Home on the Range with Bunchgrass Beef

New Horse

2012-02-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

Mike has a new horse. Winchester, or Chester or sometimes Chet.

Glassing for cattle

Chester is a tall horse and a rock or an uphill side is handy to get on from. Shorter horses are nicer that way, but so far we have found Chester to be mostly kind, active, and he stays on his feet. All good attributes in a coworker.

Chester

I'm still riding Mestizo, the pack horse-turned saddle stock. He is sweet natured, catty, and herd bound. He's getting better, but he still gets nervy (Lippizaner style) when he loses sight of his pals.

Mestizo

We had a good ride to gather cows off the bar upriver. Chester hesitated at the river crossings, but Mestizo, the old hand, marched across and Chester followed gladly.

Near Magpie

Coming home in the near dark, I felt the comfort of a well-fitting saddle and my horse, knowing his way home, but not hurrying too much.

Almost dark

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Weaning Time

2012-02-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

Weaning time has come and gone. Last Sunday we opened the gate and turned our 2011 calves back out to join the herd on the winter range.

Loafing in the barn

The calves spent nearly the whole month of January in the corrals eating hay and we were fortunate to have mostly dry weather. During the few storms that dumped rain or snow, the barn provided good cover and Mike faithfully cleaned the bedding.

Look at their eyebrows Grandma

Baling twine lariat

Dawson enjoyed being inside the feeder, helping pitch hay, or practicing his roping skills. He pointed out the calves' eyebrows and eyelashes to me and we admired his big black and white spotted heifer calf.

Ruby at the corral

Ruby spent most of her time down at the corral eyeing the calves. She never seemed to tire of watching their every movement, hour after hour.

Early in the month, Mike and Gabe helped the neighbor gather a few more head out of the breaks, hiking into the high basins and trailing them down on foot.

Already a good hiker

Dawson tagged along one day, staying in the bottom of Log Creek with Grandpa, while his dad climbed up to bring down a few cows. On the way home, they trailed some of our cows back from the Hall Place.

Trailing part of the herd back from the Hall Place

It was a good January. Yes, there were times when it snowed, and blew, and rained and froze. But the sun was out an awful lot, and there were green things, little forbs poking up their first leaves, and ground cover sprouting a lacy bright carpet in the box elder grove.

We've turned the corner into February, the so-called "dying month", but for now, everything feels like it's about to come alive.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Stomping Grounds

2012-01-19T09:36:00.000-08:00

Since the holidays ended this year, I've caught myself a couple times saying, "I want to rewind to a few days before Christmas." It was a wonderful day, followed by another and another....

Prairie and Jon were here for a whole week.

Christmas breakfast

Hot out of the oven

Christmas Day was filled with family. We had breakfast, church, ham dinner, the afternoon walk, and always music making, storytelling, gaming.

The afternoon walk

The day after Christmas we were thankful for generations of friends dropping by from morning till night with a parade of food, music, games and fun.

Day Two, the four panel - four artist project

Day three we headed to the river and Mike helped gather the neighbor's cattle out of the breaks. The first day he rode from dark to dark in torrential rain, his horse new to canyon, the soil thawed in places and greasy on steep norths. That night he rode in spent and filthy, weighted down with thirty extra pounds of sodden gear. The second day was dry at least, but even longer.

Near the bottom of Tulley Creek

Jon, Prairie and I fixed waterline and went hiking. The day after the storm we hiked up Tulley Creek to our old stomping grounds. Tulley was our first home in the canyon when we arrived from northern Idaho. Back then Prairie was 2 months old and Gabe was still in diapers.

Almost to the bench

Prairie and I couldn't remember the last time we'd been to Tulley Creek. We used to hunt apricots near there. In July we'd make the scorching dusty drive, arriving at the old orchard, some years finding a jackpot and others not a single fruit. The reliable reward was the swimming hole and jumping off cliffs into the river. When the ranches sold and sold again and we stopped going.

Our first home in the canyon so many years ago

Now Tulley is in the care of McClarans, our long time neighbors and we had the rare bonus of bumping into a couple of the girls when we reached the house. They were heading north to sort and trail cattle on the bench. It was so good to see them and share a few words about the recent storm, nasty slick trails, the holidays and family.

Maggie at the creek

Beth gets the gate

I love this kind of understanding, with people who have worked and lived in some of the same places, places that in a way, now seem like friends and relations.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

A Lot of Thanks

2011-11-24T22:34:00.000-08:00

Larry on his cell phone

Thanks Larry for helping us trail the cattle off the top of the ridge and through the canyon rims on a long cold, snowy, blowy day.

Thanks cows for travelling all those hours without out more than a few bites of grass while being poked by nosy calves who wanted a drink and a nap. You kept going, and after we called it quits at the end of the day, you marched right on down to the winter range.

Punch, one and a half years old

Thanks dogs for working with heart and speed, and for "down" "stay" "walk up" "away" and "come by. "

Bird ready to call it a day

Thanks Gabe and Cammie and Dawson for helping us get out wood in, for stacking hay, for all those miles of wire stretched and jacks built, and for letting us use Bird whenever we need another horse.

Thanks John and Tommy for building and fixing and sometimes even riding and branding. You've helped us keep critters in the right places, roofs on, fences up, and buildings in good shape.

Thanks Cheryl for walnut gathering adventures and all the other fruits and edibles that you help stock my larder with. Thanks trees and plants for making food for us to harvest.

Sara herding toward Thomason

Thanks Zeke for choring and fixing the computer many many times. Thanks Prairie and Jon for using your vacation to come home and build fence, move cows, chop ice or do whatever else is needed.

Off the top

Thanks Bill for being such a great neighbor, and helping our management in the canyon work. Thanks Dave and McClarans for being there, for understanding the places and life and why we're out there. Thanks all you customers for encouraging us, for buying our beef, and for letting us know why you appreciate and enjoy this nutritious food. Thanks Phillips and Killam Families for helping us get a start on the Magpie Ranch and letting us put our energy and talents to use doing the work we love.

Thanks everybody who has visited, helped, listened and valued the land, the animals, the traditions and people in this special place "where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day."

Partners

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, Home of Bunchgrass Beef.

No More Bawling

2011-10-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

Fuzzy heifer during weaning last year

Last night when I arrived home from work I could hear the incessant bawling of a neighbor's cattle down the road. It brought back memories of weaning and shipping time on the big ranches we used to work on here in Wallowa County. Most big ranches sell their 8-9 month old calves in the fall after the grazing season ends and before the long winter when cow herds are typically sustained on hay laboriously fed out each day in fields and feedlots.

I remember when the first snow flurries began to drift down through the big pines out north and hunting season populated the woods with wall tents and campers, the cowboys would be putting in long days gathering cattle from the prairies and timbered ridges. At the Steen Place, the cows and calves were trailed to a big holding pasture along Chesnimnus Creek, each day's gather adding bunches of cattle to the growing herd.

Before long, up to six hundred pairs, mother cows with calves at their sides, would swell the holding pasture, creating a dark tide of animals spread across the golden cured grasslands. When all the cattle were in, we'd herd them into the big corrals, sorting the calves away from the mother cows and turning the cows back into the holding pasture. That's when the bawling began.

Cattle trucks, contracted to haul the calves to sale yards or feedlots, made the long drive across the prairie to the ranch, arriving in the pre-dawn hours, their headlights lined up along the gravel road beyond the corrals. The calves were herded into alleys and up ramps into the cattle trucks, the one ranch job that I always dreaded. By lunch time, the trucks were gone and so were the calves, but the bawling continued.

At night, laying in bed inside the hundred year old log ranch house, I fell asleep to the bawling of the mother cows bunched outside the now empty corrals, and woke up in the morning to more bawling. Each day fewer cows lingered near the corrals, lured by hunger back to the farther reaches of the holding pasture, or perhaps knowing from experience that no amount of bawling would bring back their calves. By the fourth day, the silence typical of wild places returned and the cows were ready to move on.

Here at the Magpie Ranch, we don't sell our calves in the fall, we keep them as part of the herd for more than two years, ranging the canyons and prairies in multi-generational family groups. We do wean the calves when they are around ten months old, by holding them in corrals in the canyon and feeding them hay for a month, while their mothers are free to come and go outside the corrals. The mother cows can see, smell, lick and visit their calves every day if they want to. Once weaned, the calves are turned back into the herd to resume their natural lives and behaviors.

Cows and calves during weaning

We are committed to providing our cattle the best life possible. If they are butcher animals, after two years, they are brought in small groups to the home ranch where they are humanely harvested. Listening to the bawling of the neighbor's cattle, I'm thankful we are able to practice ranching the way we do, learning from the past, honoring the future.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Moon Morning

2011-10-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Blue-silver, rust-fringed clouds around the moon this morning. Mike left early to inspect a ranch in Baker County and after he pulled out, I stood in the not-too-cold dark admiring the peaceful shift of clouds across the nearly full moon.

I'm thankful for the rain that has fallen this past week, but glad it's not raining this morning. I want to see the fields and breathe in the world as the dogs and I run out past the marsh and through the wheat stubble.

Dawson in the stock truck

Mike cut an enormous load of wood on Monday, hauling back two chords in the stock truck after spending the day in the woods with Gabe, Cammie and Dawson. It feels great to see wood piling up in the woodshed again.

I got the onions hung in the cellar. Connie, visiting from Germany, helped me pull them out of the garden a few weeks ago. They were resting on tarps in the woodshed and needed to get out of there before Mike cut wood, so I braided them up, setting aside the ones without tops to use right away.

Keeper onions in the cellar

The last of the Bartlett pears made it into the spiced preserves yesterday morning. They will be perfect for those corn-meal waffles we hope to share with visitors over the winter.

There are a few plums left to deal with, and a big box of winter pears from Cheryl that I need to get into the dehydrator. But it still feels like a lull in the harvest frenzy. A quiet moment when nothing is clamoring for attention from the stairwell or back porch.

I haven't forgotten those huge red apples in Joseph, the ones I trade a pie for to the guy who has the trees in his front yard. Or the prune plums I think my friend might have extras of, perfect for stewing.

But for now, I'm going to wander out past the horse pasture, through the still-green alfalfa, and look for the moon in the new light of the day.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Trailing to the Vance Place

2011-10-08T09:28:00.000-07:00

The day started with Mike finishing his roofing job on the front porch. The old farmhouse got a lovely new coat of paint this summer and it seems like we just finished cleaning up from that job, but the front porch couldn't face another winter without attention and rain was in the forecast. So up he went on the ladder, while I tackled some of the plums, cutting them up for the dryer and tossing a few into the cinnamon rolls, thereby discovering a new delectable treat, plum rolls.

What I call "date" plums

Sweet-tart sticky fruity plum rolls

By the time we loaded up and hauled to the Zumwalt, dark clouds had descended and the rain had started. Nothing like swinging onto a wet saddle in your dry jeans....but wonderful to smell, hear and see that moisture falling on the range. I was glad for my many layers in what seemed like an overnight transition from months of shorts and sandals to fleece and slicker.

Mid-day dark, leading Mike's horse while he brings the truck

The cows gathered easy, but weren't sure where we were going, as it was their first time trailing to the Vance. The last few miles seemed to stretch on and on as we meandered back and forth down the draw, stymied by the persistent traffic of hunters who seemed to enjoy stopping in the middle of the herd.

Scattering in the draw

I was glad when the winds died down and the rain let up and relieved to finally see Vance meadow through the trees. The cows were relieved too and quickly settled to grazing on their new range. With just enough daylight left, we repaired the dilapidated gate and put up the "Keep Gate Closed" signs.

Mestizo and Ol Zeb

We loaded the dogs and horses and hopped in the truck, ready for the last cup of coffee from the thermos and the plum rolls I'd saved for the end of the day. That's when Mike realized our headlights were out. It wouldn't have been the first time we'd plugged across the prairie with only our running lights, but luckily it was just a loose fuse and soon we were rattling west over the hills toward home.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Apple Apple Plum Peach

2011-09-20T22:21:00.000-07:00

Honey-curry pickles

Early and late the harvest continues all around us. Dust clouds migrate through the fields in the distance marking the combine's progress through the wheat. Handlines spread irrigation water across close-cropped alfalfa soaking thirsty roots after second cutting. Beans and cukes are brined into pickles, sour and sweet. Fat onions, purple, white and yellow loll in their beds, soon to be pulled and braided. Cabbages become kraut, while winter squash ripen under their tarps, safe from frost.

Horse Creek Plum Jelly

At the river we picked the last of the Mirabellen, and brought them home to make the wonderful golden sweet-tart jelly that will top our whole grain waffles and cheer us up during the dark winter months. And we filled a bucket with blackberries, both for the freezer and winter cobbler, and for jam.

On through peaches and nectarines, canned, dried, and spiced into preserves with cloves and cinnamon. Then to the first applesauce from the transparent apples, one of our nicest crops of transparents ever. Somehow there are always a few extra dabs of sauce or jam left over after the last jar is filled for the canner. These go into a bowl and become our immediate reward for all that peeling, coring, and stirring. A fresh taste of harvest to smear on toast, mix with yogurt or just plain eat off a spoon.

Sorting peaches before canning

A good crop of transparent apples

Jars on the wood stove ready to go to the cellar

It's a good feeling, after lugging all those jars to the cellar, reorganizing the shelves, the few jars from last year moved to the front, the new jars behind, and then standing back, surveying the bounty, calculating how many times a week, how many times a month, we can eat this fruit or that pickle. And knowing that many jars will be shared as special gifts for family and friends. And there will be more. Still to come are the pears, the prune plums and green gage plums and the late apples. How generous the plants and trees are to share their fruits with us!

Now if only the woodshed were as full as the cellar.....

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Love and Longing

2011-08-31T09:08:00.000-07:00

Mike's tent in the Gobi

Mike has been working in Mongolia again. This last trip he was in the Gobi desert the entire time so there wasn't any way to communicate. I knew he was out there bouncing around in a jeep, locating eco-plots and camping under the Mongolian sky and I really wished he could Skype me and tell me about it.

While he was gone, I hosted a young woman bicycling her way from Oregon to Florida. As we chopped vegetables for stir-fry one evening, she asked me to tell how Mike and I met and got married. It's a long story that starts in Seattle with a cowboy hat, a horse and a guitar, and ends three years later with a wedding on Mount Rainier.

Traditional Ger of herder household

Desert Shrine

During those three years Mike and I didn't spend much time together. A few months after we met, Mike went to work in Alaska. When he came home, I left for Germany for a year. When I got back he left to work in Alaska again. Then he came home and I left for college in Minnesota. When I got back from Minnesota, he left for the Yukon Territory. It was a bit ridiculous.

"How did you get to know each other when you spent so much time apart?" my young friend asked. There wasn't any internet and even if there was a phone, long distance calls were expensive. The whole year I was in Germany we only had one awkward twelve minute phone call. What we did was write letters. Stacks and stacks of letters.

Mike washing up at a Camel Trough

Finally, when Mike was in the Yukon, working at a gold mine, he asked me to come up and float down the Yukon River on a raft. Three weeks later, with the glacial fizz of the massive Yukon swirling us north, we decided it was time to get married. We thought getting married would mean spending a lot more time together. And it did. But a life of working on ranches, going back to college after having kids, and now doing international consulting, has meant we still spend a lot of time apart.

Prayer wheels

Last night after the sun had gone down in a tangerine-chocolate harvest sky, Mike asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. We called the dogs and headed west through the new-mown alfalfa field.

In the dark we could still make out the brow of the Wallowas jutting up at the edge of the valley and to the east, the low dry hills rising toward the Zumwalt prairie. Alfalfa stubble crunched under foot. The smell of hay and dust and ripening wheat eddied around us. The velvet air was balmy and where our bare arms touched, Mike's skin felt smooth and cool.

When we reached the marsh along the creek, the dogs raced past into the field beyond. We stood in the quiet, each of us with our own thoughts, the creek gurgling faintly beneath the waist-high grass. Then we headed back toward the old farm house that has sheltered us so many years now, and I felt a familiar longing well up inside me. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but sometimes, at night in a field, when the one you love is right there in front of you, striding along in the dark, your heart can feel his presence and his absence at the same time.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Ropin and Ridin

2011-08-14T22:36:00.000-07:00

Charlie Tackman with Lucas and Trish

The past week had so many things jammed into it, it felt like a month in seven days. Mike's scientist buddy and ex-boss Charlie and family drove up from SE Oregon for a visit. The two scientists wanted to talk prairie and canyon ecology, Lucas and Trish, high school seniors, wanted to ride and fish. So they headed to the summer range to see how the new bull was getting along. And then to the river to overnight at Horse Creek to see if they could catch some salmon.

Mike and Charlie

Dawson's birthday party rolled around on Sunday and we had big doin's at the park with the youngest generation. What a joy to be part of a family that includes children I've known since they were born, who now have their own children, all of us gathered for wild rumpus and birthday yumminess.

Cammie made a dump truck cake

Dawson got a roping lesson with his new roping dummy. Then Buck roped the kids as they screamed and ran. As soon as he caught somebody, the other kids would swoop in, relishing the chance to "brand" and "give a shot" to the "calf."

Buck gives Dawson a roping lesson

Last year when we were celebrating Dawson's birthday at the park, we saw a huge column of smoke on the horizon and a stream of fire engines roaring west. It was the Wallowa Mountains visitor center burning to the ground, a beautiful log building with interesting displays and most of the USFS offices, including Gabe's. He lost three year's of photographs and files from his project to document the many historic cabins and other structures scattered across Forest Service lands. He wanted these structures to be mapped and described so that if there were a wildfire, the firefighters would have up-to-date information. This year we were all glad to just enjoy a simple, fun birthday with Dawson.

Cammie, Gabe, Dawson, Lucy, Buck, Chelsea, James, Callie, Luke, Kate, Lillie and Addie

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Migration and the Wayward Bull

2011-07-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

After we branded, we gave the cows a couple days to loaf before starting the three day trip to the summer pasture. I had been sick and welcomed the extra rest before the tough climb out of the canyon.

They cows probably did rest a day, but when Mike went back down to brush out the trail, he saw fresh sign. The cows had found a way onto the road and had trailed five miles along the bench to the trail-head, climbed up the trail and were now munching bunchgrass in a steep little basin below the rims.

Morning drink

By the next day, they topped out on their own, climbing out of basin and threading the rimrock to find a hole in the fence. We found them early in the morning, resting in the timber, not far from a stock pond. It was hot and I was glad to be reminded of the pond's location as I had not been there in years.

Herders

Getting close to Thomason

We trailed on foot to Thomason and over-nighted the cows in the road pasture. Come morning, a stray Hereford bull the size of a Mac Truck had taken up with the herd. He made our 2 year old Longhorn bull look tiny and even dwarfed the biggest cows. Mike had to push half the herd through a funky wire gate in a flimsy stretch of fence and then try to cut the big bull out as the cows came back through the gate onto the road.

Hereford near the front, our bull by the brindle

The bull was not aggressive. But when he decided to make his move, he was like a mountain in motion. And he wasn't slow. All Mike had was an old horse, our other geldings were still in the canyon. All I had was a stock whip. I held it straight up, zinging the air with a few hard flicks of the wrist. The bull looked me in the eye, his neck and shoulders towering about the cows' backs. I stared back trying to look tough.

As a bunch of cows ran through the gate, the bull made his move. Mike was trapped behind a tangle of cows and calves. I stepped between the cows and the bull and snapped my whip in the bull's face. His thick flesh rolled forward over his powerful neck as he slid to a stop and hesitated, poised to plow past, or over me, I snapped the whip back and forth. "Don't you dare," I said staring him in the eye. "Don't you even think about running over me."

The bull swung his head and took several steps side to side. "Hit him!" Mike hollered from his horse. "Hit him on the nose." "I can't," I yelled back, feinting slightly and snapping the stock whip, afraid to go closer, knowing I'd have no chance to get out of the way. The bull turned and ran and Mike went after him with the horse and dogs.

Luckily the bull didn't test the worthless fence, but high tailed it west over the ridge. In a cloud of dust, the bawling cows and calves milled off into the timber and we were on the move again.

At last, on the summer pasture

The rest of the day was uneventful, hot and slow. When Mike finally brought the herd through the last gate into the summer pasture, I was relieved. Thank you cows, for mostly trailing yourselves to the summer range this year.

Loaded up

"Smile. We're done."

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Cow Untipping

2011-07-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

Cow untipping field

Last week on a morning run I saw my neighbor up ahead messing with the pump in his grain field. Another neighbor had pulled over in his diesel flatbed truck and the two farmers stood yakking over the fence. We called good-morning to each other as I trotted by with our border collies in tow.

A short ways down the road I caught sight of four stiff black legs sticking up out of a dry irrigation ditch. "Dang," I thought. "Heifer got stuck in the ditch and died, that's too bad." Then I saw a leg move.

Start of dry ditch

I trotted back up the hill to the two farmers and told them about the calf, thinking we ought to do something.. They seemed unimpressed. When they realized I meant the calf was still alive, they said, "Well, better go down there and see if we can get her out."

They got in the truck and drove down the road and parked outside the fence near the calf. I told the dogs to lie down and stay in the neighbor's driveway while I took a short cut through the pasture.

The heifer was a big black baldy. After managing to up-end herself in the ditch, she had wallowed forward upside down wedging herself in good between the narrow uneven banks.

The younger farmer grabbed a hind leg and pulled this way and that. The old farmer pulled her tail and I grabbed her head pushing it uphill. I felt slightly ridiculous, down in the ditch in my running clothes. The heifer thrashed, we jumped back, she stayed stuck.

We tried variations of this maneuver several times to no avail. I kept saying, "If only we had a rope for some leverage." Finally the old farmer said to the young farmer, "You got a chain or anything in your truck." "Oh yeah, I got everything in my truck," the young farmer said.

It was a long ways around by the road to the nearest gate. I looked down at the heifer, wondering how long she'd been like that, how much time she had left. Then I spotted the nylon pea-chord that I keep tied around my waist when I run with the dogs. It's only about two feet long, but in a pinch I can loop it through the dogs' collars and corral them if we're on the road and something tempting drives by, like a flatbed of barking dogs pulling a stock trailer.

"I do have this little piece of string," I said, untying it from my waist and holding it out in front of me. The farmers looked at the tiny piece of chord and then at me. It was not a favorable expression.

Before they could say anything, I made a loop in the chord and lassoed the heifers off-side front foot and pulled. They grabbed a leg and tail and pulled. The heifer moved. We pulled harder, letting go as she violently jerked against us and shifted slightly inside the ditch bank. She felt the change in position and struggled harder, getting a leg against the bank and finally pushing herself over.

As the heifer struggled to her feet and stumbled off, the three of us looked at each other. "Good thing you had your little piece of string," the old farmer said with a smile.

Black cows

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Creek Crossing Adventures

2011-06-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

Prairie and Zeb ready to gather

We decided to stay in the canyon and take the cows up Pumpkin Creek for a few weeks since the grass on the Zumwalt is a little slow coming on this year. It was really nice that Prairie and Jon could come home to help gather and herd the cattle the six miles up to Pumpkin Creek.

Mike lines out the plan

Jon hiked upriver and gathered the cows off the bar and headed them up to the bench. Mike and Prairie met him on horseback and trailed the herd north and through the gate, headed up Horse Creek. A soft rain fell off and on all day and the grass felt like it was growing under our feet.

Sara putting on her chinks

Mestizo ready to go

The next day, Mike and I rode up the creek and found the cows most of the way to Pumpkin Creek. They trailed smoothly and by noon we were at the cabin. The only excitement of the day was when Mike and I crossed Horse Creek.

After we went through the gate at Pile Up, the herd trailed off up canyon through the brush. Mike and I climbed down off the steep hillside, looking for a place to cross the creek. Since we hadn't taken the high trail, we were stuck in Pile Up, with its narrow boulder filled draws, dead-fall timber, and thorny thickets.

I found a spot where we could get to the creek and we rode across the first channel to an island. At the second channel, there was an opening on the far bank where we thought Mike had cleared a trail last year. If we crossed there, we thought we could get through the trees and up the steep bank to the road. Unfortunately a tree had washed down stream and wedged in the channel just below the crossing spot.

Mike took a first attempt, but his horse refused to jump out of the creek into the brush on the other side and veered downstream into the logs. After a tense moment of tangled legs and rushing water, he jumped back over the logs and returned to the island. I decided to try another route, heading downstream off the island and sweeping around to the far bank below the logs, where I thought I might angle onto the "trail" from behind a tree.

The water below the island showed a dead spot, still and murky in the otherwise turbulent stream. I knew it was deeper, and hoped the bottom wasn't full of sticky mud. My horse stepped off the island reaching for the bottom. I felt him going down, down, down and then he pushed off hard with his hind feet and propelled us across the hole to the rocky bottom and rushing current in the middle of the channel. I couldn't believe how deep that hole was. We navigated the rest of the channel, picked our way around a nasty staub of a log sticking neck high out of the water, and took the bank with three big leaps up through the brush, a hard left through the rocks and finally we were up on the road. Mestizo was awesome, careful, sure-footed, calm.

Mike followed, but tried skirting the far side of the hole after seeing Mestizo and I drop into it. Amazingly enough, the far side was even deeper. Mike's horse, Zip, stepped into the hole and sunk to the left, losing his footing and almost rolling over in the deep water. He thrashed forward, found the stream bed and shot up out of the hole with Mike still in the saddle, water streaming. They made it across the channel, but ended up at a tangle of trees on the near bank below me. Mike was able to get off and somehow get his horse around a tree and up the bank. Safely on the road, we knew how bad it could have turned out. Zip stood heaving for air and sluicing water with one ear bent so far back it looked like it was broken. It was full of water from being submerged. Then Mike recalled the time Jim Baquet's horse fell crossing Cow Creek during spring run-off one year, pinning Jim underwater until the horse finally rolled free. We knew we wouldn't try a crossing like that again. Next time we'd find a better way.

Jon takes an after lunch siesta

Bear paw prints on the cabin door

At the cabin, Jon had trekked up into the rims and closed all the gates, so we could just let the cows settle, relax and eat our lunch.

Relaxing cows

Happy mama and calf

Looking north up the Imnaha

Nice valley sunset

As we drove out of the canyon the clouds lifted revealing the beautiful green benches and red rock ridges. By the time we reached the valley, a glorious sunset provided the perfect good-night to a good day's work.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Sharp Minds and Warm Hearts

2011-06-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting 12 students from Whitman College who are spending a month in Wallowa County studying the concept of "resilience" as it applies to communities and natural resources.

Communication trailer with satellite link and solar panels

Student tents along the river

The students spent the week in field trips with local residents. They learned about fisheries and Nez Perce history from Joe McCormack. Mike and I spent a day hiking and visiting with the students, sharing information on rangeland ecology and how our small family ranch works. At the end of the week they took a horseback ride to the Snake River with Mary and Nora Hawkins (Del Sol Adventures) and learned about outfitting and recreation in Wallowa County.

Studying plants up spring draw

Field sketch

It was wonderful to have the company and conversation and to take time to think big-picture and reflect on the changes in our community. The students are collecting their observations and at the end of the month will create a Wallowa County Almanac. I hope we can get together again while they are in the County and I can't wait to read what they write and see their drawings in the Almanac.

Found a rattlesnake on the river hike

Mike answers questions above the cut-bank

Best way to end the day, music and campfire

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Bass Weaver's Outhouse

2011-05-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

Salvaged parts

Gabe thinks it through

This tumble of old boards is really a 100 year old outhouse, built by Bass Weaver. The boards are hand split tamarack and the framing was pine round-wood, from limbs or small trees, not super straight.

Instead of letting the pile rot into the ground, Mike decided to salvage what he could and resurrect this amazingly durable piece of history for modern use.

Luke digs, Skip watches

The new hole was dug about four years ago when friend Luke Royes came down with his really small excavator. He was helping us remove a foot of of rock-hard pig/sheep/horse/cow manure that the previous residents had let build up in the barn. The outhouse hole was an after-thought, but I'm sure glad he was there since he dug up at least one 50 pound rock in the process.

Steve Arment showed me the square nails used in the original construction, which we used to help confirm the age of the building. The resiliency of those tamarack boards amazes me. Over 100 years old and still strong and purposeful.

New window

The framing was not as durable and much of it had to be replaced, along with the roof. Mike stayed true to the original design by making it a 2-holer. He added a hinged window for more light and air.

The outhouse is fully functional now, sans door. Mike will add a dutch door soon. We plan to install a little plaque on the front, commemorating the centennial of the outhouse. The grass he planted in the disturbed area around the base is already sprouting and the structure looks right at home under a hackberry tree. The views from the "throne" are beautiful. Hopefully it will still be standing in another 100 years.

Curious calves check out the new-old outhouse

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Pinky and the Gang

2011-03-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

Pinky, our last year's first calf

Mike and I gathered the herd off the benches this weekend and brought them in to sort off the yearling heifers. The heifers receive a required brucellosis vaccine before they reach one year of age. The vet has to administer the vaccine, which means a trip to town this week for fifteen heifers.

Nice Red Steer

While we had the herd in, we got the opportunity to look over all the animals and to size up our butcher steers for this year's harvest. With the heifers in the corral, we let the cows spend the night in the horse pasture and gave them all a feeding of hay. The herd looks good.

Gabe looks over some of the cows after feeding

I loved having three days on the river. The full moon cast a bright blanket across the benches and lit up the frothing water. Apricots and plums and service berry are in bloom and I saw yellow bells and buttercups while riding the benches to gather the cows. We woke up Sunday morning to thirty degree temps, so I hope the apricots don't freeze. The first day of spring brought sun, bluebirds flitting in the brush and pairs of geese gabbling in the shallows. Now we just need the weather to keep warming up and the grass to take off before calving starts.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Chainsaw Work

2011-03-11T16:22:00.000-08:00

Gabe brushing out draw to fix broken water line

At least it was a warm day when Mike and Gabe tackled the water line after zero degree temperatures at the end of February froze and broke twenty foot of line running up to the spring. The wildfire that raged through a few years back had burned most of the brush out of the draw, but the broken water line was in a staubed-up tangle of brush and dead hackberry. That's when it's so nice to have a son around to handle the chainsaw work.

While Gabe was at it, we cleaned up more of the dead wood in the orchard-garden. We've been pruning every year since we took over the ranch and it still needs more. I run the loppers and the hand pruners, but it is so satisfying to see a big ol' limb come off like a hunk of butter in the maw of the chain saw. I have not gotten over my sadness at the girdling of the trees by someone who put wire cages on and left them. The beautiful fruit trees grew into the wire and many were dead or dying when we started resurrecting the place.

Cleaning the orchard

I can still remember picking nectarines and peaches there more than 25 years ago. The ripe nectarines were small and scabby and incredibly sweet, with little jewels of nectar that had oozed from tiny cracks and hardened like sap on the outer skin. Wasps lilted around us in the languid air, and when all the fruit was gone, we shed the stickiness and dust from our skin with a dip in the swimming hole before driving back to town. Now moldered stumps cast a faint shadow in the dry horsetail patch where the nectarines once stood.

In spite of all those years of neglect, the apricot trees are enormous and healthy, raising plump purple-tinged buds into the crisp air of a March evening. I'm crossing my fingers we'll be picking luscious golden apricots come July, but I know that gift arrives only perhaps one year out of four, so we'll see if the fruit sets this year, or if a late frost will nip the trees along the river.

It won't be long before the cows begin to calve and the river will be running high and fast. We're still fetching little bunches back every week from where they cross to the west side of the canyon. Let's hope the mother cows are all on the east bench when they start to drop their calves. Once the river rises, it's a slow trail around to the bridge to bring them home.

At the ford upriver

Driving back to the valley yesterday, Mike caught the sunset over the Wallowas. Another storm just blew through and now it's thawing again. It's a special part of the world that can give us the early green of canyon spring and the bold sunset of the snow covered valley all in the same day.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef.

Winter Herding and Smashed Fingers

2011-03-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

Return of Winter as March arrives

February seems to have blown by in a series of storms. Some left us wet and muddy. Others brought sharp cold, the benches bright with winter sun. Greys and browns returned to dominate the landscape. Buds went dormant on the trees. It felt like the sap had sucked back underground, and the memory of buttercups in January seemed incredulous.

Mike got the calves through weaning in good shape. High winds, icy roads and mud made tricky hauling for a few loads of hay headed to the river from our barn on Prairie Creek. He worried about wet corrals, but the ground dried out enough between storms to get us through.

Looking across to Haas Ridge

We're still dealing with open fences across the river, which means we have to gather stragglers every week and bring them home. When the temps warm up, the grass perks up and suddenly the birds are singing again and spring seems possible.

Down road off Pack Saddle

It's been a yo-yo kind of winter in the canyons. Cold. Warm. Wet. Dry. Frozen. Thawed. Ice. Mud. Not so unusual, except for the fluctuation. Sixty degrees in January and below zero at end of February.

It's helped a lot to have Zeke around to heft loads of hay and Gabe has been coming down to help with the outhouse project and the ever-present fence jobs. And now Dawson wants to get involved.

Fence stretcher

The day we put the new gate in on the Hall place, Dawson marched over to the fenceline. He put his hands on his hips, looked over the half crib and said, "You guys need some help?" After he messed with the fence stretcher for a while, he switched to a hammer. He had a great two-hand swing. Unfortunately he tried out a one-hand swing and landed the hammer head square on the nail of his other pointer finger.Ow.

Two-hand hammer

After the tears a band-aid felt good

As his dad said, "Just in time for the trip to the beach." Luckily by the time they left a few days later, pointer finger was back on duty.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch home of Bunchgrass Beef

Weaning and Fishing

2011-01-29T08:47:00.000-08:00

Crossing back to the home place

It's been a bit of a challenge keeping the cattle where they are supposed to be. About once a week they cross the river below Packsaddle where the fences have been cut to provide easy access to fishing on the neighbor's property upriver. I've heard the neighbor eventually wants to build a pole fence, but for now it seems having cattle wander over is less of a concern than needing to open a gate to get to the fishing hole. So when the cattle wander, we gather them up and head them down river and back across to the east side.

It would definitely be easier for us if the fence were up, but we try to be flexible. Last week when Mike crossed the herd he saw fresh beaver sign. I wonder where the beavers are building. I'm going to keep an eye out for the new lodge. I'd love to be able to watch them doing their handy work.

Beaver sign

Beaver balancing act

Gabe lands a steelhead

While climbing around a rim on his trek back home, Mike caught sight of Gabe and Luke, with Dawson and James in tow, fishing at one of the holes above the house. Gabe was just landing a steelhead.

A few days later when the weather warmed up again, Mike and Gabe gathered the herd and sorted off the 2010 calves. It's weaning time and Mike will be staying on the river feeding the calves for the next month. While the herd was in the corral, he put small bunches into the alley and "groomed" them by pulling burrs and cutting off wads of cockle burr with his pocket knife. Not only does this remove the irritating seeds, it helps prevent the spread of weeds.

Weaning day - a nice afternoon in January

Steers ready for grooming

A few of the 2010 calves at weaning

Mike's not big on fishing, but while he's down there feeding the calves, I hope Gabe gets him out for a few lessons. Those fresh steelhead are pretty darn tasty.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Evidence

2011-01-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

Dropping salt on the way to Magpie

It’s definitely a good feeling, knowing the cows are on the home place. Yes we still have to herd and fix fence, but everything is within a day’s reach and the days are getting longer.

Down fence above Magpie

Balancing act

The herd is scattered along the bench and grading up towards the rims above the river. When we first brought them down from Pumpkin Creek, a few head trailed to the south end of the range and found a hole in the fence. Mike and Gabe packed material and spent a day repairing one of the steepest fences on the ranch, a place where it’s hard to stand up, let alone build a rock jack.

I had the cushy job of babysitting and spent the first warm day of 2011 along the river with Dawson, digging in the sand bars, collecting muck and rocks and bones, and riding the “horse tree” in the big Box Elder grove.

Over a decade since the flood, it all comes back when I see places where the river changed course, islands of alders, abandoned meanders, rafts of debris, and the enormous piles of rock and gravel sorted and left behind on the wide bar. Recently I saw images from the terrible floods in Australia, fierce soil-thick water clawing and sucking a path across the land. I knew what that would be like, the sound alone pushing against you in a deafening roar that threatened to pull you away to your death.

Four foot deep debris raft

Infill in the old eddy, a "20 ton" bridge beam

New Year’s Eve storm, New Year’s day flood. The only one in my lifetime, I hope. Being at the mercy of the elements gives our lives immediacy, forces us to be resourceful, a part of the place where we live and work.

At the "beach"

The rewards are great, a lazy day in January, water riffling over the shallows and smoothing out across the summer swimming hole, a green shimmer of chervil germinating under the locust trees, sap rising in the willows.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Home Economy

2011-01-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

Roasted prime rib and steak

A couple days ago, I took the leftover prime rib and steak bones out of the fridge and put them in a kettle of water to make stock. The bones had the rich smell of the dry rub from the roasted meat. As the stock simmered on the wood cookstove, that rich smell pervaded the kitchen along with the radiant heat of the stove.

Ready to freeze

After the stock cooled, I poured it into jars and put them on the back porch to "prefreeze" overnight before wedging it into the freezer. Beautiful stock. It will make a delectable meal some night, probably when I need a quick nourishing soup after a long cold day.

Before Christmas, I went through the pumpkins, looking for one to bake for pie, and I was amazed that not a single pumpkin had started to rot. They were all pristine. Perfect rinds, perfect stems. It consistently amazes me that a vegetable harvested months ago, can sit around in a cardboard box all those months and still be edible.

Perfect flesh

I know the apples in the cellar are getting softer. By the end of February, they'll be more fit for cooking than eating. But they will still be edible.

Making stock, sorting the winter squash, eating tons of beets and carrots as they get rubberier each week, I never thought of this as home economics. Sometime before I started public school, home economics had morphed from the science of food preservation - like how to can venison, to the consumption of preserved food - how to make desserts out of Jell-O and Cool Whip. I avoided home-ec.

Trio

Kentucky farmer and author, Wendell Berry got me thinking differently about the economics of maintaining a household. He writes about what it feels like to be responsible from start to finish, for something made, something important and satisfying, like food. He says that when I grow pumpkins for pies, I am practicing a science and an art. He says that a home economy has spiritual value, that it provides the means of life and the longevity of nature and culture. Count me in.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Ending the Year at Pumpkin Creek

2010-12-31T10:53:00.000-08:00

Above the Rye Bench, looking north

The three of us, Mike, Zeke and I, gathered the last of the herd out of Pumpkin Creek this week and trailed them to the river.

Old rock flume at Pumpkin Creek

We gathered on foot, crossing Horse Creek on a slippery downed alder tree just below the cabin, and climbing high into Pile-Up where I’d spotted about nine head on a narrow strip of grass between the north rims.

The norths were thawed in places, with steep patches of greasy mud that stuck to my boots. I was glad for my staff. We threaded a little bunch of cattle off the narrow end of the ridge between rock outcrops and switchbacked down to the drift fence. They wanted to grade out but we managed to hold them.

Once through the gate, they took off in a wild run crossing back into the draw and through the brush before galloping downslope all the way to the creek.

Down the Pumpkin Creek road

The next day Mike and I rode and Zeke shuttled the truck over to pick us up at the river place. Our neighbor had driven up the creek that morning to tell us where he’d spotted some cattle, and to let us know he’d already cut a few of our stragglers out of his cows and put them through the gate. Nice.

We picked up another fifteen head trailing to the river. The weather held off for the five-mile ride and the cattle trailed willingly across the bench. Almost to gate on the Rye Bench, we reached the funky drift fence at Walking Cane, with its long weak stretches, rotted material and awkward corner gates.

Trailing north

A bunch of the neighbor’s cows were scattered below on a finger of bench ground. Mike suspected our cows would go running over there as soon as they could get through the fence, so he rode ahead, off the slick side hill and onto the flat. Sure enough as soon as a big red steer found a hole, he high tailed it toward the flat with a string of cows behind him. Mike’s determination and some fancy footwork by Zip finally got the best of the steer and turned him back. When an old cow took the lead towards home, the rest of the bunch soon followed.

Mike brings west-side stragglers across the river

Past the home place

We reached the river, met up with Zeke, unloaded supplies and turned the horses out. Mike and Zeke drove up the road to Crazy Man to gather a few steers and heifers who climbed out of the river pasture earlier in the week. They trailed the tail end of the stragglers through the driveway gate just as the snow started to fall. The temperature was dropping fast and the wind was picking up. We ate the last of the pies, swallowed some hot coffee and headed for the valley.

Zeke drove us out to town, over the ice and snow and into a blizzard squall. We were wedged into the front seat with the heater cranked and the familiar smell of wet dogs wafting up behind us. Mike took a swig of water and summed it up, “Well, we accomplished everything.” It was a good way to end the year.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Cow Camp at Pumpkin Creek

2010-12-19T13:33:00.000-08:00

Pumpkin Creek cow camp

We've lived in cow camps ranging from a place to pitch a tent to a two-story house. At the Steen Place on the edge of the Zumwalt Prairie we summered in a 100 year old log house with walls that bore testament to some of the previous residents via initials carved into the front porch. There was also a barn, extensive corrals, and out behind the kitchen, an enormous multi-chambered root cellar in a state of collapse. The cellar had a log front and thick stone walls that birthed boulder-sized rocks, pushed out by the settling hillside. Even though it was our summer place, we stayed there into December while the cows were in the breaks of the canyon, and we were thankful for the enormous barrel stove and the thick logs insulating us from the cold.

At Pumpkin Creek, the accommodations are simple. A roof overhead and all the basics you appreciate at the end of a long day and a steep trail.

"Fully equipped" kitchen

A "real" bed

Last weekend, Mike installed an old cast-iron dry sink for the kitchen, an improvement I'm looking forward to using. While he built the sink stand, I hiked the steep norths above the narrow bench to gather cattle and move them up Pumpkin Creek. I had to work two good dogs while keeping a pup and a big slobbering Labrador out of the way, which proved interesting at times.

Mike builds stand for the dry sink

Narrow trail on a steep north

Frozen spring shedding ice in the sun

The sun was brilliant and the ground still frozen as I side-hilled along, gathering up little bunches of cows and heading them south. At one point, I came upon a spring flowing out of the ground above a rock outcrop. The rock face dripped with moss and a few stalwart icicles clung to the basalt, while the ground below was strewn with chunks of ice fall, collapsed in the sun after the night's frozen temperatures.

Looking north toward the Imnaha

It was nice to have most of the snow melted off after the last storm, to have open ground for the cattle to travel in. Looking back toward the Imnaha River, I saw the high snowy rims of Haas Ridge, and was reminded that winter has a long way to go yet.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Poets and Storytellers

2010-12-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

Last night was poetry and story-telling at the neighbors. "Come back any time," the old-timers called as we left, and I felt like I could.

Somebody read a family story of the hired gun "range detective" who simply shot people when they went out to chop a load of wood or saddle a horse, because their neighbors asked them to quit the country and they didn't.

And we heard the brand-new story of two sheepherders at Christmas on Pony Bar and I laughed so hard my belly hurt at the part where the sheepherder's hat flew off and stuck on her face when she was getting bucked off her mule in the middle of a race. And funniest of all, the old timer reciting the one about the girl who found herself dating a cowboy and his dog and ended up liking the hairy kisses of both.

We did talk a little politics, a little craziness we see going on right here, with people not wanting to share, with people not having to work a place to own it, not needing their neighbors. And we pulled ourselves in with a soft-feel, like horse-whisperers, as one cowboy reminded us, "What would Tom Dorrance do?"

Ice along the Imnaha

I didn't share the poem I wrote, but I like it better since I heard the poetry and stories last night. The questions and emotions about where we live and how we can talk to others when we hear them out in the world saying, this is what the local folks think and do, and it's not.

There is so much that we learn from the places we live in. And often not with words. And we have to learn to tell it, to look at the other animals in the room and ask ourselves: Where is the life energy? Where is the fear? How much pressure should we give? When to release?

Here is the poem.

December, Dug Bar

What matters

is not the time or date, but the light and wind and chill,

the snow clouds blotting out the trail.

After dark, I hear your packstring

clump in on the frozen ground,

and I go to the barn so I can see you alive, unsaddling the beasts, their breath fogging the air.

It feels like we are in the bible,

flood and famine, whatever God writes.

I’m saying I think I understand this grass

this water, these gates and trails.

I’m saying I can see the locust grove

swinging in the basin high above us,

the place we rest sometimes, as if our graves lay there.

SI Miller 12 10 2010

Mike headed home ahead of the storm

From Sara at Mapgie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Christmas Missive

2010-12-09T08:59:00.000-08:00

Winter finds us here on Prairie Creek, east of the stubble field, beside the ancient row of lilacs hugging the ditch-bank. The farmhouse has enriched our lives not only with shelter, work and gaiety, but kinship.

The farm is a life shared with us. It holds not our mothers’ childhood. Nor did our grandparents, uncles, aunts, make these fields or carve these waterings, raise these barns and sheds, corrals and bunkhouses. This is another family, now interwoven with ours, far flung, and rich in their own lives.

I see their summer photographs, the stubbly lawn bathed in full sun, the meager slips of lilac either side of the footbridge, new and ornamented white with gated archways. And in the yard, beside a tall slim woman, a toddler in bloomerish attire, toddling as my own have done in this very place.

Only now, the elms are tall and the lilacs overgrown. The buildings, once stark and construct, are settled and aged among a scattering of fattened cottonwoods and tall windbreak conifers. I am thankful for this sharing.

This winter morning, the fields and pastures, still farmed, are licked with fog. I wait for the sun to break through, to light the ice and set the fields with crops of tiny rainbow prisms.

There are other houses that have grown out of these farms, and left aside the farmers. There are houses whose people have lives elsewhere, with other professions and means. I would like to know them, I tell myself, and feel the urge to knock on their door, bearing jam and potatoes. I think I want to hear their stories, to tell my own, but then I remember times when the story is unanswered, and I doubt.

Sometimes it takes getting past, like wading through hawthorn thickets in the bottom of a draw. Last week moving cattle, I drug my horse into the middle of a thicket, thinking I’d find a hole and ended up clawed from every side. My horse’s head against my back, I wrestled spiny branches, wishing for a machete, until I found the fire-killed sumac that I could break, and we pushed through.

Mike said he cut the trail out once. But it will take cutting out again, for as long as someone is bringing cattle up that creek on foot or horseback. And I think of all the trails that have felt the arc of his machete. And I think of the hands before us who knew and wanted to keep open the way to that range and to the cabin at the forks.

Sometimes our stories can be told, even miles apart, to people we rarely see, and they might remember this same trail, even if they have never set foot there. I will knock on the neighbor’s door again this Christmas.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Thanksgiving's Work

2010-12-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

Friday after Thanksgiving, the sun comes up with an intensity that sharpens the facets of the mountains' snow-covered cliffs. Zeke says the mountains look taller with snow on them, and they do.The golden light tips wheat stubble and tall-grass fence rows, a perfect morning for a march across the field with Dawson and Prairie. At the creek we stomp ice, poke our faces into the culvert - trying to see each other on the other end. The dogs run crazy and we practice Punch, now five months old, on 'heel', and 'here', and 'sit', 'behind' and 'stay behind'.

Dawson looks at Prairie

South End of Culvert

In the afternoon we load supplies and horse hay onto the flat bed. Mike leaves for the river with two hours of daylight, hoping to spot the herd above the Imnaha.. Prairie and Jon and I finish packing another load and head down in the dark. We arrive to a fire in the stove and a light on (yeah solar system!), but no water. It's 40 degrees and the wind is in a steady blow down canyon.

Saturday morning, just as the horses are saddled, Gabe, Cammie and Dawson pull up and Zeke is with them. Mike and Prairie are headed upriver toward Basin Creek, where Mike spotted some of the herd, about six miles away. Gabe and Cammie ride out toward Walking Cane to open a gate on the drift fence.

Gabe, Prairie, Cammie on the Rye Bench

Zeke and I stay behind to work on the water line. As we hike up the steep draw to the spring box, Dawson scrambles over the trail, fending off the claws of wild rose and hawthorn branches with one arm, the other firmly held in my grip. There's water in the springbox, and a wet place where the line might have a crack. We poke around in the muck, then decide to head back. Nap time and we need a shovel. Dawson scrambles down slope with equal enthusiasm, "leaping" off rocks and stomping through an icy mud hole. At the bottom, Zeke and I spot where the pipe is apart. We walked right by it on the way up.

Back at the house, I look out the kitchen window upriver, clouds are rolling toward us like dense smoke, the snowfall obliterating landmarks from sight. The temperature is dropping fast and the wind is picking up. Dawson looks out the window, "Storm's coming Grandma." I'm wondering how far the riders and cattle have made it, where on the canyonside they will be when the storm hits.

Storm clouds descending

Headed home ahead of the storm

With half an hour of poor light remaining, the four riders snake down off the hill, but Jon, who headed out for a hike this morning, is nowhere to be seen. We get the horses put up, still no Jon. A few of us hike part way to the bench in the failing light, no sign of Jon. The snow is really coming down. Hunger battles concern, dinner's ready and it's pitch black outside. Then we hear Zeke's voice on the porch and Jon's answer. Thank God.

Sunday morning the snow has stopped. Mike and I saddle up and head out to gather the cattle off the Rye Bench. It's a slick climb, the horses are sharp shod with caulks, but the four inches of wet snow ball up under their hooves, making them slide a bit on the steep north. On the bench, the cattle are scattered in three bunches and it takes longer to gather than we hoped.

A solitary elk calf is in with herd and we wonder where her mother is, or the rest of her family. All day she follows along, sometimes wandering off a ways, then trotting back into the cows with long bouncing strides. As she stands fifteen feet from my horse, I realize I've never been this close to an elk calf before, and I admire her thick coat, her large dark eyes, how tall she is, the mewing noises she makes as she scans the canyon behind us.

In the afternoon, Mike spots a herd of elk high above us on the canyonside, and the elk calf leaves us to find her own kind. We drop down, cross the creek and turn the cattle through the gate onto the Horse Creek road. My feet are soaking wet, we've clawed through thickets of hawthorn, I'm hungry and my horse is tired. I'm looking forward to meeting the rest of the family at the Pumpkin Creek cabin, where lunch will be waiting.

The cows have other ideas. They would rather head up the other side of the canyon and onto the east bench, than trail up the narrow road. It's the hardest part of the day, but we finally get them lined out, and I swear the trick is that I start whistling "B-I-N-G-O". They seem to have an aversion to it, and want to move, so I keep whistling until my lips cramp up. Finally we're through the last gate and can let the cattle settle and scatter. I'm hoping Gabe has finished the rock jack on the drift fence, and plugged any other holes that would make it easy for the herd to head back toward more familiar territory. It's been four years since we had cattle on this range. It will take a while for them to make themselves at home.

By Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Hats Off to Customers

2010-11-19T07:39:00.000-08:00

Steel blue-grey sky and snow-covered fields outside the kitchen window as dawn creeps into the Wallowa Valley. On this 15 degree morning, I'm thankful the Oval cookstove still has coals in the firebox and all I have to do it drop in a couple chunks of wood to get the fire going again. It's the season of thankfulness and for days now I've been ruminating on how much I appreciate our Bunchgrass Beef customers.

Cold morning in the valley

Customers--hats off to you! Not only have you supported us financially by buying our locally raised beef, you have been my teachers at Customer College. Your questions have helped me tell our story. Your feedback has given me perspective, everything from how great your cholesterol levels are to how people at your barbecue went wild over the amazing flavor of a Bunchgrass Beef burger.

I love that you love feeding your families with natural, healthy local beef. I love that you are connected to Magpie Ranch and want to keep family ranches on the land, supporting local knowledge and our efforts to raise food sustainably.

Packing salt to cattle in the canyon

I love how diverse you are and the many ways you inform me. Why does an animal yield more meat one year than the next? How come my raw burger turns dark after I leave it open in the fridge? How do I decide which "quarter" to buy? What do I do with this big roast? What makes this meat so flavorful? Why are the fats different in grassfed meat?

When I'm struggling to get a fence back up on the edge of a canyon, or chopping ice at a water hole, or crunching numbers and making calls, your words of encouragement are right there, they are a part of what keeps us going.

So give yourselves a gold star, for patience, for sincerity, for caring about local food and most of all, for letting us know what you think. And here's a big cowgirl whistle for you too. Plug your ears!

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Over the River

2010-11-10T07:33:00.000-08:00

John and Newt below Packsaddle

It's official. The cow herd is on the winter range. Doug and Gabe and Dennis helped us get them to Packsaddle and a couple days later, John and Mike trailed them from the Hall place across the river to Magpie. I bet the cows are as relieved as I am. It's nice to get settled into your home range for the long winter, with all that nutritious bunchgrass spread out across the slopes and benches, the clear fresh water, and plenty of room to wander.

Climbing out of the Hall place

The favorite spot for crossing the Imnaha River

We'll be taking the herd up Pumpkin Creek for a couple months this year. It's been about four years since they were were up there. We've been resting that range since the big fire a few years ago, and gradually getting the fences fixed or replaced where they burned up. As soon as we get a couple big downfall trees off the main fence, we'll be ready to trail the herd the six miles up Horse Creek.

Pumpkin Creek reminds me a little of the Litch Place on Cow Creek. I love being high up in the big pines, hemmed in by the narrow rims and steep canyon sides, far from the road. The cabin is primitive, but provides the basics, a place to cook, get warm, sleep.

I'm looking forward to spending a bit more time there, exploring, getting to know the trails, cleaning the cabin, fixing things up. I am reminded to thank each hard working soul who was here before me, building this fence, putting on a new roof, clearing a trail to the creek. Every "improvement" out in this vast country is a welcome and valued asset, even if it is just a two room shack with an outhouse and a place to put your horses.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Paw Dirt Doggies - Stomp Your Feet

2010-10-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

We had another amazing old time dance at the Liberty grange last Saturday. Four fiddlers, three git-fiddles, a mandolin, piano, concertina, and spoons. Two callers and a big crowd of rowdy laughing dancers from ages 18 months to 77 years.

I had a blast harmonizing with the fiddles on my concertina, and playing the spoons. I learned the hard way that my new lighter-weight jeans are not so good for backstopping the spoons. Even though my playing spoons are wooden, my legs were on fire!

In spite of jet lag from his return trip from Armenia, Mike couldn't resist an old time dance that was right in our neighborhood. He wandered over for some visiting, relaxing with old friends in the chairs along the wall or standing in the corner close to the food and drink. I even got him out on the floor for a waltz.

Being in the grange reminded me of the old-time dances we had in Imnaha, many miles upriver from town. There is something comforting about the fact that many of the grange halls have the same building design. A big staircase and porch leading upstairs to the big hall with high ceilings and stout well worn wooden floor lined with chairs along the walls, rows of narrow double-hung windows, and a small stage, a coat room and a storage closet. Downstairs is a cavernous basement with many long tables for dining, several wood cookstoves, a couple electric or gas cookstoves, kitchen sinks and cupboards, and bathrooms (if you're lucky).

At Liberty, the outside stairs and landing are walled in to fend off winter gales and blizzards, with a recently added curtain of deer fence over the entrance to keep out the varmints, pigeons, etc. On Saturday night, the black mesh deer fence was hoisted up to allow us inside and walking under it made me feel like I was entering some kind of medieval fortress that had raised its portcullis.

It is a tremendously good feeling to be able to gather people together for music and dance in a building that was built a couple generations back by some of the great great grandparents of people still using it. One of the things I love most about the grange halls is that they are often located out on the prairie, or up the creek, or tucked in the hills, where farmers and ranchers can be the hosts, welcoming their neighbors, welcoming folks from town, welcoming anybody intrepid enough to make the trek, homing in on the faint lights of windows peeking out of the darkness at the end of a bumpy gravel road.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

The Times They Are a Changing

2010-10-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

First snow on the mountains. Garden ready to be put to bed for winter. Last of the squashes and pumpkins ripening under their blankets. Onions in the cellar. Meat in the freezer. Apples to harvest for storage and a few other odds and ends, and my part of getting ready for winter will be done!

Last weekend I had the unbelievable opportunity to swim in the Wallowa River on the 2nd of October. It was 85 degrees in the shade and I hiked up the backway along the river from Joseph, thinking I would take a dip in the lake.

When I reached the dam, the water was so low that instead of the usual raging torrent of summer outflow, there was a deep clear pool below the dam. I figured this was the only time I might experience both low water and hot temperatures, so I carefully climbed off the flume of the irrigation diversion and took the plunge into the icy beautiful blue-grey water. Frigid and refreshing!

That dip was enough to energize me through a hot sticky kitchen afternoon and the canning of the last of the pears. All afternoon long, my skin carried the velvety memory of that mountain water.

Now mornings are soggy with dew and early romps through the field with the dogs result in dripping wet pant legs from the knee down.

The new pup, Punch, (short for Opuntia - prickly pear), is well on her way to learning come, down, sit, back, and behind. Mostly she just races after the big dogs as best she can, but she is smart and if I am consistent on her training, and can keep her from having bad experiences, she will be an asset to the ranch.

Another month and we'll have the cow herd back in the canyon. We hope to go up Pumpkin Creek this fall as we haven't used that range since the big range fires a couple years ago. I can't wait to be on the river, the frenzy of summer growing, fall harvest, and trailing the cattle, all behind us, and just the steady work of winter - fixing fence, packing salt, herding, making improvements to keep us busy.

I know there will be long dark evenings where we are hunkered down, fires going, reading and writing and talking, a few songs on the guitar and concertina, hot cups of tea and a last walk outside under cold and starry skies to send us off to bed.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Oxtail and Beef Cheeks

2010-10-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

We just celebrated Slow Food Wallowa County's first event, Dig In!

Saturday the week before Dig In!, I got up to a kitchen loaded with produce waiting to be canned, frozen, or dried. On a whim I called Julia to see if she wanted to can peaches. She is a fruit person--that's what she told me when we met. She did want to can. So I started setting us up for peaches, honey curry pickles and apple pie filling. But after harvesting my cukes, I needed more so I called a garden buddy.

Janie said she had some cukes, but she was up to her eyeballs harvesting spuds and needed to get them in the cellar. I said I would come over and do it and she called me a "miracle from God." Julia and I went to Janie's and came home an hour later loaded with cabbage, beets, shallots, potatoes, carrots, dill, mint and a few cukes. The first produce for Dig In!

When Friday rolled around, I wanted to make my dishes for the pot luck while Dawson was napping.As soon as he fell asleep I started in on my two meat dishes: braised oxtail and braised beef cheeks.

Braising stock with red pepper and tomato

Oxtail ready for braising

The oxtail was browned and then simmered in a dutch oven for 4 hours in a tomato-ginger-red pepper-carrot-onion-garlic stock.

Browning cheeks before braising

After a lot of trimming, the beef cheeks were browned and baked in an onion-garlic-black pepper-beef stock. Chilled overnight, I removed the fat and then reheated them for the potluck. Both were delicious.

Saturday of the event, I got up early and went to the neighbor's farm for apples. The neighbors came out and helped pick, parking a flat bed truck under the tree and climbing a step ladder from there. Boxes and boxes of yummy cooking apples to share.

Some yummy produce from the Magpie Ranch

After that I went home and picked all my yellow and green beans, harvested red and green cabbage and herbs, and sorted a box of windfall Bartlett pears to take to the park.

Around three o'clock, people came to the park to share produce and everybody talked about how delicious the different produce was and what they planned to do with everything.

Then we had the potluck with amazing dishes, great stories, and good ideas. Monday morning, Julia and I hauled about six boxes of fresh produce to the Food Bank. It was a great way to wrap up a Dig In! weekend.

Now as an Indian Summer ripens the winter squash in the garden, I'm starting to look forward to winter and the next opportunity to gather folks and keep learning how to improve access to fair, safe, local food. And this very moment-- I'm going to can the last of those pears!

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Pop Pop goes to Armenia

2010-09-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

Pop Pop, as grandson Dawson calls him, is headed to Yerevan again. When Mike was first asked to go to Armenia to work on a pastoral systems project, I had to look on a map to figure out where it was. It's over there next to Turkey, below Georgia and above Iran.

This is his third trip, and the last for this year. He has been too busy to educate me much about it, but so far I've learned that their main breed of cattle are a cross of native Caucasus cattle and Brown Swiss, which they hoped would increase milk production for their dairy operations. The "beef" they raise comes from bull calves that are weaned at three months and put on pasture for a year. They do not castrate and the beef animals do not gain very well and are maybe only 400 - 500 pounds when slaughtered.

It sounds like the villages have some good options for improving their management and increasing the yields from their livestock operations. These could include managing dairy and beef animals as separate herds, allowing the beef herds to be grazed on pastures further from the village, castrating non-breeding bulls, and implementing a range management approach based on

ecological principals.

There was a time when I would not have pictured Mike as a scientist, but now it seems to make perfect sense. If a horse wreck had not laid him up and sent him down the college path, he might have just kept working on ranches as a hired hand. In fact, once he was back in the saddle, ranch work kept him sane while he pursued his education. Between semesters he took winters off to herd cattle at Dug Bar on the Snake River, or summers to work for the US Forest Service Range department. The ranchers we worked for, like Joe Collins of the Hubbard Ranch, were incredibly supportive.

Mike spent quite a lot of the next ten years away from home, three of those in Idaho. I cherished the months, weeks and days when he could be home with us, and especially the ones where the family was all together, wintering in cow camp, herding cattle on the craggy canyonsides. It was amazing to be on the range with him, watching him apply what he was learning, and seeing the ecological system of climate, topography, plants and animals through his eyes.

I drove him crazy with questions and I still do. He is mostly patient. He is mostly quiet. But I know that underneath the hours and hours of hard work, whether building a fence or packing out salt block, calculating stocking rates or planning a restoration project, he sees the big picture and our little place in it.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef.

Heifer Havoc

2010-09-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

I guess this kind of behavior should be expected from a two-year old. But Mike is always telling me to have a positive outlook. In other words, don't assume the yearlings and two-year olds are going to wreak havoc.

So I didn't think about it as we unloaded at the neighbor's corrals. Our day's job: to gather the herd on the Zumwalt and sort off bulls and steers to haul to the valley. We rode through the 400 Acres and down past the pond. The sky arched over us like a robin's eggshell, and the golden grass, cured on the stem, rustled against our horses' feet. It was a beautiful Indian Summer morning.

The cattle were across the draw and on top of the ridge and they gathered easy and trailed easy all the way to the corral. Getting them in was a different story.

We bunched them by the corral gate, where a short fence made a wing to help guide them into the first corral. The cattle balked and milled, and a couple mother cows fought the dog. Then a bull went through the gate and a bunch of cows went with him. We thought we had them. That's when some heifers quit the bunch and high-tailed it north with the dog and Mike in pursuit. Then a little red cow let out a beller and started running and the whole mob broke for the hills.

Repeat this scenario about five times. Every time the three of us got the herd gathered back up, one of the blasted two-year olds would bust loose, leaping rocks and humps of grass, evading me. The cows would bulge through the opening I left behind, while the other riders worked to hold the sides. We really needed at least another dog, but Ruby was left at home to babysit Punch, the new pup. And good horse flesh was lacking. Mestizo still thinks he's a packhorse and gets confused by my agitated intentions. Spurs might have helped. And then there was Zeb, the cowy, but ancient mustang. And Zip, the big guy, all charging here and there and working up an enormous sweat. The lone dog was wore down to a frazzle with a bad leg. It was not a real positive part of the day.

Finally Mike decided we should try a different gate, one flat-on mid corral, at the alley, where they could see the other cattle in the corral. We bunched them, they balked, we bunched them again and drove, and then the lead cow walked through the gate. A miracle!

During the year, I like having the mixed age herd, the generations of cattle working the range together. But when it comes time to gather, those yearlings can be a real pain in the pitoot.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Windfalls

2010-09-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

Mike and I just returned from a few Indian Summer days on the river, where Mike diligently pulled weeds (puncture vine and cockle burr) and I picked blackberries and plums. We are in the thick of the harvest now. Our second wave of Bunchgrass Beef customers are hungrily anticipating their September deliveries. The garden is overflowing its borders in a tangle of pumpkin and winter squash vines. And the trees are weighted down with fruit.

Usually we think of a windfall as a stroke of unexpected good luck, like finding out your old horse blanket is really a Navajo rug worth thousands of dollars. But when it comes to fruit, windfalls are often viewed with disdain, i.e.: those annoying piles of rotting apples collecting in the lawn.

I could have felt that way about our transparents. The tree has been battling some kind of leaf curl, but still produced fruit this year. The small, hail pocked, easily-bruised and quick-to-rot apples were becoming more and more numerous in the grass under the tree. I kept thinking if the apples would just stay on the branches longer, they would get bigger, and I would be more inclined to work with them.

But no, they kept falling off and a little voice inside my head kept saying, "Waste not, want not." Therefore, I added the apples to the growing list of garden stuff destined to be tucked into jars, freezer bags or drying racks. This included: peaches (lots), pears (quite a few), blackberries (the tale end), green and yellow beans (tons), sour yellow plums (plenty), cucumbers (just starting) and raspberries (last gasp).

Looking into the bucket of wimpy apples, I was humbled by the fact that imperfect fruit can still yield great food. Working up the apples reminded me how I love the feel of a good knife in my hands, the weight of a fruit balanced against gravity while the knife does its work. The peel falls away, the seeds are nipped from their bed, and into the pot go the serviceable and delicious remains.

There was a lot of trim on those apples, but after cooking them and running them through the hand mill, I combined them with the tart yellow plums to make a beautifully golden batch of plum-apple butter. Luckily, after the jars were filled, there was a "windfall" dab left over to spread on crisply toasted, butter-saturated chewy whole-grain bread, the perfect snack for hungry harvesters.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Rejuvenation

2010-09-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

In geologic terms, rejuvenation is a kind of rapid erosion that takes landforms backwards in time, from older forms to younger, more rugged features.

I imagine this like when the 1,000 year flood came through along the Imnaha River and stripped away the soil and trees, carving new channels, leaving high raw cuts and sprawling gravel bars. A few years later, I stood at the edge of the river and looked across the rapids to the far cutbank and the water line ten feet above my head. I briefly pictured myself submerged inside the roil, and shuddered.

The Missoula Floods cycled through about every 55 years when Hells Canyon was being formed. When I think that what we witnessed was a once in a 1,000 years event, the frequency of those Ice Age floods is staggering. I wonder if I have ever seen water travelling at the rate of 80 mph. How fast was the Imnaha when it was running 20,000 cubic feet of water per second? Even during a normal flood, at 2,000 cfs, the river is frightening.

In contrast to the geologic process, the rejuvenation of body or self is mostly associated with indulgence and relaxation. Perhaps I should reconsider life's threatening situations as another form of rejuvenation, the physical breaking down into new life, the turmoil that erodes feelings down to emotional bedrock, where one can begin building up again.

In 1862, Thoreau wrote, "In wildness is the preservation of the world." Back when we first met, Mike had a favorite poster with that quote on it. I think it helped me trust him. The quote was like a founding principle that we could always agree on, one that has grounded us wherever we've lived, from the Yukon Territory, to the Andes Mountains, to the depths of Hells Canyon.

Wildness has been both balm and catalyst. Ignition and antidote. It has been one of the best teachers, for two people in it for the long haul.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Old Bonnie's Last Winter

2010-08-22T18:04:00.000-07:00

Six years into retirement, old Bonnie dog sleeps most of the day. Often deep in dreams, legs twitching,she sleeps so hard you can raise her foot off the ground and drop it, and she doesn’t notice a thing.

To wake her, you have to poke her or stomp on the floor in front of her face. When she does wake up, it’s as if a shot has gone off and she lunges up off the ground a couple inches.

In my mind I see her when she was younger, when she never stopped moving and seemed to flow over the ground. All of her fit together and worked together. She had speed, agility, stamina.

For most of her life, she never missed a day’s work. Always a header, she would swing in a continuous arc alongside the herd, up and back, up and back. Sometimes she'd circle clear around and I wouldn't notice her slipping in front until the whole herd stopped. Squinting to see what was going on, I'd catch a glimpse of her slender form, quiet and focused, gliding back and forth, holding the lead.

During her last winter at age 18, she would get up every morning, unfold her stiff bones from her canvas bed under the bench and totter to the the back porch screen door. The night is likely to have been close to zero and inside the porch it’s not much warmer. If the door is propped open, she wobbles briefly at the top of the four cement stairs and executes a controlled fall to the wooden deck below.

Her momentum carries her into the frozen yard where she aims towards the pasture. It’s been a long night and she really needs to pee. She reaches the yard fence and relieves herself and slowly begins her laps around the house. First she navigates east along the north-side past the garden, then turns south past the lilacs along the ditch, then turns west under the overgrown honeysuckle, past the pumphouse and then north again.

As her stiff hind legs warm up, she breaks into a loose jog, remembering the stride that followed the cattle across the prairies and canyons. She rounds the house again and again and I see her pass by the kitchen window every few minutes for the next half hour.

Soon she will wobble up the back porch steps again and fold herself onto her worn bed under the bench. As she drifts into slumber, her body relaxes, her legs extend, her chest rises and falls--her lips opening with a little puff of breath. Her toes begin to twitch. Where is she now I wonder. Is she deep in the canyon climbing a rocky trail and dodging prickly pear? Or is she high on a ridge, threading the tall pines, following the scent of the herd?

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Dog Days with Great Grandma

2010-08-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure exactly why they call them dog days, but I think they have arrived. In spite of the heat, my eighty-five year old mother was determined to make the trip to the canyon to overnight at the ranch.

This time of year, the main cow herd is up on the Zumwalt prairie enjoying the summer pasture so we don't make many trips to the canyon, unless there is fruit to harvest in the orchard. An early bloom, followed by a late frost did in the apricot crop and the apples and plums and pears aren't ready yet, so the trip to the river was mostly about Mom getting another chance to enjoy the river and sky and beautiful canyon rock formations.

She hates the road because she is afraid of heights. One advantage of old age and failing eyesight is that she was not as petrified because she could not see the drop offs so well anymore. She had also forgotten about the road, and when we got there, she announced that she now remembered it and the fact that she always likes the trip out better as she would be on the uphill side!

Ninety degrees in the shade when we pulled in and almost immediately an enormous thunderstorm came crashing down, thunder and lightning with hailstones the size of Mom's thumbnail, followed by a torrential downpour. The temperature dropped twenty degrees to a comfortable 70, perfect for enjoying an evening hike.

While Mom stretched her legs, I hacked and collected thistle heads and pulled goat-head plants. The dogs should thank me for removing the goat-heads from the corrals and driveway. This ground hugging plant gets its name from its nasty seeds, about the size of a pea, with two incredibly hard, sharp spines that pierce the pads of the dogs feet. After the thunderstorm, I had a good opportunity to pull plants from the moist ground.

Mom loves being outdoors and just watching the storms and the sunsets provides hours of entertainment. She also enjoyed the new electric lights in the ranch house - via solar power that Mike installed. This was very handy on her many nighttime trips to the bathroom - as she puts it - "At 85, I'm a frequent flyer."

We finished up our visit with a hike up the river bar to pick a few of the early blackberries. Mom put her feet in the river, while I took a swim. The first river swim of the summer. Languid, refreshing, perfect.

We celebrated the end of Mom's visit with dinner at Gabe, Cammie and Dawson's house. Mom had a blast with her two-year old great grandson (one of seven "greats"). I made a luscious blackberry-blueberry cobbler using that weird and delicious recipe that calls for berries, topped with a layer of batter and then sprinkled with sugar and cornstarch and - the weird part - with some boiling water poured over top. I'm sure Mom will polish off the leftover cobbler today as she tries to implement my father's motto of "eat dessert first." At eighty-five, that's probably a good idea.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Going to Seed

2010-07-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

Once the rain stopped, it seems like summer chores have been compressed into a frenzy. Suddenly the canyons are hot, the grass has seeded out, the garden has gone crazy - broccoli grew a foot in one week, and I'm anxious to get some irrigation on the horse pasture here in the valley.

My 85 year old mother is here for some love, laughs and lots of good meals. She is happy to wander the yard, admiring the mountains, the sunsets and the amazing thunderstorms - with rainbows.

The cows are happy on the Zumwalt and the steers are wallowing in lush green grass on the toe- slopes of the Wallowa Mountains. Thank goodness all our fencing efforts are paying off, because Mike is working on a pastoral systems project in Armenia and taking multiple trips over there this summer, so I'm riding herd on the cattle and so far, cross your fingers, they are staying put.

Mike's project is challenging as he tries to promote information sharing and the adoption of an ecological approach to rangeland management in the Armenian grazing systems. He is making friends and learning a lot so that is a good start.

In spite of all the chores, I'm reminded to take some time for the hammock, especially when both 85 year old Grandma and 2 year old Dawson are here. What is life without that velvet breeze, lingering in the shade on a hot NE Oregon summer day?

From Sara at Magpie Ranch home of Bunchgrass Beef

Hand Measuring

2010-06-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

Hardly a day goes past when I am not reminded of my great teachers in life, the people who shaped my skills, desires and values. Some of these are far in the past, like Mrs. Jorgenson at Normandy Park Elementary, who let me paint my way through first grade (age 5) and Mrs. Anslow, the pianist, who tolerated my grubby horse-stained appearances on lesson day (age 12).

There are teachers among the members of my family, like my maternal grandfather, Lawrence Goodrich, the cabinet maker, who taught me that success means doing something you love. And my father, Ralph Miller, whose family was so poor they never owned a car and had to live in rented rooms, who showed me the vast riches of the natural world and the incredible gift of discovery, whether of a tiny plant on the bank of a creek, or of learning a new language and making cherished friends in a foreign country.

There have been so many wonderful teachers in my life, I could write an encyclopedia just listing them all. They are the jewels on my necklace of years. So each day I admire a few and give thanks.

Today I was thinking about Janet Wilson. I met Janet when we both had little kids and she was one of the toughest, hardest working women I knew. In spite of arthritis that was already crippling her wrists, she broke horses and worked in the fields and logging camps. I remember how she determinedly shod her own mule, trimming and rasping the hooves, then shaping and nailing on the steel shoes. It took her four days since she could only tolerate shoeing one foot per day.

Last Sunday I saw Janet for the first time in fifteen years. We met up at the Donnelly garden on the John Day River. Janet is hanging in there, hunkered down on the family homestead up Alder Creek. She can't saddle her old mare anymore, even though she can still ride.

What she can do is make incredibly beautiful beaded works of art. The richly colored glass of a garden-themed dream-catcher sparkled in the June sun as she gifted it to my niece for a new baby's room. Janet just finished a lamp shade that took four years to complete. Each piece is given away, inspired by the richness of giving.

I was thinking of Janet while mixing up a batch of banana bread in my farmhouse kitchen here in the Wallowa Valley. I picked out the right-sized bowl, eyeballed the amount of mashed banana in the bottom, added oil, eggs, honey, flour, and measured, in the palm of my hand, the baking soda, baking powder and salt. Then it struck me, who taught me to cook without measuring cups?Without mixer or recipe? So that now, when my own daughter asks how I make waffles, or bread or gravy, I find myself struggling to describe the size of bowl needed, the amount of ingredients.

I realize I did not learn how to cook from anyone in particular. What I learned from friends like Janet, and so many other hard-working resourceful outdoor women, is that you don't need much to do a good job. You give it a try, you make mistakes and you get better.

That is not to say that I don't rely on cherished recipes from time to time. I still remember desperately wishing I knew how to make a lemon meringue pie and thinking it was a godsend to find a cast-off book, "The Bride's Guide for Living,"at the Imnaha dump. After forty pages of how-to on bridal registries, spring cleaning, and hosting cocktail parties, there appeared a few sample menus AND a recipe for lemon-meringue pie!

Yes I can now "eyeball" a pie, and I owe it, not to a fancy kitchen stocked with gadgets galore, but to the simple cow camps where just about anything you make tastes delicious.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

It Takes a Village

2010-06-22T08:16:00.000-07:00

Or a family, at least. In our group effort, we safely trailed the cow herd from Horse Creek on the Imnaha River to the Zumwalt Prairie in three days.

Day one, Cammie and visiting niece, Maddie, brought the herd up the road and along the bench to Log Creek. Dawson even did some "herding" via stroller, the first time I've ever seen that attempted!

Zeke and Mike spent the morning clearing the Log Creek trail with machetes and hand saw, whacking through a jungle of blackberry, alder, and poison oak. Luckily Brian and Mike had done a major job of brushing out the trail last year so this June the job took significantly less time. Gabe and I got the herd started up the narrow draw and through the first gate where we left them overnight, hoping they would continue to climb up on their own during the afternoon and evening.

We all returned to the ranch house for a yummy barbecue, relaxing in the warm afternoon, playing horseshoes and fishing in the river. Except for Mike, who spent the evening resetting shoes on horses, getting them ready for the next day's work.

Day two, Mike and I took over, making our way up Log Creek. Travelling mostly on foot in a steady downpour, we slogged through shoulder high wet brush and up saturated side hills so slick even our horses had trouble keeping their feet. Finally the rain quit and a bit of sun even came out as we reached the cows, who had indeed continued up the draw and were now lounging near the last steep pitch. The weather was something like I imagine Ireland to be, and the canyon below unfolded in a stupendous light show of clouds, sun and shadow.

Our job was made somewhat easier since Mike had already hauled most of the steers to our other summer range near Hurricane Creek at the foot of the Wallowa Mountains. This left us with fewer animals to push up to the ridge top.

Nevertheless, the last pitch was brutal. Leading Mestizo and Bird, I would scramble up about ten yards at a time, then perch between the two horses as all three of us caught our breath for a minute. I thought, well I guess if it's hard for the horses, I shouldn't feel bad about it being so hard for me.

Mike was up above me, handily working the dogs on foot as he switch-backed the herd up and threaded them between a couple small rims of rock and topped out into the timber of the canyon breaks.

Hallelujah. I was so happy to be able to get back into the saddle, and so thankful to have my horse under me for the rest of the day.

The cows travelled well along the top, in spite of the occasional traffic, wood cutters, noisy motorcycle riders, rigs hauling trailers, gawking tourists, etc. The ominous weather had drawn closer, with pitch black clouds off to the east. We were accompanied by thunder and lightning for several hours and the temperature turned cold, but fortunately we did not get dumped on by any of the numerous downpours all around us. We finally passed Thomason Meadows and soon the Steen Place came into view. I was flooded by memories of the many years we lived and worked that range, living in the historic two story log house, reclaiming it each summer from the pack rats and mice.

Now part of a vast private hunting preserve, the abandoned house, barn and corrals sit unused beyond new locked gates. As we rode past the huge holding pasture west of the barn I remembered how Mike, then the "new man", used to wrangle the horses out of that big pasture every morning. We were living in a wall tent in the yard as the house was getting some repairs and at daybreak, our foreman would holler out the door of his camp trailer, "Hale! Get those horses in!"

I remember filling in for Mike a few times, escaping motherhood in the soggy tent for the back of a horse. It was always a bit hairy, as the pasture was so large and the horse herd was often at the far end. As I approached the herd, my saddle horse would get all riled up and then the herd would stampede past. Since I really couldn't hold my horse back, I just tried to stay on as we flew over the wet rough ground, dodging hidden badger holes and leaping little washes alongside a rumpus of bucking and farting horses.

Now the meadows were silent as we trailed past with our bunch of longhorns. I gave thanks, drinking in the smell of a place that was so much a part of our lives, our growing up as parents and our learning how to live and work.

As we reached the corner by Vance Knoll, Gabe and Zeke met us with a thermos of hot coffee and some dry clothes. The cows were tired and it was getting colder, so we decided to call it good for the day and dropped the herd for the night.

In the morning on day three, we took the cows the last little bit up the road and turned them down across the Four Hundred Acres and through the gate onto the summer pasture, right where they belonged. As we rode back to the truck, I couldn't help looking across the prairie where the dark fingers of timber met the green swales of grassland, remembering our new neighbors, the wolves, and hoping that our tough mother cows with their substantial horns would do well to remind the wolves that there was other better prey on the range.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

One Step Closer

2010-06-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

The sun appeared and dried out the corrals just in time for branding last weekend. It was hot, but not too hot. The cattle gathered easy in the early morning cool and the box elders provided some shade for the branding corral. Our crew of Zeke, Gabe, Mike, Cammie, Sara, Dawson (yeah, I know he's only two) and Danish exchange student, Laura Wang, handled the job well.

Mama cows with their baby calves were happily back munching lush canyon grass by afternoon while the branding crew enjoyed a feast of delicious Bunchgrass burgers, fresh salads and homemade rhubarb custard pie. We deserved it!

After the work was done, and our hunger satisfied, we relaxed and enjoyed the beautiful warm day. When things cooled off, Laura, Cammie and I took a leisurely ride along the Imnaha River. The temperature was balmy and the evening light bathed the high red rims and green carpeted canyon slopes. A gentle breeze rustled the thick ribbon of trees hugging the river and everywhere birds sang and darted above us in the softly descending evening.

I felt like we could have just kept going, clear to the Snake River, our horses' rhythmic hoofbeats in the moist dirt, the soothing sway of the saddle beneath me, the clean soft air on my bare arms, with just a hint of summer's brutal heat.

Before we knew it we had ridden longer and travelled farther than we intended. So we turned and took the long trot toward home, grateful to have had those few hours to remember how blessed we are to be doing this work, to have these animals to care for, to spend another day in the canyon surrounded by the memories of those who were here before us, who taught us and whose encouragement we still need.

Yup, with the branding done, we're one step closer to starting up the trail to the summer range.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

When it Pours

2010-06-07T20:48:00.001-07:00

Last week I had the pleasure of laying eyes on my neighbors. It wasn't on the range, but rather in a basement conference room where we were meeting to discuss the future of grassfed beef. Two young women I've known all their lives, come home after college to begin the next generation of work on their family ranch. I wanted to know how they were. They wanted to know how the longhorns were. With cattle like ours, sometimes the cows are more interesting than we are.

I assured them the longhorns were great, lolling in lush grass, in no hurry to leave the canyon benches for the summer ground. The girls on the other hand, had been hard at it going over miles of fence out on the prairie, trying to patch up a mess left behind from rush-hour at the elk-way.

Several extra large elk herds decided to spend more time on the private prairie lands than on the public lands this winter. A few landowners became concerned about the loss of feed that they were counting on when the time would come to bring their cows out to the summer range. So a "hazer" was hired. I believe his job was to encourage the elk to move back toward public rangeland, where they could happily munch their way toward summer.

However, between the elk and the public land are a lot of fences. Fences people need to keep their cows where they are supposed to be. Fences that keep certain ground from being over grazed and encourage cattle to use other ground. Fences that keep our longhorn bulls out of the neighbors' hornless herds. Fences that keep cattle out of riparian areas or in holding pastures.

Some of those fences are almost twice as old as I am. Those are "historic" fences, a testament to good split material, like tamarack, and yucky, but effective barbed wire. The crux of them all is a decently constructed rock jack, crib or half crib. It's amazing when you think of all those miles of fence defying gravity for years and years and years. And then you think of the guy who built that fence for the very first time, back when you could ride to the nearest grange hall every month and stay up all night dancing and eating sandwiches and pie.

The girls had been out on the prairie in the pouring rain for two days. Stretching, splicing, stapling, hammering, staying, hefting, and pounding. They looked slightly disgusted just mentioning it. And yet, somehow even fencing in the rain makes a person feel useful. It's necessary and you know somebody somewhere is really appreciating the fact that you're out there doing it and they aren't.

When it pours everything is wet. When it pours for six out of seven days a week for a couple weeks, everything is saturated. We all know we're only a cloudburst away from disaster. Just across the Wallowa's, a storm cell parked above North Pine Creek, swelling the creek into a raging river that carved off football field sized sections of a major road. Bridges washed out, houses were flooded.

At Horse Creek, the Imnaha left its banks overnight, but we got by with minor flooding and our bridge was impassable for only half a day. Still, with the memory of the massive 1,000 year flood event of 1997, we never turn our backs on the river when there's this much rain.

I'm watching the grass grow and it's like getting an awesome interest rate on the money in your savings account. Out in the valley, an odd silence lays across the afternoon fields. No shush-shush of irrigation sprinklers. The farmers quit irrigating weeks ago. It's just too wet.

I don't know much about climate change, but I know our part of the world is supposed to get "warmer and wetter". This spring it feels more like colder and wetter, with the coldest May on record and people's lawns beginning to look like hayfields just before first cutting.

The sunset tonight was unexpectedly beautiful, the violet stretch of sky, fiery rays of sun turning salmon, then muted tangerine along the ridged horizon, fading upward in faint rainbow layers through yellow into green, into robin's egg blue into navy blue into midnight blue. I'm stunned by the expanse of it, by the color! Grey day after grey day, smothered by rain clouds, I'd forgotten how beautiful our summer evenings usually are. So for now, I'm loving every minute of sun, still thankful for the rain, just hoping it will let up a bit so we can all dry out for a change.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Calves on the Ground

2010-05-07T20:01:00.001-07:00

The first Bunchgrass Beef calves of 2010 are on the ground! We're about half way through calving and with the new grass coming on, calves and mamas are happy. Little Basin has an almost all white calf with red ears! It's cavorting season and I'm jealous because the last few times I've been at the river, all the pairs have been high on the canyon bench and all I've seen are steers, yearlings and cows that haven't calved yet. Yes, I did see some of the little critters with the binoculars, but that doesn't count.

We picked up a good-looking black longhorn bull to add to the herd for the summer as well as a young red longhorn bull who will have another year before we put him to use. We said goodbye to Fred, our awesome tri-color bull, who we sold to a ranch out north where he can be in heifer heaven with a new harem for a few years.

In spite of the six inches of snow that arrived on May 5th, we know summer is right around the corner. In another month we'll be thinking of turn-out and trailing the herd to the summer range on the Zumwalt Prairie. Before then we'll gather family and friends for the annual branding, hopefully when it isn't too unbearably hot. Last year we set the date and then it turned out to be about 100 degrees. Right now I can't really imagine it's going to be so hot that I'll want to jump in the swimming hole, but I know it's coming. That and cherries and blackberries and plums and homemade ice cream and barbecues and sitting around the fire with the guitar and concertina, watching the stars blink on in a violet blue sky.

From Sara, Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Date Night in the Thistle Patch

2010-04-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

Sunday late afternoon, a gentle breeze blowing down the river, the golden light settling on vibrant new grass, Bunchgrass Beef cows high on the benches with their frisky new calves...all was well on the Magpie Ranch.

The dirty work of digging out the crawlspace and putting in new conduit for the solar power was done. The first go round on the lawn with the stinky hard-pushing gas mower, whacking it all down before snakes and grandchild had a chance to meet unexpectedly. Another ride on the sassy new mare. The bumpy drive up to Pumpkin Creek to seed grass on the fresh dozed tracks where the road was relocated out of the creek. And in between it all, the non-stop antics of the almost-two-year-old grandson.

Time for a break. Time to sit on the porch, letting it all sink in: the greening range, the merganzers zipping low through the air heading downstream, the current high and silty frothing over the rapids and sucking at the willows, the fruity-sweet scent of apple blossoms and the heady perfume of lilacs. And sun, glorious and warm, bathing red rock and red osier and purple brodia and yellow sunflower.

And what could be nicer than a leisurely meander across the bridge and upriver to the farthest stretch of reclaimed feedground, where the rangeland drill couldn't go, to the broadcast seeding, to see what our efforts had amounted to.

That's how it started, a simple hold-your-hand stroll through the field. But somehow a shovel entered into the picture, and not long thereafter, the uprooting and pulling of a scotch thistle here and there, and then the scuffing and scrabbling of kochia sprouts from among new grass seedlings. Before long I was hard at it in a clump of thistle rosettes with Mike up ahead, gloves wrapped around a stubborn root. When I finally stopped looking at the ground, he was gone, a telltale wire gate left open at the narrow end of the field.

I laid my shovel down and ventured into the lush ribbon of alder, birch, dogwood, elderberry, box elder and rose. Rock rims crowded the channel, towering overhead and casting their cool shade onto the tunnel of trees. I crept under the hanging branches, looking for signs of boot tracks in the new grass. The river churned past, licking the banks, and the fresh leaves of the trees danced around me in the breeze. "ARRRRRRR!" came the inevitable roar as Mike jumped up from behind an ancient upended box elder.

We laughed and then continued on through the green tunnel to the end of the grove where the rims reached the water and cut off the trail. And we stood for a moment on a rock reaching into the current, where we could see a few Bunchgrass Beef cows grazing the spring grass on the far bank, the slant light of dinner time cutting into the canyon. Then we turned toward home, holding hands again, at least till we got to the thistle patch.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Gap Fences

2010-04-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

The fence we built last weekend is classic. Not in the traditional rock jack sort of way. More in the improvisational scrounge-and-scab-together way. As our new grass seedlings pop up in our restoration projects, some of those athletic Bunchgrass Beef cattle challenge our determined efforts to keep them from crossing the river and reaching the big bar on the west side. Not that they don't have nutritious bunchgrass greening up on the slopes and canyon benches, they just "like variety" as Mike puts it.

We are a few years into the restoration project on the west river bar where there used to be a feedlot. After the 1,000 year flood in 1997, the bar was colonized by six foot high kochia and other weeds transported in on the flood, and enormous piles of gravel and rock and woody debris were left behind in scattered spots on the broad flat ground.

When we first started the restoration project, we had to pull out the feeders, anchored by railroad ties that Mike and I toiled to set as posts over twenty years ago when we worked for the Phillips' family. It was really hard work setting those posts and I guess we did a good job, because it was really hard work getting them out too! After dismantling the feeders, we burned and pulled weeds and cut out washed up trees, etc. Then we drilled in seed with the the rangeland drill from the Soil and Water Conservation District.

This year we did our second round of drilling. Our first seeding took pretty good in some spots, but we wanted to get into areas that we couldn't seed the first time, and go back over some places where germination had been spotty. It's really rewarding to see grass instead of weeds and to see the diversity of plants and animals enjoying the habitat.

Last weekend we were improvising a gap fence between rock outcrops where the cattle were finding spots between the rims where they could jump down onto the river bank and then cross to the other side. We lugged a couple steel posts downriver and perched ourselves above a small rim along the east side of the river. The view of the historic camping place in the box elder grove and upriver across the bar was soothing in the warm spring sun, with the river gurgling past in one of our outstanding salmon fishing holes and a set of rapids tumbling off to the north.

Just below us, a Canada goose was setting on her nest in a cleft of basalt half-way up the rim. A great spot to get away from predators, but one of her eggs had rolled off the nest and sat out in the open, balanced on the rock ledge like an abandoned Easter egg. It would be fun to see how the goslings make their first jump off the nest and into the river some six feet below.

All day long the beautiful cliff swallows darted back and forth above the river. As they banked and turned catching insects in the warm air currents, their iridescent backs flashed in the sun.

Finally, just as we gathered up our dusty tools, a golden eagle drifted around the bend and flew overhead close enough for us to see the striations in his belly feathers.

The gap fence didn't turn out as tight as we would have liked, but it was a pretty good day out there with the birds.

From Sara, Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Ostern

2010-04-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

I love those holidays like Easter that last for days with all our favorite things, like dying eggs and hunting eggs and eating eggs. And the cookies Prairie made to decorate in vibrant colors, our family gathered under one roof, sharing and playing, laughing at our kites jumping on the gusts of wind in bright sun along the river bar.

Any day now there'll be the first calf of the year on the Magpie Ranch, a lean little creature taking tiny knobby-legged leaps beside his mother.

I'm thankful for the moisture this past week, the snow and sleet and rain. For the native grass is growing along the benches and canyon slopes, and in the drill rows of our restoration projects, the new seed is germinating.

I know the river will come up in her banks and I try not to think of the herd crossing in their usual places, the little calves braving the current, their heads bobbing above the waves. I am reminded some things come naturally.

Each week brings new flowers, birds I am learning to know, with always a fencing job and cattle to be herded and lately, horses needing shod. I have planted more asparagus to join the feral sprouts in the garden, thick with equisetum. And I dug in a rhubarb start in hopes that all will survive the blaze of summer. Perhaps I want a reason to come back, when I can say, I've got to get to the river and water those plants...

Trailing the rocky slopes, I scan for buds on the prickly pear, their spiny limbs suddenly plump and tall after the wan and dessicated months of cold. It won't be long before their creamy yellow blossoms tinged with pink dot the canyonsides.

Green up. Glorious green up. It feels so good, I could almost eat the grass myself.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Ene and Azja

2010-03-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

Six thousand miles. That's about how far Ene and Azja travelled to get to the Magpie Ranch. Nearly a quarter of the way around the planet, from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to Horse Creek on the Imnaha River.

We are very fortunate to have friends like these who teach us, question us and laugh with us. Yes, we learn about their country and lives, but we also get the rare opportunity to see our own work and culture through their young eyes.

Mike and Azja worked together the last time Mike was in Mongolia, and Mike wrote a letter of recommendation for Azja to get into graduate school in San Francisco, where he is working on a Masters in Developmental Economics. In Mongolia, they live in the capital city, (as Ene says,"I am not a countryside girl."), but like other urban Mongolians, they are only one generation removed from centuries of life as herdsmen on the Mongolian steppe.

Ene spent much of her childhood living a rural lifestyle with her grandparents while her mother studied to become a pediatrician. Milk and meat are the sustenance of Mongolian people. Thus Ene was prepared to inform me that camels give 15 liters of milk and are milked three times a day. At the ranch she kept saying,"You get milk from your cows, right?" "No, I said, "They are beef cows, we raise them for meat."

When we were hiking the bench trail on our way to fix fence, I pointed out one of my favorite Longhorns lying down, relaxing in the spring sunshine. Ene asked why that cow was special to me and I explained that she is calm, travels well, and raises a nice calf every year. Ene asked when the cow would have a calf and I said in a month. "Then you will milk her, right?" she asked.

The fact that we own cattle and buy milk from the store struck her as somewhat ridiculous. At least I was able to reassure her that some of our friends with cattle do have milk cows and that sometimes we buy milk from them.

Ene and Azja are part of a generation faced with the enormous responsibility of carrying their homeland forward in the transition from a command economy under Soviet communist influence to a capitalist economy under a struggling parliamentary government. There are roughly 3 million people and 40 million head of livestock in Mongolia. This year, more than 4 million of those animals are dead, with more expected to die as a result of the dzud, severe winter weather with extreme cold and high winds.

Rich in minerals and land, Mongolia is under pressure from international mining companies and land-starved nations. Migration to the cities from rural areas continues. Corruption in government is common. In the midst of economic turmoil and cultural change, family ties are still of utmost importance.

When summer break comes, Azja will leave San Francisco and return to Mongolia for two months. His mother said she needs him. I think he might not want to go, but he doesn't consider the possibility of saying no, not even for an instant. "Family is the most important thing," he says. "In Mongolia,we always help each other. Always."

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Living History

2010-02-26T06:59:00.000-08:00

For Caryl Coppin, 1917-2010

It's nearly March and the first buttercups speckle the canyon slopes. Like shiny gold buttons on tiny stems, they tremble in the stiff breeze, resolutely facing south as if determined to absorb every possible ray of sun.

I lean over in the saddle and marvel at how many cups of gold there are today when just yesterday I counted only seven. We are riding after cattle and I'm glad. There are few jobs better than the ones that find us horseback in the canyon on the cusp of green-up, on a blue-sky day.

But a part of me wishes I were out in town, at the old stone church where I know people will be gathered. I could tell this story, of the buttercups, of alders trailing their ruddy catkins, and wild geese returned to nest in the tall grass. I could tell about the fisherman I didn't see, who swathed in waders, lost his footing and stumbled like a drunk across the cobble, how he set my horse leaping sideways up the bank and me flopping in the saddle with half a brain saying--what the heck, while the other half reminded me to reach down and grab a rein.

And there was more. The gather and turn of the cattle with shouts of "come by" and "away to me", the dogs circling and holding the herd. The splash across the river, our horses' legs inside the ripple, the deeply colored stones awash below. The nod of horns and the climb of haunches trailing upslope to benches spread in winter bunchgrass, golden with a hint of green. The long trot toward home and afterward the oily glow of kerosene at the dinner table and the home-cooked meal, last year's beef, some cellared spuds and squash.

Of all the people who would have told me to stay away from town, there's only one I listened to today. I can hear her plain as I can see her, the nod of silver hair as she waves her hand between us. Go on, I hear her saying. You've got work to do. And your husband, why I'm sure he's waiting.

And it's this love of living, in every chore and season, in labor and invention, in showing and learning how, in celebration and in passing, that keeps me here, among the cattle.

Yes, I could be in town. But here, she's riding with me, just behind the cantle with her slender arms around my waist, her story in my ear about how it used to be, and still is.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Signs

2010-02-08T06:39:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced. More than that, I'm delirious. How can such a simple thing as horses shedding gobs of long coarse hairs, clogging up the curry comb and sticking to me like velcro, elicit feelings of glee?

And, there were geese poking about in the bends of the river, and song birds arrived to flit and scurry in the brush, and, yes really and truly, there are buds on the willows and birches.

The final note to convince me arrived on Saturday night, when I heard the bouncing calls of the screech owls, returned to the locust grove to mate and nest and raise their young. The stars were fierce and I dragged Mike out of the warm house to help me look for constellations and listen to the owls. The blanket of stars was so thick it almost felt suffocating, like being outnumbered and scrutinized by a gazillion other worlds. Innumerable tiny sparks and closer to us, several large stars sharply pulsating in brilliant blue and orange.

I was searching for my old friends, the Seven Sisters. It's odd how stars befriend us, become like members of the family who you miss when they are gone and welcome back upon their return. When we lived at the equator, I felt little kinship for the night sky, even though I still longed for and appreciated seeing the stars. Where was the big dipper? I felt displaced, a stranger. By the end of the year, the Southern Cross was my new companion.

In the canyon, sky is reduced to whatever opening the ridges grant you in the particular spot where you are working. Places on the rivers, like Dug Bar on the Snake, or at Magpie on the Imnaha, give us more to consider. But tucked away in a narrow draw, like up Pumpkin Creek,there is only a sliver of sky to befriend us between the dark pines and heavy basalt walls.

So Saturday night as I stood under a span of sky, saying hello to the Seven Sisters, listening to the screech owl calling from the ancient locust tree behind me, with a carpet of cast-off dun horse hair beneath my feet, it was unmistakeable. February, the dying month, is also the harbinger of change.

Red and brown and tan will soon become the backdrop for winsome buttercups, then all manner of pink and white and yellow and purple and blue and orange will spring up, and shoots in every shade of green. I'm getting ahead of myself.

But one last thing. I could smell it. I could smell the river banks, coming to life, the mud and ooze, the day-warmed rocks, the rot. Glorious.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

February Storm

2010-02-03T07:35:00.001-08:00

The storm that just came through dumped a ton of rain in the canyon. During the night we heard the rain on the roof, steady, steady, steady and woke up early to heavy clouds like a lid on the canyon. As the clouds shifted, the end of a high ridge above the house would poke through the storm. The glimpse of jagged snow-covered cliffs hovering above the clouds reminded me of Unuru, our Mongolian friend, who always referred to the canyon rims as “beautiful mountains.”

Our plan to ride for cattle quickly changed to a day working on corrals and outbuildings. With the top layer of soil on steep north facing slopes thawed and saturated, it was too slick, too mucky, and too soft for trailing.

The thermometer hovered at 36 degrees as sodden cold sucked at our bundled bodies, but I noted with glee the tiny green plants germinating in protected spots and the green shoots of grass poking up in the orchard. There is a turn in the air, and inside my own cells a small voice ringing the bell of spring.

After a fast hike to the bench to spot the herd left me with boots and jeans soaked through and hands damp and numbed inside their gloves, my thoughts were only on the woodstove and a mug of hot tea. The winter canyon has many labors to consider. And many gifts as well, as this poem from the Magpie Ranch journal reminds me.

February Canyon

This is an hour when all could find a will to live.
A solitary hour with no other human soul in sight, among the wind, the bleached grasses,
the rust colored locust pods in their transient, timeless places.

And the river, industrious, committed to its journey, as if each vesicle,
each droplet riffle-joined, had passed these rocks and willow-matted shores
uncounted times before, such that their passing now earns not a glance
or hesitation in the scour and fall and pour.

And shadows cut a mirror likeness of their great rimmed parents,
echoes of light so stark they seem more solid than the rock-ridged walls that cast them,
predictable in their march from day to night, a conquest far beyond the tiny paths of men,
and knowing every crack and frond and seep and newly tumbled stone.

This is the opera of our days, the great unfolding from which scatter forth
the reds and browns of story, the blues and greens of life, the germ and decay,
the blossom and fruit, the wing and song, the hum and foam, the toil.

We populate this place with more than those of us who are living.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Plucky Lucky

2010-01-02T11:09:00.000-08:00

If there were a Biggest Loser for horses, Lucky could have been a winner. It was spring when he arrived at the ranch, fresh off valley pasture and fatter than a tick. It looked like he had been that way for a long time. A middle-aged gelding, flea-bitten grey, Lucky was barely fifteen hands tall, with a fairly refined bone structure and probably had some Arab blood in him. He was one of four horses in the string provided by our new employer when we moved to Brown Canyon. The others were Podunk, Mary, and Lady.

All of them were rejects of a sort. None had been ridden in ages, a telltale sign that our new employers were mainly valley farmers who had recently leased some canyon range for their cowherd. The mares, Mary and Lady were too old to gain much weight. The bay gelding, Podunk was pretty larded up, but he was bigger framed than Lucky and carried the weight more spread out on his body. Lucky looked like a ball with appendages. If he fell over on the trail, it seemed he might just keep rolling.

Our job was to run 150 yearling heifers on several thousand acres. The heifers had never been in the canyons before and we were supposed to keep them healthy and on the gain until fall. We were also supposed to keep them from getting bred, something which proved a significant challenge, given the state of the few existing fences and the tenacity of the Angus bulls on the neighboring range.

The ranch buildings sat close to the mouth of Brown Canyon. We were housed in a pink single-wide New Moon trailer with a big room built onto one side. We had two kids then, five and three, and they slept head to foot in a single bed until Mike built some bunks. From the trailer, there was an open view down the bench above the Imnaha River and we could see Indian Village high up across the canyon near the breaks of the west rim. The main trail to the summer range headed east, up the creek behind the ranch buildings where the Brown Canyon rose narrow and steep to the top of Grizzly Ridge. We could ride from the house and reach the summer range in just over an hour.

It was a pretty good trail once we got it brushed out, steep, with a few rock outcrops, but you could still find your way down in the dark if you had to. The worst part for me was locating the beginning of the trail from the top where the range was open with grassy swales spreading north and south above the rims. I had many a false start, poking into one draw after another, looking for the way home before I learned my way around and didn’t have to worry about rimming out on some big drop off.

Lucky struggled with that trail. Up or down, either one is hard on a fat horse. We dry lotted him on hay to help him drop the weight, but we still had to use him. Yearling cattle are like teenagers, curious, impulsive and athletic. Between riding the fenceline, herding the neighbor’s bulls, and keeping track of the heifers, all the horses got a workout.

Riding Lucky that spring made me nervous. Not because he was ornery or badly trained, but because I worried he was about to have a stroke or a heart attack. I led him a lot, but eventually I’d have to get on. He’d start up the trail and he’d be huffing and puffing, and pretty soon I could feel his chest heaving and his heart pounding so hard between my legs I thought he was about to explode.

One thing about Lucky was that he never gave up. In spite of being smallish, middle aged, and grossly overweight, he kept trying. Plucky Lucky we called him. Even after he got into shape, there was a feeling of trepidation as he doggedly started the climb up the creek. He never seemed to forget how hard it had been, never seemed to realize how capable he was.

Lucky was really a pretty decent little horse, his gaits were smooth and his mouth was soft. However, he did have a problem that he never got over. He didn’t like anything flapping around near his back. As long as you paid attention, and didn’t try to get your rain slicker on while riding, he was fine.

Our other fat horse, Podunk, was young enough to resent being put to work after a life of leisure—lolling about in irrigated pastures. One day Podunk pitched a fit and caught Mike off guard, throwing him into a pile of rocks. Mike showed up back at the house, grey in the face and clutching his left shoulder. Flinny, the cowboy with him, couldn’t stop laughing about how funny it had been, the fat gelding humped up and Mike flying through the air. A trip to the emergency room and three weeks off with a dislocated collar bone made it harder for me to see the humor of it.

There was no doubt that although Podunk was young and strong, he was a handful, and Flinny refused to ride him. So when Mike got back to work, he used Podunk for the most part, while Flinny saddled Lucky or one of the old mares for the climb to the ridge top. One evening after the horses were turned out and dinner was over, I kept noticing Mike with a smirk on his face.

Finally, I asked, “What’s so funny? What are you laughing about?”

“I can’t stop thinking of the look on ol’ Flinny’s face when Lucky took off with him in a pile of rocks today,” he grinned. “Caught Flinny totally off guard, the more Flinny flopped around, the more it freaked Lucky out. Ol Flinny was bellering like a stuck calf, took him forever to get Lucky stopped.”

“What caused that?” I asked.

“Well,” Mike said, “It could have been me riding up behind and flapping my arms a couple times.”

Christmas Day

2010-01-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

"Why can't we have beef?" Mike asked. True, with all the delicious Bunchgrass Beef in our freezer, we never seem to eat beef on Christmas. So this year, we shouldered aside the locally raised turkey, and hefted three roasts into the wood cookstove.

Sometimes I wonder about food being the center of our celebrations, especially with all the sweet, sticky, crunchy, iced, dipped, and sprinkled treats. Then I get a package of stollen in the mail from my sister who lives in a ghost town in the high desert, and I rip it open, eager to toast my first hunk, slather it in butter, and maybe even, oh Lord, dab on some of her quince jelly.

Food can be a gift of love. Such it was that we gathered with two other families on Christmas Day, to relish not only the three roasts, succulent and savory, but also an enormous brick of scalloped Prairie Creek Farm potatoes (took three hours to cook), green beans with shallots and red pepper, Grandma Lorry's hot-out-of the oven cloverleaf rolls, mounds of fresh greens with lemon juice/olive oil dressing, and raspberry-huckleberry topped cheesecake.

Rounded out by our other traditions of wild rope swings in the hay mow, brisk walks through the fields, non-stop music jamming in the living room and a relay of board and card games, it was a simply lovely Christmas. Sigh.

Out with the Plymouth, in with the Oval

2009-11-18T07:32:00.000-08:00

Floyd Peterson’s staggering collection of junk, mostly metal scrap, was stored in and around an enormous well-weathered building next to the old Mill Pond in Enterprise. Somehow Mike figured that amongst all that junk Floyd might have a cookstove, which Floyd did, which is how for the grand sum of $25 we became proud owners of the Plymouth.

“It’s all there,” Floyd said, pointing to a pile of metal that he claimed was a functional wood stove. “We raised six kids on it and it’s been right there ever since I took it out of the house.” Mike brought the pieces home and indeed, it was all more or less there, from the somewhat-repaired firebox, to the black-trimmed white porcelain warming shelf, to the oven temperature indicator reading: “warm–slow-medium-hot-very hot.”

For twenty-five years, the Plymouth served us well. It was about as non-airtight as it gets and wouldn’t hold a fire for more than an hour (well, maybe longer if you put some apple wood in it). At baking temperature, the inside of the oven would be 500 degrees in the left rear corner and 300 degrees in the right front. If you forgot and set something breakable on the warming tray, it would soon vibrate toward the edge as people walked past and then fall off and shatter on the cast iron stove top.

In short, the Plymouth was a beloved fixture in our otherwise frigid farmhouse. The center of every winter morning, and every holiday gathering, loaded with simmering and baking foods, a place to dry out and warm up after cold, tiring work, the Plymouth was like an alter in the middle of our lives.

Several firebox repairs and about 150 chords of wood later, we’re not exactly getting rid of the Plymouth, we’re just putting her into semi-retirement. We’re modernizing. For our thirtieth wedding anniversary Mike gave me a brand-new modern, efficient, wood cookstove. As of this very moment, all six hundred pounds of the Oval are resting on the new tile hearth Mike built, hooked up to the new insulated chimney that Mike put in, burning a toasty fire of wood that Mike and Zeke harvested. She’s a beaut.

The old Plymouth hasn’t quite made it out of the kitchen yet, but will likely head to the canyon to take up a service in the ranch bunkhouse. She’ll need a new firebox first. And the bunkhouse needs new sills, a chimney, a door…it could be a few years. But that’s okay. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a useable cookstove is worth hanging onto.

From Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Hairy Lucy

2009-11-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

She didn't start out that way. When Prairie and I took pick of the litter, Lucita La Luz was a silky sweet pup with prick ears. We chose her for her confirmation and personality, which we hoped mirrored her grandmother, Bonnie, one of our favorite dogs.

Lucy joined the pack, at that time consisting of Oso, Bonnie and Chili, and assumed her role of relentlessly harassing the older dogs. Since she was too young to work, she did her best to herd the other canines at the ranch, racing ahead to cut them off and nipping at their legs, necks and shoulders. She was a colossal pest. But since all the other dogs had exhibited this same behavior as pups, they tolerated her or sent her packing with a no-nonsense growl.

When Lucy was about a year old, she and I were walking the fields behind the farmhouse when a coyote popped up from the marsh and loped off across the stubble. Lucy spotted him and took off like a rocket. I let her go, thinking this would be a good time to work on a call back, to get her to break her focus and listen to me. The coyote was a long ways off and I knew there was little chance of her ever getting close to it.

Her speed was unbelievable. I was so impressed that I just let her run. As I watched her churn across the field in a cloud of dust, it reminded me of the old roadrunner cartoons. She was humming.

I came to my senses and called her back, whistling long and sharp into the morning. When she heard me, she turned and ran all the way back to where I waited at the pond. She galloped up, tongue lolling, flashing a smile as if to say, "Now that was fun."

Lucy taught me an important lesson about communication. She was a pup when Zeke was in grade school and he loved to call her into his lap, where she would jump all over him and lick his face. As she grew older, this behavior transformed into a tightly coiled, forty-pound leap launched at your face as you walked across the yard. I hated it. Visitors like it even less.

I tried everything to break this habit, but nothing worked. Finally after two years, it clicked. She was not misbehaving, she was obeying a command. Zeke had trained her to "give kisses" and the command for this action was to look down at her and make eye contact. As soon as I figured this out, I stopped giving the command. When she bounced over to me in the morning, I looked straight ahead, said, "Sit" and held my hand out flat at my side.

At first she would sit obediently, but when I then tipped my head to look at her, she would jump, bam, teeth-first into my face. So I tried looking straight ahead and then petting her without looking down. It worked. I asked others to do the same and after a year she stopped jumping up altogether. It's amazing what we teach each other without meaning to.

Lucy was about four when she went to graduate school. She and Mike headed to the US Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho where they grazed sheep on knapweed and developed protocols for controlling invasive species using livestock. Lucy was our first dog who could work both sheep and cattle.

Back in Wallowa County, she worked hard and eventually retired at age ten. The older she got the hairier she got. Her undercoat grew more and more dense and she never seemed to shed out all the way. Combing and brushing helped, but she was still a magnet for burrs and seeds. After two expensive trips to the vet to remove foxtail embedded in her abdomen, I took to shaving her each spring. When several friends appeared on the scene with dogs that were also named "Lucy", she became first Big Lucy and then Hairy Lucy.

In her last chapter of life, Lucy was the grandkid dog, the sweet old beast that would stand while one-year-old Dawson patted her back and grabbed handfuls of her ruff. As long as she got a chance to snake a tongue in his face every now and then, she was happy to put up with him.

Saturday Lucy went to meet her maker. Zeke and I dug the hole and the younger dogs, Newt and Ruby, came over to give her one last sniff. I laid my hand on her back, "Lucy, you were a good dog," I said. "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust," said Zeke.

If anybody comes over to pay their respects, you can find Lucy's final resting place out back in the dog cemetery next to the native grass nursery. Her's is the one with the deep red basalt stone.

From the Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Heads and Hides

2009-10-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

They are beautiful, these animals we have chosen to raise and live with and to respectfully harvest and appreciate as a source of food.

The harvest went well. Now the Bunchgrass Beef from Magpie Ranch is carefully aging, soon to be skillfully cut and packaged for each family who is waiting, freezer at the ready, to receive this year's bounty. I am thankful.

I am also thankful for all the work that Mike has put into preparing the heads and hides of these amazing animals. He skins and cleans each head and puts it away to dry. In a year or so, each stark skull with its impressive horns, will be ready for sale to provide another source of income to sustain the ranch.

There is something about taxidermy that creeps me out, but I don't feel that way about skulls. Perhaps this is because out on the prairie and in the canyons, bones are part of the landscape. Sun-bleached and porous, each holds testament to an individual life. The skulls of deer, cattle, and elk are more common, but an unusual skull is something to ponder. I cradle it in my hands, How tiny the skull of a mouse! How interesting the teeth of a badger!

Each skull from the Bunchgrass Beef herd is unique. Some have long swooping white horns delicately tipped in black. Some have powerful short horns that arc inward. Some have horns that jut forward, like tines on a pitchfork. I admire them all.

For the hides, Mike painstakingly cleans the flesh side and generously rubs fine salt into each hide. Then the hides are folded and put away to dry. After cleaning and salting, they can be safely stored until we are ready to have them tanned, either as regular leather, or with the hair on for rugs or upholstery. Each one is unique and a pleasure to look at.

I'm glad that today, when I look at a skull or a hide from an animal out of the Bunchgrass Beef herd, I can feel a sense of peace. I am thankful that each animal had a life well lived as part of the herd in a wild and beautiful place.

From Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

The Third of October

2009-10-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

Snow. Closing in like a flour sack being cinched around our valley.Where were the mountains? Where was the neighbor’s house at the far side of the field? I could barely see the barn through the frigid wet clouds that had settled onto us like a hen on top of her nest.

We were building corrals as the snow fell ceaselessly, heaping up on surfaces like some kind of water-saturated frosting. Jarred loose by our hammer blows it splatted in little glops on our hats, shoulders, hands.

As we pounded and sawed and measured, wrapped in our slickers and wearing our winter boots, we kept saying, “Wasn’t it ninety-one degrees a week ago? We were out in the yard in shorts and t-shirts, barbecuing up Bunchgrass Beef burgers!”

I escaped the wet and the hammering and headed to the kitchen to start lunch: a huge pot of minestrone soup, batches of yeasted rolls and apple pies. Zeke and three friends from Portland, a couple more friends from Enterprise, and Bryan and Tanyia were here helping and before long, the wet and hungry hordes would need a warm and tasty refuge.

There is nothing quite like coming into a savory kitchen, dumping your sodden muddy layers in the porch, and being enveloped in the smell of soup simmering, bread baking, and bubbly cinnamon-apple pies resting on the sideboard. A hot beverage is pressed into your hand, and you wedge into the circle at the table, elbow to elbow, stories and laughter swirling around you as your weary muscles relax and good food fills your belly.

Saturday showed me more of the ‘neighborly economy’ that goes into the raising of Bunchgrass Beef. The untimely snow may have dampened our labors, but the spirit of camaraderie kept us going. Night began to fall and with it snow-laden trees that collapsed onto power lines taking out the power at farmsteads all along Prairie Creek. We lit lanterns and candles and pulled out extra blankets, grateful for the warmth of friendship and the old upright piano, as the timeless music of familiar hymns filled the living room.

From Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Sometimes Things Can Go Very Right

2009-09-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

I love it when the peaches resting in their boxes on the kitchen floor reach perfect ripeness on the evening I have time to can. Or when the dogs lie down in the exact spot that keeps two renegade pairs from quitting the Bunchgrass Beef herd. Or maybe when the number of cucumbers from one picking just equal the amount needed for the pickle recipe. Or when the lead cow looks at the open gate, looks at me on my horse, feels the herd milling behind her and decides to walk into the corral.

That’s what happened on Saturday when I was riding Mestizo, and it felt especially good. A lot of animal experts, Temple Grandin, Tom Dorrance, etc. tell us how as predators, we can interact with prey animals without either them or us freaking out. In theory, it seems clear. In practice, I often fall short of my intent.

Mestizo is our tall red horse, who, after ten years of thinking he was a pack animal, is learning that he will be carrying me around on his back the rest of his life. The Peruvian Paso of his mother gives him a long smooth gait and the thoroughbred of his father makes him high-headed and nervous. Mestizo does an excellent job in the comfort of the pack string and he enjoyed his place on the ranch until we ran short on horses this year.

I needed to ride him again, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. When we were given Mestizo as a colt he was already terrified of a few things, like being tied up and sprayed with liquid. His flight instinct had kicked in, but he couldn’t run away so he had learned to rear violently in response to stress. A bucking horse can make me nervous, but a rearing horse unleashes a flood of icy fear in my brain. Adrenalin explodes throughout my body and I’m incapable of sensibly communicating with the animal between my legs. Combine Mestizo’s fear with mine and it’s not a pretty picture.

This June when Bryan decided to ride Mestizo on the cattle drive to the summer range, I watched how Bryan pushed Mestizo through his anxiety with forward motion, instead of working against it. Mestizo danced around and turned a lot of circles, but he didn’t rear. This time when we gathered the herd I was ready to try again.

Yes, Mestizo humped up a few times as we rode through the dark grove of wind-whipped Ponderosa pines. Yes, he whinnied and danced when Mike and Zip got too far away from us on the other side of the herd. But when we reached the corrals, there was no more worrying about us. The cattle were either going in the corral or we were going to be chasing them all over the prairie.

I stopped thinking and let my body guide the movement I knew would help the cattle decide that entering the corral was easier than running away from it. Mestizo flowed beneath me, yielding to pressure, turning, striding, turning, scooting in front of the red cow, then back to head off the brindle. The first cow finally chose the open gate and the rest of the herd followed. A stiff breeze chased the dust north into the timber. Mestizo blew softly as my hand reached under his mane to scratch his supple neck. We had done a good job. Together.

From the Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Neighborly Economy

2009-09-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

The night frosts are upon us, down to 25 degrees on Monday, and we’re in the thick of the harvest. I picked pears and apples this week and today I lugged a bucket of cucumbers in from the garden for a batch of honey-curry pickles. It’s also the season for meat and the first hunters are out in the hills. In a few weeks, we’ll be butchering and starting our delicious Bunchgrass Beef on its way to hungry families anxious to lay in a supply for the coming winter. Think of all those kitchens that will soon be filled with the tantalizing aroma of simmering stews and savory roasts. I’m starting to salivate.

One of the best parts of having a family ranch is having family. Our “real” family, and our amazing “family” of friends who work for each other, lend each other stuff and barter to get things done. This week Prairie was here helping sort and move cattle and build fence.

Prairie also stretches our thinking with discussions about local food systems, sustainable communities and economic justice. We’re lucky to have her out in the world learning, traveling and working towards positive change. One thing she shared with us was a list of Wendell Berry’s 17 rules for a sustainable community that appeared in YES! magazine. Berry is a farmer and well-known author and many of his rules resonated with me. I especially liked rule #15:

“Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, leaving people to face their calamities alone.”

When asked what they value about living in small rural communities, I often hear people say it is that we help each other when we need it. A house burns down, someone is injured in an accident or becomes ill, and suddenly a whole swarm of people tumble out to organize meals, set up donation accounts, raffle quilts, hold dances and auction off $150 huckleberry pies.

Our family certainly relies on and enjoys being part of the neighborly economy. Just this week we had Prairie’s help with the cattle, Bryan was here to lay out the new corral, Pam called to offer green beans and another friend let us glean fruit from his orchard. We then passed on apples and cucumbers to other families.

While she was here, Prairie also took over the kitchen and whipped up some tasty meals. Working at Zenger Community Farm and immersed in the thriving food scene of Portland, she collects a lot of interesting recipes. The Carne Asada tacos she made were perfect for Gabe’s birthday dinner. Try out her simple and savory recipe. With a few neighborly acts, you might even be able to rustle up some of the ingredients right where you live. In any case, you can start "economizing" by having the neighbors over to enjoy it. Maybe they'll bring the beans and rice.

Prairie’s Carne Asada Tacos

A nice piece of grassfed beef - sirloin, flank, or round steak
Juice of 2 limes mixed with several cloves of minced garlic, some olive oil, salt and pepper

Marinate the meat in the refrigerator for 4-8 hours in the lime juice/garlic/olive oil. Then cook the meat. You can cut it up into small pieces and sauté it. Or you can grill or broil it whole and then cut it up. Don't overcook it.

Serve on warm corn tortillas garnished with:

Chopped white onion in fresh lime juice with fresh cilantro
Fresh jalapenos minced
Hot pickled veggies, jalapenos, carrots, cauliflower, etc.
Fresh or home canned salsa
Shredded cabbage
Chunked avocado

Goes good with a side of rice and beans.

From Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Owls

2009-08-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

On the cusp of autumn, the owls are back in the cottonwoods. All week long I wake again and again to hear them. Calling. Calling. Their softly feathered voices like sonorous drums carrying a message along the watercourses of the valley.

I don’t know what brings these great horned owls from their usual haunts to our tall cottonwoods each year. During the summer, we see them perched on power poles or swooping out of the tops of willows and gliding off into the dusk. But late winter and early fall they join us for a week or so, settling in outside our sleeping household and gently waking us in the dark hours. I am impressed by their persistence, their meditative calls that go on and on. I wonder what they are thinking.

Owls are one of my totems. As a child, I grew up on salt water in the land of coastal tribes. Dark fathomed arms of the Pacific reaching into the continent to lap fir-covered humps of land. Even in this dry country where I now live, I feel a tiny totem pole shaped inside me. Significant, recurring experiences,indelible over time. What I carry with me.

At our first home in the canyon, I was often with owls. At the edge of a vast grassland bench, Tulley Creek nestles into the draw with red rock rims stair-stepping to the breaks above. It’s a special place. But I was struggling with the isolation of a woman in a man’s world, and hardly any men at that. It was like being on a tether, trapped in the snare of two babies under the age of two. Diapers piling up, everything washed on a board.

One long evening in August, I stood in the screened porch looking east when a tiny screech owl landed on the gatepost at the end of the boardwalk. Another owl landed on the other post. They perched quietly, their heads swiveled backwards. I had never been so close to an owl.

I stepped inside and picked up the crawling baby, took the other child by the hand. “Look at the owls,” I whispered, kneeling in the porch doorway. Dusk was falling and the orange tabby kittens began tumbling out of their lair in a mass of daylilies crowding the porch. Suddenly I knew why the owls were there.

I had already lost most of my cats and in the constant battle with mice and packrats I couldn’t afford to be without. My last mother cat had been hauled off by something that left her dead and hanging high up in an alder tree behind the cabin. These kittens were all I had left. “Get,” I said, waving a hand at the owls. They ignored me, eyes riveted to the squirming kittens wrestling in the trampled yard. I picked up a rock. It smacked against the post. I picked up another rock and threw it hard. The owls lifted and flapped away.

The next afternoon I had to get out. I saddled a horse, threw some panniers over the saddle, put the baby on my back. I lifted the toddler onto the horse and walked to the old orchard about a mile down the bench. I picked too many apples and let time get away from me. Dark was gathering. The mare was spooked. She didn’t like the bags of apples shifting against her side or the toddler perched on top of the load. Coming off the hill onto the trail, she snorted and whirled, the toddler cried. I jerked the lead, apples spilled.

I barely got a hold of the toddler and dragged him to the ground by one arm before he got dumped. The mare pranced and snorted like there were cougars in the brush. The toddler refused to get back on, so I trudged toward home, lugging him in one arm, the baby whimpering on my back, the mare wall-eyed and jittery at the end of the lead.

Night air flowed around us, the cool dirt smell of evening mixing with the sweet smell of apples. Then a shadow passed overhead. I looked up. The biggest owl I had ever seen glided above me. Off to the side another owl flapped silently along the trail. The owls followed me all the way back to the cabin. Remember, their softly drifting shapes seemed to say. Remember we were here first. And I haven’t forgotten.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Dances – My Top Ten

2009-08-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday night’s barn dance was not quite a rip-snorter. About a hundred folks packed into the upstairs of the Hockett Barn. Some lounged on fairly cushy strawbale seating under the eaves, others busted their moves, arms twisting like octopuses, skirts flying, boots stomping. The local talent belted out some rowdy western-swingable tunes and everybody from sleeping babies to slightly deaf great-grandmothers had a great time. Even though we live in a pretty small-town kind of place, we put on some of the best shindigs ever. Most of the great dance parties on my top ten list have taken place right here in good ol' Wallowa County.

#10 Hale Family Living Room Dance – what WAS the occasion? We rolled back the rug, shoved the furniture out of the way, I called standing on the piano bench

#9 Cox Wedding Dance, Dug Bar, Hells Canyon – I called standing on a chair next to the squash patch

#8 Norse Hall, Portland, Oregon – old time dance with “professionals”

#7 All Night Latin Dance Party, Iowa City with Rueben from Guadelajara, okay it wasn't live music, but we were still smokin hot

#6 Skip and Pam 25th Anniversary Old Time Dance – Oddfellows Hall, sweet and wild

#5 Callie and Luke’s Eastern Montana Wedding Dance – crazy wagon ride to the "dance hall" tent, get drunk enough to break your leg and win a prize

#4 Cammie and Gabes’ Out in the Pasture Wedding Dance – on a “real plywood” dance floor built by cowboys

#3 Imnaha River Grange Hall – old time dance with whiskey in the bushes by the outhouse and midnight supper with mountains of sandwiches and pies

#2 First Cowboy Poetry Gathering Dance, Elko, NV – with Ian Tyson and people who know what counterclockwise means

#1 First Cowboy Music Gathering Dance, Elko NV – Texas Playboy style with my all-time favorite cowboy dance partner

From the Magpie Ranch - home of Bunchgrass Beef

Rock Jack King

2009-08-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

Today is the Rock Jack Building competition at the Ranch Rodeo in town. The REAL champion rock jack builder won’t be in the competition. He’ll be working on fence out on the Zumwalt Prairie.

People from Wallowa County sometimes don’t realize that the rock jack is a unique fencing technique, but we’ve had many a visitor ask us what those triangular structures and piled up rocks are all along the fenceline. In most places, people just drive posts into the ground. On Wallowa County rangeland, much of the ground is rock, and there is no way you’re going to sink a post into it. There is also the issue of remoteness. Many fences can only be reached by horseback and wooden fence material packs better on a horse than metal posts do.

The art of rock jack building is passed down from one fencer to another and it starts with good material. Mike’s first job in Wallowa County was splitting 9,000 pieces of tamarack fence material for the US Forest Service. He and Jay Penniman searched out enormous dead-standing tamarack trees and felled them. They sawed the downed trees into lengths and laid into them with maul and wedge to split them into 4 ft posts and 4 ½ ft stays.

I can still remember the sweat glistening on the men’s necks and the ring of their mauls biting into the pumpkin colored wood. It fascinated me, the clean straight grain of the tamarack splitting sharply into what seemed like impossibly long lengths of material. Standing beside one of the enormous logs, I imagined the wood slabbed off into shakes, boards, timbers, shingles, everything you would need to build a hand-hewn house. What a remarkable resource.

Mike’s rock jack techniques have been honed over years of fencing. First contracts, then building and maintaining fence on the ranches we worked for, and now on our own fences at the Magpie Ranch. One year we built fence for McClarans on Pine Creek and camped out in our wall tent all summer. While I worked alongside Mike, the kids played He-Man, using the flatbed truck for a fort with the dog-catcher over the cab as their watchtower. Prairie even came up with a new armored hairstyle by working a handful of fence staples into the crown of her tightly braided hair. My job was to attach the fence stays to the newly strung wire. After a mile’s worth of days of hammering staples into twangy tamarack, I got used to waking up with swollen hands that could barely make a fist and I developed a healthy respect for fence builders.

Out on the Zumwalt, the resident elk herd migrates through our range on a daily basis and can flatten a fence without batting an eyelash. Mike is perfecting the art of keeping the fence just loose enough for the resident elk herd to pass over, and just tight enough to keep our cow herd from deciding to go visit the neighbors.

Building good rangeland fences requires skill. With steep ground, determined animals, and gravity to contend with, I know how important every angle is, the choice of each piece of material, the placement of the rocks on the deck and the height of each wire. And yes, fence building has appeared in one of my favorite poems, a love poem of course. I’ll share an excerpt here, but if you want the whole poem, you’ll have to ask me for it. And by the way, since Mike’s not entering the contest, I’m rooting for Bryan Baquet.

Excerpt from

February, Horse Creek

When you wake up
we haul two jack’s material
down slope and build fence.
I love this just as much,
mu diagonal fitting your upright,
the wire I lift and hold in place
as if all the world could be held by one wire
strung just right.

From the Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Circling Back

2009-08-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

Little Duke was not little. The cowboys named him that to differentiate him from his dad, Old Duke, who eventually became Duke Whitey, because of his thick white hair. Both Dukes are part of a long line of Phillips, which I think is now up to Duke the Fourth with Little Duke’s son. In my family nobody has ever made it past Junior, so this feels weighty to me.

I met Little Duke when he knocked on our door to offer Mike a job day riding. We didn’t have a phone so he had driven the eighteen miles out to our place and since Mike wasn’t there, he delivered the message to me. It was a brief conversation. I had yet to discover that it would be the beginning of years of working together and many late night campfire barbecues, with guitars, poetry and stories.

The Phillips came to the Snake River from Old Mexico. They were Texans, but grew up on a ranch south of the border. Duke and his brother Scott were our age and both spent time on the Oregon ranch between college and getting married. Their ranch included Dug Bar, Horse Creek, Camp Creek and Target Springs.

Horse Creek is now part of our winter range. The house is actually on the Imnaha River, and the range extends into a fork of Horse Creek. My first memory of Horse Creek is from a cattle drive from Dug Bar to Camp Creek. We overnighted at the Horse Creek house and our black half-wild pup escaped the truck and disappeared during a storm. The next morning after the cowboys headed out, Duke came riding back with the bedraggled pup under his arm. He had spotted him halfway up a rim downriver, said he looked just like a bear cub crawling through the rocks. That’s how one of our best dogs got the name Oso, Spanish for bear.

Phillips later hired Mike and I to build a large feedbunk on the river bar across from the house. We toiled for a couple weeks, setting the heavy railroad tie posts into the dense cobble of the river bar, sometimes unearthing enormous boulders and slabs of basalt. That feeder was stout and meant to last. In the evenings, I pulled books of poetry from Little Duke’s shelves and discovered the Chilean writer, Pablo Neruda, poems in Spanish that eventually led to our family moving to Ecuador for a year. The Phillips left the country after less than a decade (winters were too long) and settled back in the Southwest, but Mike and I still think of them. Especially last year as we labored to yank those same feedbunk posts out of the ground.

We laughed about the irony of our efforts, but under our management that patch of riverbar is one of our main restoration projects. After clearing out the feeder, burning and reseeding the bar with a rangeland drill, we are satisfied to see the new grass taking hold, the weeds becoming fewer and fewer. We admire the athletic river otters who make their way to a favorite fishing hole in late winter and we welcome the pairs of wild geese arriving to nest on the bar in spring. We think of our own migrations, one ranch to another, winter range to summer. People come and go, ranches change hands, decisions or weather take their toll for a time, or improve things. We keep circling back and when we arrive, we say, here we are again, and we look at what needs to be done.

From the Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Remedy

2009-07-29T00:30:00.000-07:00

Today I was reminded of a tried and true companion that has travelled with me from the Okanogan to the Yukon to Hells Canyon and the Wallowa Valley. I’m talking about The Herb Book by John Lust. The subject of the book came up over dinner when we were discussing a malady that has afflicted me the last few weeks, the nasty rash, swelling and pain caused by exposure to Rhus radicans L, poison ivy.

Since I have been affected before, I know what poison ivy (commonly referred to in these parts as poison oak) looks like and I avoid it like the plague. But I still get it several times a year, from Mike, the dogs, tools, laundry, etc. This time I suspect I got it from the horses. When Mike and our good friend Bryan trailed the cows up Log Creek to the summer range, they said they went through a “jungle” of poison oak. I remembered not to touch the dogs, but I forgot about the horses.

The Herb Book contains a startling amount of information on useful plants. It not only includes botanical information, but also educates the reader on medicinal terminology, methods of preparation, nutritional properties, other useful properties, herbal formulas, plant lore and has several comprehensive indexes. Yellowed and worn, I grabbed the compact and dense paperback from my kitchen cupboard and showed it to my friend at the dinner table. “Wow,” she said, “I’ve never used a book enough to have it look like this.”

That’s when I realized how many times this book has helped me treat various illnesses, wounds and discomforts for myself and my family. Living in remote areas, I could often use this resource to find herbal relief in my cupboard, garden, or surrounding landscape. Just a few days ago, I used it to review the properties of my chosen remedy for poison oak and refresh my memory on preparation, dosage and application.

I have heard of many “treatments” for poison oak, everything from bleach and kerosene, to scratching-the-heck-out-of-it, to steroids and shots of whiskey. The remedy I prefer is a decoction of black walnut leaves. Luckily, Mike was heading down river so he picked some fresh leaves for me. As a plant person recently reminded me, the treatment for offensive plants is generally another plant that grows in the same region.

In this case, I used two remedies.

Black Walnut Poison Oak Remedy

Simmer a couple cups of whole fresh leaves in about a quart of water for 5 - 10 minutes. (Dry leaves can be substituted for fresh, simmer 10 minutes.) Let cool. Pour leaves and decoction into a glass jar and store in the fridge. If you are not going to use it up in a week or so, strain and discard the leaves before storing the liquid. Soak a small cloth in the liquid and apply it to the affected area for several minutes, three or four times a day. It helps relieve itching and dry out the rash.

The Other “Remedy”

I hiked from Buckhorn Springs out the end of the ridge above Tulley Creek. A storm was gathering, with fretful winds, dull yellow underbellies of thunderheads, and dark curtains of rain trailing south. When I reached a rock knob at the end of the ridge, I looked down to the Tulley Creek bench below, and the spot where our first home in Wallowa County still squats beside the creek in a ribbon of birch, alder, and willow.

I sat down to contemplate the vast expanse before me and suddenly the world was becalmed. Not a breath of wind, not a bird singing, not even a fly buzzing. It was utterly still. The kind of quiet you can feel on your skin.

Now that kind of remedy works for most anything.

Prairie Terroir

2009-07-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

Luckily there was a breeze on the Zumwalt today. It’s hot. It’s July. Out in the open, where the sun is baking the range, there’s the pungent smell of tarweed and yarrow. I like that smell.

This morning Mike dropped me off at the pond and I hiked the upper fence, checking for holes where the elk wander through on their daily travels. I climbed above the head of Alder Creek and crossed a swath of biscuit-scab terrain, the interesting mounds of vegetated soil with rocky bare channels between. Nobody knows for sure what resulted in this unique rangeland feature, some say glaciers, others geologic floods, and once I even heard a theory about giant prehistoric gophers!

In spite of the dryness, there were still wildflowers: pink buckwheat, lilac erigeron, magenta dianthus, purple-blue penstomon. I followed the fence off the top down into a stand of Ponderosa Pine, thankful for the shade. In the dappled shadows, the grass was green and lush, with birds flitting and calling among the trees and shrubs. I swear I could smell the huckleberries ripening, even though I couldn’t find any.

Every time I look up into a big old Ponderosa Pine, I think of cougars. I think of how a cougar can jump almost twenty feet straight up, easy as pie. I look at those massive tree limbs arching out from the trunk and I think to myself, “If I were a cougar I’d hop up there, drape myself along that branch and take a nap.”

No cougars today, but lots of birds and butterflies and our cow herd happily wandering the range, enjoying the breeze just like me. Out in the open, I was reminded how beastly hot it gets on the Zumwalt, how when we lived at the Steen Place the kids would try and swim in Chesnimnus Creek even though it hardly had any water in it. They wandered along the creek bed looking for holes deep enough to wallow in and came back to the house covered in mud. I had to pump a couple buckets from the well and douse them off before I could let them in.

The Steen Place is a big two story hundred year old log house at the edge of the prairie. We summered there off and on over the years, and we have many memories of good times and hard work with the folks who cowboyed together there. It seemed we always had some project going to try to fix up the house. One spring the pack rats packed 50 pounds of dog food, one piece at a time, from the front porch up into the attic where it collapsed the ceiling and fell through into the bedroom below. We got new sheetrock on the ceiling that summer. When the ranch sold recently, people stopped living there. I wonder if it will ever be cared for as anyone’s home again.

The Steen Place is just one more reason why I love this country. The open rolling grassland, the mosaic of timber, the deep red canyons, the wide benchlands, the lush dynamic river bottoms. Like the grass and the cattle, we have become the product of its soil, climate and culture. This is our terroir.

Velvet and Luminous

2009-07-18T16:41:00.001-07:00

In his collection Elemental Odes, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda has written some of the most sensuous love poems in history. Consider this excerpt from Ode to the Onion:

In the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency and as the remote sea in lifting the breasts of Aprhodite duplicated the magnolia, so did the earth make you.

Yes, one can write a love poem about a vegetable or a fruit.

Like the intoxicating and voluptuous apricot. Three pickings already this week and now they are dozing in boxes in the basement, ripening, ripening.

Evenings I break a sweat carving their little orbs into the makings of luminescent preserves, racks loaded for the fruit dryer and quarts of perfect halves floating in their exquisite nectar.

Poet and professor David Wagoner talks about feeling like he was using the same words over and over in his poems. When he examined his work, he found the six words that his poetry lived on: wind, bird, tree, water, grass, and light.

Apricot is one of my words.

I feel a sense of embarrassment every time the apricot appears in another of my poems, but I can’t help it. Sometimes they just sneak in there. And this is definately one of those moments. They are such a gift.

Canyon Apricots

And come the long baked days of summer
I return for the harvest glowing
among the fluttering leaves. Velvet
shoulders gently plucked from stems,
and lolling in my palm, the succulence
of blushing cheek and silken cleft.
Again my lips reach for tender skin
the burst of flesh, sweet quenching
I can not swallow enough of.
And all this for simply needing and finding
what was left by those before us
hidden here among the rims and benches.

Little Houses and Lasting Partnerships

2009-07-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

The Bunkhouse Orchestra has a song about the "little house that stands among the trees" and they are not talking about a cottage.

We have built, restored and reholed many an outhouse over the years. I have great respect for a good outhouse and there are definitely times when two holes are better than one. Some of my favorites are the two holers that have a regular size hole for grown-ups and a stepped down hole for the kids.

When the 1,000 year flood came in 1997, we lassoed the privy at Corral Creek and tied it off to a tree. It survived, upright in the raging floodwaters, riding the waves like some kind of ark.

At Horse Creek our centennial one-holer is made out of hand split tamarack planks and square nails which date to a hundred years ago. It was in pieces when we found it. Mike carefully dismantled them and is now restoring it to a place of honor just up the hill from the ranch house.

The old farmhouse we live in has both an indoor flush version and an outdoor one-holer. We tell guests that when they stay in the bunkhouse it comes with its own privy. In fact, it has a dutch door so you can enjoy your privacy and the view of the mountains at the same time.

Indoors, the flush facility has its own character. It is lilac. Lilac sink, lilac tub and yes, lilac toilet. This was Hattie Freudenberg's house and purple was her favorite color. In June, the toilet perfectly matches the immense hedge of lilacs blooming all along the front of the yard.

Mike spent quite a bit of his 4th of July holiday removing and refurbishing said toilet. After seventy years you can expect a piece of plumbing to have a few issues. Which reminds me how thankful I am for lasting partnerships and division of labor. While I have fixed many a toilet, I'd much rather spend my time making a pie for him to enjoy when he is done with the plumbing job. It is not likely we'll find another lilac toilet, so we are trying to make this one last. But we'll always have the little house out back, just in case.

Ode to the Privy

Four walls and a door, with a roof overhead
one hole or two, not much more than a shed
but you never freeze shut, you never break down
a sure sign that we are not living in town.
O outhouse dear outhouse you welcome us in
when wind rattles by and rain hits the tin
so we'll sweep out the spiders and shovel your snow
because whenever we need you, you're ready to go.

A Sam Loftus Kind of Day

2009-07-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

Today the bulls get a surprise. They are going to the prairie to be reunited with the cow herd. At this moment, they are lounging in the shade of the willow trees out by the corral, their bellies full of lush green valley pasture grass. It is a pretty good day already, but it’s going to get better and they don’t even know it.

Mike could get a surprise today too. I made a super delicious sour cream fudge cake late last night and now I’m picturing a picnic to surround that cake, on the breaks of the canyon, overlooking the deep-cut tributaries of the lower Imnaha River. It could be a Sam Loftus memorial kind of day.

Sam was our first cow boss when we came into Hells Canyon nearly thirty years ago. I remember the first time I met him. We had recently moved into the cow camp at Tully Creek, a long ways from anybody and five miles up a dirt driveway that was ten miles down a cliff-hanging dirt road. The cabin was well worn, with a rich history of pioneering souls and packrat invasions, an unreliable spring, and an equally unreliable toilet that somebody had installed on the front porch.

It was early in the morning on a wet April day and I was trying to get a garden plot started below the cabin. I had two kids under the age of two and Mike had already left for the day’s work, so I snuck out while the kids were sleeping. The view out across the wide canyon benches at Tully Creek was stark and soothing. It’s one of those rare open places in what is otherwise an up and down landscape.

As I squatted in the damp dirt among my scraggly beds of seedlings, I suddenly heard the thump of hooves and the hard breath of a horse climbing the draw. I turned and stood as an older cowboy galloped up on a huge dapple grey gelding that he slid to a stop practically on top of me. “Where’s your man?” he barked, towering over me while his horse blew, spraying me with slobber. “What are you doing out here? You’ll never get a garden to grow. Too hot and not enough water.”

His orneriness could have been intimidating, except for his impish grin and his eyes that twinkled out from under the brim of his hat. I knew there was a sense of humor under his loud, bossy demeanor and I knew I had to be just as tough as he was if we were going to get along.

Sam’s been gone a couple years now and the memories of all the seasons and places we worked together fill most of my life so far. The big ancient log summer house at the Steen Place, the tiny winter cabin at the Litch Place, Indian Village, School Flat, Vance Knoll, Square Mountain. And even when we weren’t working for Sam, we still relied on his knowledge of where to trail from one range to another, where to water, how to deal with a sick animal.

One of the last pictures I have of Sam is at Buckhorn. He’s sitting in a wheel chair at the edge of the fire look-out. The breaks of the canyon fall away right behind him, where he looks down at the trail from summer to winter range. And over his shoulder are the dusky clefts of the drainages, Horse Creek, Lighting, Cow, Corral, Thorn, Tulley. And on the horizon, the high red hogback ridges, Haas, Grizzly, Windy, Summit.

So that’s what I’m thinking. A picnic at Buckhorn after we drop off the bulls. A few good stories, some of that awesome chocolate cake, and a look into the canyon that has shaped our work, our lives and our friendships all these years.

What Real People Eat

2009-06-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

I’m sure if I read Betty’s book I’d find something good in there. Betty Fussell is a gourmand. She lives in New York, N.Y. and she believes in steak. Her recent book Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef, is described by Michael Pollan as an “absorbing journey through the geography of beef.”

But I haven’t read Betty’s book. I’ve only seen part of the meaty note she sent to High Country News in May. This is where Betty shares a few thoughts on red meat, emphasizing that ‘real’ American men, women and children eat steak because it infuses them blood, iron and vitality.

What struck me about this sentiment is the word “steak.” In my book, what ‘real’ men, women and children eat is locally and sustainably grown food. Which in places like Hells Canyon, with an abundance of natural grasses and forages, includes meat. And not just steak.

Steak can be yummy. So can arm roasts, heart, soup bones, liver, rump roasts, tongue, stew meat, etc. To build a food system that supports ranch families and the lands they steward, we must learn to eat and use more of the animal.

Folks who know how to cook a delicious heart or tongue can share those skills and tastes. I can’t remember who showed me how to cook tongue, but I know that boiled and seasoned, sliced thin, it makes awesome sandwiches, with a hearty mustard on homemade bread.

Nowadays, the butcher even asks me if I want the tail. And some of my customers do. So fire up the freezer honey, because it’s about the whole cow.

Recipe for Boiled Beef Tongue

Rinse the tongue and place in a stock pot with water to cover and one teaspoon of salt. Optional: add chopped onion and/or seasonings, such as bay leaf, red or black pepper or pickling spice. Bring to a boil and simmer 2 to 3 hours or until tender, should be able to pierce it with a fork. Rinse in cold water. Peel off the skin. Slice thinly and serve. Good for sandwiches.

Lessons Learned

2009-06-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

Cherries good. Bean maggots bad.

Here is what you don't do: plant a late cover crop, till it in late, rush to plant your beans and then incubate a superb hatch of bean seed maggots in the cool moist rotting cover crop. This is guaranteed to eliminate beans from your summer harvest. The bean maggots eat the bean sprouts as they emerge from the seed. The happy little buggers took care of every bean seed in the garden. I hope my friends and neighbors have a bumper crop this year, because I will be on the hunt for beans.

Consolation for the demise of the beans came in the bucket of cherries Gabe brought out from Horse Creek. Sweet, dark, juicy delicious organic cherries. The tree is at least 40 years old and enormous. It has survived in the old orchard along the river in spite of drought, pests (including bears), and floods. The birds love it. They usually get the harvest, but this year the salmon season coincided with cherry season and our dedicated fisherman also loves fruit. So I got the bonus of cherries.

Some were splitting from the copious rains of last week. I sorted and saved the most pristine for fresh eating and pitted and froze the rest. These will go into my favorite kind of cherry pie, which is a mix of 1/3 sweet cherries and 2/3 pie cherries. And don't forget cherry smoothies, and plain frozen cherries barely thawed which are a great treat in themselves, especially for little kids. For now I'm practicing self discipline and not reaching into the cherry bowl too often, just when I think of the beans.

Rain on the Range

2009-06-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

One should not complain about rain. Many good remarks were shared at Flora School Days yesterday regarding the benevolence of morning sun breaks as the heavy clouds marched overhead. The music was great, especially having the fiddlin' Fluit sisters from Upper Prairie Creek, Doc Woods on his trusty stand up bass, and a new mandolin player, Liz from Flora. Lucky for us, it didn't really rain until the activities concluded and then we scurried around packing up everything from butter churns to mules and plows.

And it's still raining. I hope my beans haven't decided to rot in the garden. One of the items that is a must for the pantry is a good supply of pickled beans. So I'm hoping those little bean plants are happily soaking up moisture instead of turning to mush.

Speaking of stocking the larder, I can't believe we are still eating onions from last year. These are the best keeper onions I've ever had. They are the same kind I've grown the last few years, yellow and red Spanish sweets, but for some reason they've held longer. I wish I could predict how curing, braiding and storing resulted in such longevity, but I can't. So I just praise each onion as it goes into the pan, firm and unsprouted.

I wonder how the cherries are fairing down on the Imnaha at Horse Creek. Last week they were nearly ripe and Gabe and I had to restrain ourselves from eating too many and suffering the result. If as much rain has fallen in the canyon as in the valley, the cherries are likely to have split. But there will be other cherries in the coming month. That is the beauty of food in Wallowa County. With our elevation gradient the opportunities to harvest are scattered across topography and season. First the canyon, then Imnaha, then Big Sheep, then the Valley. I can't wait.

After a well-deserved Fathers Day breakfast of four-grain sour-milk waffles with honey butter sauce (honey from Prairie Creek), Mike and I are off to the Zumwalt again. We have a couple heifers who would like to join the herd on the summer range.

It will be good to breathe in the fragrance of wet prairie, but I will look out across the canyon breaks and part of me will still long to be at Horse Creek. It's a time of transition, this migration that gets in your bones, feeling the pull from one ecotype to another, from one cow camp to the next. We count our blessings to still be here, following the circle, remembering those who were here before us and those who will come behind.

Home Sweet Summer Range Home

2009-06-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

June thunderstorms keep rolling in soaking the thirsty range with sweet fresh rain. Wildflowers and native grasses are blooming. The sun rises early and sets late in a salmon-magenta horizon framed by canyon breaks and mountain shoulders. Life is definately good.

Last weekend we trailed our small herd of longhorn and corriente cattle from the winter range in the Imnaha River canyon to the summer range on the Zumwalt Prairie. It was a three day affair. One day of brushing out the trail (Mike and his faithful machete vs blackberry and poison oak), and two days of trailing. As usual, all the meals tasted better, the draws seemed steeper, the sun got hotter and the beds felt sweeter.

The dogs, horses, cows and cowboys all worked together to make it a safe smooth trip.

Lots of changes up on the prairie as more ranches are purchased and consolidated into private preserves with a proliferation of explicitly yellow "posted" signs reminding everyone who ventures past that they are not welcome.

When we topped out of the canyon and hit the gravel road by Thomason Meadows, we bumped into a neighbor. How good it was to visit, catch up on family happenings and remember all the times we've helped each other over the years, sharing our labor, knowledge and resources. It's good to be part of community.

Now that the cows are situated, it's off to Flora School Days this weekend for the big doin's at the old two-story schoolhouse. Every year Mike and I join the other folks who show up to play music on the schoolhouse porch. What's better than circling up some fiddles and guitars with a mandolin, banjo, stand-up bass, concertina and some spoons thrown in to spice it up?

Especially since all around the school yard people are busy learning about wood stove cooking, blacksmithing, horse farming, washing on a board and other useful stuff. Inside you can wander around listening to the echos of classrooms past and taking in all the history. And there's pie. You can get delicious homemade pie, with or without a dutch oven dinner. I always eat the pie first. Two pieces, one chocolate merengue and the other rhubarb custard. You better get it on the calendar for next year.