Icon awesome-facebook-square
Group 554
Categories
Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

Pasture Lost & Found

If you take care of the land, the land will take care of you. It’s a familiar sentiment that stirs feelings of pride and heritage in most farmers and ranchers. It takes an ironic twist though, when we discover – and subsequently have to deal with – the valuable, worthless, and downright weird artifacts and garbage that appear on our pastures and farmland.

Most of our fields are a couple hundred kilometres from the nearest Tim Horton’s, which helps filter out some riff-raff, yet even so we regularly end up dealing with other people’s junk. For others who live along busier corridors, they have found everything from abandoned camper trailers, tires and clothing, to actual people tenting in their pastures. Other unique findings reported include undetonated explosives, a bathtub full of cement, household remote controls, and a couple risqué items I don’t think can be printed in a newspaper.

After cleaning up after everyone else, it would be nice to find the long-lost phones, pocket knives, and fencing pliers we’ve deposited ourselves over the years but we’re still looking.

Balloons & Boots. Helium balloons are a classic pasture find. Where do they come from? How far have they travelled? Watching a balloon waft across a meadow is enough to create confusion among man and beast alike. Our most recent find was a balloon that said “You’re #1!” and while I appreciate the sentiment, the original possessor obviously wasn’t great at picking up after themselves. Another very common pasture find is assorted footwear, mostly in singles. I’ve recovered fairly new footwear in some remote and untraveled spots. These aren’t settler’s artifacts; these are modern day shoes and boots that warrant an explanation. Did a shoe get tossed out of someone’s saddle bag? Did it fall right off someone’s foot and they somehow didn’t notice? Did it come out of the sky? Or were people trespassing and littering?

Obscure trinkets and treasures. Some pasture finds appear to be potentially lucrative. One person found a safe that had been stolen from a small-town watering hole. Thieves apparently dumped it out and it tumbled to the bottom of a coulee. The landowners were left with a mess to clean up and a trail of six or seven loonies for their trouble. Another person came across a jewelry box wrapped in grocery bags, the owner and origin which remains a mystery. Yet another reported discovering “treasure” of a different sort, this time in some purchased bales. Imagine the farmers’ surprise when they found their cows munching on someone’s collection of R-rated magazines during winter feeding. What’s the relative feed value of Playboy magazine, anyway?

Trash. This is the final, largest, and most frustrating category. Farmers find everything from seemingly benign trash like pizza boxes and beer cases to truckloads of construction waste. It takes time, energy, and money to clear these items out. A broken bottle can start a fire, a pile of shingles or batteries can sicken cattle and cause death. I once found a mountain of moving boxes along our road allowance. It took me (plus two toddlers and an infant) a couple trips to pick and dispose of the garbage. Were the litterers too lazy to take it to the dump? Too cheap? Did they really not think about someone dealing with the consequences? Or did they drive three miles out of town, turn down a dirt road, dump out their trash and simply not care?

Our land is an investment, and something we take pride in. As a rancher, I feel like it’s an expensive but important responsibility to manage ecosystems, filter water, provide habitat, conserve biodiversity, and sequester carbon – all things that benefit society. Society can remember something too – our fields are not a garbage dump. Someone has to deal with your sh…belongings, when you won’t.

Categories
Beef & Business Critters & Kids Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

Beyond Meat is Beyond Me

It’s hard to beat a beautiful Canadian summer! Fun in the sun, beach time, lake days, and of course, the sizzle of a grill as you barbecue a simple patty comprised of twenty-one ingredients, like bamboo cellulose, vegetable glycerin, gum arabic, and pea protein isolate…just no actual meat. Yeah, I’m talking about the Beyond Meat sensation that is on the news, in your Facebook feed, featured in advertisements, and speculated about on Wall Street.

When it comes to food preferences, I’m not opposed to options. While I enjoy serving and eating ranch-raised beef, I also eat other proteins, so long as they aren’t in disguise. I make a mean lentil chowder, serve baked beans at many large meals, and have been known to eat an entire container of hummus at one sitting (don’t judge me).

Diet diversity is important for what it is – diversity. However, some Beyond Meat proponents make false claims, saying it is “healthier” or more “environmentally friendly.” Well my friends, the devil is in the details, and when you look at the fine print, these claims are wrong.

Myth 1. Plants are always healthier… right?

Wrong.

I took a minute to compare nutritional parameters between beef and peanut butter, our other handy household protein source. A small serving of peanut butter (32 g) had less protein, more calories, more fat (including saturated fat) and zero iron, compared to 75 grams of cooked lean beef. I’m not going to cut back serving either to my kids but I’ll admit I was a bit surprised that when it comes to packing a nutritional punch, beef handily surpasses an old-fashioned PBJ.

What about looking at how the Beyond Meat burger compares with a beef burger? According to this article, a 113 gram Beyond Meat patty has 250 calories, 18 grams of fat, 390 mg of sodium and 20 grams of protein. Health Canada rates 113 grams of lean ground beef as having 292 calories, 16.5 grams of fat, 105 mg of sodium and 33 grams of protein. If consumers need a nutrient dense, high protein, low-sodium diet, real beef is the healthier option. If people are worried about consuming processed foods, a faux meat patty made from 18-21 ingredients is the much more highly processed option. A ranch-raised beef patty served here isn’t processed at all, unless you consider the four pairs of helping hands that went into forming it.

Myth 2. Plant-based protein is better for the environment.

No! NO! This is wildly inaccurate.

I’m not sure exactly what inputs are required to extract bamboo cellulose or derive pea protein isolate, but I do know that grasslands and beef cattle support natural wildlife habitat, preserve fragile land, and make use of marginal land incapable of producing other crops. No other agricultural enterprise in Canada supports natural biodiversity or maintains sensitive ecosystems as well as beef cattle. Grasslands provide habitat for thousands of species, including many species at risk such as loggerhead shrikes and short-eared owls. Grasslands also provide dozens of ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, groundwater recharge, soil protection, and nutrient cycling, to name just a few. Does gum arabic do that? What is gum arabic? Beef is truly the ultimate plant-based protein and the beef cattle sector continues to make positive strides to become more efficient with water and energy. Plus, innovation and research is enabling beef farmers to make use of human-inedible by-products like ethanol distillers grains, potato peels, and even leftover beer-making ingredients.

At the end of the day, I am just a mom, standing in front of her hungry kids, trying to feed them a well-balanced, healthy diet. If they want a healthy, environmentally-friendly juicy burger that looks like beef, tastes like beef, has the same texture as beef, and smells like beef – I’m going to serve beef!

Beyond meat is beyond me.

Additional reading:

Isn’t Beef Canada’s Ultimate Plant Based Protein? Beef cattle Research Council

Vegan Beyond Meat burgers are just ultra-processed patties that can be bad for our health National Post

Why Canadian beef? Canada Beef

DSC_0444 watermark
This short-eared owl, a species at risk, looks on as cattle graze at Lonesome Dove Ranch.

Categories
Beef & Business Critters & Kids Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

#OurFoodHasAStory…what’s yours?

October is Agriculture Month in Saskatchewan, and friend and fellow rancHER Adrienne Ivey asked me to share my food story as a guest post on her blog VIEW FROM THE RANCH PORCH. Adrienne is sharing a variety of food stories from people across Saskatchewan as part of Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture’s #OurFoodHasAStory campaign. Head over to Adrienne’s blog to read my story and what food means to me… better yet, participate on social media and share your own story!

Categories
Pastures & Prairie

What’s Up, Buttercup?

Pasque flower. Wind flower. Prairie anemone. Anemone patens. Does a crocus by any other name smell as sweet?

There is no rite of spring quite like the discovery of the first crocus. I’m sure at this moment sitting on many a table across southwest Saskatchewan, there are crocuses in teacups, tiny vases, or bowls. Excited children like to bring back fistfuls of the pretty purple flowers, and even the occasional thoughtful spouse will think to stoop down and grab a few while they are out fencing.

Every Saskatchewanite seems to have fond memories of hunting for crocuses across the grasslands. The enthusiasm and interest that these little flowers generate gives me hope that deep down, people still have a connection to the original natural resource in our part of the world – native prairie. Crocuses, while occasionally found elsewhere, usually live on prairie grassland, because they rely on special bacteria to help the plants acquire nutrients so they can survive. Of course, they can randomly pop up elsewhere, including in my parents’ farmyard, where they discovered a crocus sprouting by the shop. The land had been cropped for decades before my parents established a yard site there, so where and how this crocus came to be is still a bit of a mystery.

Like most people, I too have fond memories hunting for crocuses on the big rock pile hill in one of our fields. Other times, long walks during Easter gatherings with my cousins always yielded a bounty of crocuses, not to mention excellent conversations. Last year was probably my favourite great crocus hunt of all, because almost all of my nieces and nephews joined in on a lovely evening walk to pick the fuzzy forbs.

The prairie crocus isn’t actually a crocus at all, in fact it is part of the buttercup or Ranunculaceae family. The plant itself is considered to be mildly poisonous although I would like to state that pretty much every plant is poisonous, depending on the dose. Cattle or sheep or humans would have to eat so much of the plant that even if you were intentionally trying to poison yourself, you’d get fatigued before you even got close to accomplishing your goal. But still. Don’t eat things you see growing in the wild.

Indigenous people use to make a poultice of the crushed leaved to reduce skin irritation from wounds or burns. I also read that sometimes a special crocus recipe was ingested to induce vomiting or purging, and one count indicates that in small doses, apparently crocus functioned as an aphrodisiac of sorts. Yet another book indicated that holding a crocus flower to one’s nose will stop nosebleeds. I think I’ll just stick with enjoying their beauty.

I haven’t yet gone on my annual pilgrimage this spring, but I’ll soon take a walk to see what I can find. Crocuses won’t be around for long, and before I know it, all that will remain on the hillsides will be little fluffy seed heads, looking like puffs of smoke, just waiting for the wind to take this buttercup to a new potential home.

IMG_3371

Categories
Beef & Business House & Homestead Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

Home/Work

Entering into the ranching business is not cheap. It takes work, planning, mostly lots of luck, and to be perfectly honest, capital. Without money, you can’t buy grass. Without grass, you can’t buy cows, and if you want to buy cows, guess what you need? For this reason, I have almost always worked off-farm in some capacity. Lucky for me, my off-farm employment revolves around prairie management, forage, beef, and communication, which is a pretty nice complement to my on-farm life too.

I used to drive to an office every day to work full-time. This was okay for a while, but three babies later, I decided to live the dream – ranch full-time…and work from home too. How hard could it be? Other people seemed to successfully work from home so why shouldn’t I? Blissfully ignorant, and I was looking forward to achieving the elusive (and annoyingly cliched) “work-life balance.” There were some myths that I quickly and systematically busted after just a few short weeks.

Myth: you will never again have to brave 105 kilometres (one way) of slippery roads, making the trek to the office in blizzard-like conditions. You’ll be safe and warm at home and weather will no longer impact your work like it once did.

Myth-buster: on beautiful, sunshiny days when you would love to be outside with your other ranching peers, you’re slaving away in your basement office tapping out your next report that is due in 47, wait… no… 46 minutes.

Myth: working from one’s home, you’ll surely be able to pop a quick load of laundry in the dryer while you run upstairs to grab a home-brewed cup of java, after which you can throw some supper in the slow-cooker. You’ll have well-planned meals and the cleanest home ever, all the time.

Myth-buster: your ice-cold coffee sits untouched until your alarm rings to go pick up the kids for music. You realize you haven’t yet brushed your teeth, so you do and run out the door, ignoring the mess in your house that accumulates because you are now in your house all the time. But hey, you got that last project submitted 3 hours before it was due!

Myth: you’ll get so much extra work done without the hassle of extended water cooler breaks and random chit chat. You won’t ever have to deal with office politics. Also, the flexibility of working from home means you can take off a bit early to get the kids to those music lessons, as long as you make the time up somewhere along the line.

Myth-buster: When you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, you realize you’re looking at the craziest woman you’ll ever share an office with. Wish you had someone to run a concept or idea by? Want a second opinion? Good luck finding a colleague that’s willing to chat at 11:52pm on a Friday evening when you’re making up for lost time.

Myth: with careful organization, you will at time create large blocks of time (during the daylight) to get a jump on work deadlines. Free from distractions, there is no reason you can’t put a good dent into your project.

Myth-buster: You’re focused. Wait…is that a knock at the door? It’s a traveling salesman, wanting to show you his wares. You send him on his way and just as he drives out, you hear the mooing of an errant bovine (or several) rambling through your yard. Once you put them back where they belong and return to your desk, the phone rings and it’s your long lost friend you haven’t chatted with since 2013. Then it rings again and you are needed out in the field. A quick four and a half hours later, you are back at your computer, smelling like diesel, but more focused than ever. Time to get some work done, people!

As the saying goes, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. I’m lucky to love my ranch work and “home/work” and enjoy the privilege of doing both. However, I can definitely say that I continue to learn a lot about that work-ranch-life balance. Some days the grass may seem greener on the other side, and sometimes it’s greenest right under your feet.

Categories
House & Homestead Pastures & Prairie

Tree Hugger

My dad used to have a saying about the southwest Saskatchewan landscape – “there’s a girl behind every tree,” he would say. Evidently there aren’t many trees in our part of the Palliser Triangle and apparently back in the day, there weren’t many girls either. Not many trees, mind you, except for the rows upon rows of carefully planted shelterbelts that dot fields and farmyards.

The yard I grew up in was an excellent example of how trees can grow in the southwest if they have a little support. When I was a kid, my parents hauled a grain truck full of tree seedlings home from the shelterbelt centre at Indian Head. If you’ve ever planted tree saplings, you’ll know that they are pretty small, so a grain truck full of saplings is, well, a lot of trees to plant. The tilling, the hoeing, the watering, the re-planting, the fist-clenching and chasing away of troublesome deer… it was no small feat to establish a healthy grove of trees and shelterbelts on a once barren stubble field during the driest years in the 1980’s. But they more than established, in fact, they thrived. Soon the trees grew tall and strong and beautiful and there were many excellent climbing prospects, lots of shady spots to tie a hammock in, and even some berries to pick. If you closed your eyes and just listened to the wind whistle through the branches, you could imagine you were in a forest. Songbirds, mourning doves, great horned owls, and of course, deer, all made their homes in our yard and nearby field shelterbelts.

Another grove of trees that I can’t help but admire is one that my Other Half’s great-grandfather established. He had foresight to plant trees on his homestead at a time when there would have already been so much work to do and so many challenges to overcome. His descendants followed in his footsteps, continuing to plant, maintain and nurture the impressive stands of trees and field shelterbelts which you can spot for miles around. At a recent centennial celebration for the original homestead, four generations of family members all gathered at the farm among the remarkable trees. The elder generations enjoyed visiting in the shade while the younger folk scampered throughout the trees, playing and laughing.

I got my hands dirty and planted a few trees on our own farmyard, though not as many as our ambitious predecessors. I’m not so sure about our foresight but I know hindsight is 20/20 and looking back, we were darn lucky that we planted our trees right before a few of the wettest years we’ve ever experienced. I still had to mow and till and water and weed our trees, but our timing turned out to be good for establishment. I didn’t have to harass deer during establishment however I had to grapple with gophers, who would pull the seedlings over and chew the buds right out of the tree. I was persistent and we were lucky to lose just a few trees and before I knew it, we could enjoy frosty beverages in the shade of the very trees that we planted.

Shelterbelts are more than just a legacy, they serve a purpose too. Trees provide many functional benefits on our agricultural landscape including the commonly known services such as carbon sequestration, windbreaks, soil erosion protection, and habitat for wildlife, birds and pollinators. Maybe those trees also provide paybacks that we don’t see and therefore can’t readily quantify. Perhaps the perennial vegetation that grows alongside those trees have positive soil microbial activity that benefits adjacent crops. Maybe these naturalized corridors are part of the greater matrix of biodiversity that is essential in fields that would otherwise be monocultures. Perhaps today’s trees are providing soil protection from future environmental threats that we can’t predict or even comprehend yet.

I’m not sure you can find a girl behind every tree in the southwest, but behind the odd one, you will find me. And I’ll be hugging that tree for dear life.

Categories
Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

The Green Green Grass of Home

I love haying season. I love the smell of hay, the anticipation of walking up to a swath to see if it’s dry, and the sound of a baler whirring across a field, provided the sound is indeed a whir and not a clank. I suspect most ranchers love seeing hay bales dotting a field because they know that in just a few short months, they’ll feed those very bales to their hungry cows when the weather is a brisk -40C.

I suppose one could learn how to make hay from books, or by researching information on-line. The topic was probably covered extensively during one of my 8:30am classes back in college, but I can’t tell you for sure. You could attend a workshop to learn about the best method for cutting your crop, letting it cure to an appropriate moisture level and baling it at precisely the right time.

Luckily, I just learned about haying from my dad.

As long as I can remember, haying was an exciting time in our household. In the early days, Dad made square bales, but when I was still pretty little, he and I picked up a New Holland round baler from Mankota Trading and slowly towed it home, anxious to put it to use. We logged a lot of hours together in the field that summer and for many summers after that – cut, bale, repeat. I learned how to listen to the way the swath rustled so you could tell if the hay was cured. Dad taught me about the pros and cons of conditioned versus swathed hay and how and when to feed test. We would watch seagulls swoop down to eat the grasshoppers and the hawks dive down to eat mice as we baled the swaths. We observed watchful does who would usher their fawns to the next strip away from us as we cut.

In Dad’s mind, there was nothing worse than having rain fall on a swath that was curing. Mom and Dad would obsessively follow the weather on the American Weather Channel, as that was deemed to be the most accurate at the time, looking for signs of impending thundershowers. Notes were made about humidity levels and the length of time it was taking for the hay to dry and Dad would assess the situation and cut a very specific amount of the crop to reduce the chance of having rain fall on it. I should probably mention that while I don’t like to have swaths rained on to this day, I don’t exactly go to the same lengths that Dad did to avoid it.

Dad enjoyed making hay, selling hay, and calculating (down to the penny) how much each bale cost to make. Dad loved to talk about hay too. This became problematic when I would drive four hours home from school to visit my Other Half. He would arrive to pick me up for a date only to end up engaged in an enthralling discussion about hay with Dad for a couple hours. Neither seemed to notice (or more truthfully care) that this was interfering with my date night.

This is our first haying season without Dad, but he hasn’t been far from my mind. He no doubt would have some choice words to say regarding the low yields and the sporadic showers that produced just enough precipitation to stop us from our field work but not quite enough to measure in a rain gauge. Conversely, an as experienced hay seller and exporter, Dad would be dancing a jig about the record-setting hay prices across the province and beyond.

My son and I were baling one day, and as we went up and down the swaths, we talked about Grandpa, reminisced and shared stories. We also talked about when to cut and how to tell if the hay was ready to bale and we talked about how this years’ crop is slim pickings. My son watched the hawks and gulls circle overhead and land nearby, searching for their prey. We spied a coyote and kept our eyes open for ducks in the swale.

I’m not always ready for life when it comes full circle.

After a while, my little boy went home and I kept on baling. But I wasn’t alone. Out in that field, bale after bale, someone somewhere was riding along with me.

Categories
Pastures & Prairie

The Grass(land) is Always Greener

The third week in June is jointly proclaimed as Native Prairie Appreciation Week (NPAW) by the provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Environment. Saskatchewan was once a sea of uncultivated wild grasslands, with needle grasses, wheatgrasses and hundreds of other plant species covering the landscape as far as the eye could see. For a variety of reasons far too numerous to mention here, there isn’t a lot of native prairie left in Saskatchewan. In fact, less than 20% of Saskatchewan’s native prairie remains, and that figure decreases slightly each year. NPAW is a nice way to bring attention to an important and dwindling provincial natural resource.

Over the past seventeen years, the Saskatchewan Prairie Conservation Action Plan (SK PCAP) has organized NPAW activities to engage with people about the prairie. You can learn more about their initiatives at www.pcap-sk.org . This year, SK PCAP is asking people to think about what they value about native prairie.

Naturalists might value native prairie because it provides a place of abundant wildlife and biodiversity in which they can study and gain understanding. Recreationists might appreciate prairie for its beauty and uniqueness, and the ever-changing wide open views.

Researchers and scientists may value grassland ecosystems because they can provide answers to questions they may be asking about interrelationships of organisms, populations of particular species, or how systems adapt and perform under various pressures.

Teachers and educators perhaps value prairie rangeland because it provides local real-life examples of how natural ecosystems function in a variety of settings. I hear teachers often commenting that they enjoy being able to open their students’ eyes to fact that Saskatchewan prairie is diverse, beautiful and alive.

Ranchers and farmers may value native prairie because it provides a sustainable source of grazing for livestock. This grazing resource is nutritious, renewable and requires few external inputs other than some barbed wire, posts, and a water hole. (Okay, I simplified it a bit here, managing range is not quite that easy, but that’s another story for another time!).

Plains First Nations people may value native prairie because it represents a critical link to their past. Their entire culture is rooted in prairie plants, geology, animals and topography. Archaeologists perhaps value prairie grasslands because they may be a sort of “final frontier” for northern plains artifacts. Out on the prairie, it may be easier to discover effigies and learn about the past compared with more disturbed sites like cities or crop fields.

Hunters and outdoorspeople may value native prairie because it provides essential upland and wetland habitat for birds, fish, and other wild game. Without habitats and corridors for wildlife to live, their populations would not thrive.

Prairie and its connected habitats, such as wetlands and rivers, are an integral part of the Saskatchewan landscape. They symbolize our resilience and our strength and are an important link to our history.

What do I value about native prairie? All of the above, and then some. Prairie grassland is important to our ranch for grazing, certainly. But native prairie also represents a way for my family to learn about the natural world, connect with our past, and understand the importance of conserving these precious ecosystems for the future.

How do you value native prairie?

DSC_0139

Categories
Beef & Business Critters & Kids Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

East or West

They say everyone deserves a day off now and again, a holiday or a getaway of sorts, to help rejuvenate and renew your soul, inspire your work, even make your work more productive and valuable upon your return. It’s a great theory, but one that’s not always easy to put into practise.

People these days seem pretty busy. There’s a never-ending to-do list of regular tasks plus a whole host of other jobs that get added onto your plate depending on the season. This makes it hard to take time for that coveted vacation. If you have small or medium or even large children, the thought of going on a relaxing vacation where you can put your feet up is almost laughable, especially for some members of the family (*cough* moms). There’s packing and laundry and lists and cleaning and vehicle organization and activity planning that can sometimes (always?) get in the way of having a worry-free holiday. Then when you arrive home, the real fun begins: unpacking, more laundry, vehicle clean-out, more laundry, recovery of lost items, and… more laundry.

Late in the summer, it didn’t look like we were going to get away for a weekend trip anytime soon and that didn’t sit well with me. I’m very familiar with the concept of the ‘staycation’ or ‘holistay’ or whatever the trendy term is these days for having a vacation in your own backyard, so that’s what we did. Except when you’re a rancher, you have a pretty big backyard, and instead of sticking in our literal yard, we ventured down to camp in one of our pastures. It turned out to be a pretty good arrangement. I was happy because I only had to pack whatever was needed for a 12 hour camp out (which is still a lot, but less than what it could have been!), the Other Half was happy because the destination was close and involved cattle, and the kids were happy because when you’re little and you go somewhere, it’s always a fun and exciting adventure. We explored, ate snacks, watched shooting stars and even entertained some good friends who managed to find our campsite in the dark.

More recently, we went on a larger-scale family trip that again incorporated work, play and cattle, something we seem to be adept with here at the Lonesome Dove Ranch. Our family shows cattle annually at Agribition, and after the kids and I sat out for much of this show and others over the last couple of years, we decided it was time to bring everyone. Ten days, three kids, one hotel room, lots of cattle in two different barns, thirty changes of clothes for the children alone… My overarching goal was survival and I’m pleased to say that we achieved that deliverable. Additional benefits included meeting new people, visiting with friends, family and customers, and as an added bonus, we did well in the show too. Some of our kids really cottoned onto the promotion and marketing aspect of showing cattle, some had fun combing, some felt we walked a bit too far, and one child thought one of the black bulls would look better with a pink barrette in his hair. With a little help from friends and family, we had a very memorable time at Agribition this year, albeit a much different experience than what I remember having in the past.

Our family enjoyed two very different holidays this year in spite of a challenging fall for us. Whether you go far or stay near, whether you leave the ranch or whether you take the ranch with you, embarking on a getaway is important and valuable. They say you will return home from a vacation with a more positive outlook on life, be healthier and feel more connected to your family. They also say that ‘east or west, home is best.’ The hardest part of a vacation may be to leave. The best part of your holiday may be your return. Except for maybe the laundry.

Categories
Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

These Boots are Made for Walking

Ten years ago this summer I made a dear friend. We were hired as summer students, to hike around some of the most beautiful parts of southwest Saskatchewan and identify plants, measure shrubs, and assess habitat for a particular species at risk (SAR). This gal and I spent four months working and living together, and also depending on one another for field safety. It was fortuitous that we became friends, but I think we balanced each other out well. She taught me everything I didn’t even know I didn’t know about native prairie plants, and I brought a sensitivity towards landowner rights to our dynamic (deranged?) duo. At the beginning of summer, we were handed topography maps, a GPS unit, and the keys to one dilapidated quad to share between the two of us with instructions not to ride double (wink, wink).

Some landowners allowed us to access sites with our unreliable quad, while others restricted us to foot traffic only, which we respected. Some days were literally a walk in the Park, and we would lace up our boots and hike upwards of 25 km. We encountered rattlesnakes, black widow spiders, greater shorthorned lizards, numerous bovines, the occasional tourist, an eastern yellow-bellied racer, and many other birds, mammals and SAR, small and large. We came across the humble remains of many abandoned homesteads and tipi rings, we befriended landowners, we waded across the Frenchman, we planted a geranium in a mysterious toilet present on our deck, and we stayed out of the flat when it rained 1mm or more. We had a blast.

One day, we were heading to a location that we were allowed to access by quad, provided we kept our route short and sweet. We parked our truck at a central spot, unloaded the quad and drove down the pasture trail towards our site which was about 8 kilometres away. Just before we arrived, we encountered a low spot that was semi-full of water. We paused briefly before confidently proceeding through this watery depression, only to find that our quad, when weighted down with field supplies and summer students, didn’t have the stamina to make it through to the other side. It glugged, sputtered, and stopped. We pushed and pulled, swore and kicked, but it was no use, that quad would not budge. Resigned, we set off on the brisk walk back to the truck, accepting the fact that we weren’t going to get too many assessments completed on that beautiful summer afternoon.

Hot, dusty, and somewhat disappointed with our day, we arrived back to the truck in about two hours. I hopped in the driver’s seat and declared to my friend, ‘I’ll have the keys.’ ‘You already have them,’ was her response. We looked at each other in horror. Neither of us had the keys. They were clipped to the quad keys. Which were still in the ignition of the quad. That was stuck in an ephemeral riparian area. Eight kilometres away. Our fatigue and frustration made the lines between laughter and tears rather blurry, and by this point in our day’s adventures, we found the situation a bit hysterical. The facts that our keyless truck was still parked several kilometres away from the nearest landline and that cell service was negligible didn’t help our state of mind.

While we hatched a plan for our next course of action, we heard a distant buzzing that gradually got louder and louder. Before long, we had made a rare sighting of a cowboy riding a quad, one that seemed to operate better, or at least faster, than ours. It turned out this fellow was loaded with posts to fix some fence and was headed right towards us. He cheerfully offered us a ride back to our collection of keys sunk out on the prairie, and towed out our quad to boot.

We didn’t have too much to show for that day’s work other than some life experience and a sincere appreciation for helpful cowboys who show up in the right place at the right time. We were tired when we arrived back to town, but we laced up our boots for one last walk: down the street for a welldeserved brew.

Categories
Critters & Kids Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

Independence Day

Autumn is a bittersweet time of year. It’s wonderful to see the crops being harvested and watch the leaves change colour, but it also wistfully signals that summer is gone once again and we’re on the cusp of my not-so-favorite season.

Autumn is also incredibly busy. There are bales to haul in, cattle to move, pens to set up, cows to pregcheck, and calves to wean and market. Weaning is my favorite ranch activity, followed pretty closely with calving. It’s gratifying to see the calves come in, weigh them up, administer their vaccinations and basically see the fruits of our (and their mamas’) labours. The data we collect is a measuring stick we can use to see if we’re on the right track with our breeding and grazing plans or if we need to make some adjustments. Weaning is also the most stressful period in a calf’s life, so they need extra monitoring following their newfound independence.

Some cows appear relieved to see their babies go, and they’ll wander off over the hills to graze in peace. Other mamas, usually the older herd matriarchs, are a little less eager to be sorted off, always staying at the back of the herd when we’re gathering. I’m not going to argue the intelligence of cows (or some would say, lack of), but when we start gathering a field, I know many of those mamas understand the emancipation that lies ahead.

Usually weaning is a family-friendly event, and this year we had multiple generations of hands on deck. Our three littlest helpers came with and alternated between staying out of the way, getting in the way, eating snacks, napping, and playing with sticks, rocks, ladybugs, and other treasures they came across. Then one day, my Other Half saddled up a couple of extra horses and our four-year-olds got to really ‘help,’ much to their delight.

It was a chilly, windy morning but they were determined to gather pairs out of our roughest pasture. They rode into the coulee and never once looked back. They didn’t go real fast, and I suspect Grandpa rode several extra miles to cover some ground that the boys didn’t, but I don’t think anyone minded. When the cattle came through the gate, I asked if they wanted off, and they replied no. A little ways into the next pasture, once again I asked if they wanted to ride in the warm and cozy truck with me.

“We don’t need you, mama,” my one kid cheerfully hollered over his shoulder at me as he kept riding away through the tall porcupine grass.

Oooph. I’d never been physically punched in the gut, but I think I felt the metaphorical equivalent at that moment. “Okay then, I’ll just keep following with the truck and trailer,” I called back. Had I not been travelling with a co-pilot, I probably would have wept softly into my coffee cup and felt sorry for myself, but there was no time for tears.

My boys’ independence and determination doesn’t surprise me. My Other Half is, ahem, rather strongwilled, and I too am stubborn and have a hard time asking for help. But their response did point to a slow and steady shift I’ve been noticing in the last few months. Our boys are growing up, and with that, they lean on me less and less. Intrinsically, I know that it’s a good thing. They’re making decisions and acting with conviction, but it still smarts a bit.

Eventually, the boys came back to the truck and dismounted, somewhat regretfully. “You got anything to eat, mom?” asked one. “I need a Kleenex,” said the other. “Of course,” I replied, and got them what they needed, relieved that I wasn’t completely irrelevant in their independent pre-school lives. Phew. That was a close one.

Categories
Pastures & Prairie Ranch & Real Life

GPS or GP-No

Technology is a marvelous thing. In the last century, humans have been able to accomplish more, understand things better, and share and transmit information at an almost unfathomable pace. That’s good, right? Right???

I had a tech-savvy co-worker who employed a GPS to navigate his route on trips, apply herbicide to invasive plants, mark out pasture trails and important landmarks. I learned a lot from his methods and through trial and error, I soon learned what a valuable tool the little handheld device could be. A year or two later, my colleague quickly learned that a GPS is only as accurate as the information it receives, and will correctly navigate you to the town you specify…even if the town you specify is incorrect. Typing ‘Carnduff’ into a GPS and expecting it to take you to ‘Carlyle’ is optimistic.

On another occasion, I was headed to a winter work meeting in the beautiful Cypress Hills. I wasn’t travelling with colleagues and had some extra travel time available, so I chose to make use of the two hour “short cut” between our ranch and the park. This route doesn’t take you through any town at all and I didn’t make this choice lightly. I ensured I had a full tank of gas, a fully charged cell phone, winter survival gear, and I actually wore my chore clothes, mainly because I had already gotten in an early morning of pre-work calf-tagging. People at both ends of my departure and arrival locations were aware of my plans and route and I had my trusty grid road map in case my Spidey Senses weren’t tingling.

The trip was beautiful. At -30C, it was chilly and rather desolate, but the sun was bright and the snow crunchy and sparkly, and I was enjoying the trip. After the first 45 miles, I did not meet another soul on the road. Things were going a little too well, in fact I was even running a tad ahead of schedule and anyone who knows me knows that is pretty uncommon. I headed around the correction line and made note of a little coyote trail that veered east that I had taken the previous summer while working with a women’s range workshop. And I quickly did a double take. There, impossibly far down the road allowance completely blown full of snow, was a tiny silver SUV. It was more than a little stuck. Accompanying the immobilized vehicle was a man, clad in a nylon windbreaker and loafers, futilely scraping snow away with an ice scraper.

And so it came to be that I met Dan from Wisconsin. Normally, as in my first example, I would change or omit the name of anyone who may be implicated in a story. In this case, however, I doubt that Dan from Wisconsin is a subscriber, and in case he is, a refresher on winter travel safety probably wouldn’t hurt. Dan had been travelling from Saskatoon to Frontier in his rental vehicle that brisk February day. Dan confidently left all the navigation up to the GPS on his BlackBerry, which deviated in and out of cell service. When Dan finally trudged up to my truck parked a long distance from his puddle-jumper, we exchanged pleasantries and I had a couple of questions I just had to ask.

“What possessed you to drive down this trail packed four feet deep with snow?” I asked. Dan sheepishly replied, “Well, the GPS told me to go this way.” “Didn’t you know you would get stuck?” “The SUV had four-wheel-drive. Plus, I didn’t know how else to get there without following the GPS,” Dan countered.

Friends, GPS navigation can be great, some would even argue it is a time- and marriage-saver. But if a GPS told you to jump off the quintessential bridge, would you do it? No amount of technology can or should ever replace common sense. Had I not happened upon Dan, he would have eventually walked to the nearest farm, or someone else would have found him, but he took a heck of a risk driving through unfamiliar and unrelenting country, relying solely on technology.

Technology is amazing, and takes humankind places we’ve never been before. And that’s the problem.

Categories
Pastures & Prairie

Prairie Wool

I love native prairie. I enjoy the beauty of uncultivated, wild prairie wool and also feel that is has a sense of timelessness. Prairie landscapes are dynamic and always changing in subtle ways, yet remain unchanged in many other ways.

There is an estimated 15-20% of Saskatchewan’s native prairie remaining, a good portion of which is located in southwest Saskatchewan. Land that was deemed too rocky, too desolate, or not ‘productive enough’ was left unploughed, and even referred to as ‘wasteland,’ a rather desperate-sounding and unaffectionate term. The funny thing about this prairie wasteland, though, is that it is able to sequester carbon and other nutrients; it provides critical habitat for pollinators, wildlife, and species at risk; it can filter, buffer and improve water infiltration; it is a highly valuable source of biodiversity; it provides livestock with a varied and nutritious diet for livestock; it serves as a link to our natural history; plus a few dozen other ecological odds and ends. Not bad for a wasteland.

Some folks, like ranchers, respect and appreciate native prairie 365 days a year, because it is a fundamentally important resource for their business and family. These brittle working landscapes are beautiful, yes, but ranchers require a large amount of perseverance (and capital) in order for them to rear livestock and make a living off of native prairie.

Other prairie enthusiasts, such as biologists and technical specialists, show their appreciation for prairie in odd ways, like speaking Latin when referring to prairie plants and animals, or conversing in 3- and 4-letter acronyms, including EGS, RHA, and NPAW. Armed with quadrat frames, bug spray and sunscreen, they quantify plants and other species, looking for good, better or best indicators of trends and ecosystem dynamics.

One thing all on-the-ground prairie stakeholders have in common, regardless of whether they wear cowboy boots or hiking boots, is their ability to keep anyone apprised of the local tick situation, on a tick-by-tick basis, better than anyone else. Trust me.

Many, if not most people in Saskatchewan, have never set foot in a native prairie ecosystem and may not understand its importance. Demographics have shifted, and Saskatchewan’s once rural-based population is now skewed towards urban areas. Far removed from prairie, and agriculture in general, many perhaps don’t understand the intrinsic values that prairie provides for all of society, or the beneficial role that ranchers or other landowners and managers play in these sustainable agricultural ecosystems.

Every year, Saskatchewan proclaims the third week in June (this year June 15-21, 2014) as Native Prairie Appreciation Week to help generate awareness about this valuable natural resource. Fondly referred to as NPAW (here we go with the acronyms), it’s a time for ranchers, students, prairie stakeholders, and ANYONE to come together to learn and share ideas and experiences about prairie and its management. Ironically, I was so busy with the business side of organizing and promoting prairie appreciation events this year that I hadn’t made enough time to….appreciate my own native prairie. Fortunately, this was quickly remedied with a drive thorough the cows on one of the nicest evenings we’ve had this spring.

We can all enjoy prairie for one reason or another. Perhaps it reminds us of simpler times, or the home of our youth, or perhaps it’s a favorite hunting or hiking trip that we’ve enjoyed. Maybe it inspires

creativity within us, or resiliency. It’s worth taking time to appreciate native prairie and the species (including ranchers!) that make their homes there. Mother Nature isn’t exactly making any more of it.