Alderspring Ranch: Utilizing In-Herding for Land Health

In this conversation, Glenn Elzinga shares his family’s journey with Alderspring Ranch, detailing its beginnings, the motivations behind starting the ranch, their commitment to regenerative practices and healthy food, and the importance of building relationships within the community. He discusses the challenges faced, particularly with the increasing wolf population, and how they adapted their cattle management practices to ensure sustainability and profitability. Glenn describes how their sustainable grazing practices – including in-herding - benefits plant diversity and soil health. The discussion emphasizes the inter-connectedness of ecosystem management and cattle health, showcasing how diverse grazing can lead to better outcomes for both animals and the environment.

photo credit:  Melanie Elzinga, Alderspring Ranch

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Transcript

Narrator:

Hello and welcome to season six of Fresh Growth, a podcast by the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, hosted by Steve Elliott. Thanks for listening for five seasons and we're excited to sit with more innovative producers for another season. Just for background, Western SARE is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture to promote sustainable farming and ranching across the American West through research, education, and communication efforts like this podcast. Fresh Growth introduces producers and agricultural professionals from around the West who are embracing new ways of farming and ranching. They'll tell us about their experiences adopting more sustainable agricultural practices and the challenges and benefits they've seen. Thanks for listening.

Steve Elliot:

Today's guest is Glenn Elzinga of Alder Spring Ranch in May, Idaho. Alder Spring Ranch is a family ranch devoted to raising the best grass-fed beef in a way that benefits the health of all parts of our agricultural systems. Glenn, welcome. Thanks for sitting down with us.

Glenn Elzinga

Steve, it's fantastic to be here. It's fantastic to interact with SARE   again. We got involved with SARE, I don't know, it was probably like around 12 years ago now. And they actually had our back in trying some innovative approaches to the range. So I'm really, really happy to be in touch with you guys again. That was a great experience. 

Steve Elliot

We're going to get you that project and where it's led, but start, just tell me a little bit more about your ranch, where you are, and how you got started, location, climate, the whole nine yards.

Glenn Elzinga

No, that's good. So right now we're in central Idaho and actually we've always ranched in central Idaho. That started in 1992 in the Lemhi Valley on a smaller ranch with seven cows and 60 acres, Steve. So it was just very humble beginning. The number seven proves very important because that's actually how many daughters I ended up having after we started ranching. So anyway, we grew kind of exponentially in terms of kids, but we also grew since then exponentially in terms of cattle.

So that was a really small beginning and it was a really rough start. Thank, thank God, Carol and I both had full-time jobs. They were what we call our agricultural subsidy because we were both working full-time at the time, you know, and that, that enabled us to survive kind of the gut wrenching cattle market at that time. we thought we could make it, but we had no idea what the cost structure looked like because it wasn't only seven cows. We, we ran a neighbor's cows that we leased for a while and then we transitioned into trying to expand and scale up the operation. So I took out a loan for about 150 more, pretty shortly after that. And so now everything was on the line, but thankfully we had those jobs to subsidize us because the 70 cent cattle market wasn't going to pay the bills. so anyway. From that point on, you know, we just basically worked our tails off. We're also the classic cheapskates. We didn't even own a pickup truck. mean, talk about un-stereotypical for a rancher. We didn't even own a pickup truck for probably, I think our first pickup was like eight years into the business where we could actually say, hey, we need a pickup. We were just driving these little cars. We call them crap bombs because they were, you know, we didn't, Carol and I evaluate every single cost. Every single cost was like, will this return on our investment and if it didn't we didn't buy it. So and that was everything, you know, that was like irrigation systems pipe or pickups or tractors all those things ran through that test and if we couldn't we couldn't make sure they didn't actually produce an income stream we did not buy them and So those are really the hallmarks the third hallmark of what made it successful then Along with just being cheap skates along with working forever hours, you we were in their twenties and thirties and gosh, we just worked our tails off all the time. I remember irrigating where I'd actually fall asleep next to the irrigation ditch because it was two o'clock in the morning, Steve. I'm out there changing water. It's two o'clock in the morning. I'm moving pipe for changing water. And it's like, need a nap. So I'd lay down, you know, along the irrigation ditch up there in the, in the middle of nowhere, on the upper bars of the ranch, changing water and, anyway, we started leasing some ground, but number three, and this is where leasing ground comes in, we started to build relationships. And you know, yes, we can say, yeah, we started to have a relationship with the land and a relationship with our cattle, but it was really a relationship with all kinds of people. Like the people we originally bought the place from, were people wanting to retire. They wanted a way out. They didn't. They knew they can get a lot of money for their little ranch. was 60 acres irrigated and about 70 acres of dry ground. And, and we had coffee with them a bunch of times. And finally I called them up or we left there and we said, Hey, we'd like to buy this place. And by the time we got to our rental house back in salmon, Idaho, the phone was ringing and it was Francis Alder. And she said, we want to take your offer. We want this. And the reason they wanted it, Steve was because we offered them a lifetime estate where they could stay there for the rest of their lives. They didn't have to be homeless. You know, they didn't have to try to finance building a house or anything. They could stay in a place where they always lived. And it was, it was actually very selfish about Steve, which is really funny because we didn't know anything and we knew itp. Carol and I know knew we needed these people. Because we had no hope with them because what these people were, were third, fourth generation and they had cowboy skills forever. Right? They had done the salt of the earth cowboy thing and live just right on the edge of the land. know, and I learned everything about everything, you know, from handling calves to getting cows bred, to grafting calves, to the whole process of calving, to, how to make hay, you know, how to manage grass.

I just learned so much from these people who'd done it all their life.

Steve Elliot

 I've got to interrupt and ask though. 

Glenn Elzinga

Yeah, go ahead.

Steve Elliot

You obviously weren't a rancher growing up. You didn't come from that background. So why did you want to get into this when you have a full-time job? When your wife has a full-time job, what made this attractive? It's like, want to work 18 hours a day and be in debt for a long time to make this work.

Glenn Elzinga

So that's a valid question. And maybe you're wondering if I just had a lapse of consciousness. I mean, is that what you're wondering? What happened to your brain? What happened to your brain in that time? What is wrong with you?

Steve:

 That's not what I asked. No.  It had to be something deep to go through that. Why did you want to ranch?

Glenn Elzinga

No, you're right. Why did you want to ranch? Very, very basic, very basic, Steve. So Carol and I were working for a bunch of old boys before that.  And they were just old guys scattered around the valley. And they needed a little help on weekends and whatnot. So for several years before we even thought about buying a ranch, we started doing that on the side. That was our recreation on weekends. We'd go work for somebody and help them put up their hay crop and stuff. And it's because we loved it. We just loved being on the land. And most of all, we loved interacting with those people. I mean, these were people that had lived through the Great Depression, Yeah. These were people who were just one generation removed from having, Native American villages right next to their place. mean, they're, they're in fact, you know, Ron and Francis even, you know, they're in their seventies. is back in the early nineties. Native American people, tribesmen would come up from different reservations and hang out with them for days because they were almost like blood relatives to these people. there, there was some blood connections there and they would do some trading and, talk about the old times. you know, and this is pre-reservation stuff they're talking about. They both have family ties all the way back to that, that time. So they had this really, really kind of strong connection to the land and that became contagious working with those people. And Carol and I, we were both brought up in and around agriculture, not ranching. Carol's from a corn and soybean farm in the Midwest. But it was more diversified when she was a kid. I worked on vegetable farms on the East coast, know, doing everything from, you know, growing ornamental landscape plants to, to, you know, farm or farm muck truck, tomato crops and orchards and all these things. Both had an, you know, those are the jobs we sought out. So we both had that in our bloodstream and we didn't want to raise our kids in a place that was without that. Yeah. We just didn't see that as a hope and a future for our kids. We wanted them to be dirty, you know, we want them to get their hands dirty. Want them to eat carrots out of the garden. We wanted to see where their brief came from. You know, we wanted to see what it was like to milk a cow and graft a calf. We wanted all those things into our kids. They were kind of elemental to the upbringing of a kid. So that's why that's, it's really a simple answer. Let me give me an example. We were, we had met Ron and Francis Alder for coffee several times and we just hung out with them and we got up there one night and they're driving. I jump out at a pickup and Ronald is showing me this hay ground and you know, when he put the last crop alfalfa in stuff like that, we're talking about that and he jumps back in the truck and I can't get back in because I'm just taking it all in. I'm, know, the, mountains still got snow streaking down them. There's this kind of Alpen glow light that in, in the valley that's making everything just so rich. And the smells coming off the hay and watching those cattle down there grazing. And then I turned to Ron and Francis and I saw him and absolutely weather beaten pickup. These two people. And you know what? They were the same way. Yeah. Ronald had a face that looked like leather. was like crack the leather. was brown and just weather beaten and tan and same with Francis. They, they actually fit into the whole picture of what I was seeing. They, actually weren't acting on an ecosystem. They were part of an ecosystem, Steve. were part of it. were part of it. They just fit right in. They just blended right into it. wasn't this there's a pickup. On this ground with people in it where you're saying that doesn't fit. No, no, it was, it would just fit like a jigsaw puzzle piece. And I stood there and I said to myself, I want that. I want what they have. You know, and, and I said that to Carol too, when we got in the back of the pickup and rattled down back down the Jeep trail to get back to the house. And I said, I want that. And she said, I do too. I saw the same thing you did. That, you know, Steve, that's, that's really, that's really what I'm trying to convey. This is an amazing life that we get to live. It's an amazing life that we get to live.

Steve Elliot:

What's your operation like now? What are you doing?

Glen Elzinga:

 It's a little different. So, most of the seven daughters are still around. Um, a of them were married and they're all, you know, working on different aspects as a ranch. So we moved to the next valley because we kind of outgrew that place. And since that time with Melanie, we became certified organic. And so now we're running on just under 50,000 acres. And much of that is Idaho forest and BLM lands. That's all, you know, grazing lease. That's our sole, we're the sole lease holder up there. And then, and then, you know, we got about, I think, instead of the dry grazing, think there's almost 2000 acres of irrigated ground that we also run on. So now, you know, our cattle herd has expanded a little bit too. And, so right now we're running anywhere between five and 700 head. Depending on what time of year it is. like right now it's probably six, a little over 600 head total, you know, and I'm proud to say, you know, we're we're not quite paid off and out of debt, but I think we're going to be there in four years and we can have the mortgage burning ceremony. You know, we own the cattle. so, know, by the grace of God, Steve, we're, we're, so grateful that we're here, but you know, after that, those two mantras of being cheap skates and working our butts off and building those relationships with people, three things, you know, that those people helped us so much as people trusted us and they, they poured into us so much knowledge and so much great advice. And sometimes it was the wrong advice and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with getting wrong advice. I mean, those are all learning opportunities, but those three things, you know, have really enabled us now to run a profitable operation. And, know, and we're not dependent on these. I wouldn't say that in the context of our cattle market because we have nothing to do. With those cattle markets, mean, there is some rough weeks we go through where Carol and I are like, you know what? You probably need to everything. Just take the money and run, you know? But the fact of the matter is, what the heck do we want money for? Know, we're the richest people on earth in our minds because, you know, we have our family working with us. We live in a beautiful, beautiful place. And, you know, we got these, these cattle that we've come to respect and really value. We’re surrounded by wildlife and animals. It's a, it's a beautiful life. I can't, I can't even convey to you how money could possibly replace that because I can't conceptualize that. What am I going to buy some new pickups or a fancy house? I mean, Carolyn, I just don't even care about things. You know, somebody asked me what my prized possession was a while back. Steve, couldn't, you know, they were talking to like a material possession, not the ranch. I don't even have one. Don't even, you know, they said, well, what if your house burned down? What would you miss? And I can't even tell you what I miss. You know, I, I like to play, the upright base. I play in, you know, some bluegrass country band, rock and if that burned, I'd, I'd be bummed out. But I can't even imagine. You know, because I just feel like all the good gifts are here all around me. And, so yeah, selling those cattle, you know, in a stressful week is not really on the table.

Steve Elliot:

How  do you run your cattle? You're, you're very, I mean, do you guys in-herd, believe is the term or are you still, I mean, it's very active management, not just let them roam on the BLM land.

Glenn Elzinga:

Yeah, you're right. You know, it took the wolves to bring us there. These wolves really started increasing population density. They just started exponentially, literally an exponential curve. It's one of these S curves that is finally plateaued. But you know, their growth was like this for a long time. And then they just started, the crescendo went upward and expanded and it became truly an exponential curve. So right now today, I talked to Fish and Game about this several months ago. I said, what are we at in terms of central Idaho wolf population numbers. And he said, we're probably, we're probably sitting around 1500 head. So there's 1500 head of wolves within our three county area. And our grazing range is right in the middle of that three county area. So that means, you know, we were getting into really negative interactions, especially when the population went over 2200. There is a time when we're 2200, 2200 wolves in central Idaho and we're right in the middle of them. And you know, that was one of those stupid moments where you just, you know, be driving down the road and all of a you say to yourself, what are we stupid? What do we do? 

Steve Elliot:

 Why are we raising cattle here?

Glenn Elzinga:

What are we doing here? Because, you know, it just so happens that these big wolves really, really like organic grass fed beef. think that's like, wow, you know, sliced bread to them. Like, course, and it's there for the taking, you know, and that's the way it was because you're right. We used to just turn those cattle out and basically open the gate and let them roam free. And we did some management to try to protect riparian and stuff. you know, we tried our best to keep them out of creeks, but we weren't winning because, you know, we'd go up there, Steve, and it's a huge piece of country. It's 70 square miles. And it's, it's, it's where it's the habitat like. It's the nadir of habitat. It is where habitat exists. And it's just because of the presence of water. It's perennial water. So this is where all the fish live. This is where all the birds live. This is, you know, the water source for all these ungulates that travel across the range. And there's all kinds of species that depend on riparian areas. So we were like, this is the one area we really want to try to make a change in. And we started to make some change, Steve. You know, the aspen started coming back and started reproducing again because their cows weren't eating them this much anymore. But we still couldn't get beavers. We couldn't get beavers back at all. But then the wolf population, meanwhile, was growing and ramping up exponentially. There was a lot of elk as a food source and of course there was a lot of cattle. And they started doing very, very well. And just to put it mildly, they were going to wipe us out. We had one year where we lost 14, maybe even more. And they were just going to wipe us. We're, you know, lost 14, maybe even more head of cattle up on the range. And, um, you know, it was just the predation on our animals was exponentially ripping up to match the wolf population. And it was like everywhere we'd be seeing wolf tracks, you know, we'd hear how they were with us and they were onto us and, uh, we're going to lose our shirts. And we came back. That year after losing 14 and Carol and I are just like licking our wounds from the wolf fight. And we're like, what are we going to do? And that's where we hatched this new paradigm. You know, paradigm is the number one thing that holds people back in agriculture. It's like, okay, this is the way we've done it. This is where granddad did it. This is what the county agent is telling me to do. I'm going to do this. This is what my ag school said. Hey, these are foundational principles at ag school, you know, focused on things like bold genetics, irrigation efficiency, and, you know, raising maternal genetics as well as terminal genetics and all those things and trying to balance that out, replacement heifers and calving in winter, all these things, you know, these are all paradigms and they're, a way of thinking that we get stuck in. So I find that most times in agriculture, when people do an extreme paradigm shift, it's because an outside force.

Just whack them in the head. I mean, you think like everybody I know, I know it's like the regenerative space, for instance, like, you know, Gabe Brown's a friend of mine. And, um, as Gabe, said, what was the thing that was a game changer for you? It was, he had like, it was like four seasons of hell. He had four seasons of crop failures that were like, bang. Now what Gabe, got no income strength. You know, I mean, it's just, it's just bottom line different, you know, and we were the same way. These wolves were going to just.

You know, they're just going to beat us to death. And we realized we need to do everything differently. So that's how we conceptualize the in herding. In herding means intensive, intentional herding of cattle. And it means we live with them 24 seven. We have a crew up there all summer while we're grazing summer range. And they camp with these cattle, they herd them. And then they bring them down to camp and put them in a bedding ground.

And cattle actually really get trained to it quite easily in two or three weeks. They're beating us to the bedding ground. They're ready to lay down. And we start again at four 30 in the morning, catch horses, made coffee. do make coffee first.

Steve Elliot:

 You got to do that!

Glenn Elzinga:

So we made coffee, catch our horses in the dark and we're settled up and gone at five. And these cattle, it's like, you know what it is? It's like the choir director walks in and, stands at the podium and taps the little thing and the whole choir stands up. Right. And it's just like that with these yearlings. Lot of times they all stand up. Like all rise, you know, and you open up your hot wire gate and off you go and you go on a grazing tour all day and they know, they get to know that we're going to take them to the good stuff. You know, we start thinking about things very specifically. And it wasn't my idea. None of this stuff is my idea.

Steve. So don't ever think Glenn's brilliant because he's not. A lot of times I get to get beat over the head several times before I consider an idea. But I bumped into his book by Dr. Fred Provenza. He's professor emeritus out of Utah State. He's an editor of this book with this guy named Dr. Michel Muret from France. And it's called The Art and Science of Shepherd. It's just called. And I said, I saw that. And I said, I'm going to read that book and dang. Got it. It was one of these things where you just get transformed by how you think. These people are living 24 seven with their animals and the Alps and the Pyrenees and are intentionally and intensively hurting them across these wild landscapes, these wild Alpine landscapes, because they too have wolves, but they also have people and they're trying to take care of the resource in a way that engages the people as well.

You know, they're trying to take care of these riparian systems and fish habitat. And when I saw all that add together, I thought, wait, we could do that too. We could ramp up our riparian condition like crazy because now we can control our cattle. We can even ramp up our upland condition like crazy because now we can control our cattle. We can even think about, let's not put cattle. And this is a thing with my crew. They know this with me.

They are not allowed to graze steep hillsides that face south in the afternoon. Like ever, ever. And they always have to seek and making their grazing plan for the day, a way to get on a north aspect for the afternoon. And Steve, it's really simple. It's got to do with plant physiology. Those plants are going to just shut down. Stomates are going to shut down on those steep south aspects that are open facing that hot sun in the afternoon because the temperature has gone up. Those plants are going to put sugar down to the roots. It's no longer in the plants, the bricks, the sugar content cannot be found in the leaves anymore. You you're really going to reduce bricks late in the afternoon. You don't want your cattle on there. They're not going to have fun and you're not going to have fun either because our business is to make money off these cattle gaining weight. Right. So now we say, let's go to the north aspect where bricks is in and these plants are just coming into photosynthetic maximum, you know, because it's late in the afternoon and sure it's North aspect, but they still get indirect sunlight. They're cranking out photosynthetic like crazy, which is the sugars that are a response from the dark and light reactions of photosynthesis. Before that stuff goes down to the roots for the night, our animals are able to pick it up. And that means we're going to gain weight. And when we gain weight, we make money. So it's just changed our whole paradigm of how we think about running cattle on the range. tell my crews, said, you had to make dang sure that those cattle always have their heads down. And it takes a long time to get that into people. mean, it seems so obvious. It's really intuitive. can tell my eight year old grandchild, you know, granddaughter and say, Hey, what do you think makes money? Cow down, cow head down or cow head up? And she would figure it out because she knows that when they're eating, we're making money. That's pounds you know, and pounds today are $4 Steve, they're four bucks. We want to make money. We want to maximize, you know, that you're going to be able to get that $4. So, so what's crazy is we've compared, we have scales at home that are certified. We have compared weight gains from the way we used to do it. 

So the way we do it now, and we're one pound ahead. We're one pound ahead a day. Okay, Steve. So you're out there say, say just for mass sake, it's a hundred days, right? So a hundred days at four bucks a pound is 400 bucks. right. Okay. So let's just do the math easy and say we're running 500 head up there. You know, so what are we talking? We're talking $200,000, right?

So, I mean, the money is real. A lot of people are like, wow, I can never do this. That's a lot of people, you know, but the money is real money. 

Steve Elliot:

I was going to ask about that because there's only so many kids you can have to do labor on your ranch. And this sounds labor intensive.

Glenn Elzinga:

 It's labor intensive. So there's two kinds of labor that we employ. like right now, going into, we just hired all our crews. So right now I think we're at 10 people that we pay, they're on pay. And then we have anywhere between last year we had 19 interns. This year, I think we're going to just keep it down to like under 10. And the reason for that is, is something I could talk about later. We're, we're looking at virtual fencing for this summer. But anyway, so yeah, you're right. Labor intensive. You got these people up in cow camp. The days are very long. It's expensive. So that mitigates. That uses up a lot of that money, that additional cashflow you get from value. It burns a lot of that. And so it is what it is, but the alternative is not doing it right. And we won't get that pound a day. You know, we're going to leave that on tape. So why not get the pound a day and be able to pay for this and get the habitat benefits and also the increase in value. And what our range means to us, because we're seeing increased plant diversity on our upland. We're way increased plant diversity along wet meadows and stuff like that, because, you know, we're managing them for long periods of rest. So this is how, this is the way to think about in herding Steve. You know, I did a photo series with my daughter one day. said, Annie, bring those cattle into this timber stand. I'm going to take a picture down here before you get on there. I'm going to take same picture again with you on there with 450 head. And I'm going to take a picture when you leave. That way people can see what kind of residual we're really going to have. So anyway, first picture, Steve is, you know, green grass. It's in a Douglas fir over story. So green grass is anywhere between six and 12 inches high. Cattle come into it. Next picture you see 400 head and Annie bringing this herd of cattle into this stand on a steep mountainside. And they all got their heads down. I like that because we're making money, right Steve?

So the next thing is not a cow in the picture. Annie's gone. She moved out. And now you're looking at like a six inch residual. There's about six inches of green grass left. It's all green. Still able to synthesize, you know, it's still, still got those solar panels intact. So we're still winning that way. It's still putting sugar down into roots for the winter. And so, you know, if I show that to an audience or something who are wondering about this, I say, how long is it between? Picture number one and picture number three. What's the time lapse? So I get everything. I'll have one person say it's a month, which is crazy you know, didn't want to stand there for a month. The cattle needed a drink, you know? So anyway, so a month is out there, you know, it's like, whoa, no, I don't think you know what we're doing here. So next person is like, well, have it a week. And next person is like, no, no, no, it's way shorter than that. That's half a day.

That's four or five hours. What it mattered to, ran a stopwatch just to see. There's two and a half minutes, There's two and a half minutes between photo one and photo three.

Steve Elliot:

So she just wandered through with them.

Glenn Elzinga:

Yeah, they're moving. They're taking two, meeting one. So that's the picture of what this looks like all the time. So here's the other part of it. How long do you think it was before we returned to graze it again? This question is for you, Steve. This isn't the fake audience. This is you.

Steve Elliot:

Oh, I'm going to guess 30 to 45 days.

Glenn Elzinga:

 Three years. Three years. Okay. Okay. So three, we're shooting for two and a half to three years on that whole range for rest period. Okay. And it's because these dry land plants, you know, they're not like our irrigated ground plants. They're not receiving tons and tons of water. They're dry land and they're very ephemeral. They'll go into dormancy in August because we don't get rainfall.

You know, we're, we live in what's called the cold desert. We don't have a monsoonal flow coming up from the South. So these plants will also nest and go into dormancy come August. So it's over their photosynthetic capture period ends in early July. Then they're still green. They're putting a little bit of photosynthetic, you know, sugar down into those roots for storage, but they know it's over. The party is over guys. have like a full 60 to maybe 90 day growing season. Most times those high altitude, high desert plants have a 60 day growing window. And then it's over. So that means, you know, unlike the plants at home where we can grow them, you know, even though we're at 4,800 feet on our home elevation with 30 inch rainfall coming from center pivots, we can grow grass all the way from the kids. I talked to the kids. I'm not home right now. But the kid said, Hey dad, the grass is turning green right now. So here we are in early March, you know, so we can have grass really starting to grow say by late March and they don't keep growing all the way till mid November. And that's not normal. mean, that's because we only have a hundred day growing season at home. The reason that's happening, Steve is because we got an incredible soil health benefit after investing in that ground. With management intensive grazing or holistic plant grazing, whatever you want to call it. It's cell grazing on steroids. know, we have about 150 paddocks on our home place and our soil biology, you know, right now our soil organic matter is around 8.5 % across the whole place, which is really high. And we've even had some soil health scores show as high as 17 % organic matter in our bottom. So that's why that grass can stay green much longer than it used to because that soil biology is still kicking butt. It's still generating a little bit of heat. I've actually tamped the upper profile soils and found out, holy cow, this stuff is warmer than it is above ground by several degrees. And it's because of soil biological process, that metabolic process that's in the soil with all this diverse biota is really, really heating up the soil and keeping these plants photosynthesizing, you know, so that's really exciting. We had stuff, we were still grazing green grass with our finished cattle, at the end of January this year. jeez. You know, and it, we, we've had a lot of single digit nights. Yeah. You know, thankfully we never got below zero because that really kills you. You know, when that upper surface profile really freezes solid, that kind of ends it, but we didn't have any of that. We just had these single digit nights, one after another. But we're still bricking. We'd go out there with the refractometer and test for sugar content. And we're still kicking butt. Those same things, those same ecosystem projects, processes, and those metabolic processes in the soil exist on the range, but everything is much slower. So where we have a return interval on our irrigated ground of 45 days, we take that to the range and apply the rainfall principle to it. And it's dry, short growing season. And we say, no, no, no, no. That's not 45 days up here. It's two and a half years. So it's same processes that happen or just slower. So all the same principles apply. All the management intensive grazing stuff is us on horseback. We're hot wire on horseback, right? mean, it's everything's the same. You know, people get hung up and it's like, well, the range doesn't really know. It's all the same. The only difference is time. Time and timing. So anyway, that's what in herding is.

And it's really worked. We haven't lost an animal to a wolf for 12 years. And we've only lost five head over the entire 12 year period. We used to lose five head, no matter what, wolves or no wolves. And it's because they would fall off a cliff. they would run into poisonous plants like Larkspur, all these other facts, or they would just disappear. don't have no idea what happened to them. They just, you know, our ledger usually sit around five head. They’re gone. We've lost five heads for 12 years. So all told it's a winner, but it is a personnel nightmare. Steve just hiring is a horrible thing because we get 700 applicants a year for the internship. I imagine. And it's just people who want to learn and you know, people said, well, you're putting all this work on the backs of unpaid people. And this year actually it's not unpaid. Paid 1200 bucks for every intern and it's coming out to cover travel and their personal expenses. So, but it's a paid internship. But here's the deal. After a five week internship, Steve, I bring him down to get them on an airplane or whatever, or load them on a bus. And they'll shake my hand and they're crying. They're crying. And you know why they're crying? I think they're crying for the same reason. They're seeing the same thing I saw with Ron and Francis Alder in that field. They left, they left thinking they were going to act on an ecosystem and instead they became part of it. And now they're attached to it and it kind of blows me away. They, in five weeks time, they get that. And it's not categorical, but a lot of them do. And the other cool thing about these internships is I can hire from them. I was going to ask about that. This year, I think, of those 10 people, think four of them are passed in five of them are past interns. They've already been through the beginning ropes. were all fence posts, but now they're top hands for us or top hands. They're fantastic. So that's the in hurting thing. And it works. Here's the other crazy thing about interning Steve and. Especially for the Western folks. I want to bring this up for the Western folks and your Western SARE, right?

Steve Elliot:

Correct.

Glenn Elzinga:

So Steve, this has got a huge amount of relevancy to our Western culture and our way of life. You know, for years and years and years, I think the rangelands have been seen as kind of this wasteland. It's a place where you stick cows while you go home and make hay. I mean, you even talked about it at the beginning. You you said you just open the gate and turn them out. And that is still the attitude that's fairly prevalent all through the West. Hey, we're going to stick those cows up there and hopefully calves gain weight. So what I would submit to you is something completely different, a whole different premise. So I made friends. I don't even know how I get into these weird relationships with people. But this guy named Dr. Stefan van Vliet from Utah State University. He was actually from Duke University at the time in the Carolinas. And he calls me up from Carolina. And he doesn't have a Carolina accent. He's got a very Dutch accent. He's a Dutch immigrant. But he's this PhD who's studying, metabolomics and these are metabolic, the metabolic chemistry of life. Basically all the things you need to process life. And sometimes it's good life. Sometimes it's bad life. These aren't the primary things, you know, the primary compounds they call them, you know, primary compounds or things like that, things that life can't do without like proteins, and vitamins and fats and carbohydrates. They're the primary metabolites, but these are secondary compounds. So they bring the Vim and Vigor into life. They bring, you know, extraordinary good health. You know, maybe it's heart condition. Maybe it's you know, maybe it's lung capacity. Maybe it's physical fitness. You know, maybe it's just immune system support, you know, ability. So anyway, he's going to study all these secondary metabolites. And he said, I really want to, I've been reading about you and I really want to find out if there's a difference between beef, the way you raise it and the way it's raised. traditionally about 95 % of all cattle in the United States are finished in feed lots on corn. So he finds he, and there's this other guy named Dr. Scott Kronberg. He's already in South Dakota. He finds a bunch of feed lots there to go with Stefan's study. Dr. Fred Pivenza was another author. He came out with Scott and Dr. Stefan up with us on the range and they just watched these cattle eat. It was this really weird thing because these guys are just geeking out on these plants and watching my cattle eat them. So there's an incredible amount of plant diversity up there, Steve. There's, um, 2000 plants. My wife is a PhD botanist. She knows her plants. Okay. So she says there's 2000 different species up there. She's right. She's, you know, produced plant lists and all these plants of those, you know, maybe 500 to a thousand or what our cows eat. You know, obviously cows don't spend a lot of time grazing Douglas fir trees. Don't graze zero-fine on 10 acts of the bear grass with the big in fluorescence on top, you know, there's a lot of plants they don't graze. They don't find it palatable. But what's interesting is, you know, when, when those three PhDs were up there with me, we're looking at this. They're pointing out plants that I didn't think my cattle grazed. And they're like, Glenn, look at that. That animal is grazing that grease wood, you know, and grease wood is this not nasty, nasty salt breast species found in low elevations. And I try it. And there's something kind of savory about it, but the tannins and the, saltiness drive me off. But yet I see cattle eating it and they see this stuff too. And they're like, we're going to do this. So they asked me for, beef samples off the range. I wish I had a picture. I could share it with you. So we grazed. We're grazing up there about 400 had Melanie, my oldest daughter and I separated on horseback, on the range, we pulled off 18 different animals and we sorted them off. they were all, by our ocular estimation, they were all grading choice because we look for fat deposition that's characteristic of the ones that grade choice. and we herded them down to a corral, a remote corral, put them on a trailer and the next day they were bound for the processors.

So they directly went from the range to the processor. Same thing in South Dakota, but not on the range. So same class of animal. It was Angus. The samples would be taken from the chuck. Bloodline was all straight Angus and they were all steers. And they were all about the same age. We were a little later than the feed lots because they're on concentrate corn. They really got a lot of energy. So they're gaining weight faster than we are.

So we're a little later, we're about five months later than they are. But anyway, other than that, real similar in terms of phenotype and in terms of the specific area of the physiology where these samples came from is all from the chuck. anyway, we send these 18 samples off and the feedlot sent their 18 samples off. so what was really interesting was he profiled 1500 different chemicals. They're called phytochemicals. Most of them, are plant originating compounds. Some of them are hard to identify as plant originating because they've been altered. When they hit the cows' digestive physiology, they get altered. They get paired with other things. So it was kind of a puzzle to unlock for Stefan and his crew. This is his whole lab working on it, by the way, who published it. So anyway, they found that of these 1,500 compounds, 900 had major, major differences in concentration between the two classes of animals. And the differences were pretty consistent. Like for instance, they found that omega-3 fatty acids. And I like to pick this one because this is something we can get our brain around. know, people often talk about, we're short on omega-3 fatty acids in standard American diet because we're eating too many omega-6 fatty acids. It's because these omega-3s are antioxidants. Okay, so they reduce inflammation, they increase cardiovascular health, they are immune system boosters. These are cancer fighting. Okay. Because they're antioxidants. Oxidation is the thing that often costs cancer, right? We lose electrons and we get mutations from these things. These are antioxidants. They capture those electrons. Okay. So these are important chemicals. So there's a whole, there's a whole raft of these omega-3 fatty acids. Like, one is, called , let's see, icosyapatonic acid. it's 3.5 times overall in terms of all these 18 animals is 3.5 times more concentrated than it was in grain fed beef. And there was a whole bunch of chemicals like vitamin B3, think was nine times the concentration in our grass fed beef over grain fed.

And so these are all important health components. First for the cow. You know, these are anti-inflammatory for the cow. A lot of them are medicinal compounds. You a lot of them are immune system boosters. And, know, when, when I learned this, I ate it up because it's like, ah, this is why we're not having doctor rates on our cattle anymore. You know, I often talk to my neighbors. It's like, how many pink eye did you have this year? You know, we're running like average of 600 head. How many pink eye did you have? And they're like, oh gosh, you know, we had a wreck, you know, we had 50 of them. had to doctor for it. We had none last year. We had zero pink on. And then, you know, another thing that comes to mind right away is foot rot. I think we had two foot rots last year and most of my neighbors have much more of problem with foot rot. You know, or fly concentrations. This is one thing Dr. Fred Provenza brought up to me. I said, what is with the flies? Cause we go up there on the range and there's almost no flies on her cattle.

Steve, we used to have a chronic problem with flies. In fact, we've used all these different ear tag rotations to try to deal with fly life cycle. know, we put, this is before we were organic, know, we're putting, permethoids, you know, these are, these are things that represent closely, they're actually called pyrethroids. They actually closely resemble permethrin, which is in chrysanthemums, you know, it's actually organic treatment that people use.

Anyway, we use pyrethroids, which are kind of a similar compound and it's supposed to be pretty safe for humans. So it's not good in creeks. mean, it kills fish and stuff like that, but I didn't feel sick after those. But on the next rotation, next year we put organophosphate one. I'd get these headaches after putting phytopon all day. And that was like the end of it for me. You know, that was actually one of the reasons we became organic. like, you know, screw that stuff. I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to feel sick.

 Now we find out, you know, other things like war backs are not good for us to be around. And we used to be around all the time. So I just want to get away from that stuff. That was one of reasons we became organic. But anyway, you know, these chemicals, apparently there's chemicals because this is what Dr. Fred Berlenda said. He said, those chemicals are being taken up by these animals, by your cattle, because of the diverse wild plants.

And they're doing their own insecticide. They're doing their own repellents. You don't have to do that for him. And in fact, he went so far as to say, the other thing you're doing is you're raising cattle that can now self-medicate. You're preventative. And so Fred wrote a whole book about this. It's called Nourishment. So he talks about nutritional wisdom in animals and humans and how that's, that's like a biofeedback loop after an animal ingests something. Their body will say, yes, eat more of that or don't eat more of that. And he said, you know, a lot of people have lost the ability to do that in them. It's what we need to bring back in us. But he said these animals raised in wild settings where they have these chances for plant diversity choices. We'll be able to do that. So anyway, the next thing I'd like to find connect. So this is a publication I can send you the, the, the note notation. It was in the journal science, a sub journal of that. And so it's kind of a landmark study because it definitely identified that there was health characteristics of our grass fed beef raised on those ranges due to eating all these wild plants that was actually going to get represented in them in terms of what their phytochemical makeup was in their bloodstream and even in their meat. They're picking it up in their meat. So there's a huge difference that's happening there. What I'd like to do is see him do a new study that takes it from us ingesting them, you know, can we assimilate those same compounds? Because I talked to Dr. Stefan van Vlied about it I said, so what about us? And he's like, you know what, here's the deal. Even if you're a vegan, Glenn, there's no way you can assimilate the diversity compounds that they did. There's no possible way. And it's because most of the plants that are showing up this plethora of diversity in phytochemical compounds are not edible to humans. Right. It's like the grease would I tried Steve. It's nasty. It is nasty, but yet the cows are grazing it and because they're ruminants, they can process these compounds. So I'm like, the next step for me is getting people to get a vision of where, where, where, wait, wait, wait, we can use cows to kind of categorize and collate these key chemicals for our nutrition in wild range situations like we have. We have this amazing untapped resource in the West and it's this wild plant diversity on range lands. Did you know that most people who, who raise grass fed beef on pasture, Steve have five to 10 species.

Steve Elliot:

 Right.

Glenn Elzinga:

These cattle can go up and try 500 to a thousand.

Steve Elliot:

It's, it's an interesting, we talked about paradigms. It's an interesting paradigm, which you've just described because, in this, the cow isn't the product anymore. The cow is the factory. 

Glenn Elzinga:

 Yup. Yup. They're a partner. They're a partner for our condition, for our health. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, and right now, you know, I know it's all anecdotal, but you know, we sell all of our produce, you know, we, have 250 mama cows of those, that calf crop, all of them go online. We sell every one of them online. And, through our web store, alderspring.com. It's sold out every two weeks. And Steve, it's not me, it's just this amazing diversity that's up there on native ranges. It is unbelievable, you know, how much diversity, how much plant diversity we get. My wife likes going up there at the botanist because there's so, so many cool, unique plants and plant niches. You know, it isn't all in one spot. You know, don't put that in sprig. look, 2000, no, that's ridiculous. You know, but it's over 70 square miles. We have everything from Alpine Tundra, literally Alpine Tundra above Timberland on that range, all the way down to the San River at 4,000 feet where it's low desert, where you have prickly pear cactus, you have scorpions, have lizards, rattlesnakes. You know, it is dry. It's a desert environment. So with all those elevation gradients all the way up to Alpine Tundra, you have an incredible amount of diversity of soils and the plants on them. So this is an amazing gift and it's amazing gift that we have unique to the West. You know, and this isn't, none of this is my idea because where I got it was from Fred Provenza with that book.

Steve Elliot:

 Which is going back. I mean, again, you said, you know, it's a new paradigm. It's not, it's an old paradigm.

Glenn Elzinga:

It's really old. It's really old.

Steve Elliot:

This is the way humans used to run livestock for millennia.

Glenn Elzinga:

Exactly. No, it's really old. So these people in Switzerland and France, they were whining when the government first said, no, no, you can't graze up there anymore. That's beautiful alpine habitat. We're not going to put cows up there. And then finally, it was the people, their customers who said, wait one minute. The cheese, the milk, the beef, the goat and the lamb that they raise up there is great for us. It's got flavor. It's got flavor. That's unique. It's got terrarium, just like, you know, wine does. That we want to buy. And it was the people that turned the government on in and said, no, we're going to put them back out there. We are fully going to put them back out there. They're part of our culture and they're part of our food culture and they're actually part of our wellness. And I would submit to you that that's how we need to think about the rangelands. I want them to be part of our wellness. It doesn't have to be just the people in Europe that think this way. You know, we could say about our own range lands that we've long, long put on this category of calling wasteland as saying, no, no, no, no, no. This is human wellness. This is a place of human wellness. This is how, this is the context that we need to think about range lands in.

Steve Elliot:

I have kept you here for an hour and, and that's more than enough of time that I take of you here. I mean, this was a quite fun conversation and a lot of it will stick with us for a long time. And we appreciate that. Thank you, Glenn.

Glenn Elzinga:

Well, thank you, Steve. It's been great.

Host:

Thank you for listening to Fresh Growth. We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information on Western SARE grants and our learning resources, visit westernsare.org.