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

A QUICK SUMMARY OF THIS WEEK’S FEATURED CUTS:

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This week on the ranch…

We primarily calve in the late spring (May/June) for a myriad of reasons, namely that we raise our calves to finish and don’t need to worry about selling a calf crop. We’ve had a few surprises this winter. This is the newest addition captured by Melanie.

Montana took this photo after feeding the beeves over in the Lemhi. Right now we have a bit of shuffling going on, with cattle on the ranch over there (one mountain range over), the lease ranch down the road, and here on the home ranch still. With so many wheels turning, there are many logistics to consider. A lot of equipment, hay, fence materials and miscellaneous items seem to constantly need trailered back and forth. Somehow it all goes (mostly) smoothly, minus a blown tire here and there.

We have some stockpile grass down along the river corridor that we’ve been keeping in reserve. It’s pretty fibrous stuff, which means that breaking it down in the rumen generates significant heat. Now is the time to feed it while the cattle are needing to stay warm. When spring comes around, they won’t have interest in dry feed. To determine how much hay we would need to fed in addition to the stockpile, part of the crew went down to take a look and take some measurements (continued below).

After figuring out how much dry matter was actually out there that the cattle could feasibly utilize, Josh figured out the acreage for a two day paddock using onX’s hunt app to estimate area. Then Josh and Wesley built a paddock to those specifications. Of course due to our seriously drifted snow as a result of storms over the last week, when Annie and Linnaea went to feed, they realized that four wheel drive a good tires wasn’t enough to bust through that crust. The best we could do was redo some of the calculations and feed adjacent to the stockpile. Such is flexibility in ranching.

Jeremiah has been doing a lot of routine vehicle maintenance (and repairs) in the off season. He took this photo over in the shop at the lease ranch while working on the fuel bowl of what we call “the maroon” which is an F350 with over 370,000 miles.

There’s Jeremiah, completing the consistent task of loading up the feed trailer. Similar to setting the timer on the coffee pot, this is a job that is always best done the day before. Such preparation is never looked back upon with regret. Of course one can never truly be fully prepared when it comes to ranching.

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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

On a zoom call this morning, Caryl and I had the pleasure of hanging out with some great minds from around the west. They are all in their own way moving the needle about how to graze these wild and extensive landscapes not only for the production of beef, but for ecological regeneration.

It was a great conversation, and it’s one that we will continue at the International Society for Range Management’s annual meeting in Boise, Idaho in two weeks. There, for four days, range managers and scientists from around the globe will talk about the sustainability of the rangeland ecosystem.

Caryl will be a presenter there, and I’m on a discussion panel. We’ll be specifically talking about rangelands (the vast grasslands of the world) with regard to ecosystem services, which can mean everything from carbon sequestration to ecosystem regenerative efforts (Those two ideas happen to be very related, by the way).

But the fascinating thing about our discussion was that it kept coming back to the next generation. Not of plants, cattle or the entire rangeland ecosystem.

It was people.

All of the people on the call believed that the fate of the rangeland ecosystem is in the hands of young people. The fact is that most grassland managers are my age (60 plus!), and the cold hard reality is that our time on the land is running out.

And that means that the next gen is our only hope for continuing ecosystem success on what amounts to a full third of the entire land area of the US (this just America’s rangeland!). It’s not on Bill Gates or Ted Turner (two of the largest landowners in the world).

So that turns out to be a call for us olders. We have got to get on the stick, and get some hope facilitated for the future. It’s hitting Caryl and I head on, as our own family is in the forefront of this train of thought with 7 daughters.

It’s why we are continuing and even expanding our internship opportunities. And when thinking about it, I recall that for the next gen, embracing the possibility of the future is not a picnic with rainbows and unicorns when stuck on a range crew.

You’ll see what I mean in this story from a few years back on our new range rider crew. Come with me to one day to Nevada camp…

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.