#194, IN PRACTICE November/December 2020

Resilience in Times of Uncertainty

BY ANN ADAMS

As we near the end of 2020, we find our world vastly changed from how the year began. If someone had told me that most Americans would be walking around wearing face masks in public and that we would be keeping the elderly in locked down facilities while schools were closed, I would have scoffed at them for having read too many science fiction books or being deluded with conspiracy theories.

And yet, for better or for worse, this scenario has played out in a variety of ways around the world as individuals and families struggle to figure out what they need to do to be safe and move forward in these uncertain times. The Holistic Management community has been affected both positively and negatively as some people face decreased business and others have found ways to thrive in the current market.

But, as COVID responses and fallout continue, I have seen more fear, anxiety, and depression being articulated by individuals. I am not the only one witnessing such feelings emerging. The internet is filled with statistics

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In Practice

about the increase in people experiencing greater challenges with keeping themselves and their families feeling grounded and positive.

Psychologist Dr. Ana Nogales wrote in her article “The Stages of Coping With the COVID-10 Pandemic” on the Psychology Today website, that most people will go through the following stages as they deal with COVID and the uncertainty that comes from any massive systemic societal change.

COVID Stages

• Panic

• Action

• Confusion

• Anxiety/Depression—fueled even more by uncertainty

• Anger

• Adaptation

I can certainly attest to having gone through these steps, and I also believe that having my holistic goal has helped me find the “middle ground” that feels right to me as the media shares the extremes of people choosing to remain self-quarantined to those who feel they do not need to wear masks. As a family we have looked at our desired outcome and our unique

Mimicking Nature

risks and opportunities. We have then defined our family policies about when we will and won’t wear masks, who we will let in our house and with what precautions, etc.

We are trying to adapt to these new rules to be able to engage and connect with our family (which includes grandchildren and a 95-year-old mother) and our community while being responsible citizens within the context of new state regulations. We also recognize our good fortune of living out in the country with the freedom such a lifestyle affords us while surrounded by nature and flexible work schedules.

But part of our efforts to stay grounded include recognizing that 2020 and all its challenges is a once in a lifetime experience (at least that is certainly my hope). While my mother’s generation lived through two world wars and the Spanish flu, many of us have not had to adapt to this kind of global challenge before.

In talking to numerous friends and family members, and taking the pulse of my own energy levels, I am aware of a certain fatigue. Given that I don’t have school-aged children at home who need home schooling during work hours like many young parents in the U.S., I can only imagine what other people’s fatigue levels might be.

I think there are a lot of people who are beating themselves up for feeling like they can’t keep going. But, I think we need to look at the toll that occurs after the collapse of most of our systems that have broken down or had to be significantly altered over the last six months (i.e., religious institutions, schools, community support networks, etc.). We have used up our “surge capacity” to make that transition.

The idea of “surge capacity” is articulated in the article “Your ‘Surge Capacity’ is Depleted— It’s Why You Feel Awful” on the website Elemental. They define “surge capacity” as “a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical—that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as

key component of Holistic Management is to understand how ecosystem processes function so you can better manage for improved ecosystem health by mimicking natural processes, thus increasing production and minimizing costs.

HMI educates people in regenerative agriculture for healthy land and thriving communities.

STAFF

Ann Adams Executive Director

Wayne Knight Director of Strategic Initiatives

Kathy Harris Program Director

Carrie Stearns Director of Communications & Outreach

Stephanie Von Ancken Program Manager

Oris Salazar Program Assistant

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Walter Lynn, Chair

Jim Shelton, Vice-Chair

Avery Anderson-Sponholtz, Secretary

Delane Atcitty

Gerardo Bezanilla

Kevin Boyer

Jonathan Cobb

Ariel Greenwood

Colin Nott

Daniel Nuckols

Breanna Owen

Brad Schmidt

Kelly Sidoryk

Brian Wehlburg

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Alderspring Ranch— Making a Living Mimicking Nature

BY GLENN ELZINGA

The ground fairly shook with the rumble of 350 head of elk stampeding away as I made my approach to my sample area in our south meadow. To my chagrin, they had been dining on the rich green that still grew in fits and starts on this late October day in our high valley of the Pahsimeroi in the remote mountains of Central Idaho.

They were nighttime thieves of my stockpile, meant for 550 head of hungry beeves that were cell grazing through my fall grass. And I think the wild ungulates knew it.

hand trowel, I knelt on the near-frozen sod and proceeded to find an opening in the thick and diverse sward of foot-tall pasture grass stockpile where I could sample the soil surface. I couldn’t find one, so I just tossed the trowel over my shoulder in a cowboy version of random plot generation for where I would dig a tennis-ball sized hole for a bulk density (BD) test.

I was following NRCS protocol for rocky soils, and my volcanic ash substrate was complete with fragments of volcanic bombs, both large and small that made the more common cylinder evaluation of BD difficult. After extricating the pebbles and rocks from my sample, I would return them to the hole, atop a layer of Saran wrap. Then, I would fill the hole with carefully measured out syringes of water to determine the volume in the grams/cubiccentimeter assessment that defined BD.

The last remote cow camp of the summer—the Big Hat Camp. Caryl, Glenn, and their daughters. At the end of summer, they’ll bring the cattle out on the 35-mile trail over four days to get back home to where still summer growing grass, 3,000 feet below them, awaits them.

Busted. Their cream-colored butts jostled up and down in cadence as they gracefully bounded away from me and Clyde, my border pup.

Stepping off the four-wheeler and grabbing a

The clayey soil was very wet from the snowfall that cloaked the field just two days prior with three slushy inches. I struggled to remove the rocks from the clumpy ball of soil. I remember thinking that the soil was saturated.

Literally hundreds of tiny roots and even the occasional unidentified arthropod sluggishly made his or her way through the cold material. The clumpy sample refused to work through my 2 mm makeshift sieve (a French bread baguette pan that I filched from my then France living daughter that had exactly the right pore size—I wrongly thought that she’d never know). I had to carefully work it all by hand, breaking clods between my fingers.

But soon enough, I had my sample bagged, and like a cheap parlor magician pulling a tablecloth from under dishes, I handily yanked my Saran wrap from under the water in my hole in the field and started to load my sample gear on the waiting bike with border collie Clyde anxiously tensed and wagging for our journey to our next plot.

Less than a minute later, I came back for my trowel and pocketknife. And sank to my knees.

The water was gone.

I couldn’t believe it. That completely saturated, muddy, snow-soaked soil had room for more. In all my 27 years of ranching, I had never been interested in that dirt underfoot. And now, for the first time, this light bulb moment had my attention.

I just stared at the hole. Where did the water go? I felt that I could literally squeeze excess water from my sample. And then a phone conversation I had recently with soil expert Peter Donovan came to mind.

microbiologist and climate scientist. It turns out that water, not carbon is the key functional element in the maintenance of climate, and if we don’t maintain a “sponge” of water holding capable soil, built of organic materials founded on carbon, the water cycle and even life, is severely broken. Water then isn’t available for plants, and rather than being able to capture and store high rainfall events in the soil, water is lost through runoff and soil surface evaporation. A vicious cycle is started, often commencing desertification.

And that living sponge will accommodate more moisture than I could imagine. It’s why

point that for the first time, we had excess grass to sell as pasture. And penciling it, I can finally, for the very first time, conceptualize making the marketing of pasture to cash flow.

Six Steps to Mimic Nature

How did this happen? What was the mechanism of change? How did our soil organic matter move from a 2.5 average to a 6.5 (7.3% on our best field) in 10 years, even while maintaining a partial hay operation? And more importantly, what happened to make the changes above ground in productivity and water savings?

These pigs are excitedly grazing four-foot tall cover crop ground on Alderspring this past August. In two days, after decimating their half acre grazing area, they will begin to extensively root, as radish and beets are found throughout along with some remnant quackgrass plants that used to dominate cover on this piece of pasture. The pigs will check that population with their aggressive rooting.

As October turned to November, and fall turned to winter, Caryl and I reflected on what transpired. And we came up with a list of six action items that we believe were game changers, the driving forces in creating a soil carbon sponge. But first, we found a common theme after we looked at the list. They all mimicked nature. Some of them followed current processes that we see happening in the wild country around Alderspring Ranch (there’s plenty of examples as only 3% of our county, the size of Connecticut is privately owned; the rest is a mix of federal and state land and is essentially wilderness mountain country).

“Why do you want to measure soil carbon, anyway, Glenn?” Peter asked.

“It’s because I want to know where I stand— where my ranch stands. I’ve done soil tests. My organic matter has greatly improved over 10 years under our management. I want to be able to speak the language of carbon sequestration in soils.”

“Glenn—let me tell you about a farmer I met at a conference one day. He said ‘Peter! How can I increase carbon in my soils?’ I told him what he needed to do was to take a railroad car full of coal to his farm and disk it in. His soil carbon would certainly increase.” Long pause. He wanted me to get it.

The Carbon/Water Connection

I got it, but not fully. Peter then proceeded to tell me about the soil carbon sponge, a term coined by Dr. Walter Jehne, and Australian

I sank to my knees as the realization sunk in. And everything started to make sense. My wife, Caryl and I had been observing radical changes in how we were able to manage our ranch, with exponentially increasing benefits just in the last three years. What we didn’t know was that the answer was underfoot—the soil carbon sponge was multiplying like crazy, and we were riding the vaunting exponential upswing of an S-curve as soil life ran amuck (I like puns).

It’s why our water pumping on our pivots had been slowly reducing.

It’s why our fields no longer burned up in the summer sun while we hay and weren’t irrigating. We no longer played catchup on dry fields once we got the bales off, a time period that in the past had cost us two weeks or more of growing.

It’s why our grass productivity had doubled in two ways: our stocking rates of our cattle per acre has increased twofold and our average daily gain (ADG) is up from 1.8 lbs a day to nearly three.

Overall ranch capacity has grown now to the

Others of our six mimic processes that are currently broken and hard to find in today’s world. Bison, for instance were an inhabitant of our rangelands. And their ecological position was important for us to reconstruct from historical record since nearly 400 head of Alderspring’s beef herd runs on 70 square miles of summer grass where the bison used to roam.

So here’s what we came up with:

1. Hire animals.

Sure, we have some ranch workers on the place, but our very best employees are our animals. Obviously, they are good at harvesting, and for the first 15 years we were ranching, their role was pretty uni-dimensional in that regard. Now, we realize that they are the nutrient cyclers—the drivers of life above and below ground. When we remove them from that role, we remove the cycle of decay and decomposition from our landscapes. Animals

Making a Living Mimicking Nature

bring it and facilitate it.

The other part of their work is tillage. When we incorporated pigs into our animal employment, we found that they could alter plant composition and we could use them to hack the fine tuning of desired species diversity. We encourage them to root some of our pastures to allow us to reduce competitive and chronic increasers such as quackgrass and reboot them through establishment of cover crops, that the pigs harvest as well.

Let animals do the work. They do it better than we do.

2.Take sides on “cides.”

Initially, when we started ranching full time in 1992, we learned what we could from things like Beef Magazine and county ag agents. Some of their information was germane and useful.

On the other hand, much of their chemical recommendations were highly flawed.

We tried some of their approaches, and were very cautious to do so, as Caryl and I were both trained ecologists (I was previously a Forest Ecologist and Caryl was a PhD plant ecologist). What we found was very disappointing. Fertilizers made our pastures like people on drugs; first a little seemed like enough and had great biomass results. Then, in subsequent years, more and more was needed to get the same effects.

Then, as we applied other “cides” on our animals and land—insecticides, herbicides, and aquatic herbicides, it appeared as though it made our systems more fragile. Our soils became more susceptible to weeds. Our cattle became fly-ridden if we failed to rotate ear tags.

In addition, there were effects on us: organophosphate headaches became common after tagging 200 mama cows in a day. I’d get “metal-mouth” after applying chemicals.

By the late ‘90s, we decided it was time to go with our hearts rather than the corporate mouth-speak of the likes of Monsanto and

began the steps to organic certification. By 2003 we were certified, and even in the three years of transition we started to see natural systems once again become resilient and functional again. Purchased beef cows we brought into organic certification (their calves only) had chronic fly and worm problems that our own organic mama cows didn’t have. Native plants instead of cheatgrass and spotted knapweed began recolonizing former weed treatment areas on our drier ground.

I really believe that agricultural chemical use is holding back our potential in regenerating

What if we engaged in practices that would simply reduce alfalfa dominance, and allow grasses to predominate? And so we did. We intentionally fed cattle on thick alfalfa stands in the winter with mature late cut hay crops comprised primarily of orchardgrass as well as other species we wanted in our permanent pastures. The cattle tromped in the seeds as we fed, and the impact of cattle on wintering alfalfa plants on moist ground is well known. In several years, it worked: the plants represented in our hay began to dominate our pastures.

I’m sure our neighbors were scratching

In addition, we introduced new seeds to the mix. Where we had quackgrass monocultures, we introduced sainfoin through tillage. We frost seeded hundreds of acres of red and white clover. And over time in just 10 years, we went from under ten species or less on much of our irrigated home ranch to over 50. Added benefit of diversity: our beef improved.

Flavor and

3.Diverse Pastures.

Certainly, when you think about it, diverse pastures are one of those ‘Chicken or the Egg’ things. Diversity can fast track you to soil health, and yet, soil health must be in place to fast track diversity. That said, achieving and striving for it is the thing that should keep you awake at night. All these other action items really revolve around increasing diversity, but there are certain things we did that were specifically aimed at adding species.

When we first arrived on the Pahsimeroi Valley Ranch in 2005, alfalfa monocultures dominated much of the pastures. Previous owners prioritized this single species and sacrificed all others at the altar of ‘god alfalfa.’ For us, it wasn’t like we were going to rip the plant out of the ground and start over—instead, we saw it as an opportunity. We liked it as a species component in our mix, but in quantities less dense than it was when we took over.

tenderness went up. Even our weight gains improved. When you think about it, it is relatively simple. Providing cows, pigs, sheep and chickens with the ability to choose and fulfill their own dietary requirements always maximizes their wellness and their performance.

Cows have know how.

Let them choose it and they will be healthier.

Soil diversity reflects above ground plant diversity.

Diversity is key.

4. Minimize Iron.

There’s a saying on our ranch that we keep at least four sets of mechanic tools on the place. One set is in the shop on the workbench, and the other three are scattered all over the ranch, putting iron into the ground!

It’s partly due to hiring so many young people over 27 years—they simply lose tools. Even I lose some—I have at least four multitools out there, and several pocketknives.

While grazing alfalfa in the fall can cause bloat, using very high-density, short duration grazing with three times a day moves and 500,000 pounds density, has abated the hazard of bloat. No cattle were lost to bloat and two-year-old cattle were exceeding 3.5 pounds daily gain per day.

And cellphones!

Most of what we were doing out there on the land was wrenching on much bigger iron. Tractors, plows, discs, balers, and swathers. Now, we minimized those things, and even our tool loss.

What happened? What ended our dependence on iron? Did we have a religious awakening in a belief system that we embraced that ended our need for that kind of technology?

Nothing of the sort. We embrace technology, even metal, in certain areas. We have five center pivots. We still have a 1966 Case backhoe and 1972 Allis 170. Nothing to brag about in iron!

But we sold everything else. Why? We found it made neither economic nor personal sense. We were building and buying a ranch, and we had no inherited or outside equity. We never had available money to invest in state-of-the-art equipment, and economically the size of our place would not cash flow expensive equipment. That meant that our equipment was older, and prone to breakdowns. No one on my ranch likes equipment. Period. We all like animals.

We ran the numbers and found out that not only did we not like running equipment, we could contract hay or tilling work done far cheaper than doing it ourselves. And in most years, bought in hay would beat our homegrown hay in price by a significant amount (one year it was by 40%). Time, twine, fuel and the cost of iron never end, especially if you’re honest on your cost capturing spreadsheet. We have neighbors who are equipment rich (or is it poor?). And they like nothing more than a phone call from us asking them to cut some grass that was getting ahead of us on our grazing program to make hay. It was a win-win.

Another upside of that decision was a change in our own thinking, that I think is subconscious. If you have equipment, you will use it. If you have to pay someone out of pocket to hay, or if you pay out of pocket for bought in hay, I think your brain works harder to find an innovative way to avoid those costs, which are much more transparent than the costs of home grown hay.

We extended our grazing season and reduced the amount of hay needed overall. And the hay we did harvest from our home place varied in area and timing from year to

year, reducing the impact of annual haying. Our worst pasture in our 10 year of soil tests (still a respectable 5.5% organic matter) was a field where it is logistically harder to graze and we end up haying more often than our other fields.

I’ll leave you with this thought: nature has no similar enterprise to that of plowing or haying. None of the biota we work with has adapted to those kinds of disturbances. Every time we started up a tractor we left our soils naked and exposed, either by cutting hay or tillage.

Nature always works to keep her soils covered. Now we do too.

he manages the grazing program. Haney tests in the 50s.

It’s the cheapest and most available amendment on the market today. Hay is available. Your neighbors appreciate you when you buy it. They have extra. If you don’t buy it someone else will.

Hay is easy to feed. We feed with a team of horses or a pickup truck pulling a gooseneck. Today we fed eight tons to nearly 500 head from the back of a gooseneck, forked by hand (who needs Crossfit® anyway?). We spread the biomass impact, the hoof impact, manure and urine over our entire ranch intentionally every winter.

For rapid restoration on degraded land, there is no game changer like imported biomass.

6. Adaptive Planned Grazing.

5. Import Biomass.

There are only a few natural systems where biomass is imported from outside the system, but we were in trouble when we bought the Pahsimeroi Ranch in 2005. In full restoration mode, with soil organic matter in the twos, we knew we needed help. Biomass to the rescue! For us, it was a very simple amendment.

I have a neighbor who spends over $180,000 on commercial fertilizer each year on his 400 acres of irrigated ground. He soil tests, and was desperately hoping for better numbers. He was asking me how we achieved a 7.3% organic matter on our largest meadows in just 10 years on our 400 acres, and what my input costs were to get there. I told him that my input costs were only about $40,000 per year.

“Are you kidding me? What are you using?”

“It’s called hay,” I said. That addition of biomass and the keeping of our own small amount of hay at home was one of the game changers in our soil restoration protocol. I believe it is why our Haney Soil Health Score this year was in the 50s. My brother, Jerry, in the next valley has found the same to be true on the ranch where

Caryl and I started rotational grazing at the get go in the early 90s. My brother, Jerry, at that time was dairy farming, and was a Stockman Grass Farmer junkie. He fast tracked us to the benefits of this type of grazing, a la Andre Voisin, French author of Grass Productivity, and Jim Gerrish, author of Management Intensive Grazing, now living just up the Pahsimeroi Valley from us.

On the headquarters ranch, we had over 400 acres of irrigated ground. We quickly employed planned grazing cells, at first quite fixed and controlled. As our experience evolved around the practice, we took it to a new level of adaptive planned grazing, now holistically thinking not only of cattle and grass productivity, but adding in new attributes that tweaked our management in terms of size, location and timing of grazing cells such as:

• Maintaining and enhancing diversity

• Maximizing soil moisture through timing and residue

• Herd effect on plant selection

• Animal performance in both daily gain and flavor by considering plant selection and offering diversity of species within and between days (we raise and market 400500 organic grass-fed beeves a year)

• Timing of harvest during the day

• Maintaining wildlife cover and travel routes

Horseback inherding crews will take 400 head handily out of such a meadow in as little as 10 minutes. As a result, we can graze exceptional forage while maintaining the very thing that keeps it there: soil moisture made possible by shade and plant cover.

Making a Living Mimicking Nature

• Buffers for water quality in ditches and streams

• Personnel abilities to effectively manage grass

• Undesired plant species management

• Upcoming or past weather

• Irrigation efficiency

• Stock water availability

For the answer on many of these grazing adaptations, we could turn to nature to see how wild animals would have grazed in similar situations. Invariably, though, there are practical and logistical considerations involved in planned grazing. Both, nature and logistics, are what turned us to the holistic standpoint of adaptive planned grazing (APG) rather than simply rotational grazing.

and herding them out of the sensitive habitat of the creeks, all 50 miles of them. We couldn’t keep up.

Although compared to their previous condition, we had improved the riparian areas on our range during the first five years we managed the allotment, we couldn’t seem to get the further improvements we desired. We seemed stuck at “good enough.” It was good enough for our agency partners. They were happy. But we were not.

Then wolves entered the picture. From a handful of reintroduced Canadian imports, our wolf numbers in Central Idaho mountains skyrocketed to an estimated 1,500 in a few short years. There were unlimited wild elk and deer populations to feast on…and thousands of range cattle like ours.

In 2014 we ended up losing 14 head to wolves.

Caryl and I brought the cattle home smarting

moving “virtual” grazing cells, planning our grazing to maximize our beeves’ productivity and that of the wild grasslands they walk on. We call it inherding, a coined word putting intentional and intensive together with herding. Wolves no longer bother us, and riparian areas are regenerating at a rate that surprises even my ecologist wife, who has worked on these rangelands for over 30 years.

Inherding posed a real challenge for us to rediscover the lost arts of herding on extensive ranges, but now, we know we can never go back. Even on dry ranges, our beeves have doubled in daily gain. The beef we harvest directly from the range is our best tasting beef. Our carrying capacity has increased—all because we adopted a mimic—that of the small wild bison herds that ranged through our mountains.

Nature is complex. Our thinking must be multi layered to reflect the complexities of the systems we manage.

Our headquarters ranch is covered with snow now. It’s January, and the quiet of winter has settled in. I can look out my office window and see a windrow of hay as dusk creeps over our big valley. There is a long black line of Angus beeves grazing the green, spread out for them on a foot of fresh white.

The work of feeding is a pleasure for my seven daughters and me. Occasionally, the west wind howls and we need to take them to shelter along the brush, but most days, we plan where they will eat and lay down for that day.

Adaptive planned grazing on the range is really centered around holistic planning, where the Elizingas practice inherding and let the cows decide what to eat that day. Animal and land productivity has increased on this 70 square miles of wide open and wild Idaho mountain wilderness.

Inherding on the Range

We didn’t really think about adapting that paradigm to our extensive rangeland summer pastures until nature came in with a roar. Or a howl, rather.

It was wolves. They recolonized our 70 square mile mountain grazing lands about five years after we started pasturing livestock up there. Before wolves, we simply let the cattle disperse on their own, following green up as it gained elevation with the onset of spring. There’s 4000 feet of elevation relief in our grazeable area, and it supplied our cows with green grass until late July. After July, unfortunately, our cows found riparian areas to their liking. We responded by riding horseback

from that rough summer on the range. We were ready to quit. But then inspiration came from a series of CM Russell paintings from the early 1900s, documenting cowboys living on the range with their cattle.

Herding them. Keeping them safe from predators. Taking them to the best grass.

And so, we brought adaptive planned grazing to the range. Now, ADP has us living with the cattle full time, controlling their progress across wild range landscapes. On horseback, we essentially are a moving grazing cell across the high country. Just like we consider a multitude of factors on the home ranch in designing location, timing, and size of cells, we now use horseback riders to create

It seems like work to some folks when we hand fork off eight tons of summer sunshine each day, but the real workers are there on the ground. The 500 busy black-hided employees of mine begin the process of decomposition and decay and insert it into the ground. Meanwhile they handily put on an average daily gain of two pounds a day, even in winter on hay.

But there is so much more. I just can’t see it.

Because under their feet, beneath the snow and ice, is a teeming plethora of soil biota still slowly moving, living, waiting for their potential to be unleashed when the sun crosses into the Northern Hemisphere and the harvest of sunlight will begin.

And the living soil sponge will once again imbibe all the nutrition our beeves provide for it, and a grassland will erupt in verdant green from a once dormant soil.

I never get tired of it. Happy Trails.

Glenn Elzinga can be reached at: glenn@ alderspring.com

Grass Nomads LLC— Moving with the Seasons

BY ARIEL GREENWOOD

About a year and a half ago, my partner Sam Ryerson and I decided to formalize our working relationship as a company: Grass Nomads LLC. We thought it made good sense to create an accountable, legal framework for our work together and with other clients and partners.

We gave ourselves that name because it felt true. Like the nomadic herders who have and continue to make their way across the plains and hills of Earth, we move for opportunity, sustenance, and to find our place between the tugging polarities of freedom and obligation. To be nomadic is not necessarily to wander, but rather to live in deep familiarity with an extensive range of people, places, and animals rather than a singular or central home.

Practically speaking, we live in a rotation. October through April, we manage cows on an extensive ranch in Northeastern New Mexico with Triangle P Cattle Company. That high, windy prairie stretches west along the tiptoes of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. We work cooperatively with other partners in the company, with neighbors, and with our broader

community of people in the Southwest. Come Spring, we loaded up our dogs and horses and point north to Montana when the green grass began to grow up from the loosening grip of winter. Up here, we work with Cayuse Livestock Company to manage a few thousand yearlings in the foothills of the Beartooth Front.

This summer marks our second year of doing this work together. It’s an opportunity that allows us to more or less achieve some of our near-term holistic goals: to work outdoors in agriculture, to work closely with animals, to have a community to invest in, to be able to devote time to organizations we believe in—all while making a living with livestock.

Like any way of living, this approach has its pros and cons. Picking up and moving again

helps us keep our edge—we can’t become too complacent about the objects we acquire, and because we are not in one place year round we try to invest as much as we can in the relationships we forge while we are around. We don’t have much of a slow season—as soon as we ship cattle off the Montana ranches, we head south to begin fall work in New Mexico. This rotational lifestyle also means as soon as we start to feel settled in a place, it’s time to pack up and move again.

What makes it easier is the wonderful people we meet and know across the West who share our passion for taking care of land and animals while looking out for people in a world that often undermines all three. And, of course, our animals. We train our own horses and dogs, and when it comes time to move cattle—the crux of what we do--the union of horse, dog, and rider means we feel like we are working with family— a community we bring along with us.

This past winter, we resumed management of cows and yearlings in New Mexico, spending our time in a couple of cow camps while clearing everything out of a sunsetting lease and migrating northward to establish a new one.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

Sam Ryerson and Ariel Greenwood

Grass Nomads LLC has multiple grazing contracts throughout Montana and New Mexico.

Moving with the Seasons

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7

This year, we’re able to be in Montana because a couple of the partners in the New Mexico cattle company are running things while we are away. We made provisions for this before we left by getting to know the neighbors on the new lease, fixing fence, learning the water

our own. Working on the edge of public land and the wildlife therein presents its own set of challenges; as wolf and grizzly bear populations rebound thanks to successful conservation efforts, we as ranchers find ourselves in the crosshairs of biological and market realities, just as bears forge into a world full of roads, fences, flighty wild prey, and domesticated livestock. Last year we had an exhilarating few

our grazing plan and management, and no doubt due at least as much to luck, the bear(s) eventually moved on. We don’t know what is in store for us this season; so much of this work requires putting ourselves in physical danger and having to make decisions with limited information and unknown consequences.

We’re often mounted and often on the move, and all the while developing our horses, our dogs, and ourselves. We aim to live in rich, complex simplicity—to be thoughtful of what we require from people and the Earth, and to give part of ourselves back to both. We work within the confines of commodity cattle, yet are often on the lookout for cracks in the system we are part of in which to sow the seeds of a different or better one.

Picking up and moving can be taxing, but so can being stationary. We are learning what makes us feel at home, and how to make it wherever we go. One day, I look forward to staying in one place for a while—to let the seasons come to us rather than our marching out to meet them. We may revise our holistic goal and find that nomadism is no longer serving us. For now, we keep moving, working with the seasons and cycles of grass, rain, sun, and community.

You can reach Sam and Ariel at Grass Nomads LLC at grassnomads@gmail.com.

the new cattle to improve their health and behavior, and making a grazing and work plan for the year so that our partners would have some good structure as the season rolls on. And because much of the grass was in need of a good rest when our lease began, we decided to move most of the cattle to one end of the ranch, consolidating herds as much as water and infrastructure would allow, so that the majority of the ranch could rest for the entire growing season and the cattle would be easier to manage.

Here in Montana, Sam and I run the grazing on a couple of ranches, in four or five herds of stocker cattle. We practice holistically planned grazing, and our days consist of keeping up with fences and mineral, riding through cattle and teaching them to gather, move and settle, doctoring them in the field, and moving them to the next pasture.

All the while, we’re in country shared with wolves, bears, and migratory birds whose yearly rotation is not too unlike

Sam and Ariel rely heavily on all their crew.

Sam and Ariel train their own horses and dog so they can accomplish their work on the range with the cattle they manage.

Working Lands

Helping Hands— An Innovative Approach to Conserving Working Lands

BY NATALIE ALLIO

The scope of the Working Lands Helping Hands project is developing new approaches for conserving open working lands as wildlife habitat and scenic resources. The project provides three innovative, replicable, scalable and enduring programs to support top needs expressed by

Envision project data indicate that roughly 90% of local agricultural operators desire to keep their lands in production for this and future generations. In addition, Envision survey data across all stakeholder groups in the county indicate that 97% of citizens believe that working landscapes are important to their quality of life— supporting open views, ground water recharge, wildlife habitat, local foods, community culture and economic viability.

However, agricultural business owners express serious concerns about their ability to achieve their vision of sustainable operations. That concern centers around rapidly increasing economic impacts resulting from population growth. Conflicts with new neighbors—many from urban areas outside of Colorado— increased.

and exercise, enjoy great views, wildlife sightings, learn about which noxious weeds they should be pulling, which native plants grow well in the area, support local ranchers, and help protect and enhance the lands they love. For the ranchers, it is an opportunity to help build relationships with their neighbors and help transfer knowledge about what is needed to support working lands. It is also an opportunity to get some help on seasonal chores like:

• Wildlife habitat enhancement projects such as creating burrows for burrowing owl habitat

• Helping ranchers with ditch cleaning: including willow trimming, tree clearing, raking leaves and sticks, clearing out debris

• Helping farmers with weeding and irrigation

• Filling rock cribs for fencing anchor points

The specific challenge and programs addressed were initially identified by Envision Chaffee County, a countywide planning effort convened by the Chaffee County Board of Commissioners and engaging over 1,500 citizens and 72 nonprofit organizations, agencies and businesses.

Analysis shows that on a countywide scale, 30% of Chaffee County’s agricultural lands have been lost to development since 1982, and 62% of new development has occurred in unincorporated rural agricultural areas. Agricultural land loss is accelerating as local population grows. The state demographer’s forecast projects a 31% increase from 2016 to 2030 in Chaffee County, while Colorado adds an estimated 1.5 million new residents. Thus. it was clear that supporting agricultural operations is essential to keeping Colorado’s working lands working, protecting the open space, ecosystem services (such as ground water recharge, wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, etc.) and cultural assets.

Of crucial concern is a looming tipping point— where local agricultural support services, operator expertise and “critical mass” productivity are no longer sufficient to sustain agricultural operations, resulting in a rapid loss of remaining agricultural lands and their associated open space and provision of ecosystem services critical to both residents and visitors to the area and the state.

The conflicts are diverse and include: community pushback on projects designed to increase economic viability, lawsuits over grazing rights/ water rights/ grazing leases, new residents angry about ditches being cleaned, and conflicts between cattle, mountain bikers and new garden owners. The list is disquietingly long. In the words of Brady Everett, 6th generation rancher, “The pressure is real, something I call ‘death by 1,000 cuts. It is my hope that our children will want to continue our family’s ranching legacy. One of my biggest fears is that the ever-increasing population will cause both our children and the ranch to succumb’”.

Yet, Envision survey data indicate that 97% of community members think working lands enhance their quality of life. That’s where Working Lands Helping Hands comes in. This project is one of 40 other projects resulting from the Envision program, developed by Action Teams involving 180 diverse citizen volunteers. This program provides hands-on experiences to help connect new residents to the value of open land agricultural landscapes and help them learn to be good neighbors by connecting new resident volunteers to support critical seasonal agricultural landowner needs (for example, new residents volunteering to help spring cleaning of agricultural ditches). Currently our Hands for Lands Volunteer list is now 152 members strong.

Volunteers get involved to get out on the beautiful lands that surround the community, be part of a team, get fresh air

• Cleaning trash out of ditch

• Forest cleanup for Aspen regeneration

• Removing old barbed wire fences and Russian olive on State Wildlife Areas

• Fencing native trees to protect them from beaver damage

• Planting willows and other native shrubs along rivers and streams

• Installing a gate at a new State Wildlife Area

• Planting native trees/shrubs at State Wildlife Areas

• Building erosion control structures like Zeedyk one rock dams

Ultimately, the Working Lands, Helping Hands and Hands for the Land programs bring people together to preserve and protect the working lands that ideally serve their communities. By building relationships across different portions of a community, everyone wins—the land, animals, and people.

Natalie Allio co-manages Badger Creek Ranch near Canon City, Colorado and is on the board of the Upper Arkansas Conservation District.

Volunteer Testimonial

“The word that came to my mind as I drove home from a Kelly Ranch workday is “honored.” I am honored to have been a part of what was accomplished by the teams of CCC volunteers this morning. I am honored to have met the Kellys and to have been on their beautiful ranch.

Now I think of CCC and all it has accomplished in preserving these lands in perpetuity. I think of the hard working ranch families to whom we owe so much for their preservation of an historic, important way of life. I took a few photos, with permission. One speaks to me of the sense of peace and gratitude I felt while on the Kelly Ranch. Yes, I am honored to have had this experience and look forward to more.”

—E. Backinger

Volunteers helping to clear a ranch ditch.

& LIVESTOCK

The Rider Ranch— Growing More Grass in North Dakota

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

Jed Rider, his wife, Melissa, and their three boys, Lane, Beau, and Garrett, operate a managed grazing operation near Alexander, in northwestern North Dakota. Most of their 6,000 acres of land is rented, but their ranch headquarters is on a section of land that was purchased by Melissa’s grandfather in the 1950s and Melissa grew up on that farm. While Jed didn’t come from a ranching background, as he grew up on a sugar beet farm and the family owned no livestock, he began working on a cattle ranch when he was in high school. From then on he wanted to be a cowboy. After college and a chance introduction to the work by HMI Certified Educator, Terry Gompert, Jed became obsessed with learning how to be a better grazier and develop a resilient landscape and sustainable business.

Obsession with Grazing

After college Jed went to work for a farmer/rancher for about a year and a half. “That farmer was renting my grandfather’s farm. I was trying to figure out how to run cattle on my grandfather’s sugar beet farm. Another beet farmer ran a few cows and asked if I’d ever thought about running cattle on irrigated pasture. I hadn’t, but this farmer had been reading about a guy in Nebraska—Terry Gompert—who was talking about this. We were having this conversation over a beer in a bar and I said I’d never heard of him.”

The farmer told Jed to get on the internet and check this guy out. “He told me that some of the things Terry talked about seemed pretty crazy but interesting. This was in 2001. I went home and started reading about Terry Gompert and Holistic Management and rotational grazing. I just couldn’t get enough of this kind of information. I’d stay up at night and make economic spreadsheets and irrigation pasture maps on the computer until 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning and it about drove my wife crazy. But I was obsessed with

trying to learn more about it.

“I couldn’t figure out how to accomplish this financially at that time, however. I quit working for the beet farmer and a bit later I had the opportunity to take over my grandfather’s sugar beet farm. I grew sugar beets there, and then took on my father-in-law’s cow herd on shares. That’s how I started out on my own in agriculture.”

“I farmed sugar beets for seven years and never did get the irrigated pasture thing going. Melissa’s father wanted us to move up onto his ranch but he was only running 80 cows at the time. I said that if we were going to do that, we needed more grass and cows. At that time there was no more grass land available to rent, and he asked me what I would suggest. I told him I would like to start turning a lot of his crop land back to grass, and he let me start doing that. I started converting those cropland pastures into a grazing system after I seeded them back to grass, and it grew from there.”

Today Jed and his family move cattle through a planned grazing system consisting of tame and native pastures, upper river breaks rangeland, and some bale grazing in the winter. Their planned grazing revolves around rest and recovery. The cattle are moved as often as needed, depending on paddock size, and are utilized as a soil regeneration tool whether it’s July or January.

“It was 2008 when I started this program and I actually farmed sugar beets up until that year,” says Jed. “When I quit farming sugar beets I rented that farm out and concentrated on the grass and cattle. I changed the start of my calving season from April 1st to early June and also changed a lot of the management of my place.” The cattle are Angus, but he says they are nothing special—just whatever will have a calf and do well.

Most of Jed’s pasture is rented and now it is mostly grassland. “I have turned about 2,000 acres of cropland back to grass, and the people I rent from are okay with that,” says Jed. “It took some convincing for some of them, but I explained what was going on and why that strategy would be best. A lot of what we rent is from my wife’s parents and a couple of tracts

Jed & Melissa Rider with their boys: Lane, Beau, and Garrett.

that belong to another person. One tract that I was renting had both native pasture and cropland, and I still rent the native pasture from that guy. I tried for a while to convince him to let me convert the cropland but couldn’t get him to buy into that and he took it away from me—but it didn’t break my heart.”

Regenerate Resilience

Jed didn’t know much about Holistic Management until he learned about Terry Gompert and started learning from him. “I’d started helping a couple of local ranchers just because I enjoyed helping them. They had both taken Holistic Management courses. This was how I was first introduced to it,” says Jed.

Wayne Berry was one of Jed’s college instructors. “I’ve known Wayne for a long time, and I knew that he taught Holistic Management at the college, but I didn’t take his class—and at that time I didn’t really know what it was. Then later these two ranchers were introduced to Holistic Management by Wayne Berry. Thus the concept was actually demonstrated to me before it was taught to me. I understood some of the basics already, and I was open to it,” he says.

Then in 2011 he took his first formal course, from Josh Dukart. “I took the Holistic Management and Holistic Financial Planning classes and found these to be extremely useful. What I originally thought was ‘holistic’ after working with the two ranchers, wasn’t. I just thought that holistic meant low input, and that’s certainly a part of it, but holistic is a lot more than that,” Jed says.

“In 2008 when I pulled all the crutches out from under my cow herd and changed my calving date, we had a drought that same year, and it was a wreck. The only way I was able to get through that wreck was because I had lowered my input costs. Dropping the inputs helped, but at the same time the Holistic Management planning helped me get through it financially.”

requires healthy soils. The present herd of 250 cow/calf pairs is used as a soil regeneration tool, while producing healthy, nutritious beef.

“I manage my land for the five soil health principles which are 1) Soil armor; 2) minimizing soil disturbance; 3) plant diversity; 4) continual live plants; and 5) livestock integration. These principles can maximize soil building and regenerate resilience. This is my goal.

Jed took the financial class, and then Melissa took the intro class with him later. “I actually did it backward taking the intro class second, but that’s how it worked out. I went to college with Josh Dukart so I already knew him. I actually liked the financial class better than the intro; I thought it was really good. They are both excellent, but the financial class really helped me a lot,” he says.

“What I thought I knew, I really didn’t, until I took that class. It was a game changer, and it still is, even more now than it was at first.” This class helped put it all together for him. The “WHOLE” goal for the Rider Ranch is health. To achieve healthy plants, animals, people and lifestyles first

In 2008 Jed seeded cropland back to five native grasses. He wishes he had seeded to the diverse mix of 15 seeds or more including forbs and legumes at 60% of the mix like he now plants. This diversity helps to break through the tillage layers in the soil and is more productive than the grass mix alone.

over here to help us on our ranch, and I can teach him. We can help other people understand what is actually going on with the land.

“I think a lot of people drive by my place and don’t really know what’s going on until they actually come here and really take a look and understand these principles. We are trying to regenerate and improve resilience and health— for the whole complex from soil to plant to animal to human health. I think the goal is to regenerate resilience along that whole complex.”

To achieve the soil health principles he uses the four basic grazing concepts, which are rest, recovery, animal impact and stocking density. “In order to manage our grazing concepts and soil health principles, we use Holistic Management. This is the best way I can explain it,” he says.

Rehabilitating Cropland

Jed’s grazing management keeps improving the soil health and pasture production. “Our pastures are a diverse mix. We live on top of the Missouri River breaks so a lot of the native pastures include the bigger coulees that drop down toward the river. It is short grass native pasture, going down to the river. All the crop land sits on top. This is just the opposite of most farm country, which is generally in the valley bottoms with native grazing up on the mountainsides. All my cropland is on top, which is somewhat level ground, and then the terrain dives down into the coulees that lead down to the river.”

Jed’s first two seedings of cropland back to grass in 2008 included about 800 acres total, using five species of native grasses—three cool season grasses and two warm season grasses. “I realized over time that this was a poor mix, so for my next seeding I added some forbs into the

Jed puts up hay every fourth or fifth year on the older cropland he has rehabilitated into pasture.

Growing More Grass in North Dakota

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

mix. This helped, but still was not diverse enough. The last seeding that I did, three years ago, includes about 15 species and about 60% of that mix is forbs and legumes.” This gives a better nutrient balance for the soil and for the livestock grazing the pasture.

native grass seeding that I planted in 2008 with no diversity, no tap roots, is not doing anything.”

When seeding cropland into grass Jed recommends planting a very highly productive season-long cover crop, essentially a perennial cover crop—that will continue to thrive and create its own balance over time. “I thought at first that I could regenerate these prairies back to the way they were, but that was overly optimistic. We can’t really do that. It will never quite be the same, but we can make it more ecologically balanced and healthy. A person has to also be profitable along the way. The grass seeding I did in 2008 was not very profitable! If you are not profitable with your grass seedings, it doesn’t really matter in the end anyway. I want my pastures diverse and productive and I am not really sure that I care about what kind of grasses or plants are out there, as long as it works,” he says.

Jed’s goal is to graze the cattle through winter. “I always plan to graze for 365 days of the year, and sometimes the cattle can do it, if it’s an open winter without a lot of snow. Some years are better than others. I do bale graze, which is essentially feeding hay and a person has to go through the process of putting up hay. I acknowledge that, but the cows are feeding themselves,” he says.

“When I did the first seeding, with only five species of grasses, I thought that was diverse, considering what we knew about diverse, but it wasn’t diverse enough. The problem is that I thought this cropland would just grow grass forever, but it doesn’t. It was good cropland and that’s why it was being farmed, but the land was actually wrecked from being cropped for so long. The tillage layers really affected it. Unless it rains, the fibrous grass roots can’t get down through those heavy tillage layers.

“If I were to do it over again, or had to seed that same grass mix, I would cover crop first for three to five years minimum. I can’t financially do that, however. I understand the advantages and benefits of the cover crop strategy but it is also very expensive. If you are a farmer and can integrate cover crops, that’s great—because you are farming anyway. If you are just a livestock producer, however, it’s more of a challenge to go out and seed a cover crop. It’s not financially feasible.

“If you are in a region with lots of rainfall and can grow a tremendous amount of cover crops it’s a bit different. Here, however, your expenses are the same to put it in; it costs about $30 an acre to do the cover crop whether you do it here or in a more productive climate.

“After that first try at seeding grass, that led me to thinking I would just seed a cover crop containing three or four different kinds of legumes and about five or six different kinds of forbs and six to eight different kinds of grasses. Essentially that’s a perennial cover crop that I seeded. There was a tremendous amount of diversity, and a lot of tap roots that can get through the old tillage layers so the grass roots can find routes down through those layers. So far, this is working. We didn’t have any snow during the winter and haven’t had much rain yet this spring—less than half an inch since the frost went out. But already those new seedings are growing like crazy because we had a lot of sub-moisture. By contrast, my

“I used to put up hay on some Game and Fish land and haul that hay home to bale graze on my property. That isn’t an option anymore because that Game and Fish land is all under water now and I can’t utilize it. I really did like doing that because it was cheap and was importing carbon to my property. So what I do now is occasionally hay some of my pastures (the ones that were originally cropland—with terrain that haying equipment can traverse). I can hay some of that if I want to, if there is extra forage. I hay certain areas but not every year—maybe every fourth or fifth year on a certain spot. The next three or four years I either stockpile or graze that area. As long as I am not exporting any hay off of my property, I am okay with being carbon neutral.”

Jed simply cuts the hay and bales it, and leaves the bales wherever they drop out of the baler. He also makes the bales much smaller now, for better nutrient distribution over the fields (more total bales, covering more area). He also doesn’t tie the bales, so they are more like hay piles than bales.

“It’s like a hay-bucked pile, except that it’s in a bale. To me this is still grazing, even though I’ve made hay. The difference, to me, is that I don’t view that pile as a hay bale or haying; I view it as capturing those nutrients in those plants at that stage of maturity (with more quality than if they were left to become overly mature with less protein, etc.) which is better feed for the cattle,” he explains.

Some people ask Jed how many bales he puts up for the winter and he has no idea. “To me, it’s just grazing days, and how much it costs me to achieve those grazing days—at a time that I need them. In doing this I am simply trying to keep my costs as low as I can,” he says.

Fencing & Water Flexibility

Jed prefers electric wire, even for the permanent fences. The perimeter is two-wire electric fence with fiberglass posts. “All the cross-fences are just one wire electric. We also utilize a lot of polywire. To create the different pastures, we started out with a wagon wheel design. It’s not really a bad design but there are many things that I don’t like about it,” Jed says. Now Jed utilizes long lanes, instead. It’s easy to strip graze those by

Jed creates untied hay bales for his bale grazing for winter. He works to capture the feed at the ideal time of maturity and keeps bales small so he can spread the nutrients more evenly.

moving the temporary wire farther down the lane, and make the segments as large or small as needed. “I can give the cows just one acre or I can give them 100,” says Jed. “By moving one wire I can change the size of the next pasture very easily; there is a lot more flexibility. We’ve gone to that system and I love it. We are also starting to put a lot of the pipelines on top of the ground rather than burying all the water lines. “I rented a grazing system from one of the ranchers who taught me a lot, and he had learned from Wayne Berry. His system was all wagon wheel design, with buried pipeline and it is such a rigid system. I’m not going to say it’s all bad because you are still providing for rest and recovery, but you are so limited in what you can do with it.” Jed noted if the water is in the center of the wagon wheel, all those pie-shaped segments tend to be overgrazed/beaten out at that small end near the water at the center.

“That design was great for its time, but I would never recommend it now. With all that buried pipeline, there are now a lot of leaks to fix. The material that we can use now is much better than what that rancher used then, when he put in those old pipelines. Things have improved dramatically,” Jed says.

“My first few systems that I put in were pretty similar to his; I modeled them after his grazing system because that’s what I knew. Since then I’ve seen some negative things about it and started making some lanes instead. I really do like putting my pipelines on top of the ground for summer grazing. It’s good to have a buried pipeline to a more permanent tank for winter grazing (so it won’t freeze) but for the rest of the year you don’t need it. So now I bury the least amount of pipe that I can. With the lanes for grazing, this gives me the opportunity to capture my hay for winter if I need some hay, versus a pie-shaped pasture that isn’t as conducive for haying.

“If I am grazing rented ground, this also enables me to go pick up my fencing and water lines and tanks if I have to move to a different place. I keep my infrastructure costs as low as possible, and portable if possible. I move a portable water tank a lot. It’s just a 300-gallon Rubbermaid tank that I set underneath the electric fence and the cows have access to half the tank. One time I lost the water, and cattle can wreck things in a hurry if they run out of water. If they have a good supply of water, however, it works very well.”

For his electric fences, if at all possible he uses a good charger that runs on 110 volts. “I do have 110 power to almost every fence I’ve got, so I am lucky in that regard. I have two big Stafix Speedrite fencers. I use the big ones; they are 36 joule fencers. It’s important to have a good source of electricity. The worst thing to save money on is your fencer,” he says. Cattle can be readily trained to respect a hot wire if it is really hot, and they are very “honest” once they respect it and they know it works.

“I got a lot of ridicule when I went to electric fencing on my place, but I will never go back to traditional fences. I have never dealt with a good barbed-wire fence; all the old barbed-wire fences out here are from the dust bowl era—from the 1920s--so I’ve never experienced a good barbed-wire fence on any of the leased ground. I am almost thankful for that because otherwise I might have gone that route when putting in new fences. Electric fence by contrast works very well and it’s a lot cheaper.” To build a good barbed-wire fence takes a lot of wood posts or steel posts, which are expensive, and the wood posts don’t last a long time.

In places where there are old barbed-wire fences, when they get too bad Jed just takes them down instead of fixing them. “I just use a lot of the old steel posts that the barbed-wire hung on, and use those with insulators for my electric fence. I can even do that on my rented land; I can take that down and put up a one-wire hot wire that is quicker and cheaper than fixing the old fence. The barbed-wire is so old and brittle that you can’t splice it; the old wire just breaks,” says Jed.

Replacing those old fences with electric fence is cheaper than going to the land owner and saying he needs new fences. “This works well, as long as the owner is okay with it—because it costs the land owner $10,000 per mile to put in a new barbed-wire fence, and what will that do to my rent? It will just end up raising my rent.”

Direct Marketing

While Jed focuses on low input production, he is also working on increasing the amount of the herd he is able to direct market to increase his profit margin. “We have a grass fed beef company and direct market most of our cattle. At this point we don’t market all of them that way, but that is the goal. Our company is called Dakota Graz’d,” Jed says.

The cow herd is Angus and Hereford based, with a mix of black cattle, black baldies, red, and red baldies. “When I first started marketing grassfed beef I used a bull that was Galloway crossed with Angus. I bought that bull about 10 years ago from a guy who had crossed Galloway with some of Kit Pharo’s Angus genetics and was having good luck with that cross. The Galloway marbles so well, and the meat is very tender. They are good grass finishers by nature,” he says.

Now Jed uses straight Red Angus bulls on the crossbred cow herd. “These Red Angus bulls are really genetic-dense and linebred, and they work well on my mixed genetics; I am very happy with the results, so far. They are grass-type genetic bulls and Pharo-based from years ago.”

Jed has also learned a lot about cattle genetics from Steve Campbell and Gearld Fry, and their linear measurements to help assess and select the right type of cattle. “Gearld measured cattle at this Red Angus breeder’s place for about 18 years and they selected for animals that would be grass

Jed has found that portable water tank work best for his operation that includes a lot of leased land.

Alderspring Ranch Land Regeneration Results

BY GLENN ELZINGA

Little Hat Creek is a seven-mile long sinuous canyon bottom stream that drains snowmelt from the high Douglas-fir, aspen and lodgepole pine forests of the Salmon River Mountains. Pre-settlement conditions found it filled with aspen, birch and willow and punctuated by beaver swamps. The photo below shows how we found it upon acquiring the Pahsimeroi

one of the first blatant signs of a desertifying landscape.

The bottom image in the left column is the same photopoint location as in the previous photograph. The T-post shown is in the same position. Regeneration of woodies here is clearly apparent (they were hard to walk through at the next permanent photopoint, and impossible to photograph). Graminoids are converting back to native species here, even in floodplain areas. Soil substrate underfoot is moist, and sponge-like. Several sage grouse were spotted roosting and picking currants just downstream (I spotted 23 that day, a record for me in sage grouse observation in that area). Beavers have recolonized upstream regenerating aspen stands. Our grazing in these areas was very simple: we halted all grazing through riparian habitat with complete livestock control via inherding. Cattle were grazed several times over the last five summers within 100 feet of this stream reach, but were carefully herded to keep them out of regenerating wetland areas. We’ll likely graze these areas again in the future, but not before vegetation expression has plateaued, and then

off; native species such as Nebraska sedge and Baltic rush were only along creek margins, if at all. Many floodplain plant population dominated by non-native Kentucky bluegrass, if the floodplain wa low enough along creek margins to support the mesic grass. Near 150 years of continuous season-long low-density stock grazing c extirpation of most riparian soil holding species, and the beav maintained them. Severe exposed soil down-cuts, some exceeding feet typified much of Little Hat Canyon due to the loss of veget flash flood events over the years. Little Hat was in a severe dow trend. As was the case of many nearby low elevation brittle zone creeks, Little Hat was in danger of becoming ephemeral rather than pere

The picture above is our neighbor’s soil in October 2019 comprised of volcanic clay with rubble (it’s why it is white—the color of volcanic ash). The cover is a three-year-old alfalfa field monoculture initiated by moldboard plowing. The soil is clearly exposed. It is the exact soil series as photo on the left, just 100 feet away on the other side of our common fence. Their soil is dry and crumbly to the touch and has a frozen crust on top. There is little sign of root material or any life evident in the soil substrate. The soil received three inches

In the picture directly above is an Alderspring Ranch soil test dig taken five minutes later from the neighbor’s dig. It is the same soil type, but the cover is multispecies—around 30–50 species with orchardgrass, sainfoin, clover, dandelion and quackgrass occupying an aggregate of 35%. No soil is exposed. Soil is unfrozen, very wet and clumpy. There is living organic matter present—animals seen, and many roots. Our side used to be identical to the neighbor’s side just 15 years ago—an alfalfa monoculture with little soil structure and little water holding capability. An August soil organic matter test had this field testing 7.3%.

Little Hat Creek 2005

Little Hat Creek 2018

Neighbor’s soil.

From the Board Chair

BY WALTER LYNN

Recently I have been thinking about how the visibility of Holistic Management International and the spread of Holistic Management has been the result of people making an effort to share what they know with others. When I think of the Holistic Management® principles and framework, I think of the parable “light is to be revealed, not concealed.” As practitioners, Certified Educators, and supporters, we have a responsibility to share the story of how Holistic Management impacts our lives, revealing the light.

In particular, I am grateful for two amazing individuals, Gary Reding and Judith Schwartz. In the mid ‘90s Gary Reding read Savory’s Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making. It is still a foundation for him some 25 years later in his international consulting work. Gary originates from southeast Indiana but now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. Through his consulting practice, he works with many diverse farms–marijuana, hemp, fruits, vegetables, and grains. His family farm in Indiana was converted from a conventional row crop rotation to one where he was a leading organic producer.

That conversion started when Gary was flipping pork chops at a friend’s retirement gathering and he began chatting with a Holistic Management practitioner. The practitioner was the one that pushed Gary into the deep end of the pool. After his four-year study and planning for his family farm, Gary’s detailed plans always included animals as part of the system he was committing his time and resources to improve. His financial results were stellar when compared to his old model.

Here’s what Gary has to say:

• The framework methodology applies to more than farming and ranching; it applies to any business or organization.

Resilience in Times of Uncertainty

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

natural disasters.” However, as stressful situations continue to draw on, this ongoing great uncertainty can lead to chronic stress and burnout.

To combat this stress and burnout, we have to acknowledge that we are facing a time of great uncertainty and we are still figuring out how to adapt to this new reality. While there are numerous people predicting how long COVID will be a global risk, no one really knows. Likewise, as the personal response to various policies and regulations developed to address COVID seems to generate more social conflict, we begin to fight each other rather than fighting a common enemy. This fuels further uncertainty and creates ambiguous loss—loss that is unclear and doesn’t have resolution. Moreover, we have multiple losses—of trust, freedom, rituals, and ways of life, so we grieve these multiple losses (or react to them with some emotion like anger or fear).

So how do we take care of ourselves in these uncertain times?

Michael Maddaus writes of developing a resilience bank account. We create this resilience first by recognizing that we don’t know when this time of uncertainty will end. We need to take time for self-care, which

• Farmers and ranchers use what they are sold.

• Marginal return analysis was a key piece of his economics before any action was taken on his farm. His economic analysis was for a minimum of five years and on one engagement it was for 18 years.

• Today, Gary stands for improving world health one farm at a time.

Recently, I listened to an interview of the regenerative agriculture author, Judith Schwartz. As chairperson of HMI, Judy’s fabulous endorsement of Holistic Management warmed my heart. She commented about how our Certified Educators are working in their communities to resolve land and water issues.

But HMI is also working to address social issues. Recently, Kathy Harris, HMI Program Director and Certified Educator Jeff Goebel coached 18 participants on the benefits of building consensus to resolve complex issues for a family business, a board, or a group needing facilitation to get a mutually agreed upon next action. I was able to participate and feel this social tool is greatly needed within our community. I have found that the social issues are often what keep us from making the most of our financial and natural resources.

I was deeply saddened to hear a recent story from one of my great mentors in my accounting career. We had a conversation where he shared about a client grandmother’s death. The pallbearers for her funeral were all of her grandsons, except his client, who was the eldest grandson and had not been contacted about his grandmother’s death. This level of dysfunction has got to be addressed if we are going to more effectively manage our businesses and create healthy land and thriving communities. We have seen many practitioners, like Gary Reding, make these kinds of changes and achieve incredible results. I hope you will share this tool with others, as well as the results you are getting—bringing light into the world.

includes building and maintaining relationships, now. In particular, we may need to build new relationships to help us with these new times. Many farmers and ranchers are building cooperatives or new retail markets to replace their restaurant markets that have dried up. Likewise, they are building new enterprises to address new needs or interests as people begin to realize the importance of a local food system and the agriculture producers who want to feed their communities.

But if you are not in the action or adaptation stages noted above and are experiencing the stages of anxiety, depression, anger, and burnout, berating yourself for not being a better, stronger, more capable person is not going to help. So many people are struggling right now. Now is the time for compassion—for self and others. It is through identifying what we are feeling and getting the help we need that we can build our resilience bank account and have the resilience in our land, businesses, and families to then be able to reach out a hand to another when they need it—creating healthy land and thriving communities even in times of uncertainty.

Reader’s Forum

Challenging My Food Beliefs Through Pasture Raised Poultry Processing

BY STEPHANIE VON ANCKEN

Ididn’t think I would participate, but I was invited by people that I respect and I knew it would be an important learning experience even if I was just an observer. These were my thoughts as I drove down NM313 through Sandia Pueblo towards Bernalillo and Tierra Sagrada Farm. A few weeks before I had been put in touch with Sage and Andrea, owners of Tierra Sagrada Farm, through a mutual farming friend. They seemed like the farmers I had been searching for.

Tamara Gadzia, a long-time supporter of Holistic Management International, owns a few acres with her husband and Certified Educator Kirk in Bernalillo, New Mexico, just a few minutes’ drive from Tierra Sagrada Farms; this was all her idea. She noticed that much of the agricultural land in her neighborhood was not in production, and through conversations with several neighbors found they were all interested in keeping their land in production, but had various barriers to overcome to do so. Her solution was to create the Urban Edge Project in partnership with HMI. Urban Edge connects homeowners in urban/suburban agricultural communities with eager, self-starter type young farmers who can farm/ranch their land and help to build community around agriculture in these areas.

My job with this first pilot project in Bernalillo was to find these young farmers. When I first spoke with Sage on the phone, he eagerly outlined their enterprises and techniques and values and who he was reading and what he was hoping to do next. I knew it was a good “fit” and immediately called Tamara to set up a meeting.

Fast forward a couple of weeks: Sage and Andrea are already starting to work with Tamara and Kirk on their property, with plans to expand to other neighbors’ properties

depending on how this project progresses and how the CDC restrictions change for COVID-19. Having made fast friends with Sage and Andrea, I was invited to participate in their first poultry processing planned for the coming Wednesday along with Kirk and Tamara and Tamara’s sister, Suzan. Andrea is expecting their first child in September so she didn’t join us in the process, but came out a few times with big smiles and lots of encouragement as she photographed us at work.

Sage is warm, intentional, and exuberant about regenerative farming and all its possibilities. So it was no surprise that when we arrived at 8 a.m. he had an assembly line all set up: the tent where the harvesting would happen, the scalder to loosen the feathers, the plucker to remove the feathers, the eviscerating stations with clean cutting boards, knives, buckets and cleaning supplies and three coolers all with incrementally colder water temperatures to quickly chill the birds once they were finished.

Sage led us through the entire process with the first bird. There was so much to learn. He moved quickly and deliberately; you wouldn’t have known it was his first time. (He later said he was so thankful that all of us were there to encourage and support him.) After that first run through, I created a sign with the evisceration steps to help Tamara and I as we learned the process. And after our respective fifth birds we both had it down; oil glands, pull out neck, remove craw and windpipe, cut backside, pull out all insides making sure not to break the intestines or gallbladder in the process, remove lungs, save heart, liver, gizzard, and neck, make sure inner cavity is cleaned out, spray down with water, place in first cooler of water.

There was a sense of gratitude and reverence in every step of the process. We didn’t plan it beforehand or even really discuss our different expectations around how this was going to be done, but every one of us, in our own way, thanked each bird during every step of the process. There was a calm throughout the day, even when things didn’t go exactly to plan, a kind of expectation that what we were participating in was sacred. A sacrifice of an animal to feed a family.

I had never felt that before. And I’m ashamed to say, even when I was eating meat regularly, I had never taken the time to learn more about how that meat got to my plate. Society had taught me an “ignorance is bliss” mindset where I assumed I wouldn’t want to continue to consume meat if I knew where it was from. This is half true. Because if I had learned about our factory farming techniques, the assembly lines, the medicines, the chemicals, the cages, the filth, the unsanitary and unsafe working conditions for workers of communities made vulnerable, I would have been repulsed and perhaps have never eaten meat again.

But perhaps if I had been taught more about the small scale farmer, the way their birds are raised, the time and love that goes into their care and processing, I would have had a deeper respect for the food I was consuming and more gratitude towards the animal that was sacrificed for my benefit. And in that respect and gratitude, I most likely would have looked at meat as something more sacred and special, that one eats perhaps a few times a week, instead of every single day.

After the birds were cooled down, we vacuum packed them and put them on ice and then to the freezer. 30 birds in total. 27 that came out perfect. Three that were the “learning birds” which will be going to stock. All the feet will go to dog food, the insides and feathers went to a big compost pile, and the 27 perfectly processed chickens will feed the community.

I went home a changed person. I don’t

Stephanie learning how to process a chicken.

Farmer Sage from Tierra Sagrada Farm with processed chickens.

PROGRAM ROUNDUP

Advanced Grazing Workshop

On July 23, eighteen participants gathered for the Advanced Grazing Workshop in Eastern Colorado to learn about tools and practices to increase their profit potential, improve soil health, and discover how to have a better quality of life on their ranch.

The small group, socially distanced in the Karval Community Building in Karval, Colorado, quickly became close as conversations picked up around how everyone is adapting to the new normal with COVID-19.

Some folks had come from as far as Steamboat to attend the workshop. Others included folks from Brett Gray Ranch, the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and Colorado Field Ornithologists. We even had a Karval local, Katie Merewether who was five days into her new job as a Private Lands Wildlife Biologist for the Bird Conservancy During lunch on day two she presented on the annual Karval Mountain Plover Festival and we were lucky to spot a number of mountain plovers while we toured Brett Gray. The workshop began with a review of Holistic Planning Grazing techniques and a discussion around what has and has not worked for the practitioners in the room. Kirk Gadzia, a long time Holistic Management Certified Educator, presented on grazing planning complexities and the group practiced with the grazing priorities worksheet. Kirk presented on the physiology of plants, their life cycle, timing and recovery which led the conversation to grazing planning calculations and forage assessment. A delicious lunch was provided by the Friendship Circle of Karval. Since Dusty Downey, the Conservation Ranching Program Lead for Audubon Rockies, was unable to join in person, he sent in a short video presenting on how Audubon has been working with ranchers to use livestock to increase bird habitat and the marketing benefits of Audubon’s Bird Friendly Beef. Kelsea Holloway, of the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, also presented on their work with the stewardship team and their private land wildlife biologist assistance program.

After lunch the group caravanned over to Brett Gray Ranch where Louis Martin, owner and ranch manager, led the group on a tour. Participants visited a few water points and viewed paddocks in various stages of recovery. Louis led the group through the history of the land and openly shared their current objectives, challenges and grazing plan. Kirk and a few volunteers participated in a hands on forage assessment demonstration pacing out the size of the square of land needed to feed one animal for one day.

The second day Kirk presented on increasing ranch profitability and Louis Martin provided his own insights and experiences with ensuring his ranch’s profitability over the years. Kirk presented on the physiology of plants, their life cycle, timing and recovery which led the conversation to the principles of grazing and a deeper dive into drought planning and

infrastructure for grazing management.

During lunch Katie presented on mountain plovers. After lunch the group returned to Brett Gray and visited some truly exceptional sites on the ranch. In August of 2019 Louis introduced two beavers back into one of the spring habitats which has quickly become an oasis with a large pond and high diversity in forage and bird habitat. The group used a surface temperature gauge to compare the upper bare ground temp which came in at 130 degrees F to the ground temp near the spring at 82 degrees F! Louis and Kirk presented on water and fence options, roads, corrals and other infrastructure for flexible grazing. Louis took the group to some areas that had been recently more heavily grazed to compare to the next stop on the tour which was absolutely lush with waist high varieties of wheat, big bluestem, prairie sand reed, side oats grama, Nebraska sedge and mint.

Participants also shared their action plans based on what they learned at the workshop. Louis is interested in being part of an Eastern Colorado RAMP group (HMI’s Regen Ag Mentoring Program) and some of the other ranchers expressed interest in joining him.

The group lingered around after the workshop ended and continued their conversations into the early evening. Post-event surveys showed that there was 100% satisfaction with the workshop and that participants would recommend this training to other. Also 100% of participants said they intended to complete or modify a written grazing plan while 92% said they would change management practices or apply ideas they had learned in the course.

A big thank you to our funders, Martha Records and Rich Rainaldi, for making this event possible. Also thanks to our collaborators: Round River Resource Management, Audubon Rockies, Colorado State Land Board, NRCS, and the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies.

Grow the Growers Report

As all farmers and ranchers know, adaptation is key to success, so this year the Grow the Growers Holistic Management training was not taught in-person but virtually due to the COVID-19 restrictions. This training is a partnership between HMI, the Bernalillo County Open Space, the Agricultura Network, and New Mexico State University (NMSU) Extension.

The goal is to provide training in holistic goal setting, decision testing, holistic financial planning, marketing and business planning and holistic cropping planning to the interns participating in the Grow the Growers Program at the Gutierrez Hubbell House in the South Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico. As in former years, Holistic Management International facilitated three 2-day intensive courses for six of the Grow the Growers Program first year interns.

Jeff Goebel, a Professional Certified Educator with HMI, taught the introduction module in April. This course focused on key Holistic Management planning concepts and principles to help participants manage their farm/ranch for the triple bottom line (social, environmental, and financial sustainability) and more effectively manage resources. Participants experimented with their ability to observe, understand and make decisions based on what they can control. Participants were more talkative than most years which brought about broad conversations

Kirk Gadzia leading a plant identification

Program Roundup

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

of the potential implementations of holistic management practices in farming and ranching, in family situations, in policy and government and in community development. The group reviewed last year’s holistic goal and engaged in a conversation about their values and hopes for this year. The participants learned about on-farm decision testing and practiced with a decision case example. Through these new skills, participants now have the knowledge and tools to improve their ability to not only work with nature and increase productivity but to work together in a group, team or community environment.

In September, Certified Educator Tony McQuail led the participants through the Holistic Cropping Planning Module focusing on the big picture of ecosystem processes and also dialing into the processes at play on the Gutierrez Hubbell House property. During this session the participants received the necessary curriculum to begin a successful holistic crop plan. They began with a review of their Whole Farm Resource Inventory and Holistic Goal and talked about how a holistic crop plan is directly related to and reliant on both of these foundational documents. Tony went over the crop plan and all the steps to creating it while offering personal experiences and insights into managing ecosystem processes, crop rotation and sequencing, and biological monitoring techniques. The two-day workshop resulted in each participant:

• Creating statements for their Holistic Goal that refers to soil health, ecosystem processes or land management

• Creating a Farm/Garden Resource Inventory

• Creating a field map

• Identifying management priorities in the context of their Holistic Goal and selecting management strategies and practices to address the root cause of the management priorities selected.

HMI’s Certified Educator, Ann Adams facilitated the final session in June. The first day was focused on working through the Holistic Financial Planning process and particularly focusing on numerous examples of how to develop a gross profit analysis for a variety of enterprises to determine levels of profitability. Combined with using the Holistic Management decision testing, this process has helped many producers determine the most appropriate enterprise mixes for their farms. Many of the program participants are required to develop proposals for their use of field space in this incubator farm, so this course was timely in helping them develop their proposals. They also discussed how they could set up effective record-keeping systems.

The second day focused on marketing and business planning principles and practices, building off of the financial information that participants had developed from the previous session. In particular, participants worked through developing an elevator speech for their business as well as determining SMART goals for marketing, infrastructure development, and business systems. Participants said they found the templates for business, marketing, and financial planning very helpful in getting them prepared to take their business to the next level.

Thank you to our funder, the Thornburg Foundation, for their support of this program to develop more new farmers in New Mexico.

Key Outcomes from Program % Increase

Overall satisfaction with all three courses 100%

Would you recommend this course to others? 100%

Intent to change management practices as a result of this training 100%

More confident in your ability to make complex decision on your farm/ranch 100%

Increased ability to create a whole farm goal 100% Increased ability to identify healthy soil 100%

Increased ability to increase your farm’s net worth 100%

Increased ability to write a SWOT analysis for your business/enterprises 100%

Increased ability to develop SMART goals 100%

Increased ability to define your target market 100%

Increased ability to develop a business plan for your farm/ranch 100%

Increased ability to improve key resource concerns 100% Increased ability to get the profit you need from your farm 100%

Community Engagement Program

HMI would like to thank the Charleigh Foundation for their support of our Community Engagement Program which we started in 2018. The focus of this program is to help provide outreach support to our alumni so they can better connect to their communities as well as the global regenerative agriculture community as well. We provide this support through farm/ranch tours, developing videos and articles to share through social media, supporting our learning sites, and developing the alumni listings on HMI Community Map. We are pleased to note that we have reached almost 35,000 people in our outreach efforts for our alumni to date.

To view some of the videos we’ve been highlighting as part of this program, go to the links below.

Markegard Family Farm Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/kiOD4QoJxaI

Morris Grassfed Beef Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/yFS21dL

The Conscious Farmer Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/KCC6ElRSK4c

Mesquite Field Farm Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55RhhyOBZ7o

Christine Martin Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/GlcxeJvM3R4

Phillip Mayer Youtube Channel: https://youtu.be/ys-GesHw7MY

Philipp Mayer

New HMI Board Members

HMI is excited to announce our two newest board members, Delane Atcitty and Brian Wehlburg.

Delane lives at the Taos Pueblo in Taos, New Mexico. He is the Executive Director for the Indian Nations Conservation Alliance. He earned a M.S. in Ranch Management and Agribusiness from the King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and a B.A.Sc. in Agribusiness/Agricultural Business Operations at Oklahoma Panhandle State University. He also serves on the board of directors for Navajo Agricultural Products Industry and is the former chair of the Native American Rangeland Advisory Committee for the Society for Range Management. Delane has been drawn to Holistic Management for a number of years, but took his first formal Holistic Management training through HMI’s Whole Farm/Ranch Land Management Training course in 2016 with Kirk Gadzia. Delane is excited about being on HMI’s board and brings his expertise with tribal lands to share with the organization.

Growing More Grass in North Dakota

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

efficient and finish well on grass.”

For the beef that Jed and his family market, the ranch slogan is “They are born on grass, fed on grass and finished on grass.” The finished cattle are taken to Miles City, Montana for processing. “They are USDA inspected, and we have a retail meat license,” says Jed. “We sell beef at a couple farmers’ markets and also direct market out of our own freezer at home. We are developing a loyal customer base, and the COVID-19 situation actually helped out with that, because people didn’t want to go to the grocery store. This probably helped everyone’s direct market sales.

“Regarding the grass fed beef, we also want people to know why we raise grass fed animals. The meat is simply a byproduct of what we are doing here, growing grass and improving the soil. We want people to understand the whole picture, beyond just the fact that these cattle are grass fed. We want them to know why they should be buying into the regenerative concept versus just the grass fed concept. The healthier we can make our soil, the more nutrient dense the forage and the beef produced. There is some science and research being done on that right now.”

Family-Friendly Ranching

The whole Rider family is involved with the ranch. “Our kids are age 16, 14, and 12. They all have the ability to do the same jobs that I do, but

Brian lives on Kindee Valley Farm in New South Wales, Australia and is a full-time Holistic Management Educator through Inside Outside Management www. insideoutsidemgt.com.au. He works with his partner Kerry and has three children. Brian was born in Zimbabwe and attended a week-long workshop run by Allan while trying to find answers for their wildlife, cattle and cropping business. Brian then attended HMI’s educator training at the Africa Center for Holistic Management in late 1990s. He then immigrated to Australia in 2000 and started his training business with fellow educator Helen Lewis. He has delivered Holistic Management training across Australia and in New Zealand, including the nationally accredited Diploma in Holistic Management and now the Regenerative Ag degree run through Southern Cross University. Brian is excited to be on the HMI board and to be part of a like-minded team as HMI works on the cutting edge of new programs.

Welcome, Delane and Brian!

my jobs (and our ranch practices) are simple enough that anybody can do them,” says Jed. “The bigger farms and corporate operations are a lot more difficult for kids to become involved. They don’t want the kids working with chemicals or big, expensive equipment.

“If something happened to me, my kids could do my jobs and I think this is a more positive model for the next generation versus 20,000 acres of land and $5 million worth of equipment. Even if it were given to a kid, what’s he going to do with it, or even want to? The kid is also inheriting a degraded resource.

“Even though I did most of the planning for our new grazing system, my kids have pretty much built it. It’s been a team effort and we are still working toward our goals. Sustainable is the buzz word but I don’t want to be sustainable yet; I don’t want to just sustain what I’ve got. It’s still very much a work in progress. I want our ranch to get to the point where it is sustainable, but I don’t know what that point is. It may be several generations from now, but I want at some point for our place to get to where it can actually be sustainable.

“If I need to take something from the soil, I want enough there in the ‘bank’ to be able to do it. If there’s only two percent organic matter, there’s not much to offer. If I have 10% and I need to temporarily take from my biological bank to transfer to my financial bank, I can do it. I know I can definitely put it back. In that situation, if times are tough, you’ve given yourself that much resilience.”

Delane Atcitty

Brian Wehlburg

life from running the ranch was more difficult as we were getting older,” says Randy. “We tested that decision toward our holistic goal. We set up the lease arrangement so we could go back to the ranch. There is also a stipulation in the rental agreement that we talk about the plans for the coming year. I really enjoy that experience, but I also stay out of their way. They always know they can call me. They use me as a sounding board during that meeting.”

One of the ways that Randy decided to give back was to become a Certified Educator. “The Certified Educator Training Program was awesome and it was hard work,” says Randy. “I hadn’t been a student for years, but I put a lot of hours into completing my learning plan and visiting other farms. Terry Gompert was the main instructor and I had Roland Kroos as my mentor—he was excellent with his ranching consulting background. I went on monitoring trips with him to learn how to do that work. It was a real hands on experience. I also got to assist with classes in Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana and Florida. Whenever we did classes, we had people who really wanted to learn. That’s what’s exciting about this work—the students and what they bring to the class.”

When asked why Randy donates to HMI, he talks about the need for change in how farming is being done and how HMI helps provide training for those who want to learn a different way. “I really think that conventional farming is going the wrong way,” says Randy. “It’s just a mess what we are doing with our soils. But I see people trying to do new things and it works. They have better finances and better land. There’s also a lot of positive things going on all over the world. We know how to

fix the problems, but we just need to get the word out. We all want the same thing—clean water and air, happy families and a little extra cash in our pocket. I see that when people write their holistic goal—we have common values. Holistic Management is the best way I know to help improve management. I use the weak link test in our business every day.

“When you start building a few fences and see the land responding that’s when you want to do more. Then you need to start looking at the different enterprises and getting clear about the different production decisions and which ones make the most sense financially. For example, I really liked putting up hay, but I realized it wasn’t the right thing to do for me. I had to learn how to hay differently. I decided to use corn stalks or I bought in hay. I also worked with a neighbor and we would summer graze on my place with his animals and then we’d graze the animals on his place in the winter. In that way we developed a partnership. In the end it comes down to creativity. The time you spend in thinking is so important.

“I think the social part is the hardest part for most families. We can fix the land and finances, but fixing our families and changing the way we think is the hardest part. The farm tours and looking at what other people are doing is one way to help people change. But, you have to be careful because it’s not a cookie cutter process. As a consultant, we can teach these principles, but we can’t tell them step by step how to do it. A lot of people want me to make the grazing plan and tell them when to move the animals. They have to understand that they have to change and adapt. You can’t teach that. You have to hold them responsible. I understand because I wanted a recipe too.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16

eat meat myself, for a variety of reasons, all personal—I’ve actually been vegan for almost five years, and I don’t expect everyone to choose that way of eating. But I do hope more people engage in their local food systems and take the time to learn where their food comes from, who their purchases support, how the animals they eat are raised and how the farmers/ranchers they buy from are working to increase the organic matter in the soil and steward the land they are managing. In the Holistic Management framework all decisions are tested against your values using your holistic goal as a guide. For me, my holistic goal includes a lot about land health and

human health. And even though I won’t be eating it myself, to be able to help provide sustainable and intentionally raised poultry meat as a healthy and nutrient rich food to feed my community is something I can get behind.

Andrea showed up at my door a few days later with my CSA veggies, a chicken as a gift for helping with the processing and a few more chickens I purchased to gift to some friends. Food has a special way of bringing people together and I want to encourage more dialog about regenerative food systems.

Social change starts at the dinner table and I am thankful to be breaking bread with people who are learning and questioning and

exploring how their food decisions impact their own health, the health of our planet, and of our communities.

This was the first of what I hope to be many experiences connecting young farmers with land owners in the central New Mexico region and beyond through the Urban Edge Program.

Stephanie Von Ancken is HMI’s Program Manager. She is passionate about environmental justice and regenerative farming as a solution to transforming our food system and addressing climate change.

Reader’s Forum

Certified Educators

The following Certified Educators listed have been trained to teach and coach individuals in Holistic Management. On a yearly basis, Certified Educators renew their agreement to be affiliated with HMI. This agreement requires their commitment to practice Holistic Management in their own lives and to seek out opportunities for staying current with the latest developments in Holistic Management.

UNITED STATES

Kirk Gadzia

Bernalillo 505/263-8677 (c) • kirk@rmsgadzia.com

Jeff Goebel Belen

541/610-7084 • goebel@aboutlistening.com

* Katherine Napper-Ottmers

Las Vegas 505/225-6481 • katherineottmers@icloud.com NEW YORK

* Erica Frenay

Brooktondale 607/342-3771 (c) info@shelterbeltfarm.com

Guy Glosson Snyder 806/237-2554

glosson@caprock-spur.com

Kathy Harris

Holistic Management International Dallas/Fort Worth 214/417-6583

kathyh@holisticmanagement.org

Tracy Litle Orange Grove 361/537-3417 (c) tjlitle@hotmail.com

Peggy Maddox

CALIFORNIA

* Lee Altier College of Agriculture, CSU Chico 530/636-2525 • laltier@csuchico.edu

Owen Hablutzel Los Angeles 310/567-6862 go2owen@gmail.com

Richard King Petaluma 707/217-2308 (c) rking1675@gmail.com

Doniga Markegard

Half Moon Bay 650/670-7984 Doniga@markegardfamily.com

* Kelly Mulville Paicines 707/431-8060 • kmulville@gmail.com

Don Nelson Red Bluff 208/301-5066 • nelson-don1@hotmail.com

Rob Rutherford San Luis Obispo 805/550-4858 (c) robtrutherford@gmail.com

COLORADO

* Joel Benson Buena Vista 719/221-1547 joel@paratuinstitute.com

Cindy Dvergsten

Dolores 970/882-4222 • wnc@gobrainstorm.net

Tim McGaffic

Dolores 808/936-5749 • tim@timmcgaffic.com

* Katie Belle Miller Calhan 970/310-0852 heritagebellefarms@gmail.com

KANSAS

William Casey

Erie 620/ 423-2842 bill.caseyag@gmail.com

MICHIGAN

Larry Dyer Petoskey 231/881-2784 (c) ldyer3913@gmail.com

MISSISSIPPI

* Preston Sullivan Meadville 601/384-5310 (h) 601/835-6124 (c) prestons@telepak.net

MONTANA

Roland Kroos Bozeman 406/581-3038 (c) • kroosing@msn.com

* Cliff Montagne Montana State University Bozeman 406/599-7755 (c) • montagne@montana.edu

NEBRASKA

* Paul Swanson Hastings 402/463-8507 • 402/705-1241 (c) pswanson3@unl.edu

Ralph Tate Papillion 402/250-8981 (c) • tater2d2@cox.net

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Seth Wilner Newport 603/863-9200 (w) seth.wilner@unh.edu

NEW MEXICO

Ann Adams Holistic Management International Albuquerque 505/842-5252 ext 5 anna@holisticmanagement.org

Christina Allday-Bondy Edgewood 512/658-2051 christina.alldaybondy@gmail.com

AUSTRALIA

Judi Earl Coolatai, NSW 61-409-151-969 judi_earl@bigpond.com

Graeme Hand Franklin, Tasmania 61-4-1853-2130 • graemehand9@gmail.com

Dick Richardson Balhannah, SA 61-4-2906-9001 dick@dickrichardson.com.au

* Jason Virtue Cooran QLD 61-4-27 199 766 Jason@landlifeeducation.com.au

Brian Wehlburg

Kindee NSW 61-0408-704-431 brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au

CANADA

Don Campbell Meadow Lake, SK 306-236-6088 doncampbell@sasktel.net

* Craig Leggett Chestertown 518/491-1979 • craigrleggett@gmail.com

Elizabeth Marks

Chatham 518/567-9476 (c) elizabeth_marks@hotmail.com

Phillip Metzger Norwich 607/316-4182 • pmetzger17@gmail.com

NORTH DAKOTA

* Joshua Dukart

Hazen 701/870-1184 • joshua_dukart@yahoo.com

OREGON

Angela Boudro

Central Point 541/ 890-4014 • angelaboudro@gmail.com

SOUTH DAKOTA

* Randal Holmquist

Mitchell 605/730-0550 • randy@heartlandtanks.com

TEXAS

* Lisa Bellows

North Central Texas College

Gainesville 940/736-3996 (c) • lbellows@nctc.edu

Deborah Clark

Henrietta 940/328-5542 deborah@birdwellandclarkranch.com

Blain Hjertaas Redvers, SK 306/452-7723 • bhjer@sasktel.net

Brian Luce Ponoka, AB 403/783-6518 lucends@cciwireless.ca

Tony McQuail Lucknow, ON 519/528-2493 tonymcquail@gmail.com

Kelly Sidoryk Blackroot, AB 780/872-2585 (c) kelly.sidoryk@gmail.com

FINLAND

Tuomas Mattila Pusula 358-407432412 tuomas.j.mattila@gmail.com

NAMIBIA

Usiel Seuakouje Kandjii Windhoek 264-812840426 kandjiiu@gmail.com

Hermleigh 325/226-3042 (c) westgift@hughes.net

* CD Pounds Fruitvale 214/568-3377 • cdpounds@live.com

Peggy Sechrist Fredericksburg 830/456-5587 (c) peggysechrist@gmail.com

WASHINGTON DC Christine C. Jost Washington DC 773/706-2705 • christinejost42@gmail.com

WISCONSIN

* Larry Johnson Madison 608/665-3835 • larrystillpointfarm@gmail.com

* Laura Paine Columbus 608/338-9039 (c) • lkpaine@gmail.com

For more information about or application forms for the HMI’s Certified Educator Training Programs, contact Ann Adams or visit our website: www.holisticmanagement.org.

* Colin Nott

Windhoek

264-81-2418778 (c) canott@iafrica.com.na

Wiebke Volkmann

Windhoek 264-81-127-0081 wiebke@afol.com.na

NEW ZEALAND

* John King Christchurch 64-276-737-885 john@succession.co.nz

SOUTH AFRICA

Wayne Knight

Mokopane +27-82-805-3274 (c) wayne@theknights.za.net

Jozua Lambrechts

Somerset West, Western Cape +27-83-310-1940 • jozua@websurf.co.za

* Ian Mitchell-Innes

Ladysmith, Kwa-Zulu Natal +27-83-262-9030 ian@mitchell-innes.co.za

These associate educators provide educational services to their communities and peer groups.

Twin Mountain Fence Solar Energizer (S300)

Introducing our most powerful, compact solar energizer, the S300. The S300 is a 30-mile, 3 joule, solar energizer. Ideal for most livestock. AC adapter is included for easy battery recharging. Built-in lightning protection and “Power on Demand.”

Featuring the Twin Mountain Fence 3-year guarantee, including lightning.

Order online and receive a FREE

5VM fence tester! ($28.50 value)

Use Code HM20 at checkout!

Resource Management Services, LLC

Kirk L. Gadzia, Certified Educator

PO Box 1100

Bernalillo, NM 87004

505-263-8677

kirk@rmsgadzia.com www.rmsgadzia.com

Pasture Scene Investigation

How can RMS, LLC help you?

On-Site Consulting: All aspects of holistic management, including financial, ecological and human resources.

Training Events: Regularly scheduled and customized training sessions provided in a variety of locations.

Ongoing Support: Follow-up training sessions and access to continued learning opportunities and developments.

Land Health Monitoring: Biological monitoring of rangeland and riparian ecosystem health.

Property Assessment: Land health and productivity assessment with recommended solutions.

CORRAL DESIGNS

CORRAL DESIGNS

Williams”

Marketing & Stockmanship

McConnell & Tina Williams

By World Famous Dr. Grandin

The wide curved Lane makes filling the crowding tub easy. Includes detailed drawings for loading ramp, V chute, round crowd pen, dip vat, gates and hinges. Plus cell center layouts and layouts compatible with electronic sorting systems. Articles on cattle behavior. 27 corral layouts. $55. Low Stress Cattle Handling Video $59. Send checks/money order to:

Includes detailed drawings for loading ramp, V chute, round crowd pen, dip vat, gates and hinges. Plus cell center layouts and layouts compatible with electronic sorting systems. Articles on cattle behavior. 27 corral layouts. $55.

GRANDIN LIVESTOCK SYSTEMS

2918 Silver Plume Dr., Unit C-3 Fort Collins, CO 80526 970/229-0703

www.grandin.com

Holistic Management® Educator

Assisting people with:

stockmanship can make your livestock handling experiences how livestock marketing based on today’s price (no crystal ball) can help you realize

• Land health assessment

• Growing soil health & biodiversity

May 25-26 — 2 Day Stockmanship only, Dickinson, ND

• Problem solving & creativity

• Planning complex situations holistically

May 30-June 1 — 3 Day Marketing/ Stockmanship, Wawota, SK

• Monitorng to stay on course

• Building consensus

Coming also to Alberta, Wyoming, and Iowa!

• Finding blind spots

• Sound policy development

• Improving quality of life

Certifications with HMI, SI, SRM, Calif. BOF INDIVIDUALS, GROUPS OR WORKSHOPS (707) 217-2308 cell or (707) 769-1490

www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com 417-327-6500

rking1675@gmail.com

By World Famous Dr. Grandin Originator of Curved Ranch Corrals

“Bud Williams” Livestock Marketing & Proper Stockmanship

with Richard McConnell & Tina Williams

Learn how good stockmanship can make your livestock handling experiences enjoyable, easier, and more profitable and how livestock marketing based on today’s price (no crystal ball) can help you realize your profit goals.

We are considering offering on-line trainings as we aren’t able to travel now.

Give us a call if you are interested!

"My son and I sorted, loaded and delivered 33 feeder calves Saturday. Brian said we should send you guys a Thank You Note each time we handle cattle. This was the smoothest and easiest it’s ever gone. Price was good too. The only people who don’t like this method are the folks who have never taken the time to learn and try." — Ben

www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com

417-327-6500

™ Proper Livestock Marketing

™ Smile and Mean it: the Bud & Eunice Williams Story

™ Stockdogs: Partners and Friends

• User-friendly excel-based interface

• Let the computer do the math while you plan

• Easy SAU and ADA calculations

• Account for multiple herds

• Grazing Manual hyperlinks

• Livestock and Land Performance Worksheet

• And many more features

“This

Rangeland can provide an abundance of plant varieties for livestock nutrition. But what about the more “developed” pastures and hay meadows? Soils tests from all types of livestock producers show 95+% of all such soils do not have the correct nutrient levels to provide the best nutrition for livestock. You can change that! Choose an area, split it and soil test both sides separately. Test your hay or forage from both sides too. Treat one side as normal. On the other side, correct the fertility based on soil tests using the Kinsey/Albrecht fertility program.

Test feed quality from both sides again next year. Take soil tests again and treat accordingly. Depending on nutrients requirements it may take two or three years to prove most profitable. Test each year and, as fertility needs are met, feed value and yield tend to increase for all three years.

Increased yields will more than pay for the investment with increased feed quality as a bonus. Prove it for yourself!

please send address corrections before moving so that we do not incur unnecessary postal fees

DEVELOPMENT CORNER

Randy Holmquist

Randy Holmquist is a third generation rancher located in south central South Dakota. He and his wife, Julie, have raised seven children and have 18 grandchildren. Randy also owns Heartland Tanks and Supply, a water tank business serving ranchers as far away as Texas.

“We get large mining tires from around the country and process them into water tanks,” says Randy. “We have dealers in several states. I’ve been investing in the business, and with highly skilled employees I have the time to give back and help mentor.”

As a Holistic Management® Certified Educator, Randy knows the importance of training and education. He’s provided mentoring and training support through the South Dakota Grassland Coalition, ranch tours, and teaching classes for the Farm Beginnings program through the Dakota Rural Action. Now that he is officially retired from ranching, he’s renting his ranch out to a young couple that is ranching holistically. “I wanted to find someone from the local community,” says Randy. “I don’t plan on selling the ranch. I’ve really enjoyed working with young people and I appreciate their enthusiasm. They are very open to Holistic Management because they don’t have to unlearn conventional practices that fail the triple bottom line.”

Randy said he was always interested in plants and grass identification and attended range camps and ranch tours when he was

younger. He was always drawn to learning more about grazing. In fact, he was drawn to Holistic Management because of the grazing planning. He didn’t really understand the holism component at first because of that focus.

Then Randy took some classes from Certified Educator Terry Gompert. That’s when it really made sense,” says Randy. “He was such an enthusiastic teacher and had so much experience to share.” When Terry taught a Certified Educator group, Randy decided to train to be a Certified Educator.

Randy also began experimenting with different grazing practices. “I was trying mob grazing and moved the animals six to nine times a day,” says Randy. “I experimented with one million pounds/acre and learned that recovery was really important. The trampling was amazing and it really increased the plant diversity. We had two to three grass species and then eventually it tripled the amount of species in areas where land had been farmed before. Where we had used the holistic planned grazing it started looking more like the native pastures.

“Later on, when I really understood the financial and land planning and how it all worked together, everything started to make more sense. Once you start putting your planning together as a whole, it really works. It’s awkward at first, but then it becomes second nature. It doesn’t matter if you are managing land or owning land; it can be used anywhere. I think I’m just scratching the surface as we learn to manage holistically.

“What I’ve learned through the years is that each farm is different, but the principles are the same. Because there are so many variables and the land has so much complexity, how you apply the principles and practices is different. That’s why scientific studies are so hard to do because there is too much complexity.”

But Randy has seen people really be able to create the life they want by using Holistic Management. “Once they create their holistic goal, they really understand their true north and start using that to test decisions,” says Randy. “They quit doing things they did before because they realize how it’s taking them away from their goal.”

Randy can speak from experience on that because the decision to quit ranching (which he had done for 45 years) and invest in his Heartland Tank business was a difficult decision. “But, the quality of

Randy Holmquist