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Photos from the Ranch This Week…

The view from Upper Little Hat Camp at sunrise! The crew gets up every morning at 4:30am and is catching horses just before dawn. It’s all for the sake of the cattle: getting the cattle out and grazing right at dawn allows them to eat well in the cool morning, whereas in the heat of the day they tend to lose interest in grass.

One of the beauties of riding in the early morning just as dawn breaks is that we see the sunrise every day. Here, the coming sun bathed the cattle (and us) in warm light and made for a stunning start to another day in cow camp.

Annie and her faithful companion, Ginny, heading back to the herd.

And here’s why we go to the extra effort to graze our cattle on the range and live with them out there. It’s about wellness, and this glossy black steer is a perfect example. His coat shines, he’s fat and healthy (without the unnatural obesity that occurs in feedlot cattle), and he has no issues with flies. When we’re out grazing our cattle on the range, we see almost no sickness. Common health problems like pinkeye, pneumonia, or parasites simply aren’t an issue out here. We believe it’s due to the diversity of these native grasses: in a given day, the cattle sample from about 200 different plant species. They have free choice of what they need for their nutrition that day. The wellness effect in those plants is not something easily measurable, but a research study by Dr. Stephen Van Vliet (currently being peer reviewed) found that our beef samples had a omega 3 to omega 6 ratio of 1:1…the only beef sample he has ever measured that had equal omega 3/6 ratios (usually beef is higher in omega 6s, even grass fed). We don’t know what it is, but there’s something in the grass out there. We see it in the wellness of the cattle…and we think, the beef.

The sun setting over the Salmon river, heading back to the home ranch from cow camp.

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“You mean you’re certified organic, both on the cattle and the grass?” Former Wall Street Investment Banker was incredulous. “What the heck for?”

“The consumer wants the whole picture. They want to know for certain that their food is clean, and for cattle, that’s from birth to finish. That means free of chemicals of any kind,” I told him.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He sighed into the phone. I imagined him reclining at his sprawling solid English walnut desk, leaned back in his calfskin leather office armchair, looking out through the massive custom low-e thermopane bay windows of his office, surveying his broad retirement estate behind him. Hundreds of Angus cattle speckled the lush meadows; all his. Verdant timbered mountains rose all around the beautiful spread high in the still-snowy Wyoming Rockies, completing the idyllic vision that was now his reality.

After the hustle of lower Manhattan, retirement quite bored him, honestly. And so, he had taken a mere slice of his investment income and tied it up in the acquisition of some beautiful mountain ranch land on which to raise grass fed beef. It would be fun, he told his friends. And it had to be easy. What could go wrong? He hired a team to help him with his hobby: cattle raising, pasture management, marketing. He envisioned it, and they performed it.

Like he had in his previous life. He was a Wall Street born and bred manager, after all. He specialized on the “buy” side. Hedge funds, mutuals, and the staff to run them. An owner with vision.

I could sense him slowly shaking his head at me. He was thinking I was a little wet behind the ears, even after 20 years in the business of ranching. He went on: “Don’t you get this? They will never know. They’ll just see the word “organic”, and they will buy. That’s all there is to it. They don’t really care. They’re just checking a box, Glenn. Nothing about this is illegal, you know.”

“I know. It’s not illegal.” I had to tread carefully here. I didn’t want to insult the guy; the conversation was interesting; and it wasn’t like my reading righteousness to him was going to change the course of his mind. I’m certain that after all those years in his former life, he was fairly intractable. But in my mind, his paradigm reeked. I had already seen where he was getting his cattle from: the sale barn. No source identification. Just random heifers and steers raised on other ranches in Wyoming. He bought them on a cheap auction market, and equivalent age and bred cattle would be 25% or more on the organic market. I knew- and I knew he knew- that they were 100% percent conventionally raised cattle.

And in that, investment banker saw the creation of a beautiful, risk-free margin.

What it also meant is that every one of those cattle had been raised with chemicals. Backbone chemical pour-ons for lice, and even worms (they permeate the skin of the cow and treat interior parasites as well as exterior; in other words, they permeate the meat, all of it in said bovine). Most of them have hormone implants in their ear (“the very best return on investment in the cattle business”, my former University of Idaho county agriculture agent once told me. “Everyone should implant [hormones].” Basically, you’re an idiot if you don’t).

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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.

Your partnership with alderspring directly supports our mission to improve soil health, wildlife habitat, and animal and human wellness through regenerative ranching practices.

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