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This Week’s Story: Living the Legacy of the Bear-Hats

August on the high ranges ushers in a slow, almost imperceptible transition from summer to fall. The nights are already cooling, and by the end of the month, we will have a frost, and the beginnings of snow dustings on the highest peaks. My ears stay tuned for the sound of elk bugling—the definitive herald for the onset of fall…..

Store News

Next Shipping Date: Monday, August 11th

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, August 13th

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 “GROUNDBEEF” to get 10% off organic grass fed fattier ground beef, grass fed regenerative (non-certified) fattier 20 lb. ground beef bundles, and grass fed regenerative (non-certified) regular 10 lb. ground beef bundles!

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

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

Ranch News

Glenn grabbed this shot today just uphill from the Pahsimeroi River bottoms. The home herd of Alderspring cattle are all behind his back. Our cattle never enter this pristine area. It’s protected forever from domestic livestock, and as a result it is quite a haven for biodiversity. I’m not sure you can see it in the picture but those cattails in the foreground are almost bending over from the weight of several thousand red-winged blackbirds perching on them.

That’s Clyde ahead of me (Glenn) as I ride through one of our former nighttime bedding grounds where we would bed nearly 400 head of cattle every night for a week several years back. We would put them here in a temporary hot wire pen so one of us could camp with them overnight. It’s been a game changer with regard to wolf predation. Because of night penning we haven’t lost any of our cattle to wolves for 11 years. We get really excited about the vegetation shift in the night pens! This particular night pen is all native species that have regenerated with abandon due to the disturbance our cattle caused and the inoculation of nutrients and biology.

Clyde is posing in front of quite a story. There’s several dead trees in this pic and they’re all aspen. Much of the American West is losing aspen trees to old age. The suppression of nearly all wildfires and continuous grazing on most of the western ranges have led to the slow demise of aspen. The good news on Alderpring ranges is that aspen is making a comeback especially on creeks. Our cattle herding techniques finally give young aspen trees a rest from any grazing and a chance to regenerate.

That’s today’s grazing map. Each one of those polygons represents a morning or afternoon grazing depending on which direction the slope faces (south facing slopes are always warmer, and only get grazed in the AM). The blue pins with water drops in them are our temporary water tank locations. The yellow squiggly line is a fire hose pipeline to get those tanks full. They all disappear in just another week after the herd moves on. We measured the grass in each one of these polygons to determine an estimate of how long the cattle can graze there. It’s usually no longer than a day!

Here’s Clyde again posing in front of the entire Alderspring herd. They’re hard to spot in the big 2018 wildfire burn that’s across the valley. They’re fairly scattered across it and the crew is gathering them. If you look very carefully you can see a black band about 3/4 of the way up that partially forested mountain–that’s the beginning of the herd coming down to the bedding ground for the night.

In the 9000 acre burn area the grass can be sparse, but it is exceptionally good. The cattle really relish it because there is so much diversity, and to them diversity means flavor. If you look closely you can see cattle spread out even to the next ridge. Riders on horseback have to be very careful because there’s so much downfall and broken timber to navigate the herd through. 

That’s Annie on a breather from herding cattle in the middle of a 2018 wildfire burn. She’s crew boss today, and is on the back of Merry with Baby G, her stalwart black border collie, resting easy on a bed of elk-sedge.

Here’s a shot that really captures the essence of what the Big Hat country looks like. We’ve been grazing in these mountains of the Big Hat drainage for nearly 4 weeks starting over just on the other side of the skyline ridge to the right. You can see the Alderspring horse-string happily grazing on their day off while their counterparts are up on the mountain with the cattle.

If you look carefully in the lower left hand corner of this photo you can see the gray shape of the Alderspring cook shack. It’s actually a canvas wall tent, and dotted around it you can probably make out the many smaller tents where the crew sleeps. We’re pretty wolf aware in this country because we’ve had more interactions with packs of wolves in this valley then anywhere else on the range.

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