Dear Friends and Partners,
Welcome to Alderspring’s weekend edition newsletter! Thank you for partnering in what we do!
Below you can find beef discounts, Glenn’s weekly story, and lots of photos from the ranch!
Scroll down for this week’s story:
“People as Part of the Wild Landscape”
This Week’s Store Update & Coupons
NEXT SHIPPING DAY: Monday, October 28th
What’s In Stock
Beef was restocked earlier this week. Unfortunately, many cuts have already sold out, but we still have:
- Sixteenths
- Quarter beef: lot 3208 and lot 3212
- Eye of round roast
- Beef liver
- Beef tongue
- Beef sticks
- Wild alaskan sockeye salmon
- Pastured pork bacon
- Pastured pork chops
- Pastured pork Italian sausage
- Pastured pork liver
- Pastured pork kidney
- Pastured pork heart
- Lamb German rosemary sausage
- Lamb loin chops
- Lamb sirloin
- Lamb baby back ribs
- Lifeline organic mozzarella cheese
- Lifeline organic raw milk cheddar
- Tallow lotion
This week’s coupon cuts
Use the code “BEEFROAST” to get 10% off eye of round roast.
Use the code “FAMILYSIXTEENTH” to get 5% off grass fed family box sixteenth.
Use the code “SOCKEYESALMON” to get 5% off wild alaskan sockeye salmon.
Click the green button below or the green words above to access these cuts!
Special Mention:
New quarter beeves are available! To see the individual information and history of each beef click here or here.
If you have any questions, observations, or comments, just send Kelsey an email at help[at]alderspring[dot]com.
Pictures from the ranch this week…
We rarely have to doctor any of our cows, but occasionally the need arises. This week Scott and Jed had to doctor one of our mama cows with a foot issue. They set up panels, posts, and trucks in a makeshift chute out in the field to run her into, and were able to immobilize her leg to work on her foot. We have high hopes she will make a full recovery.
After a summer of intense riding the horses can get a bit antsy now that we are no longer up on the range every day. We make a point to work with them and ride them regularly throughout the rest of the year for their physical and mental wellbeing as well as ours.
Rose working with Sammy.
Jed putting Elle through her paces.
Josh and Jenny.
Want to follow along more day-to-day? Find us on Instagram and Facebook.
Quote of the Week
“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
– John Ruskin
This week’s story: “People as Part of the Wild landscape”
Dear Friends
The girls showed up in Cowgirl Magazine this month. A great article was devoted to them, penned by Ken Amorosano, with some fantastic photography, to boot, by the legendary Beau Simmons. I mean all 7 daughters.
I’m so proud of them.
Cowgirl is the premier national publication that celebrates women in the ‘cowgirl’ culture. Certainly, much of it is about high cowgirl fashion and designer trends, and that’s a bit of stretch for my daughters, but they were wonderfully honored. It’s a little of an unusual place for them to relate to because they are completely uninterested in fame and the toxic bag it brings, and instead have heart and soul poured into this gritty cow-hand work they do. Fashion, fame and fortune is really not who they are. I mean, they do like some of the looks of the clothes and feel of it all, but if it goes beyond functionality, they see right through it and are uninterested.
Melanie has a pair of handcrafted cowhide armitas that she likes to wear in the mountain country. They are chaps that reach down to her boot-tops, with carefully cut long leather fringes along the sides, with a special armita trademark fringed yoke around her waist and purple stained highlights on all of it, dotted with sterling silver studs around the waistline. She’ll wear them in heavy timber or brush, snowstorms or rain. They shed water, and the fringes direct the runoff from her legs. I’m certain on those days when it is snowing hard and she’s on horseback in the backcountry with miles to go to get back to camp in fading light, they are lifesavers. They were hand-crafted by Nevada gear maker, Hannah Ballantyne. Certainly, they required some cash outlay, but Melanie would say in a heartbeat that they were worth every penny. They’ve seen several thousand miles in the saddle, and with every mile they become more beautifully worn.
Annie wears these beautiful jacquard silk-scarves all day on horseback. She has several. They’ll have elegant designs on them, and go over 40″ on a side. Pure silk, expensive as all get-out, and they 100% keep her neck cool in the summer. In a blizzard they could literally save her life, as silk keeps warm even when wet. Cheapo nylon or polyester garbage counterfeits would never do.
Linnaea has a wool jacket obsession. These are high priced Pendleton or Woolrich earth-tone inconspicuously colored garments. They are beautiful, and the wool is long and thin fibered so it won’t pill, pull or itch. They are also impenetrable to moisture; when the outside is damp, they’re dry inside, and keep her warm despite pouring rain over her oilskin canvas duster shell. No polarfleece, microfleece or plastic-coated Gore-tex will do. Women have been seen wearing full length dusters in Manhattan, desperately trying to follow a fashion trend, but Linnaea is just trying to stay alive.
For them, form must absolutely follow a function code, otherwise, it is pure stupid. And they won’t put up with it. And if it can’t stand up to real work conditions, they won’t use it. Much of their clothing gear will last a lifetime.
So that’s the part of the magazine they can relate to: functional cowboy gear can also be downright beautiful. As women, they enjoy good looks in the gear and clothing they choose. But it has to have function, as they live and work full time on horseback during the grazing season, and the weather is changeable as the time.
It’s a little ironic for them to be in the magazine, because they’re sharing that issue with Kelly Reilly, who plays the character Beth in the hit Yellowstone TV series. For the girls, the unrealities portrayed in the series are such that none of them have been able to bear sitting through one entire episode.
And I’m happy to hear that, because I haven’t been able to bear it either (I’ve tried several times). I almost feel that the show dishonors and belittles the incredible, real people of the West that I’ve met and shared work and time on the trail with. They’ve changed me and the way I think, because of their incredible humility, tenacity, and just simple integrity. Certainly, they wore chaps, chinks, scarves and hats just like the characters in Yellowstone do, but that, right there, is where similarity ends.
The real cowboys I met had tongues that spoke clean words, and none too many. Rather than pick a fight, they quietly turned away, even though the wrought iron of their bones could have taken anyone on. And they were always kind to their horses, and didn’t yell at their women… or their dogs.
One such man was Ed Corbett. I was able to ride with him several times. There was not a shred of contrivance or counterfeit cowboy about him. I penned a story about Ed when we first met, and when he invited me on as a new charge. If you’d like to hear about him and how he was a real man of the West, read on.
Happy Trails
Glenn
And that’s it for this week!
Thanks again for partnering in what we do!
Glenn, Caryl, cowgirls and cowboys at Alderspring.
We’ve been crafting our pastured protein here in Idaho’s Rocky Mountains for nearly 30 years and delivering it direct to our partners for nearly as long. This is wild wellness, delivered from our ranch to your door.
Why is Inventory Low Lately?
Here’s where we’re at on the “low inventory” situation…and why it’s low in the first place! We know many of you have been with us for a long time and rely on us as your source of protein (and we’re so grateful)!
In the last few months, we’ve been hit by a lot of unexpected demand.
When it comes to raising beef, changes in demand can be very difficult to respond to quickly. It takes us 2-3 years to raise an animal to finish. That means we plan our inventory needs about 2 years in advance.
Many companies and producers we know of that sell direct-to-consumer respond to sudden increases in demand by buying outside cattle (often at sale barn auctions) and then selling that beef under their label. This is VERY common.
But this kind of “cow flipping” isn’t something we’re willing to do.
We know the entire history of every beef we sell. That’s important to us, and we know it’s important to you and part of why you trust us to raise your beef.
We’re working right now to gradually increase our available inventory to hopefully provide more beef! But at a certain point, we actually can’t expand further without compromising our standards.
We know that the reason many of you order from us is because we’re small scale. We butcher our cattle at a small processor that only does about 80 head of cattle per week (compared to thousands at a big facility). This also limits our capacity to expand, because they, too, are functioning at capacity right now. We also raise only as many cattle as our pastures can support without degrading our soils. And we’re still small enough that Glenn personally looks at every single steak before he puts it in your box to ship to you. These factors are why you order from us! But it also means occasional inventory limitations.
Your partnership with alderspring directly supports our mission to improve soil health, wildlife habitat, and animal and human wellness through regenerative ranching practices.
Here’s what we’ve accomplished with your help & support in just the last 12 years!
More information about our regenerative practices and outcomes can be found at the button below.
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