An Eight-Thousand Mile Handshake

Ben was a long ways from home, but in his element. He was visiting the Western U.S. from his home in the Falkland Islands, and came to spend a day on an Idaho cattle ranch. Mark saddled Gary's solid horse, Joker, and though Ben hadn’t been on a horse in years (he uses a quad, 4-wheeler, at home) after about 15 minutes he settled in and became just another member of our crew. The day’s task was moving the herd of cows and calves onto fresh grass in an adjoining pasture, while separating the bulls as they went through the gate.

Ben raises sheep and cattle in East Falkland and deals with similar issues as ours: keeping electric fences hot, overgrazing/overresting of plants, stock density, grazing timing, invasive plants, erosion, isolation, effects of weather, and the list goes on. When he arrived at our home and we settled on the deck to visit, we wasted zero time with pleasantries and went right to the heart of the challenges and opportunities of raising livestock on the planet today.

He stayed the night with us and said he woke up at 2 a.m. and wrote an email to himself, and to us, with, “the answer,” he called it. The email talked about the hurdles we face in applying the powerful tool of grazing to the best of our abilities, and how we need to “get it right in our inner world, in order to get it right in our outer world.” We know exactly what he means. Like us, he has one foot in traditional methods and one foot in the new/old world of holistic grazing. There are many blocks to advancing our best practices, some real and some we just think are real.

Ben is the same age as Mark and this was his first visit to the States. After a few hours of gathering cattle under a gorgeous Idaho sky, the heady scent of sage all around us, he said if he had come as a young man he might never have gone home. I rather doubt that after hearing the deep love in his voice when describing his homeland.

He showed us photos of beautifully restored grasslands after addressing decades of overgrazing by sheep. One photo showed a sea lion lounging amongst giant tussock grass plants along the shoreline - with cattle in the background! Turns out that grazing, if done at the right time of year and then allowing the plants to regrow, can complement the use of the same habitat by sea lions. Other seashore users are penguins, who prepare a kind of seedbed with their nesting activity. Ben and a group of volunteers then follow up by planting plugs of tussock grass thereby restoring a healthy coastline.   

We were surprised to see that the cattle grazing Ben's land were of the same hereford based breeding as ours. One photo showed a group of yearlings walking off a barge onto Ben’s farm, and they could have been our own.    

We are joined with Ben by an ethic, a philosophy, a love of land and animals. We’re joined by a thirst to find better ways to enhance soil fertility, grass vigor and ecosystem diversity, while improving the carbon cycle and ultimately helping to address climate change. The path is rocky. Ben and I have both read the timely book, Call of the Reed Warbler, by Charles Massy, and I found a line that I wish I had shared with Ben. Massy quotes Wes Jackson who founded The Land Institute in Kansas. "If you’re working on a problem you can solve in your own lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.” The words resonate with us and I'm sure they would for our new visitor as well. Ben, if you're out there, let me know what you think.