Organic Beef Matters
News from Alderspring Ranch, with an occasional rant about American agriculture
It's been a rough week on the range, but all is well that ends well. The country—and this season's climate simply got more difficult. The crew was thrust into thick forest, in a quest for the green grass of higher elevations. Meteorologists are saying that this is the driest, hottest spring and …
Continue Reading about Long Days and Lightning and Lantern Light
Finally, I have a forced sit-down. I'm sitting in the Salmon, hospital ER, at 16-year-old daughter Maddy's bedside. She's reading a novel on her phone, waiting for the doc. I figured I might as well write a novel...to all of you. I think we might be here for a while. Her backcountry …
Three short weeks ago, we woke up to a coating of white on the ranch. Snow blanketed everything. The breaking buds on the willows and cottonwood trees looked hunched and bunched up from the cold, as if trying to stay warm. These species were both used to the maddening duel between winter and …
Whew. It's been a week. Last Saturday, we began the long trail for the summer. The 440 cattle and their horseback range rider crews commenced a summer journey that will take them over 600 miles through sagebrush grasslands, deep canyons, and up steep forest cloaked mountainsides. They will gain over …
Kimball Oil; Challis, Idaho. I paid Linda, the cashier, the $12 I owed her for the repair tire wrangler Colton had just performed after he mounted the big lug tire on one of Alderspring's four-wheel drive pickups. Kimball's was typical of small mountain town stores; they sold fuel, they maintained a …
As I left a note for the outrider horseback crew at the tiny outpost, or spike camp known as Aspen Spring Camp, I heard a twig snap. There, just 100 yards away, a thin line of wayfaring and lost-to-us Alderspring cattle picked their way across the down logs in the thick fir and aspen forest. I …
