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

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This week on the ranch…

Lily – one of our summer range riders took this photo back at the home ranch. That’s the Taylor fire, located just over the mountain range that borders our valley. The ranch is located a safe distance from the fire, but the smoke column is ominous just the same.

Want to follow along more day-to-day? Find us on Instagram and Facebook.

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Quote of the Week

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

-John Lubbock

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Dear Friends,

It’s Roundup time.

Not for us, mind you. Alderspring beeves are living the high life in the mountains, escaping summer heat and enjoying the deep green benefits of a rainy spring. Besides, that wasn’t the Roundup I was referring to.

This one I refer to is a weed killer, formerly known by the trade name of RoundUp, coined and invented by Monsanto (now owned by Bayer). The active ingredient was and still is glyphosate, and thanks to genetic engineering, you can spray your DNA altered alfalfa stand with the chem and kill not the alfalfa, but every other “weed.”

Monoculture ensured. Diversity ended.

Caryl and I had to drive a few hours south to Idaho Falls last week for building materials. There, we were seeing several farms and ranches spraying the herbicide over the last few weeks, cleaning up their alfalfa stands. It’s inexpensive, easy, and it works.

The problem is that none of us really knows the true effects of agrochemicals on the ecosystem. I do know that I have friends in the upper Midwest that don’t have many bugs on their windshields any more (they did when they were kids).

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Yesterday, I was standing in a backcountry mountain meadow at 7100 foot elevation scouting for where to move our herd next (and our cow camp and horses). Dirt bike was the fast track method to covering vast amount of country fast, since I was planning on traversing over 70 miles (during which I never encountered another human).

I parked my Honda XR250 here because we camped in this very spot 3 years ago. Our wolf protection cattle night pen (a temporary electric twine pen) was right where I stood. I recalled in my mind’s eye how then it was pulverized to bare dirt by 450 head of cattle resting on it for 7 nights.

But now, it was an impressive impenetrable thicket of wildflowers and grasses over 8 feet tall, largely, I am certain (from previous experiences) from the biological impacts our beeves had on the site.

But the thing that really got my attention were the bugs. There were thousands. Moths of many colors; butterflies, and bees.

I’m not talking honeybees. Of these, there were none. Why? Simply because I was out of their range, and they are non-native to the Americas. Honeybees only forage 3 miles from their domestic habitations. Here, though, were native bees.

Idaho has over 200, and on our grazing area, they are unaffected by chemicals, on this, the largest contiguous certified organic parcel of land in America, and maybe the world.

It’s bees with abandon. There’s massive B-52 bomber bumbles, and little black and white zebra ground-dwellers, and many in between.

They all came to frenzy feed on forbs on a balmy July day.

Feast fast, friends, while summer is here; winter is just over the horizon!

More cool glyphosate facts in today’s tome! Be an informed eater!

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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