Tall, western bunch grass in the "bowl" located on the Wyoming Guest Ranch - this is a favorite spot for visitors on our tours. Our bunch grass is getting really tall - about 7 feet. That is a good thing. If you've followed the Ranch and my ramblings for too long you might recall my stating that when the early Americans migrated west, they were astonished at the grasslands. Massive seas of ever waving grain, billowing up from each crest and descending into valleys. Grasses and natural grains of every kind, as far as the eye could see.
It must have been quite a site.
They told us in written accounts how whole caravans could be lost in the grass. Much of it was so thick that one could tie it in a knot... while sitting in the saddle. Wow - now that is some tall grass.
And here is the beautiful thing about tall grass. For each inch above grade, expressing itself as a solar panel of immense complexity, there were two more inches of root system below grade running an intricate mining operation for minerals.
So, here's some math for you...
An average size horse is around 60 inches, or five feet tall. With the rider reaching out to grab a handful of grass, figure a conservative 5 and 1/2 feet. Now, double that.
Answer: Eleven feet
Eleven feet of rooting depth!
That means that the bunch grass in our "bowl" (the area near our old creek bed on the Guest Ranch) is reaching down and mining minerals from a depth of eleven feet. When we took over in 2021 it measured 18" having been severely overgrazed for over a century.
Last spring we had a horse of ours, one of my favorites, get a bit of "white line" in his hooves. We tried just about everything natural you could imagine. Supplements, vitamins, feed change, etc. Here is what solved the problem - and you will think to yourself, "sure dummy, that makes sense"
WE JUST PUT HIM ON PASTURE!
That's right. My genius solution was to take him out of the corrals and put him on natural grass. He can then pick and choose what he wants to eat, as opposed to what I was feeding him each day and do so in whatever quantity he desires.
Do you mean to tell me that animals can heal themselves if given the proper natural diet?
Yes, and so can humans.
It is now estimated that by 2030, fifty percent of all Americans will be clinically obese, and of that number 20% will be "morbidly obese" - why?
Well, if you are reading this, you already know… We consume total junk. Absolute nonsense. Unrecognizable gibberish. And we are programmed to like it. In fact, we are programmed to desire it. Our taste bud and sensory systems have been chemically, emotionally and genetically tampered with to desire exactly and only what Nabisco, Pepsi and McDonalds want us to eat.
Recently, I conducted an experiment. I attempted the "Lion Diet" for two months. What is the Lion Diet? It's pretty simple - Beef, Water, Salt and Electrolytes.
Here were my results -
1. Better sleep.
2. More energy.
3. No cravings.
4. Much nicer to be around.
5. Better sexual health.
6. Weight loss from an embarrassing 235 lbs. to 203, body fat percentage dropped from 19% to 11%.
I have since switched from Lion to my standard, modified "Keto-Dirty Carnivore Diet", or as I like to say "WOE" (Way of Eating). But I must say my life has changed. Dramatically. On my most intense days, I just eat more fat, as I am now "fat adapted" and do not burn carbs for energy. No roller-coaster of energy – just a long, steady burn. The change is amazing. I am back to weightlifting after a full day of work. That alone was worth the experiment.
But it took a complete 60 day reset to make it happen. Lion is great - but can be boring and should only be used to "re-program" your system. I was glad when the two months was over.
As many of you have read - our Ranch started because of a illness my wife suffered from in 2007. She was healed with food. Good food. Really good food. The kind you grow yourself.
But, somewhere along the way, burning at all ends from running a business that spans two states. On the board of a non-profit for Vets in Agriculture. Running internships and working 16 hour days, 6 days per week (we still kept the Sabbath) I went to more and more conventional, SAD (Standard American Diet). At first, it was just a few sodas each week, then soon, it was soda with each lunch, then... well you get the picture.
I was shocked at waking up one morning and seeing me in the mirror and looking my actual age, plus ten years!
It had to stop.
So, I agreed to the challenge to re-set myself.
The theory being; thus, If we consume non-chemical, non-sugary natural foods that can be "picked, killed or plucked" and have only one ingredient - Eggs are made from egg. Beef is made from beef, etc. Then my tastebuds and metabolic activity reset too.
It was a miracle. I feel like I've been given a whole new life.
Now, here was the key - and this is an unabashed sales pitch... I obviously have access to the best beef in the world. The most nutrient dense, clean, non-hormone, non-anything beef. The cows on my ranch (which I eat too) are eating from grass that is grazed and managed, by me, regeneratively. Meaning - the roots have the luxury of mining deeply because of how we use our Cows.
Why?
Simple, grasses are a perennial. That means they do not need "planting"- they come back each year for free! How do they do that? Well, they store their energy below ground during the dormant season. How do they tell when it is the "dormant season"?
There are a lot of factors that trigger the recession to dormancy. But one of the biggest ones is a decrease in solar capacity that occurs naturally in the fall. But this can be mimicked by overgrazing i.e. dropping solar capacity because your solar panel got eaten by a Cow! We know that if a plant loses leaf matter, it will retract their root systems and go into survival mode (a quasi-dormancy). In so doing, they abandon the "upkeep" of the roots and cover less territory underground. If you take a six-foot-tall plant, and whack it to one foot, the root system will retract from twelve feet to two. Imagine the difference in mineral bioavailability between twelve and two feet.
When that happens (punch line arriving - pay attention) the animals living on that plant have reduced access to sub-terranean nutrients and are thus less nutrient dense.
Did you catch that?
So.... the human eating the animal eating short, stinted, overgrazed plants is at a great disadvantage, nutritionally speaking.
This is why the plant management on a Cattle Ranch is so vital. In fact, it is more vital than animal management. You must have extremely healthy plants to make exceptionally healthy animals. Period. Junk fed animals produce junk meat. Low nutritional density meat and fat cannot and will not heal the human eating it.
Ask my horse – he’ll tell you.
It must have been quite a site.
They told us in written accounts how whole caravans could be lost in the grass. Much of it was so thick that one could tie it in a knot... while sitting in the saddle. Wow - now that is some tall grass.
And here is the beautiful thing about tall grass. For each inch above grade, expressing itself as a solar panel of immense complexity, there were two more inches of root system below grade running an intricate mining operation for minerals.
So, here's some math for you...
An average size horse is around 60 inches, or five feet tall. With the rider reaching out to grab a handful of grass, figure a conservative 5 and 1/2 feet. Now, double that.
Answer: Eleven feet
Eleven feet of rooting depth!
That means that the bunch grass in our "bowl" (the area near our old creek bed on the Guest Ranch) is reaching down and mining minerals from a depth of eleven feet. When we took over in 2021 it measured 18" having been severely overgrazed for over a century.
Last spring we had a horse of ours, one of my favorites, get a bit of "white line" in his hooves. We tried just about everything natural you could imagine. Supplements, vitamins, feed change, etc. Here is what solved the problem - and you will think to yourself, "sure dummy, that makes sense"
WE JUST PUT HIM ON PASTURE!
That's right. My genius solution was to take him out of the corrals and put him on natural grass. He can then pick and choose what he wants to eat, as opposed to what I was feeding him each day and do so in whatever quantity he desires.
Do you mean to tell me that animals can heal themselves if given the proper natural diet?
Yes, and so can humans.
It is now estimated that by 2030, fifty percent of all Americans will be clinically obese, and of that number 20% will be "morbidly obese" - why?
Well, if you are reading this, you already know… We consume total junk. Absolute nonsense. Unrecognizable gibberish. And we are programmed to like it. In fact, we are programmed to desire it. Our taste bud and sensory systems have been chemically, emotionally and genetically tampered with to desire exactly and only what Nabisco, Pepsi and McDonalds want us to eat.
Recently, I conducted an experiment. I attempted the "Lion Diet" for two months. What is the Lion Diet? It's pretty simple - Beef, Water, Salt and Electrolytes.
Here were my results -
1. Better sleep.
2. More energy.
3. No cravings.
4. Much nicer to be around.
5. Better sexual health.
6. Weight loss from an embarrassing 235 lbs. to 203, body fat percentage dropped from 19% to 11%.
I have since switched from Lion to my standard, modified "Keto-Dirty Carnivore Diet", or as I like to say "WOE" (Way of Eating). But I must say my life has changed. Dramatically. On my most intense days, I just eat more fat, as I am now "fat adapted" and do not burn carbs for energy. No roller-coaster of energy – just a long, steady burn. The change is amazing. I am back to weightlifting after a full day of work. That alone was worth the experiment.
But it took a complete 60 day reset to make it happen. Lion is great - but can be boring and should only be used to "re-program" your system. I was glad when the two months was over.
As many of you have read - our Ranch started because of a illness my wife suffered from in 2007. She was healed with food. Good food. Really good food. The kind you grow yourself.
But, somewhere along the way, burning at all ends from running a business that spans two states. On the board of a non-profit for Vets in Agriculture. Running internships and working 16 hour days, 6 days per week (we still kept the Sabbath) I went to more and more conventional, SAD (Standard American Diet). At first, it was just a few sodas each week, then soon, it was soda with each lunch, then... well you get the picture.
I was shocked at waking up one morning and seeing me in the mirror and looking my actual age, plus ten years!
It had to stop.
So, I agreed to the challenge to re-set myself.
The theory being; thus, If we consume non-chemical, non-sugary natural foods that can be "picked, killed or plucked" and have only one ingredient - Eggs are made from egg. Beef is made from beef, etc. Then my tastebuds and metabolic activity reset too.
It was a miracle. I feel like I've been given a whole new life.
Now, here was the key - and this is an unabashed sales pitch... I obviously have access to the best beef in the world. The most nutrient dense, clean, non-hormone, non-anything beef. The cows on my ranch (which I eat too) are eating from grass that is grazed and managed, by me, regeneratively. Meaning - the roots have the luxury of mining deeply because of how we use our Cows.
Why?
Simple, grasses are a perennial. That means they do not need "planting"- they come back each year for free! How do they do that? Well, they store their energy below ground during the dormant season. How do they tell when it is the "dormant season"?
There are a lot of factors that trigger the recession to dormancy. But one of the biggest ones is a decrease in solar capacity that occurs naturally in the fall. But this can be mimicked by overgrazing i.e. dropping solar capacity because your solar panel got eaten by a Cow! We know that if a plant loses leaf matter, it will retract their root systems and go into survival mode (a quasi-dormancy). In so doing, they abandon the "upkeep" of the roots and cover less territory underground. If you take a six-foot-tall plant, and whack it to one foot, the root system will retract from twelve feet to two. Imagine the difference in mineral bioavailability between twelve and two feet.
When that happens (punch line arriving - pay attention) the animals living on that plant have reduced access to sub-terranean nutrients and are thus less nutrient dense.
Did you catch that?
So.... the human eating the animal eating short, stinted, overgrazed plants is at a great disadvantage, nutritionally speaking.
This is why the plant management on a Cattle Ranch is so vital. In fact, it is more vital than animal management. You must have extremely healthy plants to make exceptionally healthy animals. Period. Junk fed animals produce junk meat. Low nutritional density meat and fat cannot and will not heal the human eating it.
Ask my horse – he’ll tell you.
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