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.
​
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.
​
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... 
​
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.
​
**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.

In last week's Blog we gathered some of our supplies and equipment to process a batch of homemade, nutritious and shelf-stable Bone Broth. We discussed the nutritional benefits of Broth, why and how we should source bones and discussed the economic and nutritional advantages of making medium to large size batch runs of Broth.

This week we look again, briefly, at some further benefits of Bone Broth. Then we will discuss in detail the types of bones to use and our method for preparing Bone Broth in a pressure cooker.

In our discussion next week we will detail how to preserve our Broth using a pressure canner to make it shelf stable and avoid the requirement for refrigerated storage (it's easier than you think - trust me).

First - lets look into why we need Broth.

Our guts are damaged. Period.

If you are an American - your gut is damaged. I can confidently say this as I know most of my readership is from the United States. Ok, sure, some of you have guts that are okay (maybe 3%) but the rest of you are a hot mess - really. Unless you grow everything, don't eat out, never visit a non-organic relative or friend's house, have a completely organic biological lifestyle (down to the toothpaste you use) and there is scarcely a barcode found in your pantry or refrigerator, I can confidently assess that you a have some level of gut leakage.

The chief culprit - glyphosate.
You remember glyphosate, right? The chemical that the USDA and FDA tell us is ok eat. I am sure the USDA and FDA are correct because they are headed by the same guys that formerly worked for Monsanto. Now, these buffoons are running the agencies directly responsible for the oversight, testing and regulation of Monsanto's golden child product called "RoundUp". Care to guess what the chief ingredient in Roundup is?

Yep... glyphosate.

Scientist are now testing umbilical cord blood from prenatal children and finding glyphosate. Can you believe that? This stuff is everywhere... Thanks Monsanto!

Why?

We have now had over three decades of rampant pesticide use. Oh, and not by coincidence, during the same three decades, significantly increasing levels of disease and chronic illness. We have over 900 dead zones in the United States - places where no life exists due to excessive nitrogen use and accompanying pesticides/herbicide use. Our guts, with their three-trillion member society of helpful bacteria are clogged with chemicals.

You see, when chemicals, like glyphosate enter our gut lining, small cracks form and leak microscopic food particulate directly into our bloodstream.

Now, follow me here, what happens when a foreign object (of any sort) enters our blood stream?

That's right - send in the histamines.

Foreign invaders (in this case food), once detected trigger our immune response and are met with the all-powerful histamine. This is normal and usually how we stay healthy. Now, once that histamine response takes place, our headquarters in the immune system catalogs the event and keeps a handy histamine remedy on file for later use. The next time that invader is spotted the response is even faster! Launch the histamines... This is why your eyes water so quickly when you frolic in a wheat fields, at age 40, or why you have a sneezing fit in a next to a cotton tree, but not quite so quickly when you are a kid.

Unfortunately, this is happening with all types of food. I remember in the good'ole days when there was only one kid in my homeroom class that had an allergy to food, maybe two. Today - its everywhere! The BBC just released this piece on the subject.

Allergies are increasing, but why?

I contend - and bear in mind, I am a lunatic Rancher - that we are destroying our guts at an unprecedented rate. That our guts then leak food into our bloodstream, and our immune system reacts just like it should.

So then... the answer?

If I might invoke the Bible - "physician, heal thyself"

Thus we come to the subject at hand, Bone Broth, be it Chicken, Pork or Beef from truly pastured livestock can heal a gut faster than any other remedy. Once your gut heals - don't stop. Gut maintenance is essential. Most nutritionists recommend 8 ounces per day for maintenance.
Bone Broth is the key, however, just as we discussed in part one, you must source bones from the cleanest possible provider.

Ok, now, lets begin cooking...

First, choose bones based upon your desired outcome. Here is a guide to use as a rule of thumb...

• Beef Marrow Bones - Uses include; Dental Healing, Gut Healing, Immune System Support.
• Beef Knuckle Bones or Oxtail - Uses include; Arthritis, Joint Health, Old Guys that Run or Jog regularly (the same reason to take MSM w/ glucosamine). Oxtail is just what it sounds like - tail bone joints.

• Beef Soup Bones - if a bone is not marrow or knuckle, we call it a "soup bone". These are generalized bones from the rest of the animal and should make up about 75% of the "1/3 rule" (discussed later). These bones have plenty of meat and fat on them - both of which give a delicious flavor to your Broth. 
• Chicken Back and Neck Bones - these form the 1/3 base rule for any chicken Broth. 
• Chicken Feet - ok, before you get grossed out, let me explain. As mentioned previously a beef's joints have connective padding between them, just like us, but unlike us, they have very large joints (a Cow can weight 10x as much as we do). So, in order to have high collagen content Broth, you need only a few Beef Knuckle Bones. On a Chicken, however, it's a different story. Their joints are very small, so you need a bunch of them close together. Hence, the need for feet added to your Broth. Chickens have 16 small bones in each foot, this, plus the claws make for outstanding collagen. Trust me, it's worth it.  Now. a word of caution - don't use just any feet. Get them from a clean source -we have them, other Ranchers do too. 

​Now for the veggies. If you can, use veggies that you've grown yourself - so as to avoid glyphosate. If necessary, buy them from someone (notice I did not write "someplace") you know. This may be expensive, but if you goal is to heal your gut, it will be worth it. Now, that being said, the majority of the cost in this project will be in high-quality bones. We are making Bone Broth, not "veggie broth". The nutritional base here are bones. 

Always, always, always roast your Beef Bones before making your Broth. This will make your Broth taste like a steak not a soggy beef sandwich. Roast them for 40 minutes at 400 degrees. Use a sheet pan. When you are done, pour off the fat.

I make my Broth in a five gallon batch. This helps keep my labor down to a minimum (a little more work makes a bunch more Broth) and will produce enough Broth for about 3 months. 

Confession - I drink a lot of Broth. I take it on trips to back and forth to the Ranch. I have a portable stove in my truck, about the size of a lunch pail that plugs into the 12v. cigarette lighter and can warm up a glass jar of Broth in 15 minutes. I sip and drive. Eve will pack me pre-cooked, cut chicken breast and veggies. I will add this to my jar of broth then cook it in my heater a bit longer (it makes my truck smell like heaven). Now I have a chicken or beef soup. It keeps me away from truck stop food and I arrive feeling rested, full and healthy. 

For a five gallon batch use (1) whole cut onion with the skin on, (1) bunch of celery with leaf, (4-6) carrots with skin on but roots cut, (4) cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. I've chopped it and pureed it in a cuisinart or juicer - both methods work well, but the latter will bring through more of the veggie flavor. You can get really creative at this point. I have tried many variations, but I always come back to a basic recipe. One reason for this is that when you take your broth off the shelf to use in a soup, stew or to make rice, you can then add whatever suits your fancy.

Toss everything into the pressure cooker, using the "1/3" rule...

1/3 of the total pot depth is bones (all types inclusive), then add the veggies and spices, next fill with water. Leave about 3"at the top for expansion. Seal the cooker - it will lock down like a canister for a nuclear reactor. Some have little hand wheels that screw down, others, like the one pictured below lock with a quarter-turn, cockwise of the top.

Heat your pressure cooker on high until you get about 10 psi, then reduce to a simmer to maintain 10 psi. Let the pressure cooker run all day, or about 6 to 10 hours (the longer the better). Then simply shut off the heat. It will depressurize after about an hour. You can tell it is ready to open when the gauge reads zero and the top can detach (they have a safety that will prevent the top from opening under pressure - so don't worry)

Once the pressure cooker is cooled (but not too much), begin the straining process.

Strain out all the broth and fill all the Jars you have collected for the project. I strain twice, once, to get the big stuff and again using a finer mesh strainer for the smaller particulate. You want the broth clean, and you'll want to strain it before it chills too much. Remember the collagen? Can you imagine staining that at room temperature - not fun, trust me.

Be sure to compost or recycle the bones and veggies - but don't feed them to a pet. They will splinter and kill the animal.

Now, after the batch reaches room temperature, place the bone broth in the fridge for the night. Tomorrow we will pressure can it for the shelf (this will be covered in part 3 of 3)

Until then, your house will be filled with a sweet aroma - that of healing Bone Broth.

We've been hearing it for years, those of us in the integrity food movement - Bone Broth, its the best thing going.

Right?

Well, yes, no, maybe... let me explain.

Let's think logically for a moment... What is the densest part of an animal?

If you answered, "The bones" you are correct - (congratulations, here's a sticker).
Bones are very dense, they hold the animal upright, don't deteriorate quickly and have been there since the beginning of its life.

So, if the animal has a history of mistreatment, stress, drugs, poor feed, bioaccumulation of chemicals (these are all factory farming side effects by the way) then, where, pray tell do those thing accumulate?
​
Right, again - in the bones.

So don't eat them.

Here is where I digress to being a lunatic Rancher again.

You know, the lunatic who says to the Vegan passing by my Grass-Fed and Finished Booth at the Farmer's Market: "Why don't you eat meat?"
"Because I don't agree with the way Animals are treated in our Modern Farming Systems", they reply.
"I wholeheartedly agree, if we didn't raise our own animals the right way, I would encourage everyone to be like you"
At this point, they are stunned. Blinking their eyes with astonishment they can't believe a Rancher wearing a cowboy hat would advocate the the world go vegan. Not sure whether to hug me or run away scared, they stammer the only word that comes to mind..."Huh?"
I take that as an invitation to excitedly explain how farming can be done with integrity, truth and dignity towards the animals and environment entrusted to our care. How this can heal our hurting earth, and how these methods produce an exceptional tasting, nutrient dense product far superior to any vegetable available, all-the-while sequestering 10x the carbon we produce.

So, why would I campaign against something as food righteous as bone broth?

Because well meaning folks read a nutrition website heralding the benefits of Bone Broth then run off to their local industrial grocery store, find the poorest quality, "organic" factory chicken or beef with no thought for how it was raised, kept, fed or cared for and make an easily digestible direct injection of bone broth, laden with chemicals and antibiotics directly into their digestive system, all the while proclaiming "health".

Are you kidding me?

I am now in that awkward position of having to tell people the truth - and boy-oh-boy is that unpopular in this current climate!

So, here we go...

Just like the poorly informed but well intentioned Vegan, "Bone Broth-ers" are lost in the clutter of commercialism. Doomed to poison themselves if not tossed a life line of common sense. They drink gallons of industrial "organic" Broth simply because it has a fancy label confident that it will heal their every ailment.

Lord help us!

When you drink broth, made from a factory-tortured animal you are consuming the greatest nutritional density you can find of that animals mistreatment, poor health and shoddy feed regime. If you don't start with the best possible elements, from the beginning, you are hamstringing your efforts from the get go. With nutritionally dense products, like bone broth, you must start at the apex of quality before distillation and rendering (same goes for making lard and tallow from fats by the way).

"Well," you say, "My beef bone broth is "Grass-fed"." So it is just fine, right? Wrong. Read this article to find out what "Grass-fed" really means.

In this and the following blogs (parts 2 and 3 will follow) I am going to detail how you, at home, can make the very best bone broth in large quantities with very little money and effort. You can have significantly greater quality, for a fraction of the price you will find in any store. It will take effort, but no, you will not collapse from exhaustion. We've done this for years in our home and get better each time we process a batch. It can be done on a Saturday with a leisurely amount of exertion. Watch the football game, or visit with the family and process a batch of broth to keep your system well fed and going for 6 months.

Efficiency comes with practice. Practice requires patience. Your health is worth it. Trust me.

Ok, let's begin...

First you need good equipment. Notice I said "good" not expensive. I believe in frugality. Experts tell us that our Grandparents lived in the generation of resource extraction, and we live in the generation of resource recycling. It is astonishing what is being thrown away by our generation.

One aspect I love about bone broth is reuse - it tickles the little environmentalist deep inside my Rancher heart. You get to re-use the jars, process an exceptional product, from a somewhat unwanted byproduct (bones) on your own, with used equipment, and all for the price of pennies.
​
It's a win-win.

Your task is to find the following:

1. Used canning jars. All shapes and sizes. Look on Craigslist. If Craigslist-ers give you the heebie-jeebies then use Facebook Marketplace. You can view the profile of the person you are buying from with Facebook Marketplace, so at least you can see who the person is and judge whether they are reputable or not. My wife feels a little better about her transactions on Facebook Marketplace rather than Craigslist because of this. Anyway, use one of the apps/websites that has used stuff for sale. It's a great way to conserve resources and keep things out of landfills. Plus, you're buying canning jars - axe murders usually don't have canning equipment for sale, so you are probably safe anyway.

2. A pressure canner. I found one on the side of the road one time. Really, like as if someone was waiting for the trash guys to pick it up. This stuff is so unused, in today's society, that I've found them for $3 at a garage sale (they sell new for $200). They look like this... make sure it has a pressure gauge.

Or buy one from an elderly lady who loves to garden and "put up" the extra larder for winter. Go over to her house, have a great talk with her and make her day - it will make yours too (trust me I know from experience). She has probably forgotten more about canning than I will ever know. She will most likely enjoy giving you all her canning secrets.

3. A bunch of lids. New ones - don't reuse old lids, regardless of how good they look. If you do, your jars won't seal right and your broth will go bad. Go to any store as common as WalMart and get a box of new ones. You might spend $5 on a dozen. 

4. Rings - for the size jars you have. 

5. Jar lifter. This handy little invention makes lifting a very hot jar from your pressure cooker/canner a breeze. Your jars can get to 250 degrees inside the canner. After the canner depressurizes, you will need to lift the jars out (more on that later), so you will need this lifter. 

6. Pastured, non-GMO fed, non-Soy fed chicken bones. If you've raised them and fed them on your own - good, use those. You will be the sole guarantee that they are fed and pastured correctly. If you don't or can't raise chickens because you live in a nanny-state that tells you what you can and cannot do with you land, then try to find a highly reputable source for bones. Ask to see the feed bag labels. Feed bag labels are very common. You don't have to be a genius to read them either - they read like food ingredients. You can read a label and know exactly what ingredient the chicken is eating. Look for the word "organic" before each ingredient. This will guarantee non-GMO. A feed bag label should be as common as a shovel on a pasture based ranch. If a farmer cannot furnish a feed bag label he or she is a fraud and is most likely buying commodity chicken and passing it off as their own. 

Do not settle for "Organic" chicken bones from a grocery store. "Organic" when it comes to fruits and veggies means everything. When it comes to animals it means almost nothing. The health of an animal stems from its environment and interaction with its environment. Animals can survive on almost anything, but coop them up, remove natural light, dirt, the ability to move around (a lot) and normal animal function and their health (plus the health of anything consuming that animal - like you) will plummet.  We say 80% of animal welfare is environmental. The remaining 20% is what they are fed. 

To learn more about what a chicken should eat click here. 

We take the breasts, wings and legs off the chicken. We use the backs as pictured here for broth. This does two things; first, you get a ton of meat and fat with your bones. The fat is drenched with Omega-3's (the same reason we eat salmon). These fats are perfectly suited for assimilation by your body as you digest the broth. Your gut lining can easily recognize this and digest it quickly for healing. 

Secondly, this portion of the animal is often wasted. You are conserving resources when you use chicken backs. They really have no other purpose than broth - so be a green warrior and use the chicken backs. 

Now that you've gathered what you need, we can begin the make the broth broth. This will take a day - but it is very easy work. In part two of this blog I will detail how to make the Broth using a pressure cooker. This will ensure an extremely high quality broth with much more nutrient density than crock pot, or conventional methods provide. 

In part three, we will pressure can our Broth to USDA standards. This allows a large portion to be made at once, keeping cost and effort to a minimum and allow us to safely store our Broth as a shelf-stable item without using any energy to operate a  freezer or refrigerator. 

Stay tuned, we are going to save money, save resources and heal our guts all at once... 

Well, it’s that season again. It’s time to wield the all powerful voting punch-card, an American right and tradition, vital to our Republic. 
​
In 1787 a woman asked Benjamin Franklin as he was exiting the Constitutional Convention, “Well, Doctor, what type of Government have we - a Republic or Monarchy?"

​His response, was both direct and prophetic “A Republic, if you can keep it”

And, with this season comes a peppering of “what say you” emails and inquires to our Ranch, regarding, policy, procedures and methods.  As such, we do appreciate the confidence you have in asking our opinion, but I must warn you now, if you continue reading, all bets are off. We are sure to disappoint, at least, everyone, once. 

So here it goes… (Turn back now if you like me and wish to continue holding my opinion in high esteem). As my Pops once said “you can please some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people some of the time”

Of course, most are asking what is the deal with Proposition 12 – the one that is supposedly designed to “stop animal cruelty”– yeah right, that will surely be the result.

In detail, here is how this will go down. Most folks will vote “yes” because it makes them feel good. Just like buying a package of meat that says “grass-fed”, from Sprouts will make them feel good. The Truth - It’s not real grass fed, and the Semi-truck backing up to the rear of the building, unloading pallets of factory Beef, all labeled “grass-fed” should be your first indicator. 

Or, one of my favorites (or not) is the “cage free” label. Meaning that, according to law that… "an indoor or outdoor controlled environment for egg-laying hens within which hens are free to roam unrestricted; are provided enrichments that allow them to exhibit natural behaviors, including, at a minimum, scratch areas, perches, nest boxes, and dust bathing areas; and within which farm employees can provide care while standing within the hens’"

​Now, does that sound like this… 

Or this...

I bet you’d be shocked to know that your well intentioned vote was circumvented when you passed measure 8, a few years ago and voted for “cage free”. That’s right, you intended for hens to be free to roam, as in video above, but the industrial, conventional, factory CAFOs and their well trained lawyers (and there are plenty, believe me) found a hundred loopholes so that what is occurring in the former pictures is legal, whilst the latter picture is what most voters think they got.
​
Here’s another thought for you – any idea why, if measure 8 was so effective, are we are voting again on this issue? Yep, you guessed it – because the CAFO industrialists always circumvent the rules. In other words, it didn't work.

In Fact, in this latest measure (Prop 12) you will notice that the required space for a laying hen is no “less than 144 square inches of usable floor space per hen”. This is totally unreasonable! No hen can live healthy in that amount of space – no matter what the cute drawing on the egg carton depicts!

They need acres, not inches.

So, you will soon see massive, factory hen CAFOs in California with 144.01 inches of floor space for each hen – and it will all be legal.

So, what is the answer?

Simple – Vote

Just not with a punch card. Instead, use a dollar.

That’s right. Stop taking meaningless action that only results in increased pay for Lawyers working for industrial farms splitting hairs on one-tenth of an inch measurement for a hen CAFO and start hitting them where it hurts.

Take your voting dollar away from them and give it to an integrity food farmer. Stop buying at the supermarket. It doesn’t have to be us, in fact, we don’t currently offer eggs. But, you could frequent a Farmers Market where eggs are sold and support a hard working farmer with your voting dollar. (Pastured eggs are very common by the way) Just be sure to ask all the right questions. Yes, it will require more effort than just voting once every few years, but, at least it will be rewarding and effective. Plus, the Farmer will really appreciate it!
Here are three general guidelines you should look for…

• Look

Does it pass the look test?
In beef, this means yellow fat – indicating the presence of beta carotene. This means the beef is truly grass fed, as the beta carotene color (the same element that makes a carrot orange) can only come from a cow eating grass. If it is eggs you are looking for, look for orange yolks. This will indicate pasturing.

• Ask

Does it pass the ask test?
Ask about the methods? Be specific. Say things like “Does this chicken’s feet touch green grass every day?” That’s pretty specific. Notice, I did not use any of the most popular catch phrases like “Free-Range”, “Pastured”, “Outdoors” etc. This is because almost all of these terms are adulterated by the industry. Another tip - if he or she doesn't answer your question with a single phrase, but excitedly explains, in detail, the sheer ecstasy of his or her latest pastured farming methods for 30 minutes, and you leave with enough information to start a small farm, your on the right track!

• Think

Does it pass the disappointment test?
Is your Farmer ever out of stock? Does he or she ever struggle with seasonality? Farming is biological, not mechanical. There are rain storms and droughts, ups and downs, predators and prey. All this effects supply. One of the primary reasons Henry Ford invented the assembly line factory, was to get a uniform product with predictability and consistency. By nature, this cannot (or should not) happen in true, biological farming.
I got a call a few weeks ago from a patron of another farming operation. She told me that she believed that her Farmer was buying factory meat and selling it at the Farmers Markets as their own product. I asked her why she would think such a thing. Her answer was telling…”They always have what I want, and in plenty. Plus they attend over twenty Farmers Markets and only farm a few acres” – I told her to trust her instincts and find a different supplier. It’s this kind of thinking that will help steer you in the right direction. Trust your gut – there are shysters out there, even at the Farmers’ Market. In short, does your farmer disappoint (occasionally)? This is a good indicator of true sourcing.

The campaign supporting Prop 12 has collected 12 million dollars; the opposition has spent just under $600K. Imagine, just for a moment if all those dollars were used to ”VOTE” for a Farmer who kept his hens out on pasture (like us) or cared for his brood hogs (mama Sows giving birth) in a field instead of a factory? Can you imagine the ground swell of inertia to collapse CAFOs if all that money went to hard working, small farmers?

One last thought – do you really trust the very agencies that brought us Mad Cow Disease, by advising Farmers to feed dead cows to cows, to regulate CAFOs?

Do we really want the wolf to guard the sheep?

Come on folks, really.
​
So, in conclusion – Vote next week, then every week after that. Keep voting and never stop.

I conducted a phone interview with a graduate student the other day that shocked me. She was writing a paper on Grass-Fed and Finished Beef (pasture-based livestock) and could not find anyone, and I mean anyone, who could answer her questions.

Very specific questions - like how is Grass-Fed Beef "Finished"?

A few years ago, I met with the same frustration. For the life of me, I couldn't wrap my head around why the concept of Grass-Fed and Finishing Beef was so hard to research. Even today, I hawk daily for nuggets of information regarding this totally foreign concept. Oh, I am not talking about the fake stuff imported from overseas and distributed by technology companies like "butcher box" in Massachusetts - I mean the real deal, real Ranchers who know how to grow cattle on grass and make them taste good. Guys and gals who understand ecology, care for our earth and have a soul-filled yearning for sustainably. 

Why was the skill of Grass-Finishing Beef so rare? Why is it so hard to find good, talented and proficient Finishers in the industry? Why are large, supermarket supplying companies taking so many short-cuts, by feedlotting beef and calling it "grass-fed" because it had one blade of grass two years ago? 

What could be so hard about this... isn't grass everywhere? Just let the Cows out and feed them...

To answer these and other questions, we must first lay some basic guidelines, define some essential terms and understand where we have come from, before knowing where we are going. 

The conventional cattle industry is split into three main sections, delineated by time. These are "Cow-calf", "Stocker" and "Finisher" operations. They describe, loosely, the three stages of life; Birth and weaning for "Cow-calf", teenage years for "Stocker" and the final stage of life where the animal is fattened for slaughter - known as "Finishing". Each of these three stages are separate enterprises, meaning that companies own one stage, but rarely or never two or all three. Subsequently, they collect revenues when they sell or transfer their "crop" from one stage to the next. So, in essence, a "Cow-calf" operator's job is done when a "Stocker" operation purchase their calves and moves them to their facility for "stocking". This process is repeated until a "Finisher" sells a full-grown, fat beef to a slaughterhouse for processing and eventual shipment to the grocery store shelf.

Ok, so now you have that, right? Cow-Calf, Stocker and Finisher - three stages, all distinct, all separate.

This chain of events has been in existence for many years. Companies have learned to specialize in each segment. They have refined, honed and perfected their operations for profitably. The system works with modern, breathtaking efficiency, until it doesn't...

In recent years, mountains of evidence have been collected to prove that Grass-Finished Beef is healthier for the consumer than Conventional Beef. The same can be said for the environmental impacts, and for the health of the animals involved. All three of these precepts witness against the current, industrial, confined Beef growing operation - and with the introduction of the world wide web public opposition to them is gaining ground at an alarmingly fast rate.

The departure from conventional to Grass-Fed and Finished Beef comes just prior to the last stage.  This last stage, known as "Finishing" is where the CAFOs or, Confined Area Feed Operations exist. These animal torture centers are the apex of cruelty. Activists rage at the mention of these facilities - and rightly so! 
​
They are truly an abomination.

But, the industry sees them as necessary and functional. Only confined animals, allowed little movement and no other free choice of food will voluntarily consume large portions of grains and corn for fattening. This produces the intramuscular fats that the average American consumer desires on their plate - but it comes at a price. The obesity epidemic, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, that is now slightly larger than the state of New Jersey and the recent flooding of CAFOs resulting in the breech of manure ponds washing into rivers as this summer's hurricanes blew ashore are only a few of terrible consequences of this type of food production. 

Not only does Grass Fed and Finished Beef not have these terrible consequences, but, to the contrary, pasture-based production systems enhance the environment, sequester carbon, produce a superior health product all while allowing  the Farmers who care for them to sleep sound knowing that their animals are not being raised in a manner contrary to nature - like knee-deep in their own manure.

Conventional Beef cattle are fattened on grains and corn - all grown on the nicest farmland (called "class 1 & 2 soils"). These nutrients, in the form of harvest crops such as corn, are then transferred to a Finishing operation, or "feedlot" (commonly called a CAFO), by truck or train. Cattle are fed these feeds to fatten them quickly, often in as little as 180 days. This produces a "Finished" Beef in 18 to 21 months total time from birth to butcher. 

Kinda gives a new meaning to the term "fast food" huh?

​In contrast, true Grass-Finished beef is never sent to a feedlot or CAFO. These cattle are given the richest, fast growing, high carbohydrate grasses to add a layer of external and intermuscular fat to their bodies. This requires exceptional grass, soils and symbiotic, carefully planned cattle-to-grass management process. Producing this type of Beef, using only Grass, Sunlight, Water and Intuition is truly an art. 

It is for this reason that commodity style, conventional Ranchers have always seen cattle as a way to add value to otherwise useless land - land that could not be developed, farmed in crops, etc. 

With conventional, factory beef, at the finishing stage, the carbohydrate inputs (grains, corn) come from somewhere else, so the land is basically a "holding facility" for the cattle to be fed on while they eat. The land could be useless - they could use an old tennis court if needed. It would make no difference if grass was growing there or not. Conventional "Finishers" just need a place to feed.

Grass-Fed Finishing Ranches, such as ours are totally different. They see the land as adding value to cattle. In this way, we focus on soil to grow nutrient-dense grass. Then the cattle harvest that nutrient dense grass directly (without the use of petroleum intense equipment) and transfer that value, through nutrients, directly into the animal's tissue and fat for sale. This is an entirely new and different approach. It also takes an additional 10 months to "Grass-Finish" Beef. 

And, in farming, like any other business enterprise, time is money!
'
So, then, why is Grass-Finishing so hard? Well, for one, no one teaches it. You need to learn it as you go, or as the old saying goes... "On the Job Training (o.j.t.) is the only Way". Overgraze your grass, an the beeves you are raising will be lean, flavorless and tough. Under Graze the grass and it will grow to maturity (giving it an off-taste to the cattle), lose nutrition and be useless. Grass Grazers are always walking a tightrope between over and under grazing while balancing the re-growth and biodiversity under their feet. We work tirelessly to manage the pressure on grass, in terms of foot lbs/acre - so as not to damage the soils, yet reinvigorate with proper manure dispersion. We time movements, to replicate what nature does with predators motivating a large herd of herbivores to move. And make darn sure the plants are pruned correctly, and rested between grazing rotations. 

One thing can be sure. Grass-Finishers care about the grass, and subsequently about the soil. It is the resource base for their operation. If abused, their venture fails. It's that simple. You will never find a proficient Grass-Finisher who is not in some way, deeply concerned about the environment and the ecosystem he and his cattle are plugged into.

Now, perhaps, you see why is it so hard to find these folks - they are a rare breed indeed. 

But, you may also see why Grass-Finishers are so interested in biodiversity, resilience and sustainability. Frankly, its our job - you try your hardest at work, right? We do too. It means more to the bottom line. It feels good to succeed. When we see plants flourishing, wild species working in conjunction with our large herbivores, and carbon being sequestered at twice the rate we are producing it - we feel good! 

Come join us...

It was a few summers into my self imposed, full-time Ranching exile. I was learning the ropes, so to speak, both usure and unsteady of how to handle the beasts in my care. I was at best an ameture - I had just enough Ranching experience to be dangerous.

But, I was a quick learner.

I had been taught the basics, by nook or crook, trial and error and with the grace of a few well respected Ranchers from the "old school" in my early days, but in this instance my experience fell short.

My objectives, convictions and ideas lay, conservatively speaking, outside the dogma of the "old school" and more experienced Ranchers surrounding me, and I was well into my metamorphosis of becoming "a lunatic farmer", one who was as rooted in ecosystems and symbiotic regenerative agriculture as they were the conservative, long-standing, pass-it down traditions-type that my grandfather was.

Then my favorite Cow contracted the bovine version of Pink Eye - and it was completely my fault. 

You see, not a week earlier, I had detected a bit of a stumbling problem in her walk and noticed she had the need for some calcium in her diet. A common problem with the heritage breed milk Cows, the kind our great-great-grandparents took with them crossing the western plains, was something called "Milk Fever".

Most, if not, all homestead families in those days had a milk Cow in tow as they lumbered from the east in search of whatever the great west held in perpetuity. With rich, abundant prairie grasses, consisting of as many as 40 species in any given acre - the family Cow, would produce abundantly. Repeleat with calcium drawn directly from the plains, this portable milk machine would provide rich cream, daily milk and abundance of other foods all at a conversion ratio that would put most modern dairies to shame. 

The overall concept was simple enough. Due to the lack of modern refrigeration, the milk would be produced on the go. Stopping each night, the wagon train, with as many as 40 families would begin the next day in earnest by milking their Cows. Cream, Milk and of course a trip down to the stream, where cold, snow melt water flowed would be sufficient for 30 more minutes of butter churning, to produce everyone's favorite - butter!

It was the ultimate camping experience to say the least - room and board, all in one!

The modern milk Cow produces much more calcium than it takes in through simple grazing. Our grasses today are a far stretch, in terms of nutritional density, than they were 100 years ago. In other words, today's grass alone would never supply the calcium needed for a milk Cow, and so, on our ranch calcium must be supplied artificially, mostly via alfalfa, and a supplement.

Without a supplement and rich alfalfa leafs, the Cow will mobilize calcium from its nervous system - thus the aforementioned stumbling. They look like a drunken sailor. I had learned properly to recognize the symptoms, and treat them correctly. Pen her up (so the others don't eat the alfalfa) feed, and observe. Have a bottle of calcium solution and and IV on hand in case she collapses. Its pretty simple really.

Now, with that being said - I did just as I had been taught. I penned her up, fed her well and waited for recovery. She did fine! After a few day she was on the road to recovery.

But... (and there is always a "but" when you are learning the ropes)

In the few day of being penned up, she contracted pink eye. Its very common for Cows in confinement to get pink eye. The flies hatch in the manure, and without chickens present, multiply rapidly. This makes for a nasty condition of flies landing on the cows face and transferring fecal bacteria, however small, to the soft mucus membranes of the Cow's eye.

There is only one cure - she must receive antibiotics. If not, she will go blind and this is a terrible way for a Cow to live. So I did what any good Rancher would do - I treated her. She healed, and I was able to keep my favorite Cow. Of course, I couldn't drink the milk for 90 days, but eventually, her system cleaned up and she served us many more years.

Here is the key point - the illness, pinkeye, was a direct result of MY MISMANAGEMENT of the Cow. If I had let her out for the day to graze, and then brought her back into the corrals for supplement and alfalfa, she would have been fine. I could have observed her recovery in the pasture without any more risk to the operation - in short, I did what was expedient, not necessarily what was excellent.

The default position of nature is health. Cattle on pasture don't get sick anymore than an entire herd of Elk suddenly fall ill. Sure, one or two might, but not the entire herd. A group of sick Cows is a sure sign of poor care. Animal illness is always a result of mismanagement. Period.

When you go to the grocery store, like me and pick up ​Consumer Reports most recent issue detailing the discovery of harmful drugs in meat - You are, justifiably,  both enraged and shocked. 

Paging through, you notice the issue focus almost completely on the concept of detectable levels and enforcement.  The piece drags on, and on, using terms like "Parts per Billion" and "background exposure". It asks why the USDA sets too high cutoff thresholds for detection. By the time you finish the column titled "The Struggle for Enforcement" you're ready to grab your proverbial pitchfork and call those lazy bureaucrats in D.C. demanding change!

Before you do, let me ask this... What makes you believe that the USDA, (who promoted the concept of feeding dead cows to cows, thus bringing down upon its constituency the plague of Mad Cow Disease) would be efficient at detecting drugs in meat in the first place?

No, dear friend, the problem is not in detection or enforcement. The problem is in the management of the animals. The problem is the whole method of animal husbandry, writ large, sanctioned and promoted by the USDA.

​The whole system is flawed! Do I need to say that again? The whole system is flawed!

In this case, the baby and the bathwater must go.

Eighty plus percent of all antibiotics manufactured in the U.S. today are used in the cattle industry. My question is this... with that number in mind, is it any wonder that drugs are detectable at all levels in our meat supply?

We must, as a Nation, repent of our ways with respect to animal husbandry. The CAFO (confined area feed operation) is flawed and must be scrapped. Pasture based livestock is the only way to avoid drugs in our meats. The best way to do this is to support pastured based Ranchers and Farmers. These small, local producers know how to care for animals without using routine, prophylactic drugs.

You can make a difference.

When my wife, Eve, attends Farmer's Markets, she is often asked for recipes or instructions to properly prepare our Dry Aged, Grass-Fed & Finished Beef. 
​
Dry Aged Beef, of any type (Grass fed or not) cooks much differently than non-Dry Aged, so, the bulk of discussion centers on this topic. That is fine, for your average steak lover, but, occasionally we have a talk with a what I call a "clean eater".

These are folks who follow a strict dietary regimen, such as AIP (auto-immune protocol eating), KETO, PALEO and the like. These eaters are not just mimicking something the doctor told them in passing, like "You should really stay away from...(fill in the blank).

,These people are food prodigies, seeking out each ingredient with diligence, dedicating hours to crafting their meals. They prepare what I have found to be the purest, most nutritionally dense plates available. Their kitchen is an alter to food righteousness. It's a place of creation and purity - almost a holy ground. It's not terribly complicated - the meals don't win awards and would never be featured on the latest installment of "Top Chef".

They pour themselves into taste, quality and sourcing the cleanest food available. In truth, it is how the culinary arts and domestic skills of yesteryear were practiced.

They've created a larder of nutrition in their home. This is food purity, sacredness, consecration - truly a sight to behold and, if you are ever fortunate enough to join them for a meal, it will be an experience you will not soon forget.

In our home we grow what we eat. When we do purchase food, it comes from only a few trusted Farms we know, personally. Thus, the lexicon of food righteousness, for lack of a better term, has become a second language for us.

Eve speaks the language of food righteousness fluently, with grace, and is no doubt a true darling of the movement. 

The few processed foods found in our house usually fall into the category of condiments. I've always struggled to find good condiments - it seems like every Ketchup found in the entire universe have loads of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) or Sugar in them. Add to that the risk of pesticide accumulation found in all the common, industrial, factory farmed condiment ingredients and you have a real risk of tanking your own personal ecosystem.

So, in keeping with our anti-establishment thinking, Eve made our own BBQ sauce. In light of the impending holiday weekend, I thought we might share it with you...

First, grab these items...

• 15 ounce can of organic tomato sauce (better yet, make your own - it's super easy)
• ¾ cup Braggs Organic apple cider vinegar
• ½ cup Xylitol or equivalent stevia
• 3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 ½ tsp organic garlic powder
• ¾ tsp himalayan sea salt
• ¼ rounded tsp organic ground cayenne
• ½ tsp organic pepper
• 1 Tsp organic onion powder

Here is the skinny on how to put this stuff together...

Add all ingredients to sauce pan. Heat over med-high heat, stir and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently. Cooking longer results in a thicker sauce. Doubling the recipe will take an additional 10 minutes to thicken. 

Once you are done, here is what you will have; about 2 cups per recipe

Grab some short ribs, flank ribs or back ribs and pressure cook them as described in this FACEBOOK post. Once done, place them in the broiler and cover with BBQ sauce. 

Be prepared for a food odyssey! 

Sure, we offer Pastured based livestock products like Grass-fed & finished Beef and Pastured, Pork and Chicken – all stuff people desperately need, but on a daily basis, but I’m increasingly convinced that our primary purpose, here at SonRise Ranch is to reach out to the consumer and offer them an education.
​
What kind of education can you get from someone who moves Pigs around a pasture all day long?In the early 20th century ninety percent or more of the U.S. population was involved in Agriculture to some degree or another. Today, Farmers don’t even rate being counted on in the US census. In fact, the current population of incarcerated persons in the United States dwarfs the number of Farmers by two-to-one.

People, for the most part, due to no fault of their own, are agriculturally illiterate. They have no idea how food is grown, how animals live, what they should or should not eat – this comprises the bulk of our conversations with our constituency.

Conservatively, I have over 100 conversations per week regarding food, food production and sustainable agriculture.
And we are by no means, a big attraction. On the contrary, we are a small farm.

I meet and talk with folks at the Farmers Markets, at Weston A. Price dinners and conferences, at social events, via email and phone calls – literally hundreds of concerned mothers, steak loving fathers, and environmental activists each week contact the Ranch seeking knowledge and information.
​
The level of interest in farming is staggering.

“Hi – I am looking for chicken that is grown only on California soil, eats no Gluten, Soy, Wheat, Corn, Grains, Bugs, Dirt, Ants, Rodents, Fish or Fish by-products, Can you help me?”

My first question would be; “What do you propose we feed them?

Air? Snowflakes? Clouds?

Theirs is a valid question, don’t get me wrong, in fact we invite people to ask these questions. But seriously folks, what, pray tell do you propose these wonderful creations eat while being raised on our farm?

I need to feed them something!

The impetus for this disconnect is a lack of understanding between what the Doctor is prescribing, and what the chicken is metabolizing. The customer, in this case, is severely allergic to the aforementioned foods and desires the chicken they are consuming to have the same dietary restrictions they do. This is completely unnecessary and dysfunctional.

What a chicken eats, and how it affects the human who eats the chicken, fall into one of two categories.

1. Products grown or found in nature - Examples include seeds, corn, lentils, beans, peas, wheat, and other grains as well as bugs, plants, grass, legumes, forbs etc.
2. Products made by man. – GMO corn, GMO lentils, GMO beans, etc. Pesticides, Herbicides, Synthetic Hormones, De-worming agents, and the like.

The chicken has no problem digesting the gluten found in grains.

Trust me – they’ve been doing it for years.

Birds (Chickens) eat seeds in nature. This is why they exist symbiotically with Herbivores. They can eat a handful of seeds and a few will pass right though, undigested then get deposited on the soil after a short flight. Nature relies on birds to spread the seeds just as it relies on bees to pollinate. If we were to travel to the Caribbean a few thousand years ago, to find an un-domesticated chicken, in its natural habitat, it would surely be eating grains – gluten and all!

When a chicken eats, the gluten (a form of protein) will digest down into amino acids; starches will break down into simple sugars, and fats will be converted into fatty acids and glycerol. This is all perfectly normal. These basic elements are what make a chicken, a chicken. They comprise its whole structure, its feathers, legs and feet. The sacrifice of the wheat grain, in this case, created the life of a chicken. It’s the whole circle of life.

In the second category, products made by man, the story is entirely different. Transgenic modified foods (GMOs) are un-natural at best and diabolical at worst. They can be metabolized, but at a considerable cost. The unpronounceable compounds, assembled by someone in a laboratory with a post-secondary education and a well worn pocket protector are not natural!

Man made products can, and will transfer directly though the chicken and into you. If you are allergic to glyphosate, for example (the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s Round Up) you will be given a hefty dose when you eat a chicken that has spent its whole life eating feeds treated with Round up.

Glyphosate will bioaccumulate(1) in the tissue of the chicken and enter you directly. Your body will no more know what to do with glyphosate, than did the chicken – so it will insulate it, catalog it and wait for further instructions. "This is a toxic invader, we better surround it with fat cells and make sure it can’t travel anywhere in the body" the immune system cries.

Not so with heritage, natural, non-GMO wheat. The chicken’s great, great-grandmother ate the same wheat, gluten and all that the grand- chicken is eating today, it hasn’t changed in a millennium.

The chicken, like you and I, have a three-trillion member, internal, bacterial team alive and well inside it’s craw (they don’t have stomachs, like we do – but it’s the same concept). This guest society is well adapted, over thousands of generations and stands ready and waiting with all the right enzymes to break down and digest some wheat to convert it into energy.

Do you get the point here?

Our customer, in this case, was not really allergic to gluten, wheat or corn. They are allergic to the chemicals and transgenic modified versions of gluten, wheat and corn. Ancient, natural gluten, wheat and corn are nourishing, and have been for thousands of years – Jesus used it to feed 5000 hungry listeners and not one complained of an allergy!
Just because modern grains are sprayed with chemicals and have modified DNA, does not mean that ancient natural grains are bad! This requires putting your thinking cap on.

Throwing out all grains, because some have been sprayed with Round up, would be akin to outlawing cars because some are operated by careless drivers that cause ten-car pile ups on the freeway.

Would it not be wiser to simply arrest the offenders and revoke their driving privileges?

This is one of the reason we feed Non-GMO feeds to our Pork and Poultry (not Cows) – we don’t want the trace elements of glyophosate to enter the bloodstreams and muscle tissue of our animals.

Our method of feeding is called Bio-mimicry. Bio-mimicry is a fancy term that simply means “to impersonate nature”.
Let’s take corn for example. In nature, without human intervention, chickens would not eat GMO corn.

The Organic designation on our feed guarantees they are non-GMO and thus not poisoned with Round up. And while we are on this topic, a chicken diet restricted to vegetarian feed only, as is the craze right now, would be just as destructive as one doused with Round up. Chickens, like all birds, eat bugs. A chicken deprived of bugs would be a very unhealthy, unnatural chicken.

If a Farmer eliminates 99% of all feeds available, due to the unfounded fear that if humans are allergic to certain feeds, then so are chickens. Or worse, that chickens somehow transfer allergies to humans when consumed, will have a serious problem – his chickens will starve.

In days gone by, all, or nearly all Americans knew this stuff.

Of course, they didn’t have the allergies we have today. The credit for the absence of allergies went, first to the hearty immune system of past generations. Simply put, it was more robust than ours today. Those folks played with other snot-nosed kids in the park as children, ate more dirt wiping out on their bicycles or falling off tire swings, and did not have the so-called benefit of anti-bacterial soap.

Secondly, their immune system was not constantly assaulted with foreign substances, chemicals and transgenic modified organisms. They, unlike us, were not raised on sterile food, devoid of helpful bacteria.

They were healthier.
We are sickly.
​And it’s all a result of what we eat.

Notes: (1) Bioaccumulation is the tendency of  a consumed substance to become concentrated inside the bodies of living things. The lying scientists and their government cronies at the UDSA and FDA will insist that glyphosate does not bioaccumulate. Is that why, since the introduction of chemical farming in America, we have the dubious honor (or dishonor) of leading the world in obesity and chronic disease? Think for yourself! What makes logical sense?

Consumers are daily faced with scathing predicament. How to support a local, small farm while still getting what they want and need to sustain their families? To be sure, most are not concerned at all with this predicament. Many just don’t care.

But, for the few that do, a near-vertical, uphill battle exists. Trusting a label to scrutinize a farm, feed regiment or agricultural management system can be treacherous at best, and deceptive at worse.  With the new de-regulation of words such as “grass-fed”, the task of deciding which box to check at the voting booth with your precious dollar has become as mind-boggling as a four-way stop in downtown L.A. (I know, I always have to ask my wife for help with who goes next?)

And now, LOCAL is on the chopping block, due to a loophole in the Country of Origin Labeling Laws (COOL) allowing the words “product of the USA” to be placed on beef that is only packaged here, not raised, or slaughtered in the USA.

Ever wonder how all of a sudden “grass-fed” showed up in all the major stores, online technology companies (notice I did not use “Ranches”) like Butcher Box suddenly popped up overnight? Or, how all the mega-chain grocers, overnight had Local “grass-fed” from a farmer nearby?

The answer is simple – it wasn’t “grass-fed“, nor was it local.

What can you do to help?

Click this link and join the 900 plus other folks who feel strongly that a rule change is necessary, forcing the regulating authorities to require country of origin labels on grass-fed beef products to be accurate and not deceptive.

Here is the comment we placed;

A heavy pall hangs in the air, visibility is down to a block or two while driving, and we haven't seen the sun for days. A few weeks ago in Southern Oregon, on a visit home, where Ranching first began for me, a record was set for the poorest air quality in the entire nation.

The Air Quality Index (AQI), used to measure smog and pollution, ticked up to 300+ in my little hometown. Hey, at least we made national news! 

This is the AQI range where mothers and the elderly are told to leave town. Folks are given masks at the local clinic for free and just about everyone you meet looks as if they've just finished a memorial service with puffy, red eyes.

As a young man, I well remember my first wildfire. It was in 1987 (I know, I just dated myself). My father, a Helicopter Logging Pilot for 30 years, was called off his logging assignment, to dump water on a wildfire near our hometown. The teams, both ground and air, extinguished the fire in a few days and returned to logging.

Back then, firefighting with a Helicopter was a narrow occupation. He was one of the first pilots trained for it - up to that point he had only used a "Bambi-Bucket" (the water tote under a helicopter) a few times in his whole career. It would be another two or perhaps three years before he would be ordered to fight his next fire.

By the time he retired, in the late 90's, fire fighting accounted for three quarters of the annual revenue for his company.  He often commented "we used to log these forests, now we get paid by the goverment when they burn"
​

​I've found a fascinating TEDTALK by Paul Hessburg on this subject. In about 15 minutes you too, can understand what is really happening.  

Here is where it gets interesting. The Native Americans actually lit fires...why?

​Well, I can tell you they weren't playing with matches. They intuitively knew that the Buffalo, their primary source of protein and central to their way of life, grazed in silvopasture - widely spaced trees interspersed with perennial grasslands. Thus, burning the forest served two purposes; first, this allowed the brush that had collected and dead trees since the last disturbance to be eliminated. 

Secondly, these wise stewards of the land (much wiser than their successors, I might add) understood the simple natural maxum - "death creates life".

Or, as America's favorite Farmer, Joel Salatin puts it "everything is either eating or being eaten"

Perennial grasses store their energy in their roots, below the surface. Annuals - crops that require plowing and planting, store energy in their seeds. A perennial has 2/3rds or more of its structure below ground and 1/3 above. Thus a wildfire would not destroy the perennial plant life, it would envigorate it. 

The opposite would be true of annual crops.

​Stay with me here - if I come and light your cornfield, an annual crop, on fire, you will lose all your stored energy in the ensuing inferno, much like Sampson did in the biblical book of Judges, when he lit a few foxes on fire and sent them running through the Philistines wheat fields. Have you ever uprooted a corn stalk? They are about foot deep.

​Not so with perennial grass. 

Now, with that in mind, take a look a this picture...

Here I am standing next to some perennial grasses that were restored with proper cattle management using a holistic, regenerative, management intensive approach - in other words, we move the cattle daily, just like they would in nature due to predation pressure. These grasses stand as tall, or taller than I do - about 6 feet. If the subsurface structure is 2x the above surface structure, then the roots stretch nearly 12 feet below the topsoil. 

What pretell do plant roots do?

Bingo, they transport minerals and nutrients to the surface - something cattle can sense, seek out and love to eat.

In other words, the Native Americans were doing good - pruning, vine dressing, stewarding the land - with the ultimate end state of attracting large Herbivorous Grazers back into the silvopasture and feeding them with the richest, deeply-mined, subterranean minerals they could get, all transported for free by well meaning perennial grasses.

Those grasses were pressed into service by being burned, grazed or trampled. They followed their one true instinct - rebuild for further propagation. It's akin to lifting weights at the gym for you and me. And without the weights - the whole symbiotic system falls apart. Without the grazers, the plants don't propagate. They die and build up flammable fuels. Increasing carbon in the atmosphere.

Ok, now for the punchline. 

The Native Americans were unable to control their herds. They didn't have the benefit of portable water troughs, mobile electric fence and salt licks that can be moved from field to field. Most importantly, their herds were not trained - heck, they weren't even domesticated. They were at the mercy of the herd mentality - seeking safety from predation, better grass, deeper springs. It was up to the herd.

Not so, us.
Not modern man. 

We can control livestock with biomimicry. Yes, biomimicry (haven't heard that before have ya?) It means to copy nature. How? By using systems that impersonate the predator, like a portable electric fence, that delivers a harmless tickle to the back end of a Cow when it brushes up against the fence wire. Or, to entice the herd to move by offering  better feed, salt or water.

Move where, you say?

To an overgrown forest that needs trimmed before it erupts in a fiery inferno - that's where!

If cattle graze a forest they remove the undergrowth, the stuff that burns real hot and boils the sap in trees - killing them instantly. They trample the branches that have fallen, reducing the fast burn fuels and speeding up the carbon-cycle. On top of that, the cattle grow - yes - grow. 

Grow what?

Milk, meat, hide - all good stuff.

And at what cost?
Free.

In fact, opposite of free. Think about it. I told you my Dad's company earned three-quarters of all their revenue from fire-fighting in the late 90's. That was 12 Million dollars! And that was "back then". 

We are spending millions per hour fighting fires right now. This could all be done for free with good, properly trained cattle managers, and the correct eco-regenerative-carbon-sequestration-fire-prevention mentality from our forest management.

Why not?

With the recent release of The Magic Pill, by the home streaming service Netflix, Keto, like it's younger cousin, Paleo, birthed a few short years earlier, has come of age. Wildly popular with those seeking a healthier lifestyle, weight loss and exquisite energy, this new system of eating is rapidly gaining ground in the nutrition world. 

Nary a day goes by, at one of our Farmer's Markets wherein we don't meet
a healthy handful of folks that have commited fully to this method of nourishing their bodies. Having an icy cold display of our Ranch Direct products attracts these new devotees at the cyclic rate. 

What is shocking, for us,  is to find out where these folks are getting all their protein and fat, to fuel this new way of eating.  The answers abound - Costco, Ralphs, Sprouts, Butcher Box, US Wellness Meats, etc... all factory farm purveyors.

When Keto/Paleo eaters consume large amounts of meat and animal fats from the conventional, industrial, factory farming system it is deeply scaring and harming our ecosystems - bee colonies notwithstanding.

"From 2006 to 2016, more than half the conservation land within a mile of bee colonies was converted into agriculture, usually row crops such as soybeans and corn" - the majority of which was used to fatten cattle in feed lots.

To be sure, Keto/Paleo eating is the most efficient fuel you can consume, but, one must consider the entire impact on the ecosystem.

It is for this reason SonRise Ranch raises animals on pasture, integrated into their natural environment in a holistic approach (meaning we consider the "whole" ecosystem)

Then, just today, we saw this article in Farm Ireland.​

The USDA is allowing import beef from Ireland to be labeled “Grass fed" if they are fed grass 80% of the time.
 
In stark contrast, SonRise Ranch Beef are 100% Grass fed, all the time. This is called "Grass fed & finished" - scary stuff for consumers who rely on their imagination of what Ireland is like.

In fact, the article admits that most consumers associate Ireland with green grass - thus they can be fooled easily.
And so, the bigger picture begins to emerge. Terms like “Grass fed” and “Organic” are being confused with what we do, here at SonRise Ranch. ​

Here is a quick video that explains what to look for in true Grass fed Beef...

To add insult to injury, the USDA, who introduced Mad Cow Disease, and spoiled import meat to the U.S. now permits import and domestic Big Ag to label their product “Grass fed” when their beef eat grass only 80% of the time.

​So what does all this mean?

​Let’s take a look at some definitions… from top to bottom (and I really mean bottom). 

Number two above is what really gets me – “must be fed grass at sometime”

All Beef eats grass, sometime in its life! In other news, water is wet…Come on, this is a ploy for the big time producers to recapture what they’ve lost to small time Grass fed & finished guys and the government is in collusion with them.

The sad part is that people can be fooled by what they read on a label and it is affecting real Ranchers in real ways. “Grass fed” should really mean just that, but such is not the case.
​
Key takeaway - you've got to know your producer!