Sharing Our Story

Spring piles on top of itself on a ranch. There are so many jobs to choose from one can get dizzy.

In the midst of it all I made a quick trip to Boise to speak to a group of biology graduate students. The class is called Science and Society and features a different speaker each week. As the semester went along I was privy to the list of presenters and noticed that they all had initials behind their name! I puzzled about what exactly I could share with the students and decided to simply tell the story of a ranch. Maybe if I told our story, I thought, the class might have a better understanding of landowners in general.  

The students are budding scientists involved in research projects of one kind or another, and so I started my talk with a bit about another scientist, Andre Voisin, a French biochemist who wrote the classic Grass Productivity in 1959. It was said of Voisin, “he realized more than most that the unknowns in science are far greater than the knowns and that simple observation of the cow at grass could teach us more about ecological relationships than the most sophisticated research yet developed.”

This idea of the cow at grass being research hits a chord with me. Mark and I have been “researching” for over twenty years, and unlike these students who are able to get rid of annoying variables and search out a clear cause and effect relationship, we do our research with the variables intact. We make stabs at cause and effect. We try to be comfortable with always more questions than answers. We keep in mind that success is measured by the health of the three legs of managing wholes - people, land and money. If one leg falters the other two follow. Real life in other words.   

I showed slides of a year on the ranch, our search for feed and water every day, the relationship between the cow and her calf, herd health and low stress stockmanship and how we strive to do our best within the many constraints we find ourselves. I told them about working with government agencies and some good and not-so-good case studies for them to ponder.

I think the students got it. What fun to hear their questions and learn a little bit about their own stories. I told them to keep their stories close because our stories keep us honest and are our best contribution to the world around us.  

I closed with a quote from Charles Dana, a journalist who lived in the 1800’s. I doubt very much he was talking about natural resource concerns, but it seems fitting. “Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth.”

I have a vision of good ecosystem management. It is of a scientist and a rancher/farmer with heads bent together over the land in full appreciation of the knowledge they both contribute. Thanks Jen for fostering that same vision!   

one ranch story

    

FFA 'ing

I spent three days at the FFA State Leadership Conference. When I got home the willows had flowered, that wispy light green smudge that appears across the dark branches and is always the first leafing of spring. It was a lovely greeting. But what I never realized before were the bees! As I walked home from feeding cows today a loud hum came from the trees. In researching, I found out that willows are important as a first food source for bees in early spring. Who knew our humble willow-lined canal had such an important job?

The kids put on another great conference. I helped select the new officer team as part of the nominating committee, or Nom-Com, as they call it. Students representing each of the nine FFA districts in Idaho serve on Nom-Com along with three adults. We put 24 candidates through a grueling interview process that I hope they appreciate later on as a character building event. Only six kids make it on the team. Now that it's history, I'd like to look each candidate in the eye and tell them how heroic they were, winners or not.  

Seth and Anna help run the conference each year since they've outgrown FFA membership. Seth hustles around with a mic in his ear and Anna, with script in hand, patiently guides the officers as they escort students, parents, civic members, teachers, etc. through the curtains and into the spotlight. When Nom-Com finished our work on the last day of conference, I stood in the darkness backstage and watched my kids do their thing. They were too focused to talk to me but I did get a heartfelt hug from each of them. I think I'm even more proud of them working behind the scenes than I was when they themselves were the stars of the event.

And in the final moments of the conference, as the officers were announced and they ran on stage, many in tears, I said a prayer for the kids who didn’t make it – to keep believing in themselves and to continue to grow and forgive. And to the ones who were selected, those who will wear the officer jacket this coming year, a prayer too, for discipline, humility, insight and integrity. Do us proud! 

bee heaven

credit Laura Wilder for the photo:

7 years of state presidents helping out with conference
- finally another girl!

Spring gets Underway

Spring is bearing down on us. Thank goodness Mark is good natured even in the heat of battle. With a suite of chores to attend to each day - feeding, calving, burning ditches, shipping calves and upgrading irrigation facilities, he methodically tackles each task in order of priority and for the most part keeps his positive attitude.

Me, well I worry too much and think I need to have things a certain way. For a few months every spring and summer that’s a fool’s game. Better to take a breath and trust that we’ve done it before - this year will work out just fine too.

I planted two triple rows of peas which made me feel better. Might as well take advantage of an early spring!   

I slipped away for a day and a half to attend a gathering of range professionals organized as the University of Idaho Rangeland Center. We discussed ways to further range improvement efforts in the state. I’m the lucky one who serves in an advisory capacity and gets to give my opinion, then go home and leave the real work to the pros. 

On the drive home I stopped at Massacre Rocks State Park to see how the grass was coming and ran into Kevin Lynott, the manager there. He’s a grass enthusiast like me so we have plenty to talk about. He showed me an implement he designed and had built that is pulled behind a 4-wheeler to assist in broadcast seeding of native grasses. The Backcountry Mechanical Vector (BMV) Sweet 16 features a mower blade mounted on the end of each of 16 arms which are designed to float over rocks and lightly disturb the soil. Following each blade is a length of chain which scratches the surface as well. He runs it before and after broadcast seeding and has gotten great results. All he’s missing now is some cows to maintain the perennials. And he, in fact, agrees with me!

With all the challenges we face as range managers - fire, invasives, endangered species, drought, etc., it’s good to know there are fine people all around the state like Kevin at State Parks, Neil, Amanda and Glenn in Extension, Karen and Lovina at the University of Idaho, and others, all dedicated and doing their darndest to figure out solutions.

it happens every spring

Kevin and his BMV Sweet 16

without cattle hooves to disturb the soil - the next best thing

still cleaning the occasional barn stall and finding beauty there

Not Belize

Seth and Leah spent their spring break at the ranch. Yesterday as we were riding horses through the Wapello sandhills, we joked about their choice of destination during their week-long college vacation. “There was sand, maybe not beach sand . . . but still!”

They successfully pulled two calves, one backwards and one with a leg back, then delivered a pair of tangled twins that didn’t make it. They weighed yearlings; Leah learning how to run the scales. They moved pairs, which was a semi-wild affair with young babies and concerned mothers. And on their last day of break they moved drys, those cows still to calve, to new pastures. Oh, and they fed cows of course. Leah got the hang of the new used diesel truck and figured out it’s pretty easy to keep Seth on the bed and to steer around the calves.

We made a drive up to our summer range at 6500 ft elevation. It was pretty sobering when you know that on a normal year we would still be snowed out at 5500 ft. We were kicking up dust most of the way. We stopped at Brush Creek to look around and Seth snuck up on slumbering cutthroat trout on a quiet waterway that should be rushing with snow melt.

We had some good conversations throughout the week. You always will if you spend time with Seth. He is a homebody with an international focus, if that’s possible. I guess we all have divergent parts of our personality, but his are more pronounced than most. Leah is just good company, cheerful to tag along at whatever needs done.  

They're grappling with those difficult career, educational, relationship decisions that all young people face. Seth graduates in May and then what? I wish we could reassure them that even though next steps seem life altering, massive, monumental, that in truth things will work out fine if, as Gary says, "you'll just let 'em." There's lots of time and room to make mistakes and make corrections and figure it out on the fly. Two more able kids we cannot imagine.  

It was grand having them here. I don’t know how they felt about using their spring break to help us. But, after all, they’re at that stage where they delight in each other’s company no matter what they’re doing. Remember that?

Twin Work

We had three sets of twins enrolled in the ranch's risk management program. Today we collected on one set.

Mark found a dead calf this morning that he thinks had both front legs back. Luckily the cow was okay. Mark loaded the dead calf and fetched the cow to the barn with his favorite mount, Jane. He then skinned the calf while I milked out the cow and tried to suckle one of the twins on her.

To “suckle” means just as you’d expect, put the cow in a head-catch and put the calf to her udder. The baby was having none of it though. He probably wasn't hungry enough and when they’re a few days old they don’t like being handled and can refuse to nurse. I tied the cow’s leg back but she was still trying to kick and scared him even more.  

I got a good pitcher of the cow’s colostrum, her first milk. Just like humans, the mother’s first milk is loaded with antibodies and critical for the calf’s future immune system. And in fact, things need to go pretty right because the calf’s stomach can only absorb these antibodies in the first 12 hours or so of life, so getting up and sucking right away is crucial.We like to have extra colostrum on hand for this very reason as once in awhile we might need to step in and help. We have an old relic of a refrigerator, the kind with a lever handle, in the barn to store the milk.

Even though the grafted calf didn’t want to suck just yet, Mark put the skin on it and poured a little O-NO-MO on his head. It’s a product that claims “orphan no more,” and is made from granular dried placenta. It must taste salty as the cows lick it and start to bond with the calf. This cow licked as intended and then hummed to her now reincarnated calf - that motherly, soft coaxing murmur we hear only when a mother addresses her baby. Cows don’t say much, but this vocalization is unmistakable. 

Speaking of twins, we celebrated Jesse’s kids’ third birthday today. It was a nice gathering of family and friends with pizza, ice cream and cake, and lots of March sunshine coming through their south facing windows. It’s fun to watch Jesse with his kids. I even think - yes I’m sure of it - I heard him humming to them once or twice today.   

beautiful and thick

she thinks she thought of him

It Must be March

It’s raining calves here on the ranch. Mark has a running tally and tags the newcomers when they are one day old. 

The cows expecting their first or second calf are in one field, the veteran mothers in another. Mark keeps a close watch on the heifers, the neophytes, but lets them all calve on their own for the most part. He walks a thin line, letting them do what nature has equipped them so well for, and also being around should they need assistance. If there’s a problem, it’s most likely a mal-presentation, a leg back, head down, etc. In these cases we fetch a horse and walk the cow into a nearby corral and haul her to the barn for help.

We have two sets of twins so far. They come at the front end of calving season, arriving early like human twins will. The cow is okay nursing two for a while until they get too big, then we’ll steal one to graft on another cow that loses a calf as the season progresses. We keep the twins and their moms in the corral so they get extra feed. In closer quarters away from the larger herd it’s also easier for them to keep track of each other.

Jesse and I arrived with two trucks to the feed ground today and found Mark with a grin on his face. He had been out checking cows on his 4-wheeler. “Guess what I saw this morning?” I thought he was going to tell us about a coyote or eagle scavenging on the calving ground. Instead he told us that while making his early rounds, and while the frost was settled all across the sagebrush to the east, and there wasn't a cow in sight . . . all of a sudden a shaft of steam burst upwards out of the brush. A new life! He had caught that cool moment from a totally different visual vantage point - when the calf slips from the birth canal surrounded with warm amniotic fluid and breathes its first breath.

It's happening on and off all day and night for a while. A mini-drama in a world of cows.

The mother of the twins, not so sure about entering the barn

getting used to two

this one is taking too long and might need help

The Capitol of Light

I was feeling discombobulated on Sunday morning. It was hard to come home from a weeklong visit to our state capitol and find myself on the back of a feed truck in a piercing wind. But now it’s Tuesday and I’m back in the swing of things.  

We’ve been to the capitol building several times over the years. When the kids were little they loved climbing up and down the great marble stairways and standing in the rotunda, looking down over the railing to the bottom floor and up, up, to the tip-top of the dome. But this visit was special. As a member of this year’s class of Leadership Idaho Agriculture I got to tour the capitol in a somewhat official capacity.

We attended meetings of both the House and the Senate Agriculture Committees and visited the offices of the State Controller and the Attorney General. We walked around the Senate Chambers and the floor of the House. Our guide, Dorita, is on a first name basis with all the dignitaries including the chairs of the most powerful committee in the legislature, the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC). Our timing was perfect as we arrived just as JFAC was adjourning, so we were able to have some time with the co-chairs, Representative Bell and Senator Cameron, before they hurried to their next engagement. They explained the challenges of setting the state budget and said that since Idaho is a balanced budget state the legislators can’t go home until the debits and credits line up.

The capitol was constructed in 1905 and due for an update in 1998 when the legislature approved a massive renovation/restoration effort. The building was restored inside and out and two new wings were constructed underground to the east and west. This allowed the existing footprint to stay the same. The only above ground structures visible over the hidden wings are the string of skylights modeling those of the original building. Because of the many skylights, a favorite of architect John Tourtellotte who along with Charles Hummel created the original design, the capitol is filled with light. It bounces around the white marble and shows off the deep mahogany accents.

Tourtellotte’s skylights were intentional, not only to illuminate the inner beauty of the building, but as a template for governance. His words ring true today, a hundred years after his work was realized: ”the great white light of conscience must be allowed to shine and . . . make clear the path of duty. . .”