The final sort is done, and now we are staged for the long walk to the mountain grasslands. We have 300 head in the low meadow; they've all been health screened, tag identified and weighed. We'll let them eat their fills for a few days, meeting early spring grazing objectives on our home Pahsimeroi …
Junior Takes the Bus
The May sun was already down; it was going to be dark soon. We were running out of time. As Josh and I meandered and bounced the old pickup through the 200-acre hay meadow, our eyes scanned the verdant shag carpet of spring grass that was coming up with abandon. I was thankful it was early spring; …
How to Lose 100 Beeves
On this May 12, treachery is about. I wake this morning with the first light of dawn, and I see the telltale signs that winter has attempted a coup while we rested. She crept back with her weakened forces and attempted insurgence on our valley under cloak of darkness: a solid line of demarcation …
The First Flowers of Spring
Twelve thousand men were in serious trouble, despite the onset of spring in 1778. The Continental Army was already in dire straits after several brutalizing defeats through the autumn of 1777. Most lacked uniforms, and some walked barefoot, wrapping rags around their frozen feet. They were sorely in …
White Death and Wiley Coyote
"The White Death is loose," I said to the girls as I stepped in to our log home from the moonlit night. It was a nightly ritual. We turn Jackie, our seasoned veteran Great Pyrenees dog free from her run most nights. She and Allie Shacker, our young Pyr, have the run of the ranch after dark. They …
How to Capture Wild Protein
Ted, my older rancher-turned-butcher friend, handed me the white package, as we wrapped up business in his spotless cutting shop. His apron still had some telltale marks of his trade, the color red slightly Jackson Pollock-ed across the canvas of his white cotton frontispiece. "What's this, …