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

A QUICK SUMMARY OF THIS WEEK’S FEATURED CUTS:

Remember, only you newsletter readers have access to these discounts!

Next shipping day is March 27th! Get your order in by Sunday at midnight to have it shipped the next day.

Sixteenths are discounted as well (this weekend only!) to make room in the freezer for more coming in next week. Click the button below for more details!

If you have any questions, observations, or comments, just send Kelsey an email at help[at]alderspring[dot]com.

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This week on the ranch…

The third week of March has brought weather fluctuations that shouldn’t be surprising to us. From sunny skies to sideways rain, springtime in the Rockies tends to require preparedness. It is rare for us to see the quantity of snow pictured above in March, however. You’re looking at Scott’s view Tuesday morning in the Lemhi Valley. They received 8+ inches of snow overnight. The general jist of March in Idaho is that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.

Later that day when things had really cleared up Montana snapped this photo. This kind of moisture is pretty crazy for March. Organic matter is key here. Healthy soil rapidly absorbs and stores sudden moisture influxes like this (all of this will melt off pretty quick over the next couple of days – enter spring). We’ve only owned this ranch over in the Lemhi Valley for about a year. The soil doesn’t have much organic matter. Which is a bummer, because most of this snow pack will just end up in the form of mud on top of the soil. It also gives us hope and determination to improve the ground and soil over there.

Meanwhile the freezer construction in the Lemhi’s goes on. There’s Jed, spreading glue over the components that will eventually make up the walls. It’s been tedious work over there for the Lemhi crew, including hours of gluing. We’ll be sharing more on the project in the coming weeks.

Back at the home ranch the snow fell as well, though not nearly as much. Melanie captured these images in the morning, before the sun arrived to warm and transform the blanket of white into food for the soil.

On Thursday part of the home ranch crew came over to the lease ranch to sort of some pairs (made up of last spring’s calves – now yearlings – and their mamas). These mama cows will be calving again here in a couple of months at the home ranch. It wasn’t a long trip down the road to join up with the main herd at the home ranch.

Caitlin snapped this photo of Linnaea and Annie. The wind started howling and the snow falling just as the crew hit the home ranch and got unsaddled. The biting cold made for a hurried home stretch, but all were still smiling when the job was done.

Meanwhile back over in the Lemhi Valley, Glenn and Melanie stopped by during feeding time doubled as a blizzard. Melanie took these photos of the task with all hands on deck.

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Quote of the Week

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
— Aldo Leopold

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Dear Friends

Eighty-eight. I was thinking about that number today as I attempted to drive through yet another blessedly blasting blizzard in southeast Idaho. It was in 1888 when over half the cattle in Idaho perished from an interminable winter that followed a dry summer.

It was 88 years ago, one Sunday in April when a particularly massive cloud of black dust tore across the entire western US. It suffocated animals, people, and cropland. Streetlights were turned on at midday in places such as NY and DC. Ships cruising the north Atlantic found dust on board decks.

It was topsoil, freed from the earth by settlers plying plow and cattle coursing across arid and devegetated high plains. The real high plains drifter that April was a cloud of dirt.

The question of the hour is if humans have learned from their past of dusty devastation. It’s a recurring one, to be sure, dating back even to a fertile crescent of Mesopotamia gone dirty desert.

We’re trying to reverse the trend. And there are others in the world of ag who wrestle with the loss of soil as well. I’m thinking that the key in all of this is to find the nexus of maximizing the means of nature–reinstating ecosystems, while being economically viable. Not by subsidy…but instead by sharing in the bounty of nature in all of its own productive potential.

We’re seeing soils revive. We’ve flipped carbon from going out on our ranch to in. And we’re seeing species diversity triple in the presence of cows, grazed in a way ancient ungulates did.

Come with me to a day on the cold north Atlantic on that April day 88 years ago…

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.

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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.