My Quarterly Report

Here is my quarterly report that will one day show up on the Quivira Coalition's website: http://quiviracoalition.org/  

The Earth has a habit of rotating too fast.  I find myself nearing the three-month mark here at the San Juan Ranch.  It is almost a cliché to say time has passed too quickly, but in many ways it has and on other days it feels like the hours of the day are not moving fast enough.  Here at the end of May, the ranch is transitioning out of calving into the growing season.  Our spring weather, as I understand it, is fairly different than last year: less wind, more precipitation, but higher temperatures.  The snow has melted from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the brush is leafing out.  I am often in awe of this high desert plateau environment I find myself in, and how different this place is from where I was four months ago—the southern Appalachian Mountains. 

Just the other night I was driving back into the San Luis Valley from New Mexico.  As I crossed the state line and drove further north on US-285, I had that “coming home” feeling, comforted by the mountains as if they were arms spread open wide.  Valleys have a way of evoking “I’m home” for me.  I have lived in two different valleys before the San Luis, growing up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and attending college in the Swannanoa Valley of North Carolina.  I feel privileged to now have the unique opportunity to live and work with George and Julie in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.

The greatest challenge I have faced so far at San Juan Ranch is the fact that I uprooted myself from the comfort of the ol’ ridge and valley of the East and plopped myself in an intermountain high desert plateau.  Raising cattle here is a bit different.  The word ranch does not just mean you raise livestock; it also holds a cultural dimension that has roots going back generations.  My Eastern education did not prepare me for many elements of Western culture; this is one of the many reasons I was drawn to this apprenticeship.   

I expected and continue to expect this apprenticeship to challenge me.  The first challenge was making the leap across the country from “home.”  Learning how to survive in an arid environment was next: drinking three liters - at minimum - of water a day, seeing my natural curls disappear with the lack of humidity, and feeling the effects of dry air on my skin.  Many of my predicted challenges are connected with raising cattle in this place: dealing with a finite water source, an 80-day growing season, weather extremes, working for a small business, immersing myself into a new team, and learning the habits of a new cow herd. 

The unexpected has also been my teacher.  In my last position, I learned the most from walking into a field where something was going wrong or at least needed to be righted.  These were opportunities to test decision making skills, and allow past experience to assist in correcting the current situation, and add to my managerial toolbox.  There is also the unexpected that nature gifts to us each day.  It is the toad by the spring, the sunset, and the small white flower blooming amidst the grasses.   

I am grateful that this apprenticeship overlapped with Amy Wright’s time at the ranch.  My ability to blend into George and Julie’s busy life was eased by her presence. Her knowledge of the ranch’s daily chores and typical ways of going about tasks helped me catch on quickly.  Her insights about working and living with George and Julie have been critical to my transition.  When I was unsure of what to do next, she lent direction and kept me going and aided in my ability to think of the “big picture” at hand.  We also began a friendship that only has room to grow. 

Amy not only gave me advice, she put me up on a saddle and introduced me to moving cattle on horseback.  My prior experience was all on foot.   I understood where to put myself in relation to a cow or herd, and how to apply pressure and work off the shoulder, but on horseback, I felt out of place, uncertain.  Before March, I had very little horse experience; while I spent my share of time mucking stalls at a friend’s stables, I never had much chance or drive to ride.  After interviewing for this position, I convinced myself that since I was very comfortable with cattle, I certainly would be fine around horses.  I was half right.  Amy introduced the horses to me in a slow and deliberate way.  I became comfortable approaching them in the field and eventually learning how to saddle them.  Our first free-enough day, she put me up on Old Mighty.  I look back now and can see that my comfort around horses has grown exponentially.  After three months of careful attention, I find that I can go wrangle the horses, saddle, and ride out into the sunrise to go move cattle.  I still have a long way to go, but the horse and I are communicating better and there is less stress and frustration between us. 

Amy guided me through basic horse care and riding and our daily ranch schedule. She also left me with a good deal of unexpected insights, insights that reach beyond day-to-day ranching activities and towards growing into a young adult in agriculture.  Though neither of us quite knows where we will be a few years down the road, we have been able to share our visions and concerns with each other.  We have discussed how to intertwine other life goals with an agricultural operation, while still achieving each dream.  I had a chance to watch and give Amy some input during a Holistic Goal update.  She then was able to do the same during the creation of my Goal.   

Amy has now moved on and we are all still adjusting to a three person team. I have stepped up to fill some of her roles and taken over tasks she oversaw: thinking further ahead in grazing management, developing a more detailed mental checklist for each project we embark upon, and devising strategies for detailed record keeping.  This new level of engagement will continue to grow and help me down the line as a more adaptive land manager. 

Some of the skills I have had a chance to improve upon include the art of barbed wire fencing, treating sick calves with natural treatments, and low stress livestock techniques.  Where I come from few fences are constructed with barbed wire.  One day, before I had had a chance to work with barbed wire, George pulled out the fence stretcher.  I told him that I had never used one before. His response was, “Don’t you all have fences?”  Well, yes, but it so happens that the fences I have repaired were never barbed.  There is an art to constructing any long-lasting fence, but barbed wire has an extra finesse to it.   Maybe I see it this way because this is the first time I have worked with the wire, but just like building high-tensile fence lines there is a technique, an art.  It is important to become accustomed to the stresses a wire can endure.  Some of the wire around the ranch harkens back to the turn of the twentieth century and is fragile, unlike the new wire we use to mend fence breaks.  The stretcher is used to pull the broken ends towards each other, so that you can form loops on both ends to attach a new strand of wire.  The stretcher is tightened, the two wire ends draw nearer to each other.  Holding this tension with the stretcher, the new wire is looped through the other end of the broken wire and is curled around itself.  This curling action is done with smooth and guiding movements around the main wire.  The tail of the wire should be tightly twirled about.  When tension is released the wire binds to itself leaving behind a tight fence with little slack. 

Treating sick calves was something new to me this season. The last herd I helped oversee did not have many health issues, so there was little chance to learn about treatment options.  Honing my ability to health-check cows and calves started quickly in late March with the beginning of calving season.  George and Julie introduced me to some natural remedies for common calf illnesses.  Since the ranch is Certified Organic, we attempt to minimize our use of antibiotics in treating illnesses.  There are several natural or alternative treatments that are as effective as penicillin and other antibiotics.  Some of the treatments are as simple as organic yogurt placed in the mouth of a calf.  The yogurt acts as a probiotic, encouraging the growth of healthy microorganisms.  We also use a drench remedy suggested by Pat Coleby in her Natural Cattle Care text that is good for certain digestive illnesses.  The drench is made up of one part powdered dolomite (calcium magnesium carbonate) and one part vitamin C, diluted in a warm water solution.   Ninety percent of the time the drench is effective at treating the calf’s scours or bloat, and allows the calf to use its own immune system to overcome the illness.  If a calf is not doing well with the alternative treatments we will use antibiotics as a last resort, which removes the calf from Organic status.  Overall George and Julie’s herd is very healthy and we did not have to use antibiotics too often this year. I hope in the coming months to spend some more time looking into natural cattle health. 

Although I came into this apprenticeship with good exposure to low-stress livestock techniques, all of my experience had been with one herd and one farm.  The transition over the past three months has been filled with observing and learning what George knows and uses in the field and corral.  I have weathered the transition well, and now have a better perspective of what I can improve upon when moving cattle on foot or horse. 

I look forward to the coming months.  I hope to start a monitoring project that focuses on how weeds are affected by grazing.  I will continue cultivating my Holistic Goal, and intertwine this with my developing Land Ethic.  I wish to continue some personal inquires into soil biota, reading 19^th century literature, and sketching this majestic landscape. While hoping to focus on all of these areas, I also will continue to explore what ranching is in today’s context and attempt to wrap my head around the subtle Western culture surrounding me.  The next few months will be filled with long and hot days, but within those, much enriching on-the-ground-learning will occur between George, Julie, the land, and me.