Interns are arriving this next week on our Ranch in Wyoming. This begins our busy season. Cows are out, chickens are in the fields and the piglets start hatching (not really - but you get the point). 

This time is flat out hectic for us. We have to feed, house and teach these eager young learners, and we work hard to be sure all their educational needs are met. We've strived over the years to develop a syllabus that is both meaningful and educational. 

It's really got to hit home - we want to leave a lasting impression.

​This year, we are teaching a new subject - the Zeedyk method of erosion control. Its part of a plan that was used to restore degraded meadows in sagebrush rangelands located in the upper Gunnison River Basin in Colorado. 

We'll be teaching from a manual out of the NRCS found here.

A little fruity - huh? Yep, I love it...

Our take on thing tends to be really strange, and quite effective. I call it the inverse-weird effect. The more lunatic I get, the more effective our soils become. That's why you find us doing all kinds of weird stuff. 

Stuff that actually works. 

A few days ago I answered a question about how we worm our Cows. My reply stunned even me, after re-reading it, I thought I might post it here...​

So, ​for our next Meat the Rancher Zoom call, May 18th, at 12 Noon (Pacific) we are going to host a live Q and A on "What is Regen Ag"  

You can join by clicking here. And, as always, if you miss it, we will post a recording here. 

I am looking forward to seeing each of you.

Douglas Lindamood
Chief Piglet Chaser, Chicken Whisperer and Calf Wrangler 
SonRise Ranch

In our next episode of "Meat the Rancher" we'll be discussing the latest trend in veterinary medicine - mRNA delivery of vaccines. 

It seems like nary a 24 hours passes that I don't get an email on this subject from a concerned consumer. No, we don't use them, but I'd like to hold a discussion and Q & A on the subject and allow all of you to ask any questions you'd like on the subject. 

The main reason this is a HOT Button topic is, well, everything is HOT Button right now. That, combined with the fact that lawmakers at the State level have proposed legislation that prohibits the use of mRNA technology in animals - namely Missouri's HB1169.

So where does this leave us, the cattle producers? 
Are we required to use these? Will I have to "go rogue" and raise cattle in secret if I don't comply?
And, while we are on the subject, what is SonRise Ranch's policy on medicine use for animals?

We will answer these and many other questions, live in our next "Meat the Rancher" 

Sign up below - see you there...

Click here for a recording of our discussion. Thank you to everyone who attended and participated.

Our little survey results are in - evidently folks are bit passionate about this subject (see the Blog below this one "Raw Milk, Raw Butter, Raw Cream and Raw Nerves - Part 1") 

By comparison, we launched into a similar subject, pre-2021 and it would have been more interesting to watch paint dry on a cold winter day. 

But now... Wow, watch out!

You folks are fired up! (the comments on the survey were amazing)

I just cant think of a major world event that might have happened in the last few years that would change peoples opinions about their personal health - hmm... let me think. 

Huh? Sorry, nothing comes to mind.

Anyway. I'd like to address in a webinar (my fancy word for a Zoom meeting) this week, the questions we received in the Raw Milk survey.

​I don't have all the answers, because this project is still in it infancy, but thought I might address the below listed questions, yarn a few stories about Eve's health recovery and the role that Raw Milk played in her life and then open it up for questions.

​If you can't join us at the appointed place and time, I will record the mayhem and post it right here.

If you want to join in, please be sure to enter your information below and we will contact you with all the details.

Thanks,

Douglas Lindamood
Chief Piglet Chaser, Chicken Whisperer and Calf Wrangler
SonRise Ranch

Oops - too late, you missed it, but we recorded it for you and posted it below...

As many of you know, we recently acquired a Ranch in Wyoming - one of the most "food freedom" honoring states in the US. We have a guest facility there, perfect for the Carbon Vault school that teaches young, energetic Interns and students how Regen AG works. 

You may also know, that the dying conventional milk industry is on life support. This is not a new thing as US dairies have been perishing for years now. It used to be a substantial industry, but with the Farm Crisis of the 80's (read Harvest of Rage, by Joel Dyer), the expansion of Government Subsides (yes, that actually hurts small farms like ours) and the general de-population of youth from rural areas, the industry is almost non-existent anymore.

Dairy farmers struggle with the low compensation they receive for their milk compared to the estimated cost of production, which can range from $1.90 to $2.50 per gallon according to industry sources. In February 2023, the average price farmers received for milk in the United States was approximately $1.58 per gallon, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

That is astonishing - if we take the lowest estimated cost of production of $1.90 per gallon and the average price received by farmers of $1.58 per gallon, the gross margin is -$0.32 per gallon, which means that farmers are losing approximately 32 cents for every gallon of milk produced.

To combat this, the dairy industry has tried to prevent competition thru legislation. One of those rules is the prohibition of inter-state commerce of Raw milk.

Yes, that is a rule.

At the Federal Level, you cannot ship milk for sale from an outside state (i). Each state is different, but for the most part, according to the FDA, crossing state lines to sell milk, somehow, magically makes it suddenly poisonous. 

But... and here is a big "but" - the transportation of your personal groceries is not prohibited at the state level, by FDA, or any other dictator, tyrant or potentate.

In Wyoming, the sale and distribution of raw milk is legal, but it is subject to certain restrictions. Specifically, raw milk can only be sold on the farm where it was produced. (ii) In California, the sale and distribution of raw milk is also legal, but it is subject to stricter regulations than in Wyoming. Raw milk can only be sold on the farm where it was produced or at certified farmers markets, and the seller must obtain a permit from the California Department of Food and Agriculture.(iii)

The cost to obtain these permits and be inspected could run north of one million dollars.

So, given these restrictions, let me ask you some basic questions?

1. Is it legal to hire someone to "board" a that Cow you personally own?
2. Can more than one person own a Cow?
3. Can you hire someone to milk a Cow for you?
4. Can you consume Raw milk from a Cow you legally own?

If you answered yes to all four of those questions, you might be a candidate for a "Raw Milk Cow Share". 

A "Raw Milk Cow Share" typically refers to an arrangement where individuals collectively own a cow (or cows) and hire a farmer or other individual to care for and milk the cow(s) on their behalf. Each member of the cow share typically pays a fee to purchase a portion of the Cow and cover the cost of the cow's care, and in exchange they receive a share of the raw milk produced by the cow.

From a legal perspective, a raw milk cow share is generally considered a private contractual arrangement between the cow owners and the farmer, rather than a commercial sale of raw milk. This is because the raw milk produced by the cow is not being sold on the open market, but rather is being consumed solely by the owners of the cow share.

A cow share agreement is generally considered a private contractual arrangement between individuals for the purpose of obtaining raw milk for personal consumption, rather than a commercial transaction. As such, the transportation of raw milk in a cow share agreement would typically fall under the jurisdiction of state and local regulations regarding raw milk, rather than federal regulations.

At our first Ranch, located in California, we offered "Raw Milk Cow Shares" on our five Jersey Cows. Jersey's are a heritage breed Cow with exceptional Milk quality (up to 25% Cream was common). Each Cow had five owners on it, plus our majority share (51%). We had first right to buyback if someone wanted to sell their share. We were members of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund to protect us in the event a helicopter hovered over our Ranch to deploy a SWAT team and take out our milk supply.  

Unfortunately, we did not continue this program, as it was very cumbersome to deliver the product. However, now the world has changed. We could easily overcome that obstacle with the technology and services we have today. 

This might be the perfect solution to our ranch dilemma. We want to train our Interns and Students on milk cows, but don't want to dump the milk out. The ranch in Wyoming is incredibly remote, but with good, high quality grass, that milk cows need. The surrounding population is sparse and would not support the milk herd.

We envision a system, like we piloted in California where we board and milk your Cow for a fee. We could bottle your property in clean glass bottles and send out on the next truck. Each time you empty a bottle, send it back in the insulated shipper. We will sterilize and refill for the next recipient. Maybe in the future we could include cream and butter. The fees would likely include...

1. A Cow Purchase Fee w/contract
2. A Cow Maintenance Fee w/contract
3. A Bottle Deposit and Cap Fee
4. Shipping

Expect the total price to be competitive with other Raw Milk Suppliers (when you calculate out the price per Gallon)
And, it's a system that actually works - plus it is legally protected (so far).

What are your thoughts on this?

To help us understand the general desire and demand for something like this, would you be kind enough to complete the survey below?

PS - I will post the results to the Survey in a few days.

Thanks,

Doug Lindamood
Chief Piglet Chaser, Chicken Whisperer and Calf Wrangler
SonRise Ranch

Endnotes:
(i) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has established regulations that prohibit the interstate transport of raw milk for human consumption. These regulations are found in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, Section 1240.61 (21 CFR 1240.61)

(ii) Wyoming: Statutes Title 35, Chapter 11, Section 101 outlines the requirements for the sale and distribution of raw milk in Wyoming. The Wyoming Department of Agriculture has also established rules and regulations regarding raw milk sales, which can be found on here. 

(iii) California: CA Health and Safety Code Section 11380-11391 outlines the requirements for the sale and distribution of raw milk in California. The California Department of Food and Agriculture has also established rules and regulations regarding raw milk sales, which can be found here.

With all the snow stories lately - I thought I'd share some cattle wisdom with our readers. One of the toughest challenges Ranchers face is how to feed cattle during the winter months. Cattle were created to be natural wanderers, traversing great distances in search of food and water. In the past, during winter large herds would migrate from northern areas to the south in search of more favorable grazing conditions.

This migration, combined with a rest period for the northern pastures, created a mutually beneficial cycle that allowed the soil to support more plants and resources for summer grazing. As a result, the animals were able to put on weight and require fewer calories during the winter.

One of the primary ways ranchers prepare their herds for winter is by checking their backs for snow retention after the first snowfall of the season. Good, fat cows will carry snow on their backs for most of the day following a light dusting, thanks to the insulative properties of their back fat. This helps us determine if our cows are ready for the winter season. If not, we usually sell them off before the harsher winter weather arrives and their condition deteriorates.

In nature, we can see evidence of the benefits of mob-stocking, rotational, and management-intensive grazing practices that promote carbon sequestration. The cows themselves provide historical evidence of their preferred grazing patterns. However, many cattlemen today rely on selective grazing and continuous stocking techniques, which involve fencing in an area and leaving the cows to graze continually without any planned movement or management.

Despite the benefits that nature demonstrates, ranchers often deride these practices as "too much work." It is important to recognize that what is declared normal and beneficial by nature should be a guiding principle for ranching practices. By implementing these techniques, we can not only improve the health of our cattle and the land, but also promote more sustainable and profitable operations in the long run.

The key concept to remember here is that there is no such thing as a free lunch - we must invest energy into our food supply. However, this investment does not require 100% of our effort. In the past, there were likely times when humans had to work hard simply to survive. But with our brains and opposable thumbs, we have the ability to optimize our resources for maximum efficiency.

That being said, we must be careful not to become so complacent that we damage the soil and overuse or misuse resources, leading to unforeseen consequences. By practicing responsible agriculture and sustainability, we can ensure that our land and resources remain healthy and productive for generations to come. So while we should strive for efficiency and optimization, we must also remember to work in harmony with the environment, rather than at its expense.

​We invested over 400 hours writing that proposal. It had a 35 page line-item budget, alone. The proposal had been read by experts in numerous fields from finance, to technology to Agriculture. It was the second most intense academic project I had ever worked on.

After Ranching all day, running the company and being a world class grandpa, I came home, lit the midnight candle and hammered away at research, spreadsheets and curriculum.

Later that summer, we took on three interns. They were awesome! Each stayed on our Ranch in Wyoming, ate with us, worked with us and learned from us. I had not yet heard back on the Carbon Vault proposal, but was absolutely sure that the Government would want my idea. I was, after all, proving we could do what we proposed. 

So, what happened?
​
…drum roll please...

It was rejected. 

No explanation, no advisory notes, nothing. Zip. Zero. Not even "Hey, hippy-rancher-dude, your idea sucks, come back later when you learn to write"

Well, then, who did get the money?

You guessed it... Big Ag, Big Pharma and Big Ed.

The three evil twins of conventional farming. That's right folks, were not only going to ask the inmates to run the asylum, we're going to fund them too...

So, what do we do?

Well, I spent 12 months licking my wounds. And, now, I am healed. Next item on the agenda...

Yep, you guessed it...we'll go it alone.

That right. We're going to fund Carbon Vault and Rancher "U" to teach E2RP on our own. Oh, not to the tune of millions of dollars (at lest not yet) but to the tune of six lovely, hard-working, dedicated David's who are crazy enough to think they can toss a rock at Goliath.

(by the way, to give you an idea of the demand for this, for those 6 spots, we had over 50 applicants!)

We have recently closed our 2023 Internship Applications - we carefully selected six for this summer. We look for kids with heart, soul and integrity (the things we can't teach) so that we can show them soils, animals and skills (the things we can teach).

We plan on doubling our interns each year and will close our guest Ranch for the summer (crazy huh?). We plan to become a 90-day intensive, regenerative agriculture powerhouse. 

Here's the catch. We do this for free. The selectees this summer will stay on our Ranch, eat on our Ranch and learn on our Ranch. While we are closed to the public. It will be teach, teach, teach. 

My curriculum is not yet fully tested - so these first, lucky few will be the guinea pigs. And, at no out of pocket cost to them.

But, next year - we are asking for your support.

Yep, you read that right. We are looking for sponsors for our interns. We will be launching a website with their biographies, once selected, then you'll be paired one-on-one with each intern. You can offer to sponsor the total cost of the summer or $10 bucks - it doesn't matter to us. Each intern will communicate directly with their sponsors, in video, writing weekly concerning what they are learning, and hopefully, stay in touch after the program.

Our goal is lofty - we estimate that we'll need $18K per intern to keep them on the Ranch at full speed for the summer. SonRise Ranch, INC is going to cover $6K per student and I will donate all my labor and teaching. This leaves a funding gap of $12K per intern. 

Its a huge ask, I know. But I also know how you folks are. How many of you stood in the rain at Farmer's Markets to keep us going during our start up. We just want to see that grow. We've got the knowledge, the kids have the desire, we just need the bridge between the two.

Next year, in 2024 - we will have a perfected syllabus a summer's worth of class room and academic teaching experience and our Ranch to launch the first ever, regen Ag school.

But, we've got to start somewhere. 

So, if this thrills you, stay in touch. We are not accepting donations as of yet, but we will be for next summer's "school-tern-ship" soon.

In the mean time, pray for us. This is a huge undertaking and we want to be sure it succeeds. 

Thanks for all your support. 

This is a post-grazed field - 24 hours of high-intensity herd impact. The cows moved to the next cell (or rotation) only moments after this picture was taken. We look for approximately 100,000 lbs. per acre of animal grazing impact during this time of year. Most cells are occupied between 12 and 30 hours. 

Why is this important?

• Water infiltration.
• Grass growth and recovery
• Healthy Animals
• Nutrient cycling
• Mineral cycling
• Erosion prevention
• Carbon Sequestration
• and the list goes on...

By using cattle as nature intended them, we get all these and more benefits. My question for you, our reader is this...

Does your "grass-fed" supplier do this? If not, why? Most "grass-fed" beef is raised in regions that cannot support it, so the producer "makes up for it" by supplementing all kinds of stuff, like hay, wheat, grains, etc. then, still calling it "grass-fed".

My gripe on this subject is that these shenanigans, sort of, half way, kinda meet the technical definition, grabbing the sale at Safeway or WinCo, but truly then defeating the purpose.

How are we different?

To feed and raise "grass-fed & finished beef" we use the soils and grasses in a regenerative nature, working in conjunction with what the landscape, animals and ecosystem is telling us.

Anything short of that is just a sales gimmick.

Here is what it looked like before we grazed it...

I am 5'11" tall and that grass is up to my shoulders.

Wow - now this makes an impact on a fella, standing in a field that was once only boot height in grass, doused in chemicals, and grazed down to the nub.

​We see the headlines every day and they don’t look good. It seems the cost of everything is going up. Food, gas, groceries, flowers and even vacations have risen in price. And of course, Beef too. Where does it end?

I can’t answer that question. If I could, I would probably not be working on 2 miles of barbed wire fence this afternoon. Nope, I’d be a rich man relaxing on a beach in the Tahiti Islands.

But I can share with you some insight into what is occurring, right now in the cattle and beef production world.
So, without further ado, here we go…

First, some basics.

Cattle are raised in America on mostly small, individual farms. Many are grown on long-held family land and raised conventionally using chemical fertilizers and modern agriculture techniques for medical treatment.

Most industrial meat is controlled by four major companies. These companies have contracts with small farms and Ranches agreeing to purchase their calves (the crop of the mother Cows) in exchange for a set price, usually favorable to current market conditions – called “contract raising”.

When the calves are ready, the contract is exercised, and the Gower is out of the picture. The calves are then shipped to a stocking faculty to grow more or sent to feed lots to mature before harvesting.

Some, but not many, retain ownership of the calves as they progress through the feed lot process of growing up in a CAFO, or “Confined Area Feeding Operation” – we’ll not get into that now. For further study on this subject, refer to my other writings in this Blog.

Once the cattle are delivered and / or the contract period is over, the contract is renewed with all associated price adjustments.

In a parallel universe, amounting to a small percentage of all beef production is the “direct market” world of beef. This consists of small Ranchers and businesses that raise their own beef, process it then sell it directly to the end consumer, without the “big four” or any of their facilities. A very small segment of this group is the Grass-fed producers. Even smaller is the Regenerative Ag, Grass fed and finished producers – this last group accounts for approximately 1.8 percent of all beef production in the United Sates.
​
This is the group we fall into. 

​So, back to prices.

When a producer is determining price, he or she must first look at expenses. For the first category mentioned, the contract growers, this is mostly done for them. The “big Four” only pay what they pay, there is very little negotiation.
Other small Ranchers will simply roll the dice and get whatever the auction brings. The prices can be good one year, and horrible the next. It all depends on the supply and demand at the time of sale. Most of these producers have other jobs and Cattle Ranching is just a hobby. As one fellow told me, “I just do it so I can keep my hat and cowboy boots without feeling like a chump”

All Ranchers need to negotiation their selling price by considering the associated the price of fuel, fertilizer, medications, and feed. All of which are skyrocketing now.

This will inevitably drive the retail price of meat up.

With the final group, the Grass-fed & finished Regenerative Agriculture, these costs are not non-existent, simply smaller. We have a neighbor, for example, who purchased 90 tons of hay for the winter for his cows. He grazes continually with no management and feeds hay as necessary in the winter. His expenses for keeping the herd are very high. At $400/ton, his feed bill alone was $36,000.

We, on the other hand, use “stored forage”, by keeping our grass thick all summer long. When the fall arrives, we start our non-Growing season plan, that shows us how much forage we have, still on the ground to feed all winter. From here we adjust our Cow numbers to be sure everyone is fed all winter long and then begin grazing.

Last year we used 2 Tons of hay – my cost $800.

Ivermectin, a pour on treatment for parasites is very expensive. Treating a 200 head herd will run a few thousand dollars. Next year, you'll need the latest version, but never actually beat the bugs because nature always wins against chemicals like Ivermectin. Its just one continuous treadmill of medications. 

We use diatomaceous earth. It kills the bug mechanically and they can't outsmart it, like the chemical applications. This plus good management of moving the cows away from their latrine make the partite load almost nil.  My cost - $60 buck a year.

So, when it is time to determine my price for sale of beef, I must consider all my expenses, and adjust accordingly. But I am no where near the conventional producer, in terms of input costs. We still have to make adjustments for fuel, wages and other line items, but for the most part, since we are working with nature, not against it, we have lower input costs to our Beef.

We understand that budgeting and planning are a huge part of eating better quality meats. After having a long talk with the family, we decided to offer our Whole Beeves in a 3-pay plan, to help lighten the load of purchasing a Custom Processed Beef from our Ranch.

This means that, just like me, you too can plan for expenses. We’ve taken the large bill of a Whole Beef (near $4k) and are allowing our customers to make a down payment of 1/3 the cost, then paying the balance in two months with completion before delivery.

This way, the customer can get the price per pound benefit of a large, custom beef without having to fork out a large cash payment up front to feed their family over the next few years. It makes good economic sense in these unsettling times. The other added benefit of this is that our loyal customers can “lock in a price” as inflation rages on. By the time the two-year mark hits (the average time a whole beef lasts a family), you’ll be paying a fraction of the retail cost of beef to feed your family - $11 bucks a pound is going to seem like a stellar deal in two years!
​
Either way, we hope that our ability to harness grass and sunlight transfers into savings for you. After all, We’d rather help you than purchase 90 Tons of Hay…

I don't know how to get this out there to the world... all of you, that is - so I am trying my blog as medium for transmission. 

The utter outpouring of support from each of you regarding the previous blog about our grant proposal has been amazing. I cannot express how humbled I am that you would take time to support us in this... Thank you. 

We received support letters, lots of encouraging words and so much good will that I just do not have words for how I feel. I am honored to have so many of you choose our little family ranch for you needs, and to gather such a large tribe of well-wishers and cheer-leaders to our side of the equation. 

You really are fellow lunatics and must be crazy enough to believe we can change the system - good on 'ya. We are so happy to be linked with you. 

I will keep you informed.

​You know how theses things go... a long period of silence will follow as the gears of government bureaucracy grind away. Hopefully, the will award this grant to someone who can really make a difference and not fill the endless pockets of Tyson, or Cargill.

Stay tuned.
​In the meantime, please accept our heartfelt thanks.

Doug and team

Folks,

We need your help!

I have never (and I mean, never) felt like government project and programs do a whole lot of good for the dollars spent. Notice, that I did not say government is not good. In my 20 + years in the Marine Corps, I worked with and met several high-quality people – doing lots of good with great intentions. I believe good governance, is good. We need that. Decency and order are virtuous and, my feelings are that we have a good system (maybe a little bit rocky in past years, but non-the-less, still good)

So, when I say that I think our problems can be solved with some government help, I do not mean, the government doing the work. I mean some help – really, some help, like a push in the right direction for a wayward teenage kid from a caring mentor.

Where am I going with this?

We have recently become aware of a grant available to us that might move the ball forward for our team – the regenerative ag guys and gals, that truly want to make a difference, not necessarily make a buck.

I have always had a vision for training our next generation of Ranchers and herd managers to operate regeneratively. We have a real enthusiasm for this and put flesh on it each summer as we take on few interns. Once they’ve worked with us and “get the vision” we often will employ them outright or give them the tools they need to start their own operation.

Until now, I have felt this was the only way forward. One or two souls at a time. In the next twenty years I might make good on 40 to 70 newbies… and can ease into my second retirement, knowing I’ve made a small dent in the gigantic, over boated, factory, CAFO mess that our nation has created.

Well, I thought that until now…

This grant would allow me to replicate our methods, and raise up over five years, 761 Regen Ag Ranchers – yes, you read that right, seven-hundred-sixty-one! It’s a huge undertaking. It’s way outside my comfort zone. It’s going to be an enormous work.
​
(Que the cliché’ quotes about nothing good coming from comfort zones… excreta)

Our little company is uniquely positioned to do this, and we have the real-world, hands-on, boots on the ground experience to share with others. Most of the work will take place at our Wyoming Ranch, but we expect it to effect the entire United Sates Ag community.

It will require a large commitment on our part, and the part of the Government, but I believe it will help train, equip and educate many more Regen Ag Ranchers than would ever be possible at the snail's pace we are crawling now.

If you don't now... at this point, to learn Regen Ag, you only have a few choices (this may change later, but for now). You can;
1. Take an internship with a Ranch like ours (we take 2 per year, Joel Salatin has about 16-20 spots, Gabe Brown has a few - the total, conservative estimate is about 50 spots, annually, U.S. wide)
2. Piece mill some classes together. Read blogs. Self teach.
3. Attend very expensive conferences.
4. If you are independently wealthy - buy land, try it out (be sure to have money set aside for trail and error)

This project takes underserved (minority, veteran, women owned and micro-farms) then focuses on converting their land and minds to Regen Ag. All the wile providing, local commodities (meat) and real-time measurement of carbon sequestration rates to show its value and combines it into one, rapidly moving project. 

It took us 13 years to get really good at Regen Ag - if I had mentorship, training and equipment like the E2RP project offers, in five years, I would have been way ahead of were we are now at SonRise Ranch.

If you’re like me, you might feel like a plea to the government for something like this is akin to pouring a cup of water into the ocean to raise the water level.

And yet, that is exactly what I am going to ask you to do.

Please write a support letter for us (I’ll include the vital details at the end of this) Feel free to handle it from any perspective you deem necessary and are comfortable with, here are some suggestions…

• Regenerative Agriculture and Cattle support carbon sequestration.
• Want more Good food, reliably sourced
• Want to see where your beef comes from
• Want more non-industrial ag ranchers
• Want to see erosion slowed on landscapes
• Want to see more water storage, healthier plants and better ecosystems that support grazing animals

Basically, any of the reasons you are a customer or follower of our Ranch – these all make good support letters. It can be short, long, or anywhere in-between. Please be sure to include the following.

1. The Name of the Grant Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities
2. The Name of our proposal Carbon Vault’s Soil Vison 30 and the E2RP Project (Carbon Vault, INC is the company we started to handle the grant – it will work with SonRise Operations, LLC)
3. Your name and relationship to SonRise Ranch (customer, friend, colleague, etc.)

Once you are done, please email it to me at douglas@son-riseranch.com - I will include it with the package.

The grant is due in a few weeks, so please send a letter in the next week. Anything sooner than that would make our hearts sing - but, as I say, better late than never. We have well over 200 hours invested in our proposal and are working feverishly to get it finished in time. We cannot share the entire grant with you because it is over 50 pages and proprietary, but below is the executive summary, and a few additional paragraphs to help you catch the vision.

I’ve included a sample support letter (please write your own), from one of our colleagues at the bottom of this for your to reference - they are really simple, and really important.
​
Questions – call or write.
Thanks
Douglas Lindamood
Chief piglet chase, chicken whisperer and cattle wrangler, SonRise Ranch.

Executive Summary
Our greatest ally in carbon sequestration and soil building capability is surprisingly simple – leveraging Regenerative Agriculture Ranching techniques, grasslands and ruminants working in harmony to build soil organic matter and microbiology. Regenerated grasslands have the potential to sequester over 1/2 metric ton of atmospheric carbon per acre, annually. 
However, the damage to our national grass ecosystem is accelerating at a rate that simple changes in procedures and quick-fix technological gadgets can no longer correct. Loss of topsoil, compaction from overstocking and plant life degradation alone will soon lead us to catastrophic conditions if not addressed with a sense of urgency.  Therefore, our grasslands can be viewed as representing both a hope for the future and a condemnation of our past.
 
A whole-of-industry effort is required to shift cattle production in the United States from destructive land management practices that increase atmospheric carbon toward regeneration methods that result in atmospheric carbon reductions. The greatest cover crop known to our nation is the historic western grasslands of our early national landscape – which can be restored to their former carbon sink grandeur; however, the window of opportunity to accomplish this is rapidly closing.
To remedy the severe deficiency of soil compaction, overgrazing, erosion, and ecosystem destruction this project proposes the Erosion and Ecosystem Rapid Repair Protocol (E2RP).
E2RP’s aim is to leverage the currently mismanaged land and animal potential with unique, measurable, carbon-sequestration training, techniques, and implementation for underserved and marginalized ranchers, ultimately resulting in traceable beef production and access to evolving markets.
The E2RP Pilot Project is a leap forward for Regenerative Agriculture, ranchers, and consumers. It is based on the principle that our grasslands can be regenerated and, all the while, sequester atmospheric carbon, retain water and provide underserved ranchers with a more profitable and proven business model. Moreover, it adds one critical and unique component to this equation – it achieves results rapidly, allowing participants to quickly convert from conventional to Regenerative Agriculture with as little economic and life disruption as possible to their existing systems.

Goals of Pilot Project

The overarching goal of the E2RP project is to put the tools, skills, and financial resources in the hands of capable, underserved ranchers willing to tackle a diverse and entrenched set of problems facing our grasslands, soils, and climate.
The key component of this endeavor is a newly educated, underserved, private landowner and/or herd manager trained in the skill of using cattle and husbandry to work with nature, not against nature, to achieve carbon reduction through the proliferation of healthy grasslands. The strategic focus is on growing grass, not cattle – understanding that if the former is achieved, the latter will follow in abundance.
These landowners and herd managers often share many common characteristics. First, they cannot cease production for the required period needed to convert to the regeneration process without a supplementary source of income to replace their vital revenue streams.
Secondly, they often do not understand or recognize the steps necessary to regenerate their soils or restart the long dormant grassland potential that lies beneath their feet.
And finally, they often do not have the equipment, resources, means or a competent guide to begin the regeneration journey.
To address this, we propose a comprehensive approach involving a united effort to educate, train and equip our most underserved yet innovative ranchers to spearhead the regeneration effort.
The requisite knowledge and techniques are currently too immature to be scaled to the national level – like our nation’s knowledge deficiency during the Dust Bowl and prior to the emergence of soil conservation services, we need a focused effort to engage, educate and encourage a core group of stakeholders within the ranching community to gain momentum in moving Regenerative Agriculture forward. If successful, an abundant carbon sink is again possible.
This effort, combined with unique, direct-to-market access can and will provide exceptional results. These results can be measured in both carbon reduction, organic matter increases, increased revenue for the producer and enhanced yet affordable access to the consumer.
In short, a fully funded initial effort will be required, and when the pilot program’s success is realized, it will take on a life of its own – the result will be a multitude of small farms and ranches that can revive the soils in the United States and collectively sequester enormous amounts of atmospheric carbon while simultaneously enriching an underserved community and satisfying a growing population’s demand for climate-neutral meat products.
List of Project Partners This project has three partners and four additional components. One component is not controlled by the primary applicant but has no fiduciary impact. The remaining three are divisions within Carbon Vault, INC.

The Primary Applicant is the one of three partners for this project - Carbon Vault, INC will be responsible for the overall execution of the Erosion and Ecosystem Rapid Repair Protocol (E2PR) project under the Soil Vision 30 concept.
Carbon Vault, INC is a disabled, veteran and woman co-owned business. Given its unique insight into the challenges disabled veterans face in the ranching and farming world, combined with successful regeneration projects on three farms in the past, Carbon Vault is uniquely positioned to provide an overall master road map for this pilot program. Their unique, all-encompassing experience in this arena is unmatched, and will include logistical support, any required contract writing, technical direction, and real-world experience to see the entire project through.

Education Partners – The repository of knowledge for this type of regeneration is narrow and focused. Many would-be practitioners hunt far and wide for a central clearinghouse of knowledge on the subject. Successful regenerative ranches are few and far between with little or no support network. Assembling a regeneration plan for any given ranch or farm must usually be patched together with information from conferences, books, seminars, and one-on-one consultations with successful experts. Having a history of profitable projects satisfactorily achieved, education partners SonRise Operations, LLC and its subsidiary, SonRise Ranch, INC (SRR, INC) have assembled a complete curriculum and syllabus that can be tailored to any location in the lower 48 states. With years of experience in this particular field, educational and practical skills from SonRise, INC’s excellent courses will form a single repository of knowledge and demonstrable results. This combination will provide a clear path forward for prospective underserved ranch participants.

Outreach components for processing

The largest and most obstructive bottleneck in small, regenerative agriculture ranching is the onerous bureaucratic processing and legal distribution of ranch raised meats. Whole social media discussion groups are dedicated to sharing information regarding the availability of processing and packaging of small ranch products.
The answer to this is the creation of small and very small USDA processors with a vision for regeneration shared with their ranchers. Our project focuses on production and consumer education and awareness, but between these two ends are the means, known as processing. The number of processors capable of handling this type of product is small. We believe that this component will grow in conjunction with increased supply (by the producer) and demand (from the consumer). With education and awareness, both components will leverage to increase processing access.
Wyoming Legacy Meats, LLC will serve as this project’s processing component. With over 20 years of experience, this partnership will leverage considerable strength during Phase 1 of the project. They will provide a blueprint for future processing components added in later phases of this project. Wyoming Legacy has a vision for creating the first ever carbon reducing meat brand. The regeneration and technology solutions laid out in this project fit perfectly as a model for their producers and consumers. They are self-funded and require no contract funds, as noted in the budget narrative.

Direct Marketing Component - SonRise Operations, LLC has experienced Direct Marketing components which are responsible for the implementation of proven techniques, small market research and development, and customer engagement and education. SonRise Ranch, INC has over 13 years of experience in direct marketing regenerative agriculture meats to consumers. They own the preeminent technology solution for online stores that offer direct to consumer meats. With foundational understanding and expertise regarding reach, engagement and access to the climate-conscious consumer, SonRise Ranch, INC will be leading the Direct Market efforts in Phases 1 to 5 – they require no financial commitment as noted in the budget narrative section of this document.
The combined and consolidated effort of these partner groups will provide an all-encompassing package that can educate, equip, and sustain the underserved participating Rancher for the momentous task of growing, cultivating, and harvesting our most efficacious carbon sequestration means in America today – regenerated grasslands.

Test, Evaluation and Technology Component services will provide quantifiable data to show the success of the project. Normally, significant and measurable regeneration results begin in the third year of execution; however, encouraging visual evidence and scientific test results will offer confirmation following the first growth season after initiation. The test division of Carbon Vault, INC will take initial soil samples and readings to establish a baseline for comparison, while evaluation partners will be tasked with mapping any given participant’s progress over time. The Carbon Vault technology division will be responsible for the implementation of the technology tools to measure the real, quantifiable impacts of this project from field to end-consumer.

The Aviation component in this project is essential and critical as it provides access to and regeneration of the highest physical points on any given ecosystem.
Carbon Vault’s Aviation Division will provide high-altitude dispensing of hydroseed and hydro mulch on certain landscapes. These techniques are vital to success as erosion usually begins at the highest elevation point in any given ecosystem. High elevations in grazing areas suffer the greatest damage owing to cattle’s instinctive desire to find high ground, thereby guaranteeing protection from predators. The peaks of any given grazing area are always those most damaged under conventional agriculture practices. This destructive mismanagement of grazing animals has persisted  for over 100 years in North American grasslands. As the animal feeds in these higher elevations, it consumes all the plant life and over-tramples the fragile microsystem present. Once gathered for harvest or processing, the nutrients consumed are transferred to a lower elevation (usually near a corral or water source), inside the animal’s rumen. This, over time, creates a migration of all useful organic matter and organisms away from this critical high point. To make matters worse, the physical trail taken (from high to low elevation) is compacted from continued, repetitive hoof impact. This trail provides a path of least resistance for water flow during rain events. When the impact of the water from rain events occurs, generational erosion destroys plant life, removes topsoil, and depletes the nutrient base – ultimately resulting in desertification.
To reverse this destructive and relentless series of events cattlemen must first begin to focus on the soils rather than the animals as a resource. This begins by developing a Holistic Management Context and Grazing management plan to limit the time the plant systems are exposed to grazing (often as little as a few hours in duration), giving the plant life a fighting chance at growth and thereby inducing  regeneration.
This poses a problem: how is growth propagated again if nothing  but bare soil remains? This is where our Aviation Partners enter the equation. Although the brush that has replaced high elevation grasses cannot be removed with aircraft, a beneficial growth medium can be applied to promote and restart seed bed activity – an essential component of Regenerative Agriculture. Once growth is started, the plant roots take hold, promoting water infiltration and retention. Plants propagate other plants and eventually the cattle can return - but only if this is done in a controlled manner using holistic planned grazing within a holistic context.
List of underserved/minority-focused project partners
The underserved project partners are the ranchers involved and selected for the E2RP project. During Phase 1 of the program, a disabled veteran-owned demonstration ranch, known as Ranch 1, that includes a named creek, varied topography, significant erosion, low productive output (relative to size), poor water rights and a depleted ecosystem shall begin restoration using rapid regeneration techniques.
Concurrently, local underserved (small business, minority, veteran and/or woman-owned) ranch candidates will be evaluated as regeneration participants for Phases 2, thru 5 of this project.
Once selected, these front runners will eventually become the first generation of regenerators using their own land, cattle, and access to E2RP program equipment. They will be compensated with feed during the critical first year. This feed support   is crucial since, generally speaking, “regeneration” requires cessation of all animal activity for a short period of time so that long dormant grasses can begin to grow back.
As progress takes place, these key personnel shall be employed as regenerative missionaries to the local ranching community searching for the prospective Phase 2 and 3 candidates. This modus will continue, as the top-tier participants become recruiters for subsequent Phases in the project.

Compelling need for the project

This project meets several compelling needs within the CSC concept.

1. Sequestration of Atmospheric Carbon.
2. Enriching underserved and minority ranchers and farmers.
3. Increased water retention[1].
4. Healthier animals, more engaged and educated customers, better nutrient cycling.

Approach to minimize transaction costs associated with project activities
​
The prescribed approach to minimization of transaction costs is simple – the primary awardee will search for the best price/value combination for all service and equipment. This has already begun, as the budget narrative below will show.

Barrier reduction

There are two primary barriers to regenerative agriculture ranching; the first, a financial barrier, is significant. The allure of direct, open markets that bring ranchers higher prices using regeneration techniques that offer better yields can be combined to make small ranching a fulfilling and attractive occupation. However, one must have capital available to make the transition possible.  This is nearly impossible in our current production system where ranchers barely break even in the sale of their product to large processors.
Second is the “unfamiliarity” barrier.  This barrier cannot be eliminated or reduced but must be overcome through education and experience. Much of the reluctance to attempt regenerative methods is due to a lack of understanding regarding both its effectiveness and practicality. These two factors can be vanquished by formal education, demonstration, and practice.
The E2RP program is specifically designed to eradicate these two barriers – and because it is voluntary, only those with the fortitude and curiosity to overcome the second barrier will apply. In short, regenerators must want to change their methods.
Once both hurdles are removed (the economic and the practical), this productive and managerial capacity is combined to form a synergistic motivation for successful implementation. Small, observed successes will be seen by others and then leveraged to build larger gains in the climate smart sphere over the term of this project.
With regeneration, small, disadvantaged ranchers see hope and feel empowered, not isolated and overwhelmed by nature. The excitement of producing from an abundance - of up to four-times conventional production rates - rather than scarcity is inspiring. A candidate can often quit an off-farm job, thereby improving quality of life, because for the first time in generations they have been shown how the land they tend can provide a full income and a worthwhile enterprise.


[1] Common estimates are that for every 1% increase in organic matter, 23,000 gallons per acre of additional sub-surface water can be retained on the average landscape.

To:          USDA, NRCS Grants Division
From:    Ashton and Bryan Dhondt
Subj:      Letter of support for Carbon Vault’s Soil Vison 30 and the E2RP Project, Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities Grant, 2022
 
To whom it may concern,
I am writing to you today, in support of Carbon Vault’s Soil Vision 30 Project. I have been a friend and customer of SonRise Ranch for many years. The work they do in the regeneration of soils and grasslands is astounding. Their team produces some of the best meat products I’ve ever tasted and knowing that my food dollars are working to support carbon sequestration, healthy animals and small family ranches is very important to me.
I have read Carbon Vault’s E2RP project and believe this is a wise use of our tax dollars. They are proposing to train the next generation of Regenerative Agriculture Cattle Ranchers in the way beef should be raised in the United States.
We are thrilled they are attempting this, and hope that you will carefully consider awarding their grant request in this endeavor.

​Thank you,
Bryan and Ashton Dhondt

On a crisp, cool morning in October 1781 General Cornwallis marched his troops into an open space between two armies that had, for eight, long years been engaged in an epic struggle eventually resulting in the birth of a new nation.
​
During this momentous event, however, General Washington would not allow the honors of war- a long held belief, amongst gentleman worriers, to which both Washington and Cornwallis subscribed, dictating that the loosing party march to the beat of the victor’s tune. Most assuredly this would have been Yankee Doodle Dandy or something of the type – an ostensibly American melody.

No, not today. On this day Washington would demand that the British march their formations of surrender, one in which each soldier would lay down his musket, to the tune of their own choosing.

Their choice – “The World Turned Upside Down”, a ballad dating to the 1640’s borne of anger to protest the rule of parliament in that day, of the belief that Christmas should be a solemn occasion and thus outlawing the gaiety and celebration we all enjoy surrounding the yuletide season, even today (yes, they could do that back then – hence one of the reasons for a revolution)

You can listen to it here, sung by a modern folk band, but this line in the lyrics is especially poignant…

“Command is given, we must obey, and quite forget old Christmas day: Kill a thousand men, or a Town regain, we will give thanks and praise amen.”

Harkening to the scriptures of Acts 17, the writer reveals his motivation for rebellion and stubbornly refuses to submit – kill an entire town, we will still celebrate joyously.

I find it incredibly odd, that Cornwallis, or his deputies even, would choose such a song, for without understanding the context in which it was written, and only observing the title, one might conclude this to be appropriate tune of subtle protest - after all, the most powerful military on earth had just been defeated by a rag-tag group of rebels and misfits. ​

And so today, I stumble upon this headline. 
​
​"Farmer Gives Cooped Up Cows VR Headsets to Increase Milk Production"

Wherein detailed are the exploits of a CAFO dairy operation, that places a VR headset playing videos of lush green pastures over the face of confined cows, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-deep in their own waste and slop, being force-fed a daily ration of grains intended for maximum milk production.

If that is not a world turned upside down, I don’t know what is.

Of late, regardless of your political, social, or religious views, you may certainly conclude that the world itself has been not only been turned upside down, but violently shaken and had the pennies dropped out of it’s pockets.

There seems not a day gone by in the last two years that I’ve not been traumatized in amazement and disbelief at the actions of our society – frankly, for a simple Rancher guy, just trying to bring righteous food to my constituents, I am often bewildered by the schemes I read about in the agriculture community and our country in general.

I may be too simple – but to me, it seems madness abounds.

Perhaps, I am too unsophisticated, traditional, or old-fashioned.

But may I ask…

Why don’t we just put the cows back out on pasture to let them see lush, green pastures for themselves, without the VR technology?

Would that hurt so much?

Are we so in love with our ideas, so enamored with our hubris that we must pervert nature to this degree?

If you are not aware, dairymen, keep their Cows in a barn, close to the milking stall for good reason.

Why?

First, they must feed them an artificially high, grain and corn-based diet to keep milk production levels elevated. They must do this because dairy farms survive on pounds of production, per hoof-pound of cattle. Meaning, as a dairyman, I calculate my success (and thus income) by dividing the total weigh of my heard, by the total output of milk (measured in pounds, not gallons). This keeps the math simple and can tell me if I am not getting enough production from my heard and thus need to make a change in feed or procedures.

Additionally, having the cows nearby is a matter of convenience.

Let me explain.

On a Ranch or a Farm, a key component that contributes to burn-out is repetition. Dairy farms are the hardest to endure in this respect. Twice per day, seven-days a week, 365 days per year, every year, you must milk your cows.
Want to jet out of town for a week?

That might be impossible – you must find a substitute. The Cows have got to be milked. Period.

When Eve and I had milk Cows the whole family involved to some degree or another. Eve’s father would help milk when I couldn’t. The kids would help by gathering our small Jersey Cow herd from the pasture in the morning and “warming up the milk barn”. It was an all-hands effort and, might I add an incredible repetitive one at that.

Having Cows right next to, or in a Barn would be a boon for moral – 20 minutes could be saved by not having to go round up the herd, twice per day, all year long. That’s over 240 hours per year! Imagine what you could do with that amount of time on a Ranch? How many fences could be repaired, chicken tractors built, or beaver analog dams constructed to help repair a stream that was eroding?

So, both nutrition and convenience would lead to having your dairy cattle nearby, or even better, confined – thus the incentive for a Farmer to keep dairy cattle on pasture is practically nil.

But, what about the benefit? Could that outweigh the cost of gathering the Cows morning and evening for milking?
The benefits of pasture-based milk production are so numerous, they reach beyond the scope of this blog, but just to whet your appetite, here are a few…

• Beta-carotene in the milk would increase substantially
• Animal health would exponentially improve
• There would be no need for sub-therapeutic, or prophylactic antibiotic use
• Breeding and cycling would become far more efficient
• Nutrient transfer would cease (if you don’t know what this is, see my blog here)
• Plant health would increase dramatically, thus resulting in better water retention, carbon sequestration and less erosion
• Cow manure would be distributed, thus decreasing, or eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers
• The Rancher’s health would improve (walk out and get the cows)

And so, I ask you this… is the world turned upside down? If, so, then let’s have the bravery to turn it right-side up again.

A World Turned Upside Down was written as a protest and evidently only the title was considered by General Cornwallis and his staff as dissent to the breaking down of old ways – how dare the rebels defeat us?

But isn’t what we need today, a deeper understanding for the hidden lyrics of society? Should we be those who, agriculturally speaking, read only the title, or ought we to look at a deeper meaning, a better solution to our problems?
Can we do that?

I’ll tell you we can and here at SonRise Ranch - and we do!

Beginning this summer, we will be adding our milk cow herd at our Guest Ranch. Not only will our visitors we able to see a real, working regenerative Agriculture Ranch, ride a horse and eat from the bounty of the Ranch larder, but soon also be able to drink milk, make butter and add cream to their coffee from a real, pastured Cow. No grains. No homogenization. No pasteurization. No funny business.

Just real, down home, gritty Ranching – in short, a world turned right side up.
​
Come join us – it will be an experience you will not soon forget.

The signs are everywhere - Nature wants to grow grass.

We just wont let it...

Now, if you were in the cattle industry - wouldn't you want more grass? I mean lets think here... Grass makes Cows, Cows + Bulls make Calves and Calves make Dollars! Makes sense to me, how 'bout you?

But, in the United States, and many other countries worldwide, the exact opposite is underway. Cattle are let loose on the land to pick and choose only the grass(es) they like most, then overgraze them to extinction. The only remaining plants are those of lower nutrition, less filling and poor taste. Over a long period of time, cattle exposed continuously to an ecosystem will create a landscape less favorable to themselves and their offspring.

How do we combat this?

Well, first, we stop continuous grazing. Then we must rebuild the ecosystem, with the help of the Cow - they can build as efficaciously as they destroy, if managed properly.

​That's a big "if"...

But, to begin, we must shift that damaged ecosystem in the right direction - just ever-so-slightly.

We figured something out recently. We found that ten feet left or right of nearly any road in America has great grasslands - why?

​Because they are pruned once per year for fire or weed control (some jurisdictions spray them - lazy dopes). This is done mostly by mowing with large tractors. Trimming and mowing are what the grasslands responded to for millennia before we got here. This was compliments of nearly 70 Million Buffalo, roaming, ranging and tilling our soils.

​Now, if you know anything about grazing cattle (and really if you just have common sense) you can see that the plant systems outside the "mow-line" are much less healthy, less nutritious and more erosion prone than those inside the line. 

As show in the pictures below... 

Take a look at those pictures again... they are astonishing. Here we see the grazing area (outside the fence) in deplorable condition, with tap-rooted, fire prone and non-nutritious brush in abundance. The area between the fence and road provides much more nutrition - why? Because it has been trimmed (on a time-oriented basis) by a tractor, but that is essentially what controlled grazing is, at its root - time oriented trimming.

So, my question is this...

Can we pit a tractor against 50 Cows? Who would be better for the environment? Who would add manure back to the ecosystem? Who would not need a defined benefits retirement plan? 

On our Guest Ranch (where visitors can come and immerse themselves in Regenerative Agriculture) we have an enormous problem with our creek. It is, and has been eroding at an astonishingly fast rate. 

The first 80 years resulted in only a few feet of erosion. The next forty have decimated the landscape. The reason - simple... our capacity to feed cattle (hay and otherwise) has increased since the 1970's dramatically.

We can now feed animals on land that was never intended to support them at the stock density or stocking rate we currently can accommodate them due to modern technology.

The first conclusion we must come to terms with is that the ecosystem we are surrounded by is not the original one given to us by the natives (or taken, rather) - once the settlers came to the west. History tells us that the grasslands of the western plains (our Ranch included) had grasses so thick that you could tie them in a knot... while you were on your horse.

Let that sink in for a bit...

"while you were on your horse" 

If you've followed us, you know that the answer to our carbon problems is grass - not soybeans, not corn, not "fuel alternatives" but perennial grasses - why? Because the root system on perennials stores atmospheric carbon. Tons of it - literally, metric Tons of Carbon per acre!

The more roots, the more Carbon can be stored. The problem is the roots - they follow the "one-third, two-thirds" rule - meaning that for each third of biomass above ground, two-thirds of roots exist below ground. So, think with me, if the early Europeans wrote letters home saying they could tie grass in knots (its was dense and thick) while sitting a saddled horse, then we are talking root systems that were 12 feet deep!

Wow! Talk about Carbon Sequestration - these grasslands were Carbon Negative before Carbon Negative was cool.

So what happened to them? 

We did... 

But, here is the good news. We know how to get them back - and we know that, historically, they were present here on our lands, so it is possible to restore them (seed beds stay present for over 100 years in dormancy). We just have to tilt the ecosystem back in the favor (and manage animals - remember there are no ecosystems void of animal or insect presence without human interaction causing that void) of these ancient perennial grasses.

How do we do this?

Good question - here is a video of just one of the many steps required to make this happen.

The main steps are...

1. Ground Cover (biomass - old hay, wood chips, old-growth grass from last year)
2. Herd Impact (all systems have animals - only we can alter their behavior)
3. Rest (do not walk, graze or use the land)
4. Graze (very high density - lots of hoof lbs. per acre, very short period of time)
5. Rest
6. Graze
7. Repeat

Now, consider this - all Ranches in America begin to grow grass again to 6 feet tall. All grasses develop 12X the carbon holding capacity they currently possess. All the Carbon being drawn down from the atmosphere and then sequestered in the soil again (remember the Carbon came from the ground in the first place).

Is this not the solution we are looking for?

We hear the term often, at least often enough, if you run in the enviro-conscious circles of our world. But, do we really know what it means? Or, better yet, what causes overgrazing?

Before we examine this subject we might want to look at a few pre-requisites for the use of any word or phrase; application, definition and context.

To begin with, here at SonRise we subscribe to the philosophy that overgrazing cannot be applied to an area, but rather a plant. My firm opinion is that we cannot look at a pasture, field or any other spatially defined area and determine that it is overgrazed. Only a plant can be overgrazed. 

A good analogy for this would be if you were a factory supervisor with, lets say, 200 workers on the floor. You look out one day and describe your staff as overworked - is that true? What about Brad, manning machine #17 - he's is just smoking along, happy, productive and not a care in the world. He could quite easily take on another three or four tasks. But, then there is Lisa working on machine #39, she has three children and her husband is deployed overseas, serving in the military. She is mentally and physically exhausted - ask her to do another thing, and she might just kill you.

If you draw your factory work-load conclusions contingent upon an encounter with Lisa, you may define your factory as overworked. If you did so on a conversation with Brad, you would conclude the opposite. My point is this, you cannot drew a general conclusion from a specific sub-set with any accuracy.

Why?

​Well, what if Brad's child dies tomorrow in an ice skating accident, as terrible as that sounds. And, on the same night, Lisa's husband unexpectedly comes home - bingo, now your entire evaluation is incorrect and the factory workload is the exact inverse of your previous conclusion. 

The same is true when we evaluate our pastures and grazing impact. We need to take a holistic view of the plants present. Are they recovering sufficiently before the next grazing period? Do they seem stressed? Are there roots receding, or expanding (good luck trying to see this - alfalfa for example has a root system that spans up to 20') - I will circle back on this in a few, so hang tight.

Once we have agreed on the correct application of the word, we must define it. So lets see what the common definition is...

I think that is a fine definition. "damage to the grassland" - good! Nice work Oxford. That is exactly what it is - damage to the grasslands.

However, did you catch the application? "the failure of the rains led to overgrazing..."

What? 

Rain has nothing to do with overgrazing of a plant, or plants. Rain has everything to do with erosion. The question is not "rain or no rain" the question is "effective rain" and for that we must turn to the problem of erosion. This is what we mean by context - you've got to use the word in the correct context for it to have meaning...

For a grass-fed beef operation to be efficient, it must, at it's core have an effective water-cycle (because the primary crop is grass not cattle). To do this we must control our animals. They work symbiotically with perennial grasses to cycle water and carbon. 

Here is a quick (six-minuet) explanation of how we use our cattle and their symbiotic relationship with perennial grasses to fix imbalances in the ecosystem caused by previous, improper use of grazing animals (mostly cattle).

That's odd, huh?

You can actually use Cows to fix what Cows and Humans have done wrong... anyway, watch this, then think how it might be applied to your local context. Problems with fire? Inefficient water cycle? Brown rivers due to run-off from tilled and abused ground?

Cattle and perennial grasses are actually the answer - am I the only one who finds it astonishingly ironic that the misdirected, ill informed vegan world is demonizing cows when they are actually the solution? 

It's not the "cow" - its the "how"​

Stay tuned for part-2 when we look at how this pasture has recovered with the use of properly managed cattle.

Our Cows need salt.

They like it, and salt provides them an efficient way to uptake certain minerals no longer present in the biosphere.

Years ago, an abundance of minerals resided in the soils and plant life - today, they are all but gone. As the great western herd of 70 million bison moved over the vast landscapes of California, they would ebb and flow with the natural flora present.

Driven by taste, pressured by predators, the massive, heaving mass of Bulls, Cows and Calves would meander from site to site, uninhibited by your swimming pool or interstate 5.

Seasonal and geographical variations would permit rooting depths of the perennial grasses to forage deep within the crevices of ancient buried rocks and mine out minerals from eons ago. This, combined with the natural growth cycle would present various plants of diverse size, shape and color to the heard. Each individual inside the group would select its grazing requirements based upon need and metabolism. A wonderful and magnificent dance of give and take would result. Those not capable, or adapted to ferreting out the right plant, at the right time, with the right nutritional uptake would fall to predation and not reproduce. The cycle of life is far more efficacious, and might I add, brutal than our puny brains and opposing thumbs could ever be - nature is, if anything - a strict schoolmaster.

In today's world of modern Ranching, none of this is true.

The animals cannot roam freely, at least not to the extent they once did. They cannot cross from the pastures outside of your community, over the streets, past the grade school, behind your backyard BBQ, and near the coastal shrub plains to gobble up a snack of Arizona Bunch-grass for that boost of iron or copper they so desperately need. 

Conventional Ranchers - the majority of producers, today, do not salt correctly. The Cow must choose their nutritional uptake. When a Rancher puts out a salt block, it is usually what the Rancher thinks the Cow needs - the Cow cannot speak, so the husbandman must interpolate its needs - right?

Wrong - the Cow can speak, just not with words. 

In fact, nature speaks all the time, we just choose not to listen. 

Here is a short clip of how we manage and handle Salt on our Ranch (BTW - we are not conventional Ranchers if you haven't figured that out yet)​

Wondering thru Wyoming last week, Eve and I took note of some amazing effects humans have had on their ecosystems. 

If you've been around SonRise for more than 5 minutes, you know we are zealots for environmentally conscious, personally responsible food production.  To be honest, I never thought I would find myself here. Our type - the Cowboys - don't usually stop to see a flower in bloom, or take the time to frolic in wheat fields.

Its usually "boots and spurs". Big diesel trucks and spittoons - "yeh haw"... "get them dawgees in" and ropen' calves.

Were sort of weird here at SonRise - we don't fit the cowboy, rough and tumble mold (but we are Cowboys, none-the less), nor do we fit into the "envro-wako" mold either (but, just for the record, I do love trees). We are a hi-bred mixture of libertarian-environmentalist, lunatic Ranchers.

My philosophy is one of balance. We are big on personal responsibly, liberty and care for the creation. I feel a deep concern for were "we" are going. I am not a full-on "Green New Deal" type, nor do I believe we should coat the earth in glphosate. I think we need to take a real hard look at our food systems and make a difference at the ground level - no pun intended. And if you know nothing else about my philosophy, know this - I firmly believe Government does not have the answers! You needed look any farther than the USDA's disastrous polices thus far, to know and understand that real healing of our earth will not happen at the hand of the bureaucrat or legislators. You wont get change, like we want, with more rules - you will get it with dollars spent in the right direction. Don't like Cargill, or Perdue or Tyson's raping of the earth - well then, don't give them a single red cent. Invest in a ecologically minded, non-chemical, non-industrial Farm or Ranch.

Ok. Rant over... sorry.

Anyway, the trip last week was really productive. We originally ventured out to see a unique irrigation system located at a friend's Ranch in Wyoming. He is one of the few Ranches that operate like we do and we really enjoyed seeing him. ​Our upcoming San Diego operation will use his irrigation system to grow grass for our finishing operation, and you (our beloved customers and followers) will be able to come out and see it in real time. Imagine that - getting to see where your food is grown! 

We can't wait... it's going to be great.

So then, all the destruction of our grasslands in Wyoming and the abysmal failures of the Forrest Service in Yellowstone, got me to thinking about our Saticoy grazing unit (Unit IV) just north of L.A. It burned this last summer and it was a huge blessing. The following videos will explain why.

Before the burn this unit carried 16 Cows - SIXTEEN! On 240 acres... now, with our grazing management it is carrying 34 Cows and their calves... Look, I don't do this to toot my own horn here, I am just saying that we can have healthy ecosystems and healthy people and... healthy cows if we just put in the work do manage correctly. 

Here is how this works.

Burn. Manage with Cattle. Re-grow the ecosystem. Remove the Cattle. Re-balance (add or subtract Cow to balance growth)

Its really simple and requires thought, effort and vision, but, it works. 

What we are seeing in the growth of grass at Unit IV is nothing short of miraculous. The cattle, if used properly, gently caress the seed bed to instigate growth. Some species of grasses can be dormant for up to 150 years. That means, that if we manage this properly, we can re-generate the grassland on this unit back to, or near, pre-European times (think West Coast here). The cattle will preform the same function as the bison did.

How we do this is half "Art", half "Science" and a whole lot of "figure it out as you go". We move the entire herd, water, fence, electric charges, hoses, etc - all at once. We rebuild it in the next rotation without allowing the cows to "back Graze" or re-trample the area they just left. 

This ecological messaging is the perfect method to keep the grass healthy and vibrant. 

Think of it like this... you have some money in the bank (your grass base) and you make interest on it each month (your grass growth). You want to purchase something, so you have two choices; first, you can empty your account and spend it all... but that creates a problem. If you do that, you will not be receiving interest payments any longer. 

Nature is a neat creature. In this case she will be kind enough to replace your base savings amount each year. But it will only be enough to barely get by - about the same as all the interest combined. You'll never get ahead. 

Option two: Try just living off the interest. Reduce the number of Cows to match just what the growth is on the pastures. Don't try to graze all the grass. Leave a whole bunch. In fact, I tell my students to feel like they are "wasting grass" when they leave a pasture. A little too much is better than not enough. 

The next year (during the rebound/regrowth season), when nature makes her annual deposit, it will just add to your nest egg. This is a mentality shift from cattle management (being a Cowboy) to grass management (being an "environmentalist") 

Back to the task at hand. We want Ranchers to act like Ranchers. Work. Move your cattle. Make a difference. Think. Behave globally. Stop leaving cattle on pasture to compress soil, create erosion and destroy the ecosystems they were created to enhance. 

And for Pete's sake - if it burns, get cattle on it within the next growth cycle so the brush doesn't come back to create another burn hazard.

Our Ranch is considered an essential service. We have been working 16 hour days to keep the supply running, and it can get quite tiring. In one month, we have doubled our output and still can't keep up. We now have a waiting list for our monthly boxes, and whole beeves are about the only product we have left. 

​We have a ton of new converts. Those who perhaps never saw food issues the way you or I might have in the past, do now!

Why?

Is it that they suddenly discovered that vegetable oils should never be consumed by humans - any humans- ever.

Or, that high-fructose corn syrup is full of junk that kills your immune response?

Or that Cows should not live shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-deep in their own manure packed into a feedlot?

No, probably not.

Notwithstanding the fact that all of these things, and many more, about our industrial food system are true, or, that they were true long before a bat flew out of a cave and landed in someone's soup bowl a few months ago.

The recent real food, local farm awakening is rather attribute to a few other main elements...

Firstly, just a few moths ago, before sickness ensued, death raged and we took a blowtorch to the most powerful economy in human history, the average American family spent 38 cents of every dollar on restaurant dining. That's a ton of pennies, folks. The remaining 62 cents were blown at the grocery store. Of that, nearly 50% was then wasted, due to spoilage, cooking too much or just plain waste from by-products (our generation, unlike our Grandparents, can afford to waste potato peels).

Then came COVID.

And, the world of food, will never be the same. 

Now, the most recent data suggests that only 4% of that food dollar is being spent at a restaurant. This means that the pennies spent at a grocery store are now, presumably, 96 cents for each dollar. That is an astonishing shift in demand folks.

Imagine, just for a moment, that you are industrial food producer "A" executing plan "B" to get exactly 38% of your product to your favorite restaurant distributor and 62% to the local Safeway, when suddenly the Safeway calls to tell you they need nearly a third more than they normally take in their shipments.

After hanging up, you adjust your face mask, ensure you are six feet form the cubicle next to you and answer the phone from your restaurant distributor - she stuns you by informing you that she doesn't need a shipment at all this month - most of her restaurants are closed.

To further complicate the matter, the restaurant historically, has used all the New York and Filet Mignon Steaks from your feedlot beeves, while the Safeway can efficiently distribute the Ground Beef and Roasts from that same beef - times 10,000. 

​So, your spreadsheet and data analysis, work schedules, shipping coordination, cooling rooms, et al, are precisely tuned to the needs of the industry, to ensure exceptional profit and efficiency. You might need to adjust, occasionally, but only by +/ - 3%, at most. Now you are faced with a serious problem. You need to get beef turned around and sent in another direction, to the tune of half your daily output. This is no simple task - it's like turning a battleship with a canoe paddle.

Oh, and, by the way, 25% of your plants have closed due to illness. 

This juggling act / nightmare is  multiplied by the countless vertical stacks of cubicles embedded deep within massive companies like JBS, Cargill and Tyson foods. These behemoths alone, supply over 80% of our nations food, on razor thin margins, with no more than a day of JIT (Just in Time Supply) back up.

This is incredibly foolish and unhealthy. It represents a nation-wide crack in our infrastructure and the ugliness of factory farming are begin to peer out of the resulting fissures. In the next few months, the food supply in America will be in the ICU.

One of the chants from the "how are we going to feed the world?" squad has always been about efficiency. Notice I did not say effectiveness - that would mean healthy food before profit. That is not, I repeat, not a tenant of the industrial food system. No, this system is predicated upon very large amounts of poor quality food to the masses. "Keep them fed!" is the mantra. Who cares more than 50% of Americans are obese, or if diabetes has doubled in the last 20 years.

As my wife says, these industrialist companies are like the Queen of France, who coldly proclaimed - "Let them eat cake" - that is what the industrialist tout. Feed the world food all right - JUNK FOOD!

Now, all of a sudden - we care. 

Why? Because we are finally cooking again, as a nation. 

I'll bet most of your new converts never knew what quality food was, simply because they had never encountered it before. 

When the department of the Treasury seeks to train agents to find counterfeit bills, the do not show them a single counterfeit for the duration of their training. Nope, they spend weeks locked in high security, examining the most minute details of one, ten and twenty dollar bills. Exhausting study of each bill is made, details are memorized.

Then, for the final exam, a board with bills taped to it is brought out on display. On it, are four real bills and a single counterfeit. The prospective graduates are to choose the counterfeit bill. Once passed, they are certified as examiners. 

Each one passes within seconds. 

Why?

They are so familiar with the real deal, that they can spot a fake without hesitation. I think you get the point.

How they come to us, what drives them to join the real food, healthy gut, robust immune system clan is really irrelevant. Frankly, it doesn't matter how they got here. They are here now, and that is all that matters to us.

A few weeks ago we learned of a customer of ours that was on business in Africa. He had left his family here in California, and apparently they were not able to be out in public. Many find themselves in this situation. Going to the store for them might mean getting sick. This man had written us to express his gratitude for our service of "meat from our ranch to your door" - it made our day, really.

One less for the industrial food system, one more for righteous, healthy food, direct from a real Farm. Another family who has potentially been saved from a life of pain brought on by cheap food.

16 hours suddenly became worth it again.

Hi Folks,

I know this is not our usual medium for posting Ranch updates (that would be our regular newsletter - which you can click here to join) but these are unusual times and we seek to communicate with you important facts about the Ranch in any way possible. 

At the bottom of this you will find an email I sent recently to all our tribe - at that time, I would estimate that we were feeding about 450 families in L.A, Orange County and San Diego. 

That was at the beginning of this food crisis.

Now, things are different... very different.

We have doubled subscribers, and just yesterday, I fielded 20 phone calls, while making a priority cattle haul to the butcher, in an effort to boost supply (about a 10 hour block of time).

The general question was "Do you have room for an extra subscriber? I need to secure a reliable food supply for my family!"

The answer was "Yes, as of now we still have room; the door to the Arc has not closed, but it is raining" 

In other words - we are well stocked, well supplied, tracing all the way back to the Ranch, and well connected from our 5,000 acres direct to your door. At these rates (as of Thursday 3.19.2020) we are still open for a few more folks, but I cannot say for how long.

We, through God's provision and perhaps a little paranoia on our part, have positioned our Ranch to be a lifeline in a crisis. We built in a robustness - termed "durability" (as put forth in my 2010 Masters Thesis), into our supply system that mandated, from our very inception, that we grow all our own provisions - not relying on suppliers or any other outside sources. This was cumbersome, tiring and on many occasions, caused me to nearly give up. We were designing and building as system outside a system - rebelling against industrial agriculture. 

The jeers and mockery from our nay-sayers was relentless for the last 12 years.

But, now...

Everything has changed - in four days!

We have a safe, secure, unstoppable supply chain, and I am very glad God gave us the courage and strength to build this. Those 20 phone calls were a breeze compared to the 12 years of hardship. It was such an honor to say to folks, who are rightfully jolted in this current crisis, "Yes, we will be here for you."

Over the next few weeks or so, we have some blogs planned that I will be writing between my Ranch and home time - (My wife always jokes, "Hey, Doug, you've got midnight to 3 AM open, why don't you do it then?").

These will help you understand where your food is coming from right now, both in the industrial system and SonRise Ranch. We will compare and contrast them and take a Q and A with online webinars to help you get a good grasp of where we are as Nation and how this crisis will fundamentally and irrevocably change our food supply.

So, please stay tuned for that those events. We will announce the webinars and blogs on social media (both Facebook and Instagram).

One thing is for sure, we will never be the same after this. 

Wishing each of you the best. Stay tuned. Buckle up and hold tight!

The California Department of Food and Agriculture has placed a quarantine around certain parts of Southern California due to a Newcastle's Disease Outbreak in Chickens.
​

Newcastle's is almost exclusively the result of poor animal management, CAFO operation tom-foolery and terrible hygiene on mega-chicken farms. 

There are currently 328 million egg laying hens producing roughly 99.8 billion eggs the United States. These hens are located on 233,700 farms. 

Did you catch that?

Lets do some math. 328 million hens divided by 233,700 farms equals approximately one-thousand, four hundred hens, on average, per farm. 

But wait... we have only 120 hens, and most small farms only have a few hens too (I bet you know someone with only 5 hens? We do) That means that the average is way off... the actual size of most of the CAFO units is near 50,000. Can you imagine that? That is a huge liability when it comes to disease.

So what is CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) trying to accomplish with a quarantine? Well, first, they are trying, earnestly and faithfully, to prevent the spread of Newcastle's by stopping all movement of live Chickens in the area. For this, I applaud them. Makes good sense to me - stop movement, stop spread - right?

The problem with all cookie-cutter, big-brother, government solutions is this - they work, yes, but usually only for a very small and specific constituency.

Don't believe me? Call the IRS sometime to ask for help on a specific tax issue. 

Anyways...

Stopping movement is also defined by stopping the hatchery from shipping new baby chicks to our Ranch in Moorpark (even though we are outside the official quarantine area). That means that an operation like ours, which doesn't hatch baby chicks, but uses a hatchery from outside the state, cannot replenish their meat birds (called broilers) each month for the harvest 9 weeks later. Forget that Newcastle is confined to egg-laying birds, not broilers.

We still can't get them. Nope! Rules are rules...right?

Not really.

The large industrial farms are still getting theirs. Just not us. How do I know - well, you haven't seen a shortage of chicken at Vons or Ralphs yet have you? Plus, these mega-farms with lobbyists and cronies can just cross-ship from another production facility and wait out the quarantine. Whereas, a small farm like ours loses our lifeline within 30 days.

The hatcheries are being prevented from shipping to us by CDFA even though we are outside the quarantine area. They are deathly afraid of the government. 
​
So, here we are. It's been nearly 4 months and we are struggling to keep our Chicken operation running. For those of you who have been wondering why you see this...

Please understand that we are not being mean. We are working feverishly to keep our Chicken in stock, but, we have been running out. If you are one of our precious subscribers, may I encourage you to eat more BEEF? It would really help us out! 

Thanks for understanding. And please pray for us that we will find our way through this difficult time. 

Thanks

Douglas Lindamood
Chief Cattle Wrangler, Piglet Chaser and Chicken Whisperer
SonRise Ranch

'When I was serving as a Marine Pilot, I used to say that flying was "hour and hours of boredom, interspersed with moments of sheer terror" - one second things were all good, the next, an engine would drop offline and I would be hunting for a place to put the aircraft down safely without damaging any government equipment - including myself.

Then of course, there were the occasions that someone else would be permitted to cast a ballot on the referendum of my life. Those days were steely, and made me a calm player under intense pressure. The enemy had as much of a right and desire to inflict suffering upon us as we might have them. It was always a give-take, with lives of Marines in the balance. I distinctly remember seeing a young man, not to far off in my age group, on the opposite side one day. He looked like I might have. Tired, scared, doing his duty, and perhaps just wanting to be sure to go home that night. For a split second, that seemed more like a hour of detail (that is how I kept calm in combat) I thought about every detail of his life - what he did for fun, how many children he might have, what his home life was like.

It occurred to me that he was like me. He wanted to live. He wanted to be home. He missed his family.

And, perhaps, his only chance at that might be if he shot me out of the sky. It was a fair game - an honorable fight as it should have been. He had his chance - I had mine.

Sheer terror

I am often asked "Doug, why Cows?" What makes a guy leave military service and want to work with Cows? Why aren't you still a pilot? Why not choose a more exiting "second career"?

I'll tell you why... sheer terror - I've had enough. Period.

The resting heart rate of a Cow is between 48 and 84 beats per minute. For a human, that is practically comatose. They are very calm creatures and after years of stark madness - they seem like my kinda folks. To put it bluntly, its a crowd I fit into quite well.

We try not to excite them, as research tell us that it takes up to 72 hours for their heart rate to return to normal after even a small startling. They are a creature of prey, so they can be very acute to your movements. They see us coming from miles away. I can always tell, because when I arrive, they continue, calmly grazing, whilst turning one, single ear towards my position. They never even look at me, they just track me like a radar with a single ear. As I move abeam their position, the single ear does too and follows me with deadly precision. We always approach our cattle with the smoothest calm  and careful methods possible. 

Most of these techniques can be attributed to the innovative work by Dr. Temple Grandin, PHD. She, an autistic lady wrote a number of innovative and insightful books on animals - who, obviously, do not speak. Their entire world is comprised of pictures and/or sound. Her insight as a successful person with autism shed enormous light on our system of handling animals. She is perhaps one of the most influential people in the cattle industry - for those willing to learn. 

And that is the key. 

Let me repeat that line - "Those willing to learn"

One, if not, the biggest challenges I face on a day-to-day basis is the absolute stubbornness present in the cattle and industrial Ranching and Farming world. 

"Well listen here Sonny, we've been doing this, this way for longer than you've been a cattleman" or, "My great-granddad Ranched this way, and I was taught by him"

Has it occurred to anyone that he might have been doing it wrong all this time?

Look, I am not after great-grandpa, or in anyway desirous of tarnishing his legacy, but lets be honest here, our farming and ranching systems are broken - period. Its time for us as producers to embrace change, humble ourselves and lead from the front - irrespective of our Ranching buddies who might look down upon us or snicker in the background about "those hippie Rancher lunatics, that do things all new age like"

'I am also not beyond, or above admitting that somethings from the "good ole day" work just fine. Fencing on our Ranch is a mixture of traditional, five-wire barbed fence (around the exterior of 5000+ acres) and new, innovative single wire, lightweight electric, solar-powered lunatic fence, that is portable, easily adaptable and very efficient for moving Cows on a daily basis. 

Movement, Manure and Aeration

We focus on movement - because that is what nature does. Cows, unhindered by man would group tightly, move daily and would act in a beautiful symbiosis with their perennial grass counterparts. The soil below them would be a dancing celebration of nematodes, bacteria and fungi - all functioning together. Manure would be deposited, not concentrated and issued from the animal at a rate coincidental to the correct metabolic breakdown rate of the soil supporting the beast above it. Aeration from hoof action would promote light disturbance, but not over-oxidation of the soil (as in tillage by a machine), creating capillary action for water to infiltrate to root zones. 

All because of the proper movement of the animal.

Where you are sitting today, reading this, in a tidy southern California town surrounded by 
21.1 million other people, roads, fences and precision laid lot-lot lines of 1/4 acre; 500 years ago was a vast grassland with no barriers to movement. Great rolling hills and space stretched as far as the eye could see (read "Two Years before the Mast" by Richard Henry Dana, for a great description of California in the 1830's)

And...

70 Million Buffalo

The great western herds would have moved freely and with purpose as the predator packs worked feverishly to keep the herd thinned of stragglers. 

That is all that our electric fences do - they mimic the ancient action of the predators. Because we can tear them down, roll them up and restring them out to then next lush pasture in a matter of an hour or two, they act to keep the herd on the move. Those Cows, on the move, are never allowed to commit the unpardonable, in plant husbandry - the "sin of the second bite" - which hinders plant growth by removing, too rapidly, the photosynthetic capability of the plant before it can recover.

Surprisingly, this system of cattle management is frowned upon. We are the butt of all the coffee shop jokes and never given credit for healing the very earth others exploit in order to fill their coffers. We still get lumped into the "Ranch" community by our far left, vegan critics and yet are vilified by our far right, dominionistic, "spray the earth" and "medicate the daylights out of the Cow" crowd. 

Its a bit like being an outcast from all. 

Sometimes I wish I was neither - but then I see the calling. 

It can be easy to see only the enemy at the gates. I understand completely the current culture war on meat - both in ignorance and apathy. I don't surmise that those are our constituency. They, of the crowd that care, are ours. Our team. Our tribe. Our co-laborers. 

They are the ones I think of most. The concerned Mom, the cancer survivor, the athlete, the true environmentalist.

When I see the Hollywood elite, foolishly proclaim that veganism is the way to save the planet - I don't get angry. I have pity. 

Perhaps they want to go home too... maybe they miss their family in this culture war, and maybe they feel that their only hope is to shoot me from the sky. 

I guess its a fair fight. 

​This week Eve and I are visiting Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Swoope, VA. 
 
Polyface is a legend in the integrity farm and food movement. Started by the Salatin family in the 1960s, Polyface became an organic, food freedom and teaching hub - long before organic was even a cool buzzword. 
 
Joel has authored over ten books, all aimed at helping turn the tide of the failed food and agriculture policy in the United States towards integrity, locally sourced small-farm success. His farm trains and equips the next generation of food freedom fighters on the East Coast. 
 
Our goal is to become the same hub of inspiration and teaching on the West Coast. Stay tuned for exciting developments in the next few years.
 
Like Polyface, SonRise Ranch cattle are fed only grass - a stark contrast to the industrial farming method used to produce 90% of all beef.

​Henry Ford is widely considered to have been the father of the assembly line method of production. With a predictable output and consistent product, his model "T" Ford became the first mass-produced automobile in history. This is a reductionist’s dream - defined inputs, predictability, and steady product. Who could ask for more?
 
The problem is, of course, that such a linear and parts-oriented approach works perfectly for any given mechanical object.

But not a biological one.

Cows were never created to be reared in a factory setting. They were never designed to be confined, to have consistent feed (called a TDR or "total daily ration") of measured corn day after day and never given freedom to roam on grass. 

How would you feel if I trapped you behind bars and fed you only oatmeal for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Every day, each day, for your whole life - you never move more than 100 feet and eat the same thing no matter what.

In human vernacular, we call this "prison."

This creates disease, poor muscle structure, harmful pathogen explosion and a host of other issues. ​So we took the 2.5 hour drive from Alexandria, VA, to Swoope, VA, to visit the legendary Polyface. For hours we passed by civil war battlefields, picturesque plantation homes on hundreds of acres, marching routes of Washington’s revolution army. Each site basked brilliantly in the full bloom of a remarkable spring day in the Shenandoah Valley. Rural Virginia is nothing like the West Coast. At nearly twice the annual rainfall of our brittle environment in San Diego County, water is both prolific and abundant. Flowing water is everywhere. Streams, beavers, dams. Farms are ubiquitous. The majority of restaurants are some variation of Farm-to-Table, and I don't mean in name only. They really are directly supplied by a farm. Polyface alone supplies over 30 of them. 

​As we approached Polyface in our awesome and formidable compact rental car, Eve and I both commented at nearly the exact time - Where are the rotational graziers? Where are the temporary electric fences, Cows groped in small compact grazing structures that cause perennial grasses to proliferate and grow in abundance (all the while sequestering 15% more carbon than unmanaged, continual, dispersed cattle on pasture)? Where are all the pastured chickens?

The hours soon gave way to minutes on the GPS estimate time for arrival.  By now for sure, there would be plenty of farms and ranches (we call them ranches on the West Coast, back east they call them farms) that replicated, modified and repeated Joel's practices.

I mean, really folks, here you are within a stone’s throw of the father of the environmentally friendly land stewardship movement of the 20th century and you’re running a confinement, factory chicken house with 35,000 hens living on top of each other and a manure lagoon to catch waste runoff!

To set an accurate context here, you must understand that Polyface is the Jerusalem of the clean food movement. Joel has been featured in numerous books, movies, and high profile articles. He is sought by theologians and earth lovers alike. His methods have been replicated across thousands of farms in the United States. The day we stopped by, he had just returned from a two-week speaking tour in Australia. His influence in our ranching methods alone has been legendary.

As we turned the final left onto Polyface’s drive, we passed a confinement dairy with perhaps 1500 cows. The bare land erosion was stifling. Cattle left to pasture, with no management or rotation, had denuded the grass to zero.
Zero - really... nothing was left. Precious topsoil was eroding downstream.

For over two hours, our senses were bombarded with poor land management. We were acutely aware of the lack of eco-friendly farming surrounding Polyface. It was astonishing. When we finally arrive on Joel's farm we exhaled with a deep sigh of "finally." His farm was teeming with life, from bugs to chickens. Life was everywhere, the grass was the deepest and most vibrant I had seen yet.

I guess the light shines brightest in the dark. The contrast was palpable. 

With neat, orderly equipment placed as we would on our ranch, it was readily apparent that this was a working farm. We were just two of 15,000 annual visitors from nearly 20 different countries. The nearest gas station is a substantial distance, groceries are even further, and we hadn’t seen more than a few vehicles in the last 20 minutes. The farm is remote by any standard. The hum of activity and birds chirping greeted us as we exited our car and headed for the Farm Store.

Following a brief visit to the farm store, we ventured out. Walking out past the car, I spotted Joel from a few hundred feet.
“Joel” – I shouted, as he turned and walked towards us. “We’ve come all the way from California to see you!”
“Well that’s great,” he replied in his quintessential southern drawl. After a short introduction, we explained, rather quickly, the impetus for starting our ranch. Eve’s autoimmune disease and the dearth of valuable, righteously cultivated, local foods. We told him of the inspiration he provided us when we first viewed FOOD INC, and of reading his books feverishly, so as to boot-strap our fledgling business into what SonRise is today.
​
After the monolog, I embarrassingly stammered out, “Sorry, I am probability keeping you from work.” He was fixated on our story, as if we were the only ones around that day. It was humbling, to say the least - he kept asking engaging questions.

“Actually, we’re filming a documentary here today,” gesturing towards the film crew that had been listening intently. “Why don’t you jump in the back of my truck and join us?”

We traveled with Joel and the film crew in the bed of his truck up to the top of the farm, where the watershed and catchment ponds collect excess runoff from the mountain’s aquifer, supplying irrigation via gravity for a few thousand acres. It looked like a super-sized version of our Ranch. Innovation was everywhere. Healthy, well fed animals in plenty. Life was abundant.
​
What I hadn’t known, until later, was that Joel had only hours before disembarked from a 25-hour flight from Australia, a nation in desperate need of his counsel. He had been there for two weeks on a speaking tour. This film crew had booked their appointment four months in advance, and he was gracious enough to include an entire afternoon of his time with us.

I was stunned.

I soon learned that we held the same philosophy with respect to people and the leading of our hearts for our constituency. In a later conversation, I found him agreeing with me when I quipped that as integrity farmers our “greatest ability is availability” – a saying I am fond of teaching each person in our employ. Our people need answers, they need to be heard, and they need someone to take the time to focus on them, even if just for a moment, to see them through this difficult process of finding a food shed for their sustenance and healing.

Joel and I had a kindred spirit. For both of us, this was more than land stewardship, animal care and environmental engagement - it was a calling.
​
The day meandered on. Our conversation was rich and diverse. We shared our dreams with him. He offered only encouragement and insight. I don’t recall even a word of caution. His zeal for a food-freedom world and farms that honor creation was astonishing. In a short afternoon, we bonded. As Eve and I left, Joel jumped on a four-wheeler and made his way to a pasture with cows in it. He was checking the mineral lick for the cattle as we passed him in our car. We waved, he waved. After hours on a plane, hours of interviews, deep, thoughtful, meaningful conversation - his respite was to go check on the cows.

Kindred spirits indeed.

We reluctantly started the long journey back. Inspired and motivated, the same countryside greeted us in our return trip. This time I saw it differently. I was not saddened by the lack of regenerative and sustainable posture of the neighboring farms; Eve and I were too busy discussing the renewed hope and enthusiasm we had for SonRise. It may be true that no prophet is accepted in his hometown, but when you are the one who encountered the prophet – it doesn’t really matter. 

I'll never forget seeing that old black and white film footage of the Apollo 15 astronaut, David Scott on the moon dropping a feather and a hammer, simultaneously, in near zero gravity - summarily testing Galileo's hypothesis that both objects would fall at precisely the same speed due to the absence of wind resistance. In the atmospheric vacuum of the moon both the hammer and the feather should arrive on the dusty lunar surface at roughly the same time.

Of course, he was correct (Old 'G was a pretty sharp guy) - and, my 6th grade teacher had helped to solidify in my mind why attempting to fly like Superman, off of my backyard shed would likely result in a not-so-super outcome, cape notwithstanding.

What is fascinating about gravity is not just its immutability, but its ubiquity - the laws of gravity apply even to the tiny nutrients in an ecosystem on a farm. All nutrients follow gravity. The nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, however small inside a decaying plant stem - will eventually follow gravity. In fact, they have for time immemorial.

So what?

Long before you and I were here, all that stuff (nutrients in plants, soil, rock, etc) has been moving down hill. Slowly, almost inperceptily, down, down, down. Nutrients move about 10 feet per year in the direction of gravity. Down a river bank, down a hillside, down a ditch.

Ever wonder why the water in a normally dry river becomes dark brown after the first hard rain of the winter? The answer is nutrients, following gravity - in fact, scientists tell us we have lost a full 1/3 of all the earth's topsoil to erosion (gravity) in the last 100 years of human history.

But when you multiply that times thousands of years, and extrapolate the inevitable outcome, you realize that, in theory, everything should be in the sea by now!

So why isn't it?

Well, it turns out that God created a certain, very special species of animals designed to counteract this exact phenomenon. They are called ruminants, aptly named for the existence of the rumen - a special stomach chamber that "holds" food for later consumption. Much like a kangaroo that can safely carry its offspring in a marsupial pouch, a ruminate, such as a cow or bison (buffalo) can pack a lunch for later consumption.

All ruminants are animals of prey - they have no inherent defense mechanisms for warding off predators. A cow can't fight off a tiger very effectively. In an unadulterated natural setting they buch together in a very tight group (ever heard the phrase "safety in numbers"). Once formed in this tight group, called a herd, they stay close together and move to a river valley, where grass is lush, green and plentiful. They rapidly gulp down as much grass as they can pack into their first stomach (the rumen) and take off for the hills to keep an eye out for predators (who need water from the river valley).

In and along the river valley, they consumed, on average 75 lbs of grass each. Now, that's a lot of grass...think of how heavy your lawnmower clipper bag is when it is full of lush, wet grass? So, they must be strong and large to carry out this task. Think of how big a bull is - we have had some as heavy as a small car!

Anyway, the herd then head up to the highest point they can find, allowing if possible a full, 360 degree view of their surroundings. They then sit down, relax in safety, and chew their cud, or more accurately "ruminate". This is a regurgitation of fermented grass from the rumin back to the mouth for manual chewing and machination. Now, I don't know about you, but regurgitation doesn't sound like fun to me. That's because you and I are monogastrics. We have only one stomach, and a very acidic one at that. A ruminate is a multi gastric with multiple, alkaline based digestive stomachs designed to digest thru fermentation something we cannot - grass. In fact, feeding them anything besides grass, like corn, monkeys this system up pretty bad and makes them sick.

Once rumination is complete, they stand up, stretch and... poop! That's right, they deposit yesterday's fermented, digested, nutrient rich grass onto the hilltop complete with all the bacteria and microbiological activity to begin life anew - feeding, fertilizing and promoting hilltop plant life.

So, what eventually happened to all those nutrients in the river valley?

Right! they ended up on the hilltop - defying the laws of gravity.

Ready for question two?

What eventually happens to an ecosystem without large-ruminant herbivores?

Right, again! The precious nutrients end up in the sea, not on the hilltops where they are desperately needed.

All this is to say, that large herbivores (read Cows as the great Bison herds that once numbered in the millions are gone from the landscape) are absolutely essential to a properly functioning ecosystem.

Does anyone remember "cattle free by '93" campaign? It was the well intentioned, but horribly misguided conception that all cattle must be off public land by 1993. It worked - the camplain did at least. But the results have been disastrous! If you look around at public land today, a mere 15 years later, you begin to see the beginnings of desertification. Small brown strips are starting to appear on hillsides everywhere.

​Without cattle on public lands, my children's children will eventually be living in a sand dune.

Next time you are out for Sunday drive, take a look at all the land where you know there are not large ruminant herbivores present - do you see what I see?

The desert is coming!

Excerpt from my upcoming book on how God can use crazy people to save the planet...

​Atmospheric carbon is produced by a number of processes, the foremost of which is the burning of fossil fuels. This creates pollution and is damaging to our entire earth ecosystem. Carbon may be sequestered, or stored inside the ground. Carbon is primarily sequestered in the soil by plants of all types. Carbon is sequestered in the soil by nature with glue like protein called glomalin. Glomalin fastens carbon to soil so that it does not wash or blow away (it makes soil sticky, and clump together). Glomalin is a glycoprotein that looks like honey under a microscope. Glomalin was discovered in 1996 by Sara Wright and Kristine Nichols, two USDA research scientists. Glomalin is believed to make up approximately 15-20% of total soil organic matter.

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi is where glomalin is manufactured. The Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi envelopes plant roots with hair like filaments called hyphae. These hyphae reach out and conduct “middle man” transactions with the surrounding soils, by trading carbon with nutrients essential for the plant’s survival.

This two way exchange – nutrients to the plant, carbon to the soil is sole function of glomalin. Glomalin is a carbon based molecule, Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi is a Carbon based life form, and both depend on Carbon for survival. It is best to think of carbon is the legal tender and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi as the exchange broker. The plant uses carbon to purchase nutrients from the Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, then the Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi trades the carbon for nutrients from other microorganisms in the soil, that then use the carbon to feeding enzymes that then release more bound up nutrients from within the surrounding minerals – all the while, the carbon is captured deep in the soil, or literally, sequestered.
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Glomalin coats the threads of the plant’s filaments roots, and protects them. Because glomalin is sticky, it aids in making soil clumps and promotes soil health. This aggregation of soil into “chunks” also helps with water infiltration, which in turn aids in mineral release and furthers the whole symbiotic process. Aggregation also helps stabilize the humus and protects it from degradation. Carbon stored in this form is twice as stable as its above ground counterparts stored in the leaves and stems of the plants mainly due to a lack of disturbance (the wind and animals move plants above ground releasing carbon, but rarely below).

There are two things that can destroy Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi;

First, tillage, physically tears Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi networks apart and breaks down their structure, by damaging the hyphae. This limits glomalin because the Fungi must spend precious resources repairing their hyphae networks rather than extending them.

Synthetic fertilizers, such as phosphorus also damage Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi networks because phosphorus is a key component used for trade by the Fungi in exchange for carbon with the surrounding soils. When synthetic phosphorus fertilizer is used in soils (P), the plant will switch its allegiance to the synthetic phosphorus rather than exchanging it with the Fungi, thus effectively leaving the Fungi without a purpose.

Native soils have very high levels of glomalin due to extensive networks of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi networks and thus store large amounts of carbon. Carbon sequestration is progressively less effective in the following order; Perennial Pasture (grassland), Forests and finally, Silvopastures (savannah grasslands dotted with trees)

Grasslands store the most, because the have a greater root surface area than large trees. Annual crops can store carbon using Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi networks and glomalin, but rarely are they found without synthetic fertilizers, so they are highly ineffective as a tool to combat climate change. Additionally, they only live for a portion of the year, whereas, perennial grasslands live year round.

It is for this reason that pasturing livestock is the best possible way to store carbon. Pasture based herbivores disturb the soil surface, but only gently, allowing for water to infiltrate, but with limited disruption of the Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi network. In addition to this, they add nutrient rich manure to the soil. They speed the breakdown of organic matter, by trampling dead and dying stems and leaves to feed the humus giving the surrounding soil something to trade with for more carbon. This then, causes the plant to thrive as it exchanges more carbon for more nutrients – and the cycle continues.

In the absence of large, well managed herbivore animals the whole ecological process moves in retrograde. The soil surface forms a “crust”, which water cannot penetrate causing water to run off taking valuable topsoil in the process. Worse, plants grow large, once then cannot decay quickly enough to expose the lower level plant life to growth promoting sunlight and water, thus inhibiting biodiversity. Woody brush and tap root forbs take over and shade out the grass, slowing the carbon cycle and sequestration.
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Some profess, that to stop climate change we must remove cattle (the only remaining large herbivores in significant numbers) from pastures and, that we should harvest protein (via heavily industrialized mechanization) from plant based sources, such as soy and peas – both annual crops that require tillage and fertilizers. One can easily see the flaw in this model, as this would inhibit greatly the production of glomalin and the storage of already enormous amounts of carbon in the atmosphere.

Lets take a break this week from examining the terrible condition of our Nation’s food production for a great steak. In fact, there is no problem, so far as I know, that cooking and eating a great steak can’t solve.

I tend to use only salt my steaks. A really good, high quality salt such as Himalayan Pink Sea Salt can usually be found at a natural grocer. More exoctic salts exsit, to be sure, but they are hard to find and unless you are a real steak effecanato, you will not notice the difference.

If your steak is from SonRise Ranch, it will be dry aged. Dry aging is a process of curing, that occurs before the steak is packaged. Dry aging reduces moisture by 12 to 15% and enzymes inside the meat activate to soften the muscle fibers making the steak more tender. In this sense a Top Sirloin is magically elevated in tenderness to a New York. A New York becomes a Filet and a Filet becomes something out of this world. Further, this moisture inside the muscle can be likened to following distance for a Semi-Truck on the freeway. Less of it and you are more likely to wreck your steak.

So, you must cook a dry aged steak more carefully by methodically planning the overall process. I don't want to complicate this, but I have seen a fair share of customers, all too familiar with cooking the poorest quality store bought, industrial, wet aged meat, purchase a $50 Rib Steak from us only to ruin it by accidently turning it into shoe leather on their grill. The principles cooking for industrial, corn-fed, feedlot beef are far different than true Grass-fed & finished, dry aged beef. The saying we use is "Low and Slow" - use a low heat, and plan on a longer cook time.

If you like more than just salt, here is a nice mixture of spices that seem to bring out the grass-fed & finished flavors with exuberance and flair. Begin by mixing up a batch of our special seasoning in the following portions. Each “part” can be a teaspoon or some other standard measurement – thus allowing you to “scale” up or down without doing math…

• SonRise Recommended Steak Rub


• 6 parts Himalayan Pink Salt (Reserve this - see note below)
• 4 parts Organic Paprika
• 2 parts Ground Pepper
• 1 part Organic Garlic Powder
• 1 part Organic Onion Powder
• ½ part Organic Coriander
• ½ part Organic Turmeric

Note: Salt tends to wick moisture. In order to avoid this we recommend coating the steak first, in the ingredients listed above without using the 6 parts salt. Then rest between 30 minutes and overnight. The salt should be added just prior to searing the steak (step 4 below)

To cook a Dry-Aged Steak properly we recommend the following...

1. Thaw and bring to room temperature. Do not cook a cold steak, or a warm steak - beginning temperature is very important.

2. You can submerge your vacuum sealed steak in a cold sink of water to thaw quickly, but only if the bag has a water tight seal - otherwise, water will seep into your bag and make your steak wet and soggy.

3. Melt Lard or Tallow in a very hot cast iron skillet on the stovetop, while simultaneously preheating your oven to 400 degrees.

4. Salt and if necessary season the steak - rub the seasonings in vigorously. This will help transfer the favor deep into the muscle. Just prior to the next step apply the reserved Salt to the exterior of the steak.

5. Sear the steak on very high heat (500 degrees or more) for 1 to 1:30 minutes each side. Look for a "crisp" crust on the steak. The room will fill with smoke, so be sure to have the overhead fan on. Have you ever driven by a steakhouse during dinnertime? The smoke is billowing out of the overhead vent. I usually open a door, so my wife doesn't come streaking down the stairs when the smoke alarm goes off... 
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6. Transfer the skillet to the oven (now at 360 degrees), or to a preheated Salt Block and cook as follows...

*Doneness                                        **Cook Time 
Rare                                                  3 mins
Med                                                  5 mins
Well (not recommended)          7 mins

*These numbers are for a average thickness steak (1 to 1.5") and may very slightly - experiment around by 15 seconds or so, and become an expert. It will be well worth your time.
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**Hint - use a timer for this, and be very exact.

When we last left our story...

A whole bunch of nutrient dense, healing Bone Broth was left in our refrigerator after having been made in a pressure cooker. In this installment of our Bone Broth series, we will pressure can our Bone Broth to make it shelf-stable. This will ensure our supply is preserved without having to send extra money to the power company every month, or clog up all of our freezer storage space. Plus, when we travel we can pack it along without fear of spoilage.

Also, note, that if you have to delay a bit between making your Broth and canning it, you may. Almost all broth will have a fat cap floating on the very top of the liquid once cooled (it looks like a white or yellow-tinted layer). This "cap" acts as a seal, and allows the Broth to stay good for up to 6 days (as a rule of thumb). So, you can brew your Bone Broth on Sunday and then pressure can it on the following Saturday if you don't have two days in a row to complete your project - just as long as you do not disturb the fat cap.

Pressure canning is really very simple. It may seem intimidating, and you may worry about having something spoil. But, in reality, we have been pressure canning in the United States for a hundred years or more. Additionally, the USDA has spent considerable tax dollars in studies and research documenting the safety of pressure canned goods. A simple Google search will reveal a couple hundred, government sponsored videos and detailed instructions on correct pressure canning methods. What I will detail below is no different. In fact, Eve and I learned how to pressure can from a county extension office class near our Ranch a few years ago.

So, lets begin...

First we need to remove our Broth from the fridge, and let it come to room temperature. Place a small amount (2 inches) of warm water into the pressure canner. Once the jars of Broth have come to room temperature. Take your new lids and place them in a pan on the stovetop with a enough water to cover them. Boil the water and remove the lids and place them on the tops of the jars, then spin on the jar rings. We do this because it softens the rubber seal on the lids making it more malleable and more likely to seal. Do not tighten the rings. This is important because as the product inside heats, vapor will escape out of the jars and if the rings are too tight they will bulge and you won't get a good seal. 

Place the jar riser into the pressure canner and then put the jars in, one-by-one. With the large quart jars, I can fit 6 to 8, smaller jars can double stack if you have two jar risers. 

Using low heat, begin to boil the water in the pressure cooker. Your water level should come half-way up the side of the tallest jar on the bottom layer of jars. Boil until the internal temperature of the Broth is 170 degrees. To do this, remove a single jar with the lifter. Unscrew the ring and lift off the lid. Stick a digital thermometer inside the Broth and check the temperature.

Once the Broth temperature is adequate, apply and tighten the lid to the pressure canner/cooker, but leave the weighted vent cover off until the unit is venting steam at a steady rate.

Once you apply the weighted vent cover, the pressure will begin to build inside the canner. This will be indicated on the pressure gauge. Look for 10 psi or greater (just to be safe - I run mine at 15 psi). The psi of your pressure canner/cooker varies based on your elevation, so use the USDA guide found here to be sure. Process for 20 mins if you are canning pint-sized jars or 25 mins if you are canning quart-sized jars.