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

this week’s coupon cuts

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

Next shipping day is April 17th! Get your order in by Sunday at midnight to have it shipped the next day.

And, new + recently restocked…

Bulk beef bundles, ORGANIC PORK BACON, and almost all sausages have been restocked this week!

Linnaea snagged this photo last while sorting one of those bulk beef bundles. Some beautiful steaks like this ribeye found in this week’s bulk beef listing!

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…

Here’s the mama cow herd on the Alderspring home ranch, out enjoying some of that beautiful certified organic hay. Even though green grass is starting to sprout all over the ranch, we’re still feeding hay to meet nutritional needs for our cattle. These mama cows started calving just this week, and we’ll have even more calves hitting the ground over the next two months!

We have 3 herds of cattle to feed right now: one small herd grazing the lease ranch a few miles down the road, the herd of mama cows, and our beef cattle herd. It makes for a fully loaded trailer to get them all fed. There are mechanical feed systems out there, but we’ve never used one. We actually prefer to knock the hay off by hand. It’s a bit more time-consuming, perhaps, and there’s certainly more physical labor involved (our version of hitting the gym!). But we actually enjoy being out there. We feed in the evenings, so we often get the benefit of beautiful sunsets and calling sandhill cranes. And it’s an opportunity to look over the cattle and check on their wellness as we push that hay off the feed wagon.

10 1700 pound bales loaded on that trailer of what Glenn calls “packaged summer sunshine.” These bales are still green inside despite a long winter!

Here’s a glimpse into one of those beautiful green hay bales. This particular bale is high in a legume called alfalfa. Alfalfa is an excellent high-energy and high-protein forage that cattle love. But we have to carefully watch our quantities on this! If cattle eat too much of just alfalfa too quickly, they can “bloat,” which is when a foam forms in their stomach and prevents them from breathing. The other risk in alfalfa that is less well-known is that feeding too much of it can affect the flavor of beef (it gives beef an almost “fishy” taste). Alfalfa is a very popular feed for grass-fed beef finishing, and it’s part of why so many people say that grass fed tastes bad (that person may have eaten some beef that was finished on alfalfa and had a bad taste experience). As a result, we’re very careful about how we feed alfalfa and how much we feed!

If there’s anything we’ve learned about creating great-tasting grass fed beef, it’s just that it comes down to forage diversity. If we feed a diverse mix of forage and don’t offer too much of any one type of grass or legume, we won’t have any issues with off-flavors. And when we have diversity on our pastures and in our hay, we increase cattle wellness, pasture biodiversity and soil health, and even the nutritional complexity of our beef. Nature never exists in monocrops, and we shouldn’t feed them to our cattle, either!

Daughter Melanie took this pic the other day while out checking on the old horses. We have a crew of a few old mares and geldings that have done their time working cows and have earned their retirement. April here is the queen of the bunch (in her younger days, she was top mare of the entire pack. Every now and then she still gives a young colt a lesson they won’t forget). She’s practically ageless, but we estimate her to be around 30 years old now. She is one of those rare horses that simply loved to work; she would jump eagerly into the trailer to go herd cattle and would willingly give you all she had without being asked. She’s earned the right to live out her days roaming here on Alderspring pastures. Every now and then we still take her out for a short ride, either to carry a kid or a beginner rider. She seems to actually enjoy the chance to show a new rider the ropes, and still heads happily for the lead of the pack every time.

What do these strange white blocks of…something…have to do with ranching? These are in fact thick foam insulators that Scott, Jed, and Montana are lining with wood. They will become the building blocks of a new freezer we are building to store beef in our shipping warehouse!

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

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Quote of the Week

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
— Aldo Leopold

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Dear Friends 

Caryl, Melanie and I are in Boise this weekend. We’re trying to buy some building materials and tools for our latest pursuit: finish our home after 8 years of hit-and-miss construction before 400 people come in it for food in July. We ranch full time after all, and home finish work is not often in the cards. 

Why would we do such a thing? We would because daughter Becky is getting married in July. A tenth of the local community will be there. 

So today, the Powerstroke pickup is filled with material of finish construction: an industrial table saw, a router, and a drill press. 

And this is why I did not find time pen a new story this week. So I’m going bring back one from a few years ago about a fellow I met who was organic…but perhaps, not really. 

Even the world of organic has its missteps and even, graft and corruption. In this world where we see everything from hormone implants to “grass fed” beef raised in a feedlot, the consumer becomes the unknowing victim.

It’s why we third party as many certifications as we can. It’s too much to ask you to trust us, but hopefully with these collaborators, you can begin to. 

Happy Trails. And thanks for your trust.

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.

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