As I was standing on the back of the hay wagon today, forking off 2 tons of hay to the mama cows and their calves, I happened to look up at May Mountain.

 

It looked like Mount Everest. 

 

Granted, May’s 11,000 some feet are a pittance compared to Everest’s 29,000, but it looked just as inhospitable to me as that highest Himalaya.  Its rocky summit ridge was caked with snow and ice, shining in the setting winter alpenglow sun.  From the chill wind blowing around me, I knew it was howling bitter up there.

But I felt warm inside, despite the night chill creeping in. 

 

And I was grateful.  As I listened to the cows tearing at the green grass hay and watched the warm vapor coming off their breath, I was struck with thankfulness for the life we lead here, the work we do, and for the sights we see every day.

 

I made a skating pond for the kids the other day.  We had enough $5 garage sale skates that every kid had skates (albeit with different colored laces).  Even the 5-year-old had a great afternoon, all bundled up and skate-pushing a folding chair around our pond with wild abandon.

We are getting ready to harness up our little-bit-wild draft horse teams to feed cattle with.  They need the work and the practice, as the kids and I are hoping to compete at the county fair next August in the draft horse driving and hay feeding competition.

 

Sure, it is cold, and there is always more work than I have hours for (the worst of which is that danged office work), but there is fun too and a lot of the work is fun!

 

Until one takes time to read the local paper.

 

The Challis Messenger had a legal notice about a Sheriff’s sale to take place on the courthouse steps sometime in March.  It was my neighbor’s place.  The slow wheel of foreclosure is bearing down on all that a family has worked on the land in this valley for several generations. 

 

I know they worked hard; they are not slackers.  Whatever the reason, they are not the first ranch to be under threat of foreclosure that I’ve heard of, and they will be far from the last.

 

Cattle prices are high, folks say…hay is even going higher, maybe higher than ever.  So why can’t a ranching family make it these days?

 

The fact of the matter is that hay and beef prices haven’t changed very significantly for some 60 years.  I’ve heard of cattle prices being around a buck in the 1950’s.  Now, they are a little over a buck.

 

But everything else is changed.  Fuel was 20 cents in those days; land was $100-200 per acre.  A fellow could build a house for $10,000 (nice).  A nice pickup truck: $1,500.

 

And here we have these rancher folks still on the same acreage, trying to stuff more cows on the same ground, waiting for the one year that it is going to all come together.  A neighbor of mine told me that his dad always used to say that the Pahsimeroi Valley is some of the best ‘next year’ country he knew of.

 

Caryl and I tried everything to try to make this thing work.  We raised beautiful horse hay.  We sold eggs.  We sold old cows.  We sold young cows.  We tried to follow the markets.  We tried to ignore the markets.  We tried every cowman trick we could figure out to make money…sometimes we did.  Most times we didn’t.

 

So we subsidized it.  Caryl and I both worked off the ranch.  Then we came home at night and weekends and ranched.  I remember falling asleep in fields in the middle of the night while spreading ditch water out to keep our fields green.  We fed cows in the dark.  We baled hay in the dark.  We slept in the truck out in the cow pasture on wintry subzero nights catching a few uncomfortable winks between checking calvy cows.

 

I remember the last year I worked my day job I had cattle on 14 different places.  I often would get calls while at work because our cows were heading down US Highway 93 in the Salmon River Canyon- a road with nothing but blind curves.  (The old boy we were leasing from imbibed a little too much and left his gates open pretty regularly.)  I’d often park our 1959 Chevy Viking truck at work next to the Toyotas and Subarus.  It was loaded with several tons of hay that I would deliver in the evening to persnickity horse hay people (each bale had to be hand-picked perfect).

 

It was a lot of work and not much money (or negative money).

 

Finally, we figured out how to subsidize our ranching, land, and livestock passion with itself by marketing our beef directly to our customers (they soon became what we call our partners).  It meant more long days.  Now I could sleep in cars year round- in the fields in the winter babysitting pregnant cows and in the marketing car the rest of the year on the way back home from farmers’ markets.  I often will point out to Caryl an out-of-the-way sagebrush pull-off while driving around Idaho and Montana: “Slept there once.”

 

But the direct marketing was working, and still is.  We enjoy it, because we are as passionate about the land and our animals as ever. 

 

But not everyone in the ranch world is cut out for this, and so they subsidize their ranching passion with town jobs, equity, or government subsidies. Unfortunately, this low economy dries up town jobs, equity erodes, and government purses tighten.

 

Through all of these economic woes, I hope, we will still be selling beef for the long haul to our friends, our partners, because this is what we believe in: connection between the eaters of food and the growers of food. 

 

Because I believe that there is a rightness to growing food for people in this pure and beautiful place.  And I also believe that we were meant to forge that connection between folks and the land, particularly in this time of industrial mega-agricultural interests whose only mission seems to be to sever it.

 

Sometimes it’s like Mt Everest up here, though: frigid, cold and lonely.  We get short on oxygen. But then one of our “partners” gives us a call and says that was the very best steak they ever had, or better yet, they just tell us that they believe in what we do.  They see the pics on the site, read some of the copy, maybe talk to Caryl or I on the phone, and try the steak or burger and the whole thing comes together for them; the connection to the land has been made.

 

And that makes it all worth it.

Christmas Dinner. Just those words evoke images of red and green table cloths, sparkling china (the best) and candles amidst greenery at the centerpiece. Maybe a turkey, ham or prime rib roast with all the trimmings as the main course.

What about on Alderspring?

This year we had Christmas dinner at our older friends, Gordon and Auntie Em on their spread up the Lemhi Valley. Their house is a very cozy log home, handcrafted some 40 years ago by Gordon himself. It is an octagonal home built of local lodgepole pine and weathered boards salvaged from an old gold mine in the nearby mountains. The floor is paved with multicolored flagstones gathered by Gordon all over the adjacent mountains. A wood fire’s heat permeated the house, overwhelming the zero degree chill trying to creep in from outside.

It was in this setting that we sat down to dinner. Auntie Em always takes great care to make us very comfortable while setting us down to a beautifully placed table.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It really all started the night before when I pulled a 7 lb beef brisket that we raised out of its vacuum pack and introduced it to the world. Auntie Em had a huge steel pan that looked as if it was made for brisket. I plopped it in there, and then we looked at it.

“What now?” Asked Em. “Any water?”

Caryl thought we should add some. “No more than half the height of the beef.”

I agreed. Otherwise we would end up with boiled beef. I had barbeque ideas. Not barbeque sauce type like in Aisle 6 of Wal-Mart, but ‘Cue Joint ‘BB Cue. The real live smokin’ Joe southern backwoods ‘Cue Joint brisket, with the bark on.

Auntie Em pushed us over that edge. “How ‘bout some dill pickle juice?”

Now this wasn’t ordinary pickle juice. Auntie Em and my girls made these pickles last August from home grown and picked spices, dill and cukes. And garlic. This juice was the real dilly garlic deal. And not some cheesy white vinegar, either. Pure apple cider. Just one step down from apple jack.

So in went the Mason jar of juice and up went the oven and in went the brisket. No lid. Five hundred degrees. Nine-thirty-five PM. After it browned nicely, Em popped the lid on and turned the oven down to 200 and said nighty-night. And then Caryl and I and 7 girls wandered off in the cold along the candlelit trail through the aspen grove to the Honeymoon Cabin for a wonderful nights rest.

Next morning around 11 AM, Caryl, Em and I couldn’t stand it: we had to look. It was beautiful; nicely browned. I poured about ¾ of the liquid off for gravy. I pulled the lid off and poured the sauce all over the brisket: ground tomatoes, garlic, sea salt, olive oil, oregano, basil, and black pepper. Caryl came in with the honey and put enough on it that it began to drip off into the water. Then in again, now up to 350, until the top was well browned and the bark was set.

I checked again in about an hour. Very dark brown; time to put the lid on and turn the oven down…this makes a nice chewy bark (but edible)—otherwise, it dries out too much.

One P.M.. The table is set. All the trimmings are ready. Red spuds and cole slaw from their own root cellar (slaw made with thick cream, not mayo), beets (grown by Em), an assortment of homemade pickles (including a nice hot pickled pepper, glowing redder and greener than they did on the vine), fruit salad, corn muffins (gluten-free by daughter Binner).

The brisket comes out. I slice it. All the fat and collagen is broken down nicely. A very nice sweet and sour bark graces the fall-to pieces beef. I know already while sampling it that it will be hard to quit at just seconds. There will be much grazing…

And the sauce that Caryl makes even makes it better. And the cole slaw, well, lets just say that I found myself in a Christmas ‘cue joint of dreams…

Back to reality. The major problem now at hand was that I knew I had to stop grazing the BBQ and save room for Binner’s cheesecake (nice and dry and flaky and handcrafted from scratch) and Auntie Em’s garden raspberry pie (no sugar or filler—just raspberries, whip cream and a wonderful flaky crust).

Thank God for time, cause there was just enough. I had room.

Complemented with a nice strong pressed cup of coffee, I think it was time to nap while the kids went sledding. They did and I did.

And I picked the guest room in the octagon house-a little cooler, and a nice firm bed. I pulled a wonderful hand-knitted afgan over me and drifted off to the sound of the kids outside in the snow, where the sun was casting long shadows on the waning day.

Life’s good.

Alderspring Ranch is a wheat-free zone.  Most of us in our family of nine are gluten-intolerant, and so we have a completely wheat-free kitchen.

We really don’t miss wheat much anymore.  Our 11-year-old daughter has risen to the challenge of recreating the snacks and desserts we used to make with wheat.  She is very intense and organized about it, as she is about most of the things she does.  Perfectionist that she is, she’ll work on a recipe until it is just right.  We’ve been eating pretty good…

A few weeks ago, I set up a blog for her to share her recipes: Gluten-free-snacks.  If you are gluten-free, stop by and check them out, and maybe drop her a comment if you have the time!

Last week I had a town trip planned. Town trip days are a big deal because we live over an hour from town, and a town day pretty much shoots the whole day.

I like to plan ahead, but Glenn often can’t…so, as happens not infrequently, he told me the night before the town day to expect another 9 people for dinner the next night. And these people weren’t going to be small appetite types. They were going to work hard outside all day, and they were going to be hungry.

I made All Day Short Ribs for a crowd:

6 packs of short ribs (about 2.5-3 lbs each)
2 cans Italian diced tomatoes
2 cans tomato paste
1 cup strong coffee
1 cup molasses
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 onions, diced very fine
8 garlic cloves, diced fine
1 tablespoon cumin
2 tablespoons mixed Italian herbs
lots of coarse ground pepper

I mixed all the tomatoes, sweeteners, and seasonings (except the pepper) with enough water to make it pour-able. (I would have liked to brown the ribs, but I didn’t have time. It still turned out great.) I single-layered the ribs in glass baking dishes, and poured the tomato mix over them and ground a bunch of pepper over everything. I covered the dishes tightly with foil (don’t let the foil touch the tomato-covered ribs–the acid will start to eat the foil-yuck). I put them in a low oven (about 180′F). The ribs baked at that temperature for around 9 hours. About 2.5 hours before dinner, I had a kid put into the oven about 25 baking potatoes. About 2 hours before dinner, I had one of the kids take the foil off the ribs and turn the oven up to 350′F for 30-40 minutes until the ribs started browning. They had to add a bit of water before turning up the oven, but this will be variable depending on your oven convection, and how well you covered the ribs with the foil. You want the sauce around the ribs to be liquid enough to not burn, but not watery like soup. After the top surface browned, they turned the oven down to warm and waited for me to come home.

We added a giant tossed salad and there was plenty of food for everyone.

You might think running Alderspring Ranch is about rural bliss: kicking back with a tall, cool lemonade, watching kids play in the spring sun, listening to bees buzzing in the apple trees. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time to kick back in the spring! Here’s what we did last week:

• Started up the new irrigation system (hooray!). After some problems and delays on the part of the partners installing the system, and after we spent two anxious weeks hoping the weather didn’t get too hot before we had an operational system, we finally turned on the water Tuesday. Spent two days cleaning clogs and fixing kinks, but some 400+ acres of pastures are now turning a glorious green. The long ditch we used from the river for water supply has been abandoned to keep more water in the river for spawning salmon and steelhead that migrate up to our valley from the Pacific some 900 miles downstream.
• The contractor finished installing the new cattle waterers. These are needed because the new irrigation system no longer relies on open ditches, which had also served as livestock water.
• Fed our last load of hay (hooray!). On a normal year, we would have been done feeding over a month ago. But this hasn’t been a typical spring. Plant growth is nearly a month behind normal (in some ways a blessing because we didn’t have water anyway until the new system was operational). We had to feed hay for about 3-4 weeks longer than we planned, a daily 3 hour job.
• Still calving. While the bulk of the mother cows have calved, we still have about 1/5 of them yet to go. We check them at least twice a day to see if anyone needs help. Thankfully, no one did.
• Got a family milk cow. We’re wondering if this was a good idea. We’ll try to write about why later.
• Turned out about 1/3 of the mother cows with the oldest calves on the range. This involves making sure the cattle are paired (don’t want to send a calf up there without a mamma), and up to date on their vaccinations. We also made sure all the water systems were operational on the range (to keep the cattle from stream water sources), the fences tight (about 30 miles worth) and closed about 20 gates that were left open by fall hunters.
• Took down the hay corral that protects stored forages from deer and elk through the winter. This hay corral is in the way of the new pivot path so had to be removed. We stored the materials away to use for a new corral this fall when we figure out where to put it. Then we cleaned up the area so it could be farmed.
• Cleaned up debris and garbage left by irrigation system installation.
• Filled in, leveled and seeded old ditches that are no longer needed because of the new irrigation system.
• Removed old fences that were in the way of the new irrigation system path (a pivot tangled up in an old barbed wire fence is an expensive proposition). Salvaged potentially useable wire, prepped the rest for recycling, and stored old wood posts in the firewood cutting area. Nothing goes to waste around here!
• Turned out the finishing yearling cattle on pastures. This required ensuring water is available, fencing a paddock with electric fence and moving cattle to the paddock. The kids did most of moving on horseback, and even had a friend to help.
• Removed sod from the new garden spot. We’ll put composted manure on it and finish working it up this week.
• Worked on house plan designs and layout to try to increase solar efficiency without compromising the magnificent views. Our log builder needs final plans soon.

Spring on the ranch is the busiest time of year! Fields are being readied for spring, fences being mended, irrigation systems are upgraded, and new calves are being born daily (we are averaging 5 new babies a day). They take a large amount of time as we carefully monitor their health, as well as their moms, and occasionally have to intervene to ensure survival. For instance, we had to capture a cow the other day who inadvertently missed pulling the birth sac off of her newborn (the cows usually are very aggressive about licking the face of their calf off first to clear away anything that might interfere with breathing). We wanted to give her a new baby.

We had an extra calf for this because we have occasional twins or abandoned calves who need a mother—in cows, optimal is one calf per cow, as most cows have trouble counting up to two and will misplace one of their kids if left to themselves. To ensure complete bonding, we remove the skin off of the dead calf and tie it on the ‘graft’ calf so the mom can smell the scent of her original baby. While this sounds grisly, it is actually rather clinical. The dead calf isn’t objectionable, because it has been dead only a short time, but the skin still smells to the cow like her calf.

We catch the cow in the barn or corral, so she cannot run off, and start the new baby on her milk bar. This all sounds very quiet and sweet, but often our wild range cow will put up one incredible western rodeo fight before it is all over, even sending Glenn over the corral fence…

But in the end, mom has a baby. It might take a few days, but it works (don’t try this on a goat, though; Glenn worked on a goat for nearly 3 weeks to take an orphan kid, and finally was met with success). And there is great satisfaction in creating a new bond out of two sad losses: a motherless calf now has a mom, and a cow missing her calf now has a new one to care for.

Nine year old Mae likes to make muffins on Saturday morning. As those beautiful corn and buckwheat muffins rolled out of the tins, I had just come back from checking cows (had two new babies before sunup) and fixing fence (they had gotten out and were eating my brand new crested wheatgrass seeding). I reached under the warming towel while she wasn’t looking, helped myself to a chilled glass of raw cow milk and put a nice slab of butter on one.

She caught me red-handed. She gets real owly about people eating the grub before its out on the table, but nobody else was out of bed, and I just could not stand seeing those little biscuits get cold.

I wish you could try one—they are entirely of her design—so you could understand why I had to make off with one (actually two now). A little bit of corn meal for crunch and that deep earthy flavor of buckwheat with honey built right in. Just wasn’t fitting to pass them up fresh and hot out of the cast iron.

She stopped what she was doing and said that she wrote a poem for those people in bed while she was pulling muffins from the pan:

Rise and shine!
or the muffins are MINE!
Get out of bed!
or you won’t get FED!

Glad I got out of bed.

We have goats in the living room. Kid goats that were just born a little weak and cold today in this cold, windy, wintery blast we are having in April. Kid goats and 7 kid girls on the living room carpet by the wood stove with the kid girls trying to coax the kid goats into standing and trying to eat.

Our life is intertwined with that of animals. So much that, as we were heading home with daylight left from a day at the park with friends last Sunday, Mae said that our lives were ruled by cows (we had to feed yet that night). I guess she was right to some extent.

We have a rooster chicken called idiot head that the kids hate. They throw rocks at him whenever he comes by, as he runs free with about 7 others (the others are friendly). The Great Pyrennes big white dog named Sadie can be heard at any time of night patrolling the perimeter of the ranch headquarters area with her deep rolling bark on the wind of the night, keeping coyotes honest (is that possible?).

Katie the cat just had kittens in the barn. She hid them all when the kids had friends over who didn’t listen to our kids when they said not to touch them yet.

Arrow, the border collie is about to pup. She bred to our other border collie, Gyp. We watch her carefully.

Last winter, we bought some winter calvers from a neighbor. Sure enough, we got one of those 20 below blizzards with wind in February. I lived with the cows out in the river bottoms, sleeping with them out there in the 20 below (I had two sleeping bags and was still cold).

Early in the morning, I found a calf that I missed, dead in a snowbank.

It was stiff and cold as mom stood over it, hoping for life. Ice covered. Then I saw a faint puff of steam come off of its nostrils in my headlamp. I picked up the stiff carcass, with mom hot on my tail, threw it on the pickup seat and roared off the 2 bumpy miles to the ranch. The white ’74 Ford (its name is Caspar) didn’t like the cold either, and lacks a heater. The calf wouldn’t get anything done for it until I got home.

I pulled up to the house and scooped up the calf and ran to the front door. “Turn on the bathtub!” I said as I set the calf down in front of the hot woodstove. In a few minutes, the tub was full of hot water, and we dropped the calf in.

Ann and Marie held the calf’s head up so he wouldn’t drown. In a few minutes, he was convulsing and kicking wildly. Then his eyes rolled around in his head. It was all the girls could do to keep him above water so he wouldn’t drown.

I remembered one time my totally numb feet thawed by the wood fire. I felt like convulsing too. I thought I was going to cry. I think that is what this calf felt over his entire body.

After his feet finally got warm, we put him by the woodstove while I went out to do chores. Several hours later I came back to screaming, laughing girls and crazed wife trying to deal with a calf running around the kitchen, knocking over everything!

“Get this calf outta my house!”

Calf dry and warm now, standing, rambunctious on seat next to me in Caspar. We head out, now driving more sanely, back into the wind, the snow, the cold.

The cows are bunched in the willows, trying to hide from the wind. I can only get within 100 yards—it gets too rough beyond. Through my icy windshield, I see one cow peel out of the willows. She runs straight for me in Caspar. It is mom. She remembers. I roll the calf out, and he remembers. They touch noses and head back into the whiteout for the willows together.

Our lives are intertwined with animals. They permeate. Sometimes I catch Caryl and the girls referring to them as people. I remember one time we were out hiking and a couple came down the trail with several dogs. They realized our kids might panic when the dogs came roaring up, so they ran up also and tried to tell us and the kids that the dogs were friendly and it would be OK.

The kids were unfazed from the start. I looked up and said “It’s OK—our kids were raised with dogs.” They looked at me a little funny, and after a few words, they headed their way, and we headed ours.

Suddenly I had the grave realization that it might have come out wrong. I turned back and yelled out to them before they left earshot: “Did I just say that our kids were raised by dogs? I meant they were raised with them!”

Got home real late from Salmon, ID, which happens to be our shipping location for UPS. I drove an hour one way down the twisty Salmon River canyon to get those boxes on the truck only to find out that the grocery store, our dry ice supplier, does not have enough to fill our orders. The ice truck will arrive in about two hours, they say. The girls (2 of them) and I wait. When the ice is finally in boxes (12 year old daughter labeling, me icing, 8 year old taping) and we get home it is 8 PM. We grab a bite, and 11 year old Marie heads out into the dark with me. We have 550 hungry mouths to feed, and calving cows to check. I load, and then Marie drives the battered 1959 Chevy Viking two ton truck, loaded with 4 ton bales of our organic alfalfa hay in the starlit night while I fork hay off the back. At least it will be quiet tonight. Last night the tail pipe fell off when we drove across a wash and I welded it back together today.

The pregnant and calved cows are waiting for us where we fed yesterday. I have Marie shining a million candlepower (what is that supposed to mean anyway, and who measured that?) spotlight into the blackness searching for distant eyes reflecting while driving and watching for baby calves that may wander in front of the truck. Any eyes are worth checking out. By the way they move, you can tell if it is a cow, calf, dog, or coyote, but the really big concern is wolves. Several weeks ago we had a loner travel through the ranch—probably a young male. A friend of ours from the next valley lost four calves in one night several weeks ago to a maurading pack of the 150 pound predators that descended on their calving cows. A cow will defend her baby, but in the end, when a pack isolates her, she loses.

Marie spots eyes about a quarter mile away. I had just finished emptying the truck with my fork. We both unload and head out across the cold dark fields on foot to see what was up.

When a cow won’t come to hay, there is something going on. Either she is calving, calved, or in trouble. Maybe a calf is backwards, sideways, and she can’t have it, and needs help. When we finally reach her, we see her licking off the steamy hot wet mass of a wiggling newborn calf. She glanced up at us as I reassured her with my voice to let her know it was us, and left her be to continue doing what she did best—caring for her young one.

I think that is probably the biggest lesson I have learned in this business of ranching. I have come to see the mother cows as employees on this spread, who have been trained by their Maker to care for their young better than I could ever try. Even in several months, when we turn these young calves and their moms on 70 square miles of rugged mountain wilderness, the bottom line is that you’ve got to trust the mother to bring that calf back home again, or worry yourself sleepless. And God knows I need all the shuteye I can grab.

Here is a poem that Marie wrote about night feeding:

Feeding
At night,
When the stars are bright
And light is most gone from the hills

We get in the truck Me and Dad

And with hay from the stack,
Dad will fill up the back,
Of our two ton with everlastin’ will
No need to go fast, But, Boy am I glad,
When feeding is over at last.
–Marie, age 11