Scroll down for Glenn’s weekly story and updates from the ranch this week!

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This week on the ranch…

Annie, second youngest daughter, took this photo of Montana, one of our ranch hands at the home ranch. Here he’s working on the fuel pump on the big green John Deere. It’s not all fun horseback riding around here! There are also a lot of mechanical breakdowns and fixing machinery!

Here’s another shot from Annie of Bryce, one of our awesome summer hands, working on a tractor tire at the home ranch.

There’s Maddy (youngest daughter) with her faithful ranch pup Patsy, running around the home ranch on irrigation duty. Patsy goes pretty much everywhere with Maddy. Next year she’ll be herding cows on the mountains and helping us out there!

Melanie (oldest daughter) snapped these photo of Bryce and Rachel coming into camp at the end of the day a few days ago on the range. It’s a long day of herding cows up there each day, but we have a great crew to do it with.

Here’s Rachel again in another shot by Melanie. We’ve had some bursts of rainy and changeable weather these last few weeks on the range. Daughter Annie and her crew got hit by a hailstorm that left the ground white for hours afterward…but the cattle were still happy and eating, and the riding crew sticks with them rain or shine!

And here’s range rider Cat. She interned with us this summer and left just a few days ago to head off to her first semester of college. She’s studying agriculture, and this internship was a chance for her to get some hands-on experience. We loved having Cat on the crew because of her positive attitude, work ethic, and the fact that she obviously loved the animals. She’ll do great in whichever field of agriculture she ends up in!

Here’s range rider Bryce, riding daughter Maddy’s gelding, Flint. Maddy is pretty picky about who gets to ride Flint, so Bryce was pretty stoked that she trusted him with her gelding.

Here’s range rider Beau, who also interned with us this summer. He, too, left only a few days ago, and we already miss him! Beau is headed back to university…in Scotland! He’s studying sustainable development there, which is a pretty broad major that covers many different aspects of sustainability. Beau’s main interest, however, is in agricultural sustainability and how we can develop more regenerative systems in ag. We hope he had a great summer here getting a firsthand look at our take on regenerative ag. We certainly had a wonderful time having him on the crew. He gave his all every day and, as a side-benefit, brought a great sarcastic sense of humor that had us all in stitches in cow camp every night.

And here are crew members Rachel and Brittany. Rachel came as an intern this summer and stayed on as an employee for the rest of the summer until she just recently returned to Feather River college to study agriculture and equine science. Brittany also went to Feather River and has been first an intern and then an employee with us for the last 3 years.

Here are Maddy and Wesley, weed killers extraordinaire. We had a crew of 5 up there yesterday (Maddy, Wesley, Emily, Linnaea, and Montana). Armed with weed wackers and some manual grub hoes, they were here for one enemy: the deadly invasive knapweed. Every year, we patrol an average of 70 miles of roads on the range out there, taking out knapweed plants by hand. We don’t spray because we are certified organic, and we have a deal with the Forest Service & BLM that they won’t spray our weeds so long as we aggressively manage them ourselves. It’s a lot of work every summer, but it’s worth it to us to keep weed populations down and maintain our organic certification so that our cattle aren’t eating from sprayed ground.

Here it is, the dreaded knapweed plant. It is almost exclusively found along roadways on our rangeland because roadways are the source of spread. A vehicle driving by will pick up knapweed seeds and then spread them along the roadside in other places. The weed crew joked yesterday coming down from the range that they would be dreaming of this plant…after a day spent taking out knapweed plants, they start seeing it whenever they close their eyes!

Youngest daughter Maddy, complete with weedwacker and hiking boots. Here she is about 10 feet off the roadside, where she just finished off a big clump of that annoying knapweed. Invasive weeds are no match against Maddy and a weedeater!

Choice organic ribeyes just in this week, fresh off of the high ranges at 7500 feet! Glenn snapped this photo while doing inventory at the shop this week.

People ask us all the time where their beef comes from…and here it is. Melanie took this shot on the range last week, a few days before we selected a few finished beeves straight from these pastures. The cattle are grazing a timbered meadow of dense native grasses…and in the foreground there, all of those white flowers you see are yarrow. Yarrow is known throughout the world for its medicinal properties (it was frequently used by Native Americans on cuts and burns as well as in teas as a remedy for colds, fevers, and more). We see the cattle eating it all day up here, and we believe it actually contributes to their wellness, too. Their coats are glossy and we have almost no sickness in the herd (in most feedlots, sickness rate is around 8%). We had just one animal get sick on the range this year due to changing weather (cold nights and hot days put cattle at risk of pneumonia–as always, we doctored the animal and then removed it from our organic certification & that is now beef we’ll sell separately with full disclosure). That’s a 0.25% sickness rate. Way under 1%. And to us, health in the cattle translates to health in the beef.

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Quote of the Week

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”

-John Muir, Our National Parks

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Dear Friends,

I could hear the crew gathering up gear in the dark of an early morning today as they loaded up to go to war.

They packed weapons of destruction: grub hoes and powered weed wackers that would remove literally thousands of target invasive plants on miles of two track on US Forest Service lands. There were four of them, and they were ready.

The noxious plant invaders come in, predominantly on recreational vehicles that traverse our certified organic public lands grazing allotments. 99.9 percent of the land we graze on is native plants in intact communities that have resided there for millennia.

But they are fragile, and when plants with no natural controls disperse into their sensitive habitats, havoc often ensues.

Anywhere else, the government comes in to spray herbicides.

But we’re organic, and as a result, pull, grub, wack and biologically control thousands of acres by hand. Every year. And we do it for two reasons: first, you, our customers, partners, have entrusted us to provide clean food for your table. Secondly, we believe the chemicals cause upset of the pristine soil ecosystems chems get applied to. Simply put, ag chemicals and herbicides kill soil biology.

Now, I can’t describe to you all the possible outcomes and long term results, simply because nobody knows. There’s virtually no money for research to resolve those questions. But the fact of the matter is that if we don’t know the effects, it’s a little like dropping A-bombs or Agent orange and later finding out that those practices had long term deleterious effects to life on earth. We simply did not know the certain outcomes.

And yet, spray is everywhere.

We’d rather not be part of that.

If you’d like to hear more about the real cost of organic, read on!

Happy Trails,

Glenn

Read 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.

Left to right: range riders Rachel, Bryce, Brittany, Beau, and daughter Annie. We said goodbye to many of these people as they headed back to college in the last few weeks! On the back of the pickup? Two 5,000 gallon stock tanks that this crew is transporting to a new location. We’ll pump water directly out of the creek and into these stock tanks to provide a clean drink for our cattle without ever letting an animal step into the creekbottom & damage wildlife habitat here. We put fish screens on our pump lines so none of the fish up here (some of which are endangered) end up in our stock tanks. It’s a win-win for getting cattle great water while protecting the wildlife we share this landscape with and keeping our springs and creeks completely pristine and untouched.

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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.

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!