I figure that if you were really interested in hearing about what it’s like to see for the first time tiny hooves, with the bottoms splayed white, coming out of the ass-end of a cow, you would be out here braving the wind and seeing it yourself. It is, after all, not all that interesting. There can’t possibly be that many reasons you’d want to hunch around, your knees creaking, brushing your hand up against dog shit, breathing as silently as humanly possible, all to stare through a grey and dilapidated fence. Your hushed caution comes from straight up fear that the nervous cow will just buck up and refuse to give birth because she knows that you are creepily stalking her during this sort of normal yet odd show. How would that feel, knowing that you are responsible for the hooves that perpetually peep past her tailbone, all because she’d rather not give birth with an audience? But again, if you really wanted to see these things, you’d find a way to live amongst it yourself, right?

As it turns out, cows aren’t so hot on the idea of company during childbirth. In fact, despite the fact that they are herd animals, when the time comes that a cow’s body tells her the baby is going to be arriving shortly, she quietly and stealthily excuses herself to head towards the hills. If that plan is thwarted, the cow becomes anxious and distracted and, as it turns out, pretty much lethal. That momma cow knows that she wants to have the baby in privacy, on a clean patch of ground, protected from both wind and predators. You quickly learn that in that cow’s sight, you are no longer the blessed alfalfa and apple angel, you are a predatory and stalking creature deserving a speedy death- the sooner you can be gotten rid of, the sooner that squirmy little squealer can come out of her abdomen.

So it just seems natural to let them do their thing.

The first pair to awaken to our Meadow Ranch, Wyoming (pathetic) interpretation of spring was discovered after the heifer was missing in the morning count. A cow missing in the “spring” means you might as well put on a helmet and shield before you go investigating the meadows. If you stumble upon her and her calf, you might be in for a scurry of a muddy run back to shelter. Or it might be just fine. All could be calm and the mother might just bellow at you a bit to keep your distance. That seems to be the case when you mostly stay out of the way of the whole birthing process and give the mother her space. Go figure. Our first pair was a sight to see, cuddling together against the sage brush, snow brushed on the long hair of the mother but the baby dry as a desert day. That was the first calf I have ever really had a chance to notice. And geez almighty was he a black beauty.

The next two, well, we are still bruised and battered. If only the two ladies knew our intentions were for the best- that we only stood between them and the isolated hills in case they were to need assistance during their first calving experience. Not their idea of a good idea. And they haven’t been the same since.

But wait, really, if you were at all interested in these things, you’d be out in the Wyoming wind, wading through the spring mud. You don’t need someone to tell you what it’s like to see a cow first learn of her baby… to watch her lick and caress and beg with her voice for that baby to rise and suck. And to see them the next day, together, the mama a bit slow and happy and seemingly satisfied to be curled in with her little one. I don’t think I ever even remotely fathomed what this experience would be like, or how deeply in love I would fall with this intimate connection to animals.

The calf born just this evening makes five total out of six. The last baby doesn’t look to be wanting to come anytime soon. We know that of the first four, three are bull calves and one is a heifer calf. Strangely, the heifer calf is from our wild Emma Gates with the unruly horns (you know, the one that had us climbing the fences to escape from her lovely motherly instincts?). The baby is named Franny Gates, after my mother and hers. Girl calves are named in a heritage breeding scenario like ours, and boy calves are simply numbered. They’ll live a shorter yet substantial life out here with us for about two years. Then they will become part of our cyclical life cycle. They are here with us to die- and quite honestly, they wouldn’t be alive right now if they didn’t have a food purpose. Maybe we all need to realize that that is a cycle that will keep happening long after we are dust again. And none of us would be here if we weren’t meant to only pass through this world, not to stay.

Garrison Keillor with The Writer’s Almanac appropriately sent this to his email subscribers today, a Shakespeare poem. Quite lovely and appropriate I’d say:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

And of Vladimir Nobokov:
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

This steak takes little more than 25 minutes in preparation and cooking combined, yet the flavors rival any past steak we’ve eaten. The steak itself is seared to lock in flavors and juices, then the other cast of characters sneak into play: chopped up garlic, de-sprigged rosemary, and smooth red wine all added into your pan for deglazing. Our steak came from Wags Livestock out of Laramie, Wyoming. Someday it’ll come from Meadow Ranch, Rawlins, WY. But for now, they’re doing a pretty bang up job of raising grassfed cows and we’re buying from them.

This recipe has become a number one promoter of our to-be herb garden (hurry, hurry, faster, faster, plant those herbs!). How can I possibly have to run to the store to find “packaged in plastic” sprigs of organic rosemary? Silly. Down right ridiculous. I would like to transplant our Michigan gardens directly into these rocky mountain grounds we find ourselves on. I can’t wait for the days that we are able to return to plucking and picking thyme, tarragon, sage, and rosemary from our backyard on fanciful cooking whims. Wait. We don’t have a backyard. And wait. Do antelope, elk and deer like herbs? How about rattlesnakes? Oh boy.

We ate this steak with a quickly sauteed cabbage, butter, dill combo, cooked together with salt and water. We could mop up the braising juices and garlic with the cabbage. It was perfect.

Thanks to Nourished Kitchen for being such an inspiring place to find whole and healthy recipes like this one!

Wine Braised Steak with Rosemary and Garlic

1 16-ounce 100% grass-fed beef steak
unrefined sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter or clarified butter
4 to 6 garlic cloves, chopped fine
1 branch fresh rosemary, plus more to garnish
1 cup red wine, any will do

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Generously season the steak with unrefined sea salt and freshly ground black pepper as it suits you.
3. Heat two tablespoons butter or clarified butter in a cast-iron skillet over a very hot flame.
4. Sear the steak in the hot fat about one minute on each side.
5. Remove the skillet from the heat, add garlic and fresh rosemary needles.
6. Deglaze the skillet with red wine.
7. Place the skillet in an oven preheated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit for about ten minutes, longer if you prefer well-done steaks and less if you prefer a rare steak.
8. serve with pan juices, garnished with additional rosemary.

YIELD: about 4 servings.

TIME: about 10 minutes (preparation), 10 to 20 minutes (cook time)

It seems that last week the honeymoon period here on the range had a not so smooth crash landing. My spirit broke daily from having to walk into work at a steakhouse, and Josh’s spirit desperately choked from this dusty barn that can’t quite seem to make sense yet as a shop. And these overwhelming feelings of heaviness in the brain continually reminded us that: We Need A Yurt. Stat. Winter looms, the mornings already falling below forty degrees; the frost predicting flowers that have bloomed six weeks before frost for decades and decades last week began showing their yellow blossoms. Lovely.

And then we had the opportunity to attend a conference within the Wyoming state line called Living and Working on the Land. We drove four hours over a remote and beautiful highway, eyes peeled looking for bighorn sheep (to no avail), reaching a delicious evening of acoustic music, local food, and our very own hotel room. The two days that followed were full of amazing speakers, wonderful local farmers and ranchers, and great time spent thinking that perhaps this ranching project of ours might have some validity to it after all. You know, it can be real exhausting to think to yourself hour after hour, day after oppressing day, that you are an anomaly, a being of extraordinary strangeness that will just not ever fit into this wild and rustic west. But we met others who’s eyes shine when you say the words, “diversity!”, “sustainability!”, and “rotational grazing!”. And now the real challenge comes with finding a way to remember that we are not alone, we are not being unreasonable dreamers, and that we just might be able to be successful with ranching while simultaneously bringing greater health to this soil and all who subsist on it.

We met Joel Salatin, leader of all things unconventional and diverse in farming. All ears perched as the audience took in his every authentic word, spoken with the unapologetic intensity of a robed and animated preacher. Who knew in this contemporary day and age it would take a farmer to stand up and speak the truth to the connections of health, food, government, politics, family, and land values. One of our favorite topics addressed by Joel was about how new ideas and growth come from disturbance. He speaks of not only how disturbance of the soil brings new growth (thus the importance of grazing animals on the land), but how allowing our false economy to crumble, thus using human capabilities to exercise and design a higher level of ecology. Innovation will arise. Joel’s Polyface Farm in Virginia works to improve the soil while providing food to a great number of people in his local community, all while teaching and employing a substantial number of well-compensated young people; young people who will take this knowledge and exponentially touch cities and rural lands alike. And as Joel said at the conference, “We are all more similar than we are different. We all eat.”

We also were fortunate enough to have an engaging conversation with rancher and writer Diane Peavey. On an evening trip to Table Mountain Vineyards Winery, we waited in the buffet line for locally produced burgers on a stick (for real) with Diane and heard some of her amazing stories about her sheep ranch in Idaho. She listened to our bit of bitchy banter about the struggles involved when two young people leave a yuppy university town and end up in a western town with the state’s severest reputation, all while not having a very good plan for how soon and very soon a yurt will be built. She thought it was hilarious and hopeful, repeatedly saying that the best marketing any of us at the conference could possibily do is to tell our stories. Tell your stories. And ah, if there’s one thing this Wyoming family has, it’s stories. And if we can only hold on to our wacky sense of humor, oh the stories we can tell of this beginning, slightly ungraceful and definitely uncomfortable, period of learning to walk despite the badger holes at our feet and battering wind at our backs.

Josh and I bought these funny little Mexican mushrooms at market yesterday. They’re only Mexican because the culture there has embraced the fungus as an edible delicacy. The actual home where these huitlacoches grew was on the corn found at Tantre Farm in Chelsea, MI.

Aren’t they goofy? I’m a tad afraid of their slipperiness on my tongue, but they were affordable so worth the experiment. Before you know it these gourmet little truffles will be $29 a pound. Josh has some pretty serious ambitions for these guys, and I think he will be inspired by some of these sites: Professor introduces unusual edible fungus to Madison, Corn Fungus Tamales: Tamales de Huitlacoche, and this information straight from Mexico.

Would you, could you, try these? They are fascinating.

The day started at 10am. Any Saturday where I actually untangle myself from the cozy blankets and greet the day before noon is almost rare, to say the least. Josh left for a gallery meeting downtown around 9am and I woke up completely on my own at 9:45. I padded down the stairs, poured myself as black a cup of coffee I could find, and sat down with my partially glazed eyes to browse through email. A friend of mine sent a mass invitation to pick blueberries and then head to the lake in the afternoon. I thought the idea was glorious. Thus, I surmised my strategy for the day. The goal was to meet Josh downtown before he started heading home after his meeting. First, we needed to head to market and pick up ingredients for both pickling and a couple days worth of food. Second, we would head to the blueberry farm about 15 miles west and pick these clusters of berries until our mouths were stained blue. And third, we would find our way to the most beautiful lake in Michigan, a retreat with no motor boats allowed. So I made my piles of needed materials and supplies for blueberry picking, farmer’s market, and the lake. After some strategic backpack packing, I pedaled away on my bicycle, reaching downtown sweaty faced and alive before it was even noon.

We were able to pick up more pickling cucumbers, swiss chard, peaches, eggs, scallions, new potatoes, shallots, dill, and cherries. We packed these in coolers and, as planned, headed to the blueberry farm. We picked blueberries until our stomaches screamed of fullness and we forfeited our battle with the mosquitos. You can see from the pictures that this was very serious business. Then we wound our way through a few little curious Michigan towns, eventually finding the much needed respite of the lake. The water was unusually choppy, the small beach a bit full of people, but it was oh so refreshing.

We made it home and in bed for a nap at 6:45pm. I guess the “early” morning had me slightly worn out. We didn’t rise from our evening nap until 9:15. At that point, we had to shift into high gear in order to finish the list of tasks for the day. We wanted to harvest swiss chard from our garden to make a Chard Gratin, make a homemade pesto with basil from the garden, eat dinner, and make these pickles that I’ve been obsessed with fermenting. And we did it. All of it.

The chard recipe is from Alice Waters cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, but I was made aware of it on the great food blog The Wednesday Chef. She has the recipe outlined on her blog, so if you want to try it you’ll find it there.

The dish was simple to make and a perfect use of many ingredients that needed to be used in our kitchen. We were able to use bread that was a couple days old and dry, milk that was set to expire, and chard from the garden that was patchworked from bugs feasting on it’s leaves. This dish will jive with any Sunday brunch or early afternoon meal. I can’t wait to heat it up again for our Sunday lunch.

“If you’re outraged at conditions, then you can’t possibly be free or happy until you devote all your time to changing them and do nothing but that,” he said. “But you can’t change anything if you want to hold onto a good job, a good way of life and avoid sacrifice.”

Today, in eight states, is a day that is spent in remembrance of Cesar Chavez. California even shuts down their libraries. Cesar Chavez is a farmworker rights activist that died in 1993. He fought for Labor Unions, worker rights, and the rights of workers to not be exposed to pesticides. No, pesticides aren’t good when we eat them, but they are even worse when you are directly exposed to them, i.e. a farm worker. Working on farms is hard enough when you can breath, but I can’t imagine what it would be like in a murky fuzz of chemical spray similar to what they poured on our “enemy” in the Vietnam War.

Without healthy soil, we can not be healthy people. Plainly speaking, without people, healthy or unhealthy, maybe the earth would exist in a more balanced way. But until that happens, I’m going to fight tooth and nail to be a healthy citizen. Even if this means sacrifice. But think of the sacrifices we ask of (primarily immigrant) farmworkers every single day… wow.

“Cesar Chavez, who insisted that those who labor in the earth were entitled to share fairly in the rewards of their toil, would never be forgotten.”

VIVA LA CAUSA
Long live our cause