Dear Friends and Partners,
Welcome to Alderspring’s weekend edition newsletter! Thank you for partnering in what we do!
Below you can find our featured deals, Glenn’s weekly story, and a suite of pics about work on the ranch this week!
This Week’s Story is a different sort of writeup: “Regenerative”
Weekend flash deal: 20% off flatirons!
Plus this week’s coupon cuts – 20% off magnum fatty and regular ground beef, and all roasts (excluding bundles)!
We also have sockeye salmon marked down 15% in the webstore until Sunday at midnight – and a special deal on New Yorks. Purchase any two pairs of NYs (4 total) and get the 5th free!
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 April 3rd! Get your order in by Sunday at midnight to have it shipped the next day.
FLASH DEAL FOR THIS WEEKEND ONLY! 20% OFF flatirons!
And this week (until Sunday the 2nd at midnight MST) you can save 20% on the following cuts:
- Magnum fatty and regular ground beef.
- All roasts! From the chuck to the tri tip. *Not including roast bundles.
- We also have a buy 4 get the 5th free deal on New York Strips, and sockeye salmon is marked down 15% in the webstore.
We are also now offering organic pork for the first time ever! We’ve got hams fast tracked for Easter, so order one this weekend to have it in time for your Easter Sunday table.
Click the button below for more details on this new organic pork!
We expect this pork to go VERY quickly. If you missed out this week, don’t stress! We’ll be restocking within a few weeks.
If you have any questions, observations, or comments, just send Kelsey an email at help[at]alderspring[dot]com.
This week on the ranch…
We’ve made it to the last day of March and the snow continues to fall. It began coming down steadily yesterday morning, and the sunshine has emerged to viciously compete with the blanket of white left in its wake. The mountains on either side of the valley are shrouded by clouds backed by the sun fighting its way through. It’s the time of year where we don’t expect this much precipitation, but we continue to say and know that we are indeed thankful for the moisture.
Annie (second youngest daughter) took these photos of the horses. Despite us being ready for spring after what feels like a very long winter, the extra snow doesn’t seem to both the horses much. It makes for some beautiful shots as well.
Josh snapped this photo at the home ranch feeding the beeves between snow storms. That’s Clyde the border collie, faithfully guarding the feed trailer from unsuspecting yearlings.
Josh took this photo of Montana at the home ranch on Thursday as they got another hotwire paddock built for the herd. The snow is actually good when we are feeding hay over top of this stockpile grass. The colder weather makes the beeves more inclined to eat the dry matter, as it generates body heat. Even though this will all melt off over the next day or so, it serves many purposes while it’s here.
Montana snapped this photo at the ranch in the Lemhi Valley, just one mountain range over. The way these storms cross over and travel up our neighboring valleys is quite the spectacle. Occasionally the home ranch will receive 6-8 inches in a matter of hours, while the Lemhi place receives none – and vice versa.
Want to follow along more day-to-day? Find us on Instagram and Facebook.
Quote of the Week
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
— George Bernard Shaw
This week’s story (a different kind of write up): “Regenerative”
Dear Friends
Today, I was driving with my bride across the Colorado high and dry desert as I conceptualize this newsletter. I’ve been seeing the high, wide and formerly lonesome great plains with exposed, plowed and disked soil (soul?) for miles. The dirt impregnation is everywhere, because the westerlies tear down from the 14,000 foot summits of the Rockies.
We’re here to share the story of Alderspring at a conference presented at the University of Colorado. There’s a way to cause this land to regenerate and once again be a functional ecosystem. And we can fast track it, even while making a life and living on the land.
It’s exciting stuff, this possibility. Because when we have that, we have hope, not only for the people on the land but for all of us–those who partake of Its goodness…and for the land itself.
This week’s write up was a herculean team effort. We’re working to get the word “regenerative” on our labeling, and USDA requires extensive documentation to do it. It’s sort of cathartic for us, as it’s a long work in progress that we never really pulled together in one place. There’s soil scientists, agro-ecologists, plant ecologists who threw their advice and input in. Then there were teams of 3rd party certifies who visited the ranch, taking notes, Checking records, and documenting with pictures. Then there was our team members: Linnaea, Caryl compiling data, and most of us digging soil pit after soil pit.
And that leads me to one more thing. We’d be happy to hear from you. If something doesn’t add up to you, partners, we want to know about it. So if you’re a data geek or just like to look at some pretty pictures, I think you’ll all find something of interest. So check it out if you have a few minutes!
Happy Trails, friends.
Glenn
Read 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 family is amazing!!!! It’s truly awe inspiring and beautiful!
Thank you Marci!
I have been re-reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History and was struck by her observations on “the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis,” which she documents in moss colonies (pp. 66-67). It echoes exactly what Alderspring is doing with in-herding—moving the cattle frequently to allow grasslands to quickly recover and develop a greater diversity of plant life. The hypothesis states that “diversity of species is highest when disturbance occurs at an interval between the extremes. … Disturbance is just frequent enough to prevent competitive dominance and yet stable periods are long enough for successional species to become established”—a pattern “verified in a host of other ecosystems: prairies, rivers, coral reefs, and forests.”
That said, about the only red meat Tamara and I eat here in Minneapolis comes from Alderspring (mostly burger). We get it at Nature’s Pantry in Salmon and haul it home in a cooler plus dry ice.
We’ll have to check it out Erik. Thanks for reading and supporting our business!