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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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? 

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)​

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"
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​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)

   As SonRise Ranch has grown, so have our customer needs. We have been innovative in Farming/Ranching, Feed profiles and we assume our customers expect nothing less than the best modus operandi in delivering our outstanding product each week.
    My chief complaint has always been that the USDA required packaging our product in plastic. I wanted to wrap it in white butcher paper, but they wouldn’t have it.

A side effect of having no true competition in the San Diego area is that everyone wants our product. This means we drive from kingdom come and back to service our customers making delivery. Sometimes our customer density doesn’t grow in correlation with customer breadth – meaning we have a few customers over a large geographical distance.
To keep environmental impact at a minimum I have always discouraging shipping our products in exchange for hand delivering to the customer.
​
Why?

A founding principle that I’ve insisted on from the beginning of our little company was an unwavering commitment to environmentally conscious principles of operation. Overnight shipping has been off the list for many years now – it was never the fuel consumption, Gas was being used in a FEDEX van if we had a box onboard or not (and we had to use petrol to get product to our customers anyway).

No, the main issue was contributing to our carbon footprint by using tons of non-biodegradable products to insulate our frozen meat during shipment only to shoulder our customers with the burden of guilt by tossing everything in landfills after their shipment arrived. Over the years we looked at Styrofoam, Glass-Packs and just about everything else you can imagine – but none of it fit the bill. So, I stuck to my guns and discouraged shipping as much as possible.


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​Recently, Marcia (our awesome Office Manager – shameless plug here!) ordered a frozen, free-range Turkey from a small farm back east. When it arrived the shipping instructions said the insulated foam inside was made from Corn Starch and was environmentally biodegradable. And could be rapidly dissolved in water!