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This Week’s Story: The Annual Hail

I texted a warning to the crew. They are in wide-open country, and I had just read the Weather Service forecast. Hail was to hit the range crew hard today, and with hail comes thunder and lightning. And that can get really dangerous in the Big Open. 

I should have known better, given what date it was. When I recalled the memory that was nagging at me, I realized that hail was two days late. Today is June 11, and hail always hits on June 9. I say always, but I’ll put a limiter on that: for the past 4 years, hail has poured from the heavens on June 9. And it can get hairy…..

Store News

Next Shipping Date: Monday, June 16th

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, June 18th

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 “WILDHUNTER” to get 10% off organic grass fed regenerative wild hunter!

Use the code “#5SIXTEENTH” to get 5% off grass fed regenerative (non-certified) #5: family box sixteenth (top sirloin).

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

Ranch News

Alderspring cows aren’t skinny on the range; They relish the variety of wild grasses. It’s all about choice. They can balance their nutritional needs by following flavor–and that means they maximize weight gain, make delicious milk, and self-medicate preventatives through diverse wild plant species. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

Camp is just over the hill, and the cattle are heading out for their afternoon graze. We’ll trail them out a mile or so from camp, planning new forage locations for each day so they don’t regraze an area. Many of the grazing zones we delineate for them haven’t been grazed for several years. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

The Bear Basin plateau is a microcosm of the greater sagebrush ecosystem that covers much of Utah, Nevada and Idaho. Perched at about 6000 feet, the views from the basin are 60 mile views, with not a trace of human habitation in sight. A dozen distant mountain ranges ring the horizon. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

Aubrey comes to us from Texas. She wants to own her own ranch someday, and she’s soaking up knowledge like a sponge. She’s aboard Ruby, one of our range veterans, who helps on teaching her the ropes. The weather on the range is changeable! Even though the National Weather Service predicts clear skies, the clouds will gather up and pour down rain anytime, despite absolutely pristine clear skies in the morning. Rainbows are common when the views reach over miles of open mountain country. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

Glenn is explaining some of the nuance of stockmanship to the interns. His main focus is to not create any stress when moving the cattle, as the main objective on the range is to encourage them to eat. If the cattle are stressed in any way, they will never have their heads down eating. As a result, it pays in beef and even $ when they have their heads down, even when they are being moved. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

Janey and Spark take a break while Glenn checks out the condition of tiny forbs that dot the sagebrush landscape. He estimates that half of the forage the cattle consume is forbs (leafy vegetation that is not grass). Janey seems to be settling in to life on the range. She almost had several blow ups on this day, but under Melanie’s reassuring hand, she held it together. Melanie will put several days on new range horses to get them used to everything: the wind, heavy brush, stock dogs, rattlesnakes, hailstorms, flapping raingear, thunder and stampeding cattle. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

Glenn and intern Leona discussing native great basin range plants. Leona is a range plant ecology major at Montana State. She’s really into native range grasses–their ecology, history and response to grazing. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

The sun has set, and it is time to turn the herd home back to camp. It’s going to be dark as the crew pulls their saddles, and they’ll find light to eat a welcome camp-cooked meal that the morning crew has built for them by campfire and lantern. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

This crew is smiling because they just finished a tough week and are heading out for showers and bunks at the ranch, back at “civilization.” They fought some tough topography with big mountains, scorchy heat and freezing rainstorms. They had to haul water at times, when pipelines couldn’t deliver to thirsty cattle. But they prevailed, and in another few days, they’ll be ready to do it all again. Photo credit Melanie Elzinga.

Your purchase supports our regenerative work. For more information go to https://www.alderspring.com/regenerative/.