That's a Wrap

We had a lovely weekend in Moscow to celebrate Seth’s graduation from the University of Idaho. The northern panhandle of our state is breathtakingly beautiful. The rolling farm ground of peas, lentils, grain and alfalfa is bathed in shades of green this time of year. And interspersed here and there are standing pines and meticulously kept farmsteads. The “breaks” of the Clearwater River provide the backdrop.  

We stayed in a luscious bed and breakfast I found on Airbnb just outside of neighboring Genesee. Airbnb is a great travel tool if you're into a bit of adventuring. Our host, Gayle, is a farm blogger/advocate like me so we had lots to visit about.

Seth had a hard time leaving his university life behind. He squeezed every drop out of his college experience. From fishing the St. Joe and recruiting a bunch of great guys to his fraternity, to working for the College of Agriculture and supervising a team of interns  his senior year, he did it all. He even got to wear the homecoming king crown and emcee a few university events. He made the most of adult mentors and did some mentoring himself to underclassmen, and he got a great education along the way. He’s the type of kid that the opportunities a university provides are used to their best advantage and worth every penny.  

After we loaded his four year accumulation of stuff into Anita’s truck and Seth’s 23-yr-old Toyota pickup, I rode with him out of town. He was in a pensive mood, not unlike other transition days in his life. I well remember the day he left home 4 years ago in that same Toyota to head to Moscow. After stalling most of the morning and still facing a 9-hr drive, I finally had to guide him behind the wheel and out the driveway, assuring him we’d still be here to come home to. He has never liked change. But even so, he immerses himself in the moment, saying his farewells and taking a long last look back.

We came home to rain and more rain and the annual switching of gears that our kids go through. They’re busy riding horses and working dogs and trying to keep dry as we follow another herd to the hills. They’re both steeling themselves for their next move, Anna to D.C. to work for the summer for the National FFA Organization and Seth to South Carolina to start a new job with an ag consulting firm. They use the word “dread” to describe the feeling of leaving home and the West again.

And as for me, the mom, I’m trying to concentrate on words like gratitude, equanimity and faith. Gratitude for all the blessings I enjoy every day - health, wealth, a warm bed, a solid companion. Equanimity, which is my catch-all word and works in all situations. And faith, that the kids will have safe and rewarding adventures and that they’ll find their way back home again.

looking over the university feedlot pen of cattle

last campus walk

blessed rain

Cassie doesn't mind the wet while Seth takes refuge

    

A May Album

After trying and failing to write a blog, I decided to let the images tell the story for me.  

I've been on a spring cleaning mission. This old barbed wire was gathered off the mountain last fall to make way for a new line. Oh, if these rolls could talk! 

A76 made the cut and is now a member of the herd. Each replacement heifer is weighed and vaccinated and her number is tattooed into her ear in case she loses her tag. 

We left home with the first herd and encountered a plethora of obstacles along the way.

The crew that makes it happen.

I walked to change a stream of water this morning and flushed a pheasant off her nest! 

Pulling up fence in God's country to get ready for the cows. A second crew kept the herd going.

We made it to the first pasture. The greenest of greens. Bless the rain!

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