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?

In our area of the Sierra Nevada Foothills a hideously invasive plant referred to as Scotch broom invades nearly every inch of open space.  This dominate species has no natural competition. It found roots in Sierras becasue of alcohol use during the mining days. 

During the mid 1800’s, Scotch whisky was highly sought after by the Miners and tradesmen who made a living working in the mining camps. I can’t really say I’d blame them, if I lived in near freezing temperatures, sleeping in a tent with no earthly comforts beyond a wood stove that barely warmed my toes and burdened with back breaking work for the modern equivalent of $20 per day – I give a lick to the bottle too… but I digress.

The best whisky came from Scotland and when shipped for that considerable distance, required protection from glass breakage in the form of a soft, pliable wrapping. Sequestered deep in this protective wrapping the original Scotch Broom seeds found their mission here in America. Once emptied of their precious content the useless bottles were often discarded on the ground and forgotten – seeding a perfect botanical rebellion that can be seen on the hills of Gold Country today.

Over the years relentless acres of once productive land, having long been abandoned by hearty Homesteaders who left for the bright lights of the city during the ensuing waves of Farm Crises, succumbed to the Scotch Broome invasion. The remnants of our once great agricultural powerhouse are now covered in Scotch Broome – depleting the local ecosystem of productivity and resources.
One tell tail sign of Broome infestation showed this last summer as a devistating 97,000 acre loss due to the enormous King Fire. It lasted from September to October, costing eighty structures, a dozen injuries and millions of dollars in firefighting resources.

Scotch Broom is cannibalistic – meaning that it grows on top of itself, so that previous generations provide layers and layers of bone-dry decay below. When ignited, Scotch Broome stands burn hot enough to boil the sap in the surrounding trees. Even when the trees don’t ignite directly they usually die from a  “boiling effect” they might have otherwise survived. Once they die, our laws often prevent their removal by logging and they simply fall down - only to decay and provide yet another fuel source for the next fire.

There is a dangerous movement afoot to “keep things natural”, in an attempt to “re-wild” areas of the United States by leaving them for dead, with no human interaction at all. Unfortunately, the window for this opportunity has long since passed.  The “natural” we observe today in our local forests is actually man-made - and like anything man-made, it must be maintained.

Abandoning ecosystems once touched by the human stain to suffer without proper management is tremendously destructive – and reeks of human arrogance.  We messed it up - we ought to responsible to manage it properly. Human interaction has happened; we have affected the eco system - There is no turning back.  In an often ill-advised, but well meant gesture we allocate incredible resources to an effort that is doomed to fail though generous donations to this or that club or society.  The sad fact is that a dangerous cocktail of legal environmental rulings and ignorance of ecosystems have overruled the common sense approach of properly managed domestic animals on the land. Our country is now horribly mismanaging our forests on a wholesale level. 

Scotch Broome grows at the rate of 1 foot per year if left unchecked and can produce approximately 18,000 seeds annually. Conventional methods for removal include pulling by hand, spraying, burning it, bulldozing - each having their drawbacks. 

We have acres and acres of Scotch Broom covered land that could be used for productive grazing. One of Scotch Broom’s good qualities is that is it a legume, a plant that fixes nitrogen to the soil. You might recall that nitrogen is very useful in good grass production – we use Chicken manure for nitrogen too.  

What we’ve found is that if we can remove the Scotch Broome, the fire hazard is reduced by 70-90% or more and the next season, a grass sod begins to develop. By season three or four we are grazing cattle on lush, moist grass with no fire hazard. 

The problem – how do we effectively remove scotch broom? Bulldozing creates erosion, is often dangerous and costs money. Hand cutting requires frequent visits to the back specialist - and we have acres of Broome. Spraying will kill broom but eventually find itself back into our beef supply.

Our answer – HOGS!

We found that our 150-200 pound Hogs, love to root up Scotch broom.   We place a border around them with electric wire, and give them a good source of clean water.  Together with soy-free, 100% organic feed they go to town…

In a few cycles of rotation, they have done what would have been extremely difficult for us using a dozer or manual labor. The Hogs are in heaven - "Hog heaven". They love being able to express their hog-ness. They eat roots, bugs, acorns and just about anything else they can find. And, boy howdy are they healthy, building muscle and living life to the fullest. Most of all (for my wife) - they don't stink! Our neighbors and visitors are absolutely amazed that our pigs don't smell like pigs.  It is truly amazing what happens when you allow nature to symbiotically intertwine with animals the way God intended.

Beyond clearing brush and saving homes, lives and possibly thousands of taxpayer dollars, our Hogs provide Good, Clean food for hundreds of families. They provide real, meaningful jobs to a small family of people who care deeply for the environment and their animals; they rejuvenate the soils with their manure, to make growing grass possible for the grazing of Grass-fed Beef.  They take food dollars away from Hormel foods and other disgusting factory food, industrial, government subsidized producers that make available nutritious products such as Spam to you and your neighbors.

Free-range, proper domestic animal management is a boon to the environment. By voting with your dollars, you are doing more to save the environment than any donation you can make to a club or society.