Dear Friends and Partners,
Welcome to Alderspring’s weekend edition newsletter! Thank you for partnering in what we do!
Below you can find beef discounts, Glenn’s weekly story, and lots of photos from the ranch this week!
This Week’s Story: “A Midnight Clear”
Weekend flash deal: 10% off top sirloin steaks! Also 10% off chuck roasts, 10% off osso bucos
This Week’s Store Update & Coupons
NEXT SHIPPING DAY: Monday, January 8!
What’s In Stock
Beef was restocked earlier this week. We still have good inventory on many cuts, including…
- A few steaks (NY, filet, and ribeye all in)!
- Most roast types
- Sausages (hot Italian and bratwurst just restocked)
- Sixteenths (bulk beef) are in stock!
- Ground beef, stew, kabobs, and more
- Lamb still in
- Salmon still in
- Cheese still in
This week’s coupon cuts
Weekend flash: top sirloin steaks 10% off! This week you can also capture 10% off chuck roasts and osso bucos!
Click the button below to get access to the coupon.
If you have any questions, observations, or comments, just send Kelsey an email at help[at]alderspring[dot]com.
How to Gift Alderspring!
Though we aren’t shipping again until after Christmas, you can still purchase an email gift certificate that will be instantly emailed to your inbox and ready to gift to your recipient! Find gift certificates at the link below.
Why is Inventory Low Lately?
Here’s where we’re at on the “low inventory” situation…and why it’s low in the first place! We know many of you have been with us for a long time and rely on us as your source of protein (and we’re so grateful)!
In the last few months, we’ve been hit by a lot of unexpected demand.
Lately, we’ve been hit with an unexpected wave of demand.
When it comes to raising beef, changes in demand can be very difficult to respond to quickly. It takes us 2-3 years to raise an animal to finish. That means we plan our inventory needs about 2 years in advance.
Many companies and producers we know of that sell direct-to-consumer respond to sudden increases in demand by buying outside cattle (often at sale barn auctions) and then selling that beef under their label.
This kind of “cow flipping” isn’t something we’re willing to do.
We know the entire history of every beef we sell. That’s important to us, and we know it’s important to you and part of why you trust us to raise your beef.
We’re working right now to gradually increase our available inventory to hopefully provide more beef! But at a certain point, we actually can’t expand further without compromising our standards.
We know that the reason many of you order from us is because we’re small scale. We butcher our cattle at a small processor that only does about 80 head of cattle per week (compared to thousands at a big facility). This also limits our capacity to expand, because they are also functioning at capacity right now. We also raise only as many cattle as our pastures can support without degrading our soils. And we’re still small enough that Glenn personally looks at every single steak before he puts it in your box to ship to you. These factors are why you order from us! But it also means occasional inventory limitations.
Recent Photos From the ranch…
Daughter Maddy and her husband Wesley (they got married this past summer!) together out looking for their first Christmas tree.
Here’s the family Christmas tree set up in the ranch house. This photo has actually been years in the making, as we did much of the construction on this house ourselves in between ranch work. This past summer much of the house was finally finished. It’s exciting to see years of work come together.
And in the next photo, the band is practicing for the annual Christmas concert. This band is made up of our family, several ranch hands, and a few good friends!
Even on Christmas day, the beeves will need to eat! Here’s Linnaea pulling strings from one of those hay bales of summer goodness. The “strings” are twine put around the hay bale when it is harvested in the summertime. They hold the bale together until we are ready to feed! It’s important we get all of the strings off each bale because if they end up in the field, cows can eat them and get sick, or the twine stays out in the field and later gets tangled in the equipment.
Melanie caught the morning frost on camera a few days ago. Temperatures drop below zero every night now, and an unusual amount of moisture in the air lately has meant a stunning display on the trees as we go about morning chores!
Want to follow along more day-to-day? Find us on Instagram and Facebook.
Quote of the Week
O little town of Bethlehem
-From “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” by Lewis Redner and Phillips Brooks
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight
This week’s story: “A Midnight Clear”
Dear Friends
Thirty Christmases. That’s how many it’s been on Alderspring Ranch.
1993: It was just Caryl and I that first year, huddled around a tree in our 350 square foot tin shack we called home. Without the wood stove that often glowed red on a frigid and brittle winter night the little plumbing we had would freeze (it often did anyway). At that time we were childless. To make up for it (or, perhaps train for a God-only-knew storm of girls we would soon start having), we had two dogs that would pile under or on our bed at night, depending on the temperature inside; an Aussie named Maggie and a husky named Skeena.
It was the first home that was truly ours. Just a tin-side to be sure, but the dirt underneath belonged to us too, all 145 acres of it. Before that, we never owned anything in our lives except what we could stuff in a 70’s ford sedan and rust-bucket Toyota Land Cruiser (you could get an immediate read on road conditions through several handy holes next to the pedals). In addition to dirt, we had livestock: seven cows were ours out on the big meadows along percolating under ice Agency Creek; the rest were the former owner’s—Ron and Frances Alder. The pair of septuagenarians still lived in a house (we asked them to stay despite them selling) just a few hundred feet from ours that wasn’t that much better than our tin shack. They’d been ranching on this place since the early 1940s, and although they owned it and the cows on it, they had little else besides a mare named Sally and a dog named Freckles….
Continue reading 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.
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 with alderspring directly supports our mission to improve soil health, wildlife habitat, and animal and human wellness through regenerative ranching practices.
Here’s what we’ve accomplished with your help & support in just the last 12 years!
More information about our regenerative practices and outcomes can be found at the button below.
I would love to see an article done on your ranch house, it looks beautiful!
Merry Christmas and blessings to you and your entire family and crew.
I love living vicariously through your writings.
Hello Beth! Thank you so much! We will try to do a post about the house one of these days…it has in fact been quite a labor of love, as we’ve been slowly building it for about 15 years now. It’s finally nearly finished! Hope you had a very Merry Christmas!