According to Wikapedia, “Roundup is the brand name of a systemic, broad-spectrum herbicide produced by the U.S. company Monsanto and contains the active ingredient glyphosate.” (Read more). (Read more.) In 2007 a federal court ruled that the USDA failed to adequately address the risks and banned the planting of any additional acres (thousands of acres of RR alfalfa had already been planted, and those fields were allowed to remain). USDA continues to work to approve RR alfalfa.

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.

A big project we’re working on this spring is a complete irrigation upgrade on the ranch. The project closes a long irrigation diversion ditch that sourced out of the Pahsimeroi River that we shared with about 4 neighbors. All of us have agreed to close the ditch to better ensure sufficient flow in the river over critical Chinook salmon spawning habitat. These fish migrate 900 miles to the Pacific where they live for two years and come back to the Pahsimeroi to spawn (lay eggs). Unfortunately, salmon runs are very low, and all is being done to maintain the species.

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.

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.

The Capital Press today reported that a Federal District judge in California has ordered an impact study on Roundup Ready alfalfa, a genetically modified organism (GMO).

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…"

I really like eating steak. But eating the one I did the other night was really difficult. Fact is, I even lost some sleep on it and not because of indigestion…

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.

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.