’s been some exceptionally rough and remote mountain country we’ve never grazed before, and the weather has been tempestuous, to put it mildly.  It’s been a hundred days, and about 600 miles. That’s how long and far the beeves and horses have walked over the season of green mountain grass. Today after 5 days on the trail from our highest camp, they have come back to the Pahsimeroi Valley, and are now grazing on a certified organic lease ranch just down the valley from Alderspring. They’ll finally make the 6^th day of their journey and arrive home next week when we weigh every critter in the entire beef herd to get production metrics off the range grasses…

Continue reading the story on our blog by clicking below!

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And that’s it for this week!

Thanks again for partnering in what we do!

Glenn, Caryl, cowgirls and cowboys at Alderspring.

L-R: Evan, Webb, Annie (6th daughter), Melanie (oldest daughter), and Jed.

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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.

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