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This Week’s Story: Baby Gets Brix

I took my grandbaby out for a walk today. It was a beautiful day; a gentle warm breeze rippling the waving and verdant grass, an occasional cloud scudding across an azure blue sky, and the windowpane clarity that betrayed the previously cloud-covered secret of snow streaked mountains…..

Store News

Next Shipping Date: Monday, October 20th

We generally ship every Monday, holiday weeks excepting (see calendar). You’ll get a tracking number when we ship your order. UPS may initially show an extra day of transit time, but will correct late Monday night when orders hit the Salt Lake hub.

Next Restock Date: Wednesday, October 22nd

We restock every Wednesday and send out a sale flyer on Wednesday in the early evening with the week’s deals.

This Week’s Reader-Only Deals

Use the code “BEEFSAUSAGE” to get 10% off organic grass fed regenerative chorizo sausage and organic grass fed regenerative kielbasa sausage!

Use the code “3LEGOFLAMB” to get 10% off grass fed leg of lamb when you buy three.

To access these sale items, and for more deals and products, you can click the button below!

Ranch News

I (Glenn) grabbed this pic yesterday on a range recon mission, and it may not seem like much, but it is actually quite impressive. In the lower right of the photo, you can see the terminus of a beaver dam with lots of fresh construction on it (mud and sticks). If you would stretch out the dam length over the entire distance, I am guessing that it might span nearly half a football field. Though not in the league with the great dams of Canada that I have seen (some nearly a quarter mile in length–the longest on record is a little over a half a mile in Alberta), a fifty yard long dam is truly a large one for the Rocky Mountains! Many of you ask often how the beavers are doing, and I’ll have to say they are thriving. As for a specific location, that I won’t give. Beaver security is real, as there are those who will happily take them for their fur. Photo credit Glenn Elzinga.

It’s the Pahsimeroi River, at fall high water with new snow on the high Lemhi Range beyond. If you look back to last week’s newsletter, you’ll learn why high water is the norm in the river that runs through the ranch. As I walked along the river yesterday inventorying our winter grazing possibilities where we entirely fence the river, I was also looking for fresh King, or Chinook salmon spawning “redd” beds (I found several). The water ran clear, and the banks were highways of several different kinds of muddy prints: moose, elk and whitetail deer. -Glenn

 Photo credit Glenn Elzinga.

Glenn shot this pic after the rain quit. We do have some fall color here, and it’s pretty rich along the Pahsimeroi River bottoms. Photo credit Glenn Elzinga. 

It’s not bad for a retirement pasture; it’s a room with a view. Two of these horses are old range retirees. They put so many miles on over the years, and still live on, simply resting on the ranch. The oldest is the black mare April who is around 42 years old. They’re perfect companions for two colts, just coming to age one and a half–it’s the other two out there. They’re just learning how to be a horse, and there is none better than Ginger and April to teach them. Photo credit Glenn Elzinga.

The beeves are growing like crazy on fall, orchardgrass pasture. Glenn tasted some of the grass today (actually), and it tasted sweet. He guesses the brix, or carbohydrate fraction of the grass is around 20%. Sweet corn comes in at around that. When grass gets this sweet, cattle lick it up and gain pounds. And it’s good pounds–laden with all kinds of nutrition that makes them not only put on weight, but resonant with wellness. Photo credit Glenn Elzinga.

Clyde spends more time on a dirt bike than most humans. Yesterday, he clocked about 40 miles on the blue bike gas tank, as Glenn ran the back-country of the range looking for anything from leaky stocktank pipelines to roving bands of elk. Photo credit Glenn Elzinga.

It’s day 2 of the long walk home. It’s about 35 miles to get the cowherd back to the home ranch, and it takes a decent sized crew to bring them. The camp has to move with the herd, as it was a total of 4 days to take the meandering trail down from the mountains home. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

That’s Justin, who took a summer off before his 5th year at Texas A&M. He’s cowboying to get the herd down from the high ranges. Just beyond him, you can spy some of the horse “ponying” crew. Their job is to handle the many horses that aren’t being rode, and bring them down along with the herd. The trick is to get the whole camp and everyone in it in stages over the homeward trail. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

Ella is on the pony crew, and is helping keep the herd moving while leading one of her charges to the next camp. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

Beau is on the pony crew, and looks super relaxed because he is–back in the saddle again. He just finished his undergrad in Scotland, and on the way home, he asked if he could join us to help gather the range this year. It’s his third year showing up in this way–the first was with a long internship where he was hooked for life. Like most of us, the range got in his blood. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

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