Alderspring Grass Fed Organic Beef Newsletter 1-4-25 - Alderspring Ranch Organic Grass Fed Beef

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 this past week!

Scroll down for this week’s story:

“When Muskrat Helped Beaver”

This Week’s Store Update & Coupons

NEXT SHIPPING DAY: Monday, January 6th.

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 3269 and lot 3238 (leaner)
Ground beef bundles
Regular ground beef
Extra lean ground round
Leaner ribeye steak
Leaner New York steak
New York steak
Delmonico steak
Top sirloin steak
Flatiron steak
Tri tip roast
Eye of round roast
Beef heart
Beef liver
Pastured pork liver
Wild alaskan sockeye salmon
Raw milk sheep cheese Carmen carrano

This week’s coupon cuts

Use the code “ORGANICGROUND” to get 10% off organic grass fed regular ground beef, organic grass fed fattier ground beef, and organic grass fed extra lean ground round!

Use the code “LEANERNY” to get 10% off leaner New York steak.

Use the code “ALLSIXTEENTHS” to get 5% off all sixteenths in stock.

Use the code “ALLQUARTERS” to get 5% off all quarters in stock.

Click the green button below or the green words above to access these cuts!

SPECIAL MENTION

We have gift certificates and greeting cards available to add to any order!

Get this week’s cuts + more 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 Past week…

New freezer parts! Scott made a nine hour trip to pick up a trailer full last week.

The freezer parts had been loaded with a forklift. Unloading them back at the Tendoy ranch, by himself, sans forklift was a little trickier, but he got it done!

Feeding time! Photo credit Rose Morris.

Rose looking over the herd. At least once a day we check the cows for any signs of illness or injury and assess their condition to make sure they are maintaining the weight they need to stay healthy through the winter. Photo credit Josh Whitling.

Want to follow along more day-to-day? Find us on Instagram and Facebook.

Quote of the Week

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

– C.S. Lewis

This week’s story:

“When Muskrat Helped Beaver”

When I lifted the beaver, his weight completely surprised me. He looked like he should weigh about 20lbs, but in the pet carrier, he felt about the size of an overgrown muskrat: maybe 8 pounds. I realized his thick coat, which made him look much larger than his weight, must be mostly insulating air space.

I gently placed him in his carrier down on a soft bed of Baltic rushes a few feet from the water. The clear flow of Little Hat Creek cruised quietly by, and under the surface, 3-foot long strands of chara, a native grass-like algae, coursed in gentle waves as the water massaged its way over it. Just upstream a few yards a beaver dam rose from the quiet pool. It was built just the year prior; a little cascade of water percolated its way down the 3-foot tall edifice. I had watched it get built, and it was now part of a 100-foot long monument to rodent engineering, transforming a sterile reach of Little Hat Creek’s dense willow and birch flats into habitat on steroids. Just a few weeks ago, I spotted several ducks on the pond the dam created. I had never seen waterfowl before this year on the 15 miles of the creek; after all, it was semi-desert, and the thin ribbon of water that defined Little Hat had never been of any interest to a duck. But now, all was changing, and the unexpected was almost becoming expected.

Just downstream was another dam just like it. The flatwater pool with a glassy surface spanned the distance between the structures.

The sound, smells, and probably just plain beauty of the setting was enough to wake my catatonic friend. He had obviously had enough at that point of travel in my GMC Yukon. We had driven nearly two bumpy hours to get here, and he had been captured four hours before that. Except for an occasional jumpy reaction to my application of several San Pelligrino bottles of cold river water every 20 minutes to keep him from overheating, he was almost hibernating with apparent depression.

He was a caged wild animal, hopeless with what his fate may be. Until this very moment, where all would be transformed.

As I set him on the streambank, he instantly rodent-speed walked to the door-side of the pet carrier, beady eyes scanning what lay before him, and nose twitching to-and-fro in an excited beaver sort of way, I thought.

“Are you ready, Melanie?” She stood on the streambank about 10 feet upstream, ready to capture some video of the introduction of rodent to river.

“Sure am!”

Click here to read the rest of this week’s story: “When Muskrat Helped Beaver”

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.