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Nothing of any particular importance

I'll be up-front, there is nothing really very important in this blog post.  Just a smattering of thoughts on a Monday night.

Kelly, our intern, finished up here about three weeks ago.  She was a good hand – willing and capable to try something new, self-motivated to get done what needed to be done, and asked questions when she needed to.  She's going places, people.  Especially if the rest of her generation is stuck watching the VMA's and using their student loan funds to buy the iPhone 5S.  I'd wish her good luck, but she makes her own luck.  Thanks for the help, Kelly.

It has been a dry summer.  We had below-normal temps so it sort of muted the effect of the lack of rain.  When it finally heated up in late August, it took about 12 hours for the crops to start showing stress.  We have had about 1.5" of rain the past two days, which was very welcome.  It would have been even more welcome about two weeks ago, but the row crops (corn and soybeans) should still do OK.  The wheat crop was excellent.  I had one field of spring wheat that yielded 75 bushels per acre.  I can take no credit, for it was God and the Hubers that did the work.

I'm on Twitter now.  More into "following" than being "followed" though.  I did it to get more up-to-the-minute information on the commodity markets.  I follow several market analysts, news outlets, and fellow farmers and ranchers.  I actually like it quite a bit better than Facebook…it feels more business-like.  Facebook seems to lean more towards the "social" in social network, demonstrated by the absolute dominance of stay-at-home-moms who participate in it.  I don't want to take anything away from that aspect…the right tool for the right job, that's all.  Twitter appears to be more flexible regarding what sort of information your feed contains.  If you want to see who I follow (I don't really tweet anything, so don't follow me for that) my handle is @rockhillsranch.  Our website is still the best place to stay up-to-date on ranch happenings.

We gave the fall vaccinations to the calves last week.  It went very smoothly.  The calves are doing great – healthy and gaining weight.  I'm more excited about this calf crop than in past years, because I am getting to see the results of some specific breeding choices I made last year.  Some calves were sired by more maternal sires, and others by more terminal sires.  The maternal ones will be sorted and some kept for breeding stock; the terminal cattle will all be destined for the food chain.  We're planning to own some of each all the way to slaughter in order to compare and contrast these breeding decisions.  Genetic progress through selection is excruciatingly slow. It takes years to truly evaluate genetic direction, particularly in the maternal realm.  And that is where I am most interested in making improvements.

The pheasant population is down this year.  I'm not a game biologist but I would guess the late spring didn't help much.  Statewide, I think the counts are down something like 64%.  The past ten years have been excellent, so I guess it was time for a correction (for all you technical market analyst types, I'm hoping this level of support holds.  This market is way oversold.  Looking for a restest of the previous high next year.)  So it will be a little bit tougher to fill limits come October.  I also had my ego crippled by the utter chaos that is the food plots.  I tried something new and the weeds won.  Pheasants like weeds, thankfully.  It just isn't the crop I was hoping to raise.  I have seen a lot of songbirds enjoying the sunflowers that were part of the mix, so that's a good sign I guess.

I'm always trying to think of interesting things to write about here.  If you have any questions about how or what we do on the ranch, I'd be happy to answer them in a post.  Or maybe you'd like our "official company policy" (aka my opinion) on some hot environmental, animal welfare, property rights, land use, or food saftey topic.  Drop me an email at rockhillsranch@gmail.com and I'll come up with something.

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Drinking from a fire hose

On Monday I drove a van load of people (including Dad and Kelly) to the Bismark area to attend a grazing tour.  It was part of the three-day Grassfed Exchange Conference happening this week in Bismark.  We toured two ranches that are progressive in their grazing and cropping systems.  Several speakers, in addition to the ranchers themselves, spoke about a variety of subjects.

We're not really into the grassfed thing.  Not that we are opposed to it, rather we just aren't set up for it.  Regardless, the information presented was outstanding.

There was a lot of knowledge present at the tour.  Seed selection, forage management, carbon to nitrogren ratios, fungi/bacterial interactions, animal performance and management, soil health, insects, chickens, winter feeding options, pH of cow urine…the list just went on and on.  If the 100 degree August day didn't fry my brain, the information overload took care of whatever was left.

I don't yet know how to apply about 85% of what I learned…it was more of an introduction to new ideas than anything.  However, here are a few takeaways I had:

– Grass finishing takes more than just some grass and a critter.  It takes skill in animal selection, forage management, and animal management.  Not to take away anything from conventional feedlot managers, but it appears to me that grass finishing requires a higher level of skill regarding feed management due to the variability present in a grassland environment.  Corn is corn, no matter if it is July or January.  Forages change not just season to season, but hour to hour.

– Nature has purpose.  Gabe Brown, whose ranch we toured, spoke about his diverse cover crop mixes (16 or more different species planted in a field at the same time).  He is basically trying to mimic native rangeland by planting many different crops at once in order to feed the variety of below-ground soil bugs.  This is what creates healthy soil.  When asked about weeds, he said he doesn't mind them at all.  He figures weeds are nature's way of telling him "hey, you forgot something!" 

– It's complicated.  I heard different people say we should be measuring soil fungi levels, soil organic material, plant brix levels, cow urine or dung pH (depending on who you ask), water infiltration rate, soil biology levels, carbon:nitorgen ratio, and soil nutrient levels.  I think I forgot some too.  That's in addition to what I'm already measuring: rainfall, forage production, ground cover, and plant species diversity.  How does anyone keep track of all that, much less manage for it?  These are all probably worthwhile things to measure.  I find it interesting that we as humans like to find that "one thing" that seems drives everything else and then tinker with it…until we find the next "one thing." 

I came away with a renewed appreciaton for the importance of diversity in our range ecosystem.  What can I do to maintain and/or improve diversity?  It sounds counterintuitive, but I think by working on creating a diverse landscape, it makes my management simpler.  Nature can manage the complexities rather well when we get out of the way it seems.  That doesn't mean leaving it alone – it just means playing by the rules.

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Ups and downs

Ranching sure has its ups and downs.

Yesterday I got the phone call no cattle man wants to get. 

“Your cows are out in [the neighbor’s] soybeans.”

Good golly.  I had just moved them into a new pasture earlier that day. What could possibly cause them to get out. A broken gate, that’s what.   I had driven through that gate three times the day before and it was fine then. The broken gate was the result of summer lovin’, bovine style.  Looks like they bunched in a corner fighting flies, while the bulls we’re trying to put the moves on hot cows. It’s less than romantic. And rather hard on wire gates, and subsequently soybean fields.  What’s worse, the only time our cows seem to get out is when they are next to this guy’s fields. I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick than have to call him again to tell him my cows stomped on his crops.  The only positive thing I could glean from the incident was being thankful it was soybeans and not seven foot tall corn. 

But ranching also has its ups.  Like tonight. Tonight I ate a home-raised steak for supper. That’s all.   Just a steak.  And some toast I guess. It was that good.   I didn’t want to ruin it with any other food. I have had the good fortune to eat a $85 filet Mignon (and not have to pay for it).  This steak was not quite worth $85, but neither was the filet.  No food is worth 85 bucks. But this steak I grilled tonight,  it was amazing. I was going to take a picture of it’s perfect gradient of caramelized outer decadence turning to 155-degree juicy medium-doneness in the middle (it was 145 when I took it off the grill) flanked by two pieces of diagonally-sliced buttered toast and a big, cold glass of milk… but I ate it. All of it.  It was not just a meal, it was an experience.  And I got to share it with my wife and kids. I feel bad for them,  because some day we will be at the supper table and I’ll be telling them, “kids, this would be an $85 meal in town so you better enjoy it. And no you can NOT have ketchup on your steak!”