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.

The Western Farmer Stockman magazine ran a story in its July issue about RR sugarbeets (bet you can’t wait), and a farmer with a RR alfalfa field. The alfalfa grower now applies Roundup annually to this field, and it is quite productive. What I found interesting, however, was that the article said:

His enthusiasm for the technology is tempered with concerns. Unlike corn and other annuals, alfalfa plantings last several seasons with numerous opportunities for flowering and seed production by plants missed in harvest. Bees and other pollinators can carry the RR alfalfa pollen to other alfalfas. The escaped RR pollen can transfer glyphosate tolerance to seed produced by alfalfa plants, often miles from the source…..
In Idaho, conventional seed growers aren’t convinced the buffer the state’s ag department mandates between varieties of alfalfa is enough (900 feet).

As organic producers, RR alfalfa is a big concern. Our commitment to you is GMO free food. If a neighbor plants RR alfalfa next to us, how will we protect our fields, and maintain our commitment? I get so frustrated with agriculture as an industry. More and more people want GMO free food, why is American agriculture continuing headlong down this path of genetic modification, especially when it is so difficult to contain (avoid contamination on a broad scale as has happened with corn)?

It seems that American Agriculture, as an industry, has forgotten who the actual consumer is. We farmers produce food for people. We feel that very acutely here at Alderspring. American agriculture should produce the food people want. Instead, the industry tries to convince people its OK to eat GM food, or irradiated food, or cloned meat, or any of the other things that agriculture, in its drive for efficiency, has come up with. Why do other countries refuse American beef? They don’t want hormones! Let’s grow what they want–beef without hormones–instead of trying to convince people that beef grown with hormones is perfectly safe (I know I’m not convinced!).

I’m thankful every day that we can grow our own food, but I’m frustrated for so many of our customers who cannot find the food they want because American agriculture refuses to produce it for them.

Our plan is to pump water out of the river below the critical flow areas—about 2 miles below where our ditch used to divert water. The Nature Conservancy, Bonneville Power Administration, local Soil and Water Conservation Districts and Idaho Department of Fish and Game have been very willing partners in the project.

For us, it will mean far more efficient use of water (leaving more water in the river for fish) and better yield and quality on much of our acres due to more uniform water distribution (to produce even better grassfed beef). It also means working daily with the contractors who are installing the system, and coordinating with all the cooperating parties on a nearly daily basis. It’s been very busy.

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.

As producers of organic alfalfa pasture for our organic grass fed beef, we are relieved here at Alderspring Ranch.

This alfalfa, genetically modified to resist glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, has potential to contaminate our organic alfalfa, and jeopardize our organic certification.  In fact, Monsanto has. in an Orwellian twist of legal logic, successfully sued producers whose crops were contaminated with Monsanto’s patented plant genes for patent infringement.  (See keepmainefree.org/suesuesue)

The Center for Food Safety, the Western Organization of Resource Councils, the National Family Farm Coalition, The Sierra Club, Beyond Pesticides, Cornucopia Institute, The Dakota Resource Council, Trask Family Seeds, and Geertson Seed Farms initiated the legal action against the USDA in February 2006.  The lawsuit argued that the USDA’s approval of deregulating of "Roundup Ready Alfalfa" was illegal because a thorough environmental impact study wasn’t completed.  They successfully convinced Judge Breyer that the USDA had failed to completely assess the potential that GM alfalfa could harm the environment and contaminate organic and non-GMO alfalfa crops.

Anyone interested in pure food should be concerned about genetically modified crops.

Learn more:

NewScientist.com instant expert on Genetically Modified Organisms
Network of Concerned Farmers (in Australia) list of 10 reasons for concern about GMO crops.
U.S. Center for Food Safety’s 2005 report Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers.  Some highlights:

• "To date, Monsanto has filed 90 lawsuits against American farmers. The lawsuits involve 147 farmers and 39 small businesses or farm companies, and have been directed at farmers residing in half of the states in the U.S.
• The odds are clearly stacked against the farmer: Monsanto has an annual budget of $10 million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers."
• Farmers have paid a mean of $412,259.54 for cases with recorded judgments.
• Farmers have been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone else’s genetically engineered crop; when genetically engineered seed from a previous year’s crop has sprouted, or “volunteered,” in fields planted with non-genetically engineered varieties the following year…"

You know, one really cool advantage to being in the beef business is that there is always beef to eat, and if you are a beef lover like me, looking forward to a good dinner at the end of a long day is really nice. Maybe it would be a steak or stir fry, with some fresh steamed garden veggies and a hearty salad with a glass of cab.

There is always beef at our house for the family to eat—vacuum packs are seal compromised, a ribeye that looks like a shoe, or the label is misprinted or stained. It is something that we can’t sell. The other reason we have the occasional steak to eat (like most folks, we can’t afford to eat them regularly) is that we are testing a recently finished beef for taste and tenderness standards before we add it to our shippable inventory.

We use no fancy shear testers or other devices to do these tests. But one steak from every beef we sell through our online store makes it to our kitchen. The protocol we use mirrors that which we believe most of our customers would—that frozen steak is dropped in a bowl of tap water to thaw, and an hour later is on the grill on medium heat. When that interior temperature probe reaches 139 degrees, the steak is off and on a plate for 5 minutes. Pepper and salted to taste, we then slice through the middle of the cut and Caryl and I each sample a ¾” strip. We then strip the rest for dinner (the kids love it too!) and set down to eat.

A couple of nights ago it didn’t go so well. We had five new beef come in from our packer for sale this week on the internet, and one failed the tenderness test. A ribeye from steer number 99 tasted wonderful, and was still by most folk’s definition tender, but it did not meet our standards. A ribeye should not eat chewy at all when cooked right. The knife passed through easy enough, but it was definitely a little chewy.

The other test steaks passed with flying colors, so I knew that it wasn’t feed or aging or handling, as they all were finished by the exact same protocol. We had this happen once before, and we chalked it up to a genetic fluke.

This happens every couple of years, so you wouldn’t think it is a big deal. I think the hardest thing for me is that we have been with this steer through its entire life caring for it to be the very best, and something like a genetic aberration writes off its quality from going top-notch.

The other big deal is the money. Here we have something around $2,000 tied up in this steer, only to find out at the end that it does not make the grade.

I’ve heard folks say that the internet is a wonderful marketing tool because there is no accountability. The customer base is infinite (as long as you can reach them), and even if folks only buy once, there will always be someone there to replace them. So satisfaction is not really important, the thought goes, because you don’t need them back.

It’s the same way in the commercial commodity cattle business. I’ve known people over the years who raised breeds of cattle known for their extremely rapid growth but also for their characteristic toughness. Once those calves leave the ranch for a distant feedlot, they’ll never see them again. Nor will they ever see or hear from the consumers of their beef.

Caryl knows me well enough to know that I don’t sleep at night knowing someone might have a bad experience with our beef. There is just no question—I can’t sell it if it isn’t right. That is why it took us so long to start really selling the grass fed beef that we produced in the first place. We both had to know that it was consistently, predictably good before we could be passionate about representing it. And therein lies the reason what we have not taken on partner producers (even though we get approached fairly regularly about that).

Maybe like the potential of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

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.

Spring grass is on the way. A shade of green colors the pastures, and I am not the only one who sees it: those yearling beeves look hard and long for any edible size blade that they may place on their tongues, like many a woman and dark chocolate. It makes it real hard to feed them. They become very discriminating now, and if you do not hand them the very best, they would rather hunt for that grass blade and actually lose weight! Kind of counterintuitive for spring, you would think.

And then there is that tobacco hay. That’s what we call hay that may be the very best maturity, but was put up just a little too green. Smells kind of like tobacco. Cows love it, even in the spring. I had been feeding it once for about 2 weeks several years ago when a store called me.

“Your beef smells musty.”

Musty. It took awhile to figure out, but it was tobacco hay. That strong flavor ended up in the meat. Never do that again. Another good reason to smell test that hay. They are what they eat, after all!

The stillborn calf lay on the other side of the berm she stood on, still above the flood water, and thoroughly cleaned and bathed by her mother’s caring tongue. Any good cow would do that, I knew, just following the protocol the Maker gave them to best take care of their young, even if dead. I knew the cow would stand guard over her baby for several days, leaving only to feed on hay with the others, lest a marauding coyote or wolf try to take a bite out of her calf.

We set up a trap with some hay along a fence a few hundred yards away. She was tough, as many young mothers often are, nearly running over a hired man and destroying a fence and a heavy duty cow panel. Finally, we coaxed her into the trailer with 2 other cows. While she waited in the trailer, I headed back down to the calf and skinned it, taking the hide with me. I left the carcass for the coyotes and other critters. Figure they gotta eat too. It would probably be gone in a day. We have many bald eagles hanging around the place that pretty much scarf up whatever the coyotes leave. We then loaded up and drove the mile or so to the home corrals and unloaded there.

Later that day while we were feeding, I kidnapped one of a set a twins we had the other day. Cows don’t count well, so twins are not real desirable. Often a cow will forget about one on the big pastures or the range, and it will go hungry without mom’s milk and often starve, and before you know it, they too become coyote and wolf food, especially without a protective mom watching out for them. We put the calf in the pickup cab, and drove home, dropping the calf off in a barn pen for the night.

The next morning, I could hear the twin calf bawling for mom from the barn. I set out, grabbed the calf hide and some baling twine and fashioned a little coat out to put on the little guy. He struggled pretty hard at first, not really liking his new fur coat, but settled into it fairly well. He was good and hungry—just perfect for what came next.

I ran the mom into the grafting pen—a 14 x 14 pen with solid 2 and 3” board paneling all around it 6 feet high. Built tough for wild range cattle. I’ve never had a cow escape, though many have tried. We make certain there are plenty of places for us to vault over the top in case things get dicey as my 220 lbs flesh and bone (can’t seem to keep fat on) is straw in the wind when put up against a 1200 lb pile of black angus protective angst. Last year one sent both Tim the hired guy and I over the side of the pen. Just yesterday one knocked me down in the barn (she had me cornered against board fence and I didn’t climb fast enough)—but the same day I was scratching another one between the ears. Cows are pretty transparent about how they are feeling—you can pretty much tell when they want to get you. When they want to get out of the calving pen, they usually head butt the gate or try to jump, but it is just too high, especially for the amount of runway they have to clear the high bar.

In the pen is a wooden head catch that we slip cows into so that we can put a new calf to sucking on their milk bar. Often we will tie their legs together so they can’t kick the novitiate into brain-dead oblivion.

The cow is in the pen and the gate is closed. She looks over it quickly, but carefully, looking for a way out. A range cow is rarely comfortable in such surroundings—she has been living in an essential wide open wilderness some 8 months a year and must be cautious and guarded. We have encountered more than our share of predators when we are horseback gathering or moving cattle—I’m sure she has stories to tell that would make our tales look pretty paltry.

She sees the hole and rams into it. I pull the rip cord and in a second she is caught, even while fighting as if for her life. The entire barn seems to rattle and shake with her effort to be free, but I swing the squeeze panel into place and she is immobilized.

I hurry the calf over and push his little head against her udder. He knows what to do. The milk bar is full, much to his delight, and his tail begins to wag merrily from side to side. He forgets all about his little coat.

All is well, I think, and jump out after letting them both free in the pen. She sniffs the fur coat, and in an instant, she believes it is hers. I have even taken white or red calves, put a black calf hide coat on them, and they were well accepted. Smell is number one. I’m told a range cow can scent her baby from 12 miles away. I check once more as I leave the barn and sure enough, baby is delightedly eating from his new mom.

About an hour later, I’m driving the hay truck flatbed with a load of hay and about 5 singing, giggling girls on the back. As we go by the barn, I try to quiet the girls down in time, but was not quite fast enough. The barn began to shake from within as a 1200 lb cow began to try to break out of the heavy duty pen by jumping through or over. I guess she didn’t like the singing. We hear a 3” by 14” piece of Douglas-fir panel board crack as she rams into it. I peek through the crack in the barn door to see her complete the destruction as she is balanced by her belly on the broken 6 foot high panel fence. In a moment she was through, and soon after over another corral fence to freedom and some other cows, leaving her new baby behind.

I had nearly given up on the old girl (after all, she had broken 2 fences and wrecked one steel panel) when Caryl and the girls suggested we get her back in on horseback with a bunch of other cows. I sent the girls off to do it, and it worked! We kept some gentle babysitter cows in with her, and she again took on her new baby to complete the bond that was started.

Another calf had a mother, and another mother had a calf. That’s really our goal through calving season; to send everyone up on the high ranges with a baby to raise.

Many folks ask us why some of our cows can be so wild (they aren’t all this way). There are not many that are actually mean—they are simply wildly protective—usually of their calf. I guess I wouldn’t want it any other way. We have had cows run off predators like coyotes, bears, cougars and wolves and even rouge dogs in search of easy meat. A gentle, quiet cow probably would not stand up.

But it does mean that you always watch your own backside. Maybe a degree in cow psychology would help.

Either way, I was thinking that my 12 year old figured it out, ‘cause as we were bumping down the road in the noisy rattle banging two ton, I thought I heard her say to me “Did Evil-The-One finally take her calf?”

I looked at her quizzically. “Did who take her calf?”

“E101.”

“I thought you said ‘Evil the One’.

We both laughed as we both knew that no longer would she be named by her tag number. Evil-the-One it would be forever. Not all the cows have names, but those who earned them, do. At least with a name like that, we will always be on guard…