Range riders still roam central Idaho

During the summer, sheep ranching in the U.S. West follows a biblical rhythm. When the bands leave their valley homes for summer grazing, shepherds accompany them. Herders spend all summer with the sheep, guiding them to new feed, providing water, and camping near them at night. 

Although cattle are checked on, watered, and moved regularly, they aren't herded as closely as sheep. Except for Alderspring Ranch cattle. Based in central Idaho's Pahsimeroi Valley, Glenn and Caryl Elzinga, their seven home-grown cowhands, and a crew of range riders herd their organic grass-fed beeves all summer long on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service grazing allotments. I helped (by staying out of the way and taking photos) Elzingas move over 400 cattle from their valley ranch to public rangelands in late May.

Roxy's ready to help new range riders learn to keep cattle where they belong.

Glenn Elzinga gets Sunny ready, with an assist from son-in-law Ethan Kelly.

Horses were tied up everywhere, far enough apart than nobody got tangled up.

Roxy strikes a pose.

Even the hitching rail held horses.

Hats off for a blessing before leaving.

Last minute adjustments.

Riders top the hill gathering cattle.

Abby (Elzinga) Kelly move the electric fence out of the way...

...and checks that everyone's ready for her to open the gate and release the cattle.

It's hard to get water to make a right angle turn; the same is true for a herd of cattle. Here they're back on the road and headed up the hill.

The cattle leave behind their irrigated valley pastures for the upland range.

Buster helps by holding some heifers.

Everything's going well coming down the Pahsimeroi Road.

A long line of cattle follows the highway along the Salmon River for a short way.

The herd does great on this right angle turn.

Hooves over the Salmon River.

Melanie Elzinga points the way.

Riders, horses, and cattle all made it safely to public lands, where they'll send the summer.

Marathon health, lava stroke, and natural resources

Mike Medberry's book, On the Dark Side of the Moon is available on Amazon, where I recently reviewed it.

Mike Medberry's legs carried him uphill to finish a half marathon the day before a clot in the 44-year-old's brain stopped blood flow, immobilizing his right side and scrambling his speech. His was the kind of stroke you want to have in the ER parking lot. But Medberry was hiking across lava at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. He spent most of a day waiting to be found and whisked to a hospital.

Medberry "became pure observer" while wounded and waiting on the lava. He describes the stroke clearly enough that I don't have to experience one myself to feel I have a working knowledge of the condition.

Recovering, Medberry learned to brush his teeth, drive, navigate phone trees, speak, and write. His struggles to organize his thoughts are heart-breaking. "…[T]he pieces of [his] brain were a blizzard of blowing pages ripped from a book." Medberry's emotional struggles are inspiring. His falling in love and recovering enough to say, "I do," are triumphs.

Interwoven with Medberry's own story is the story of Craters of the Moon. He was working to expand the national monument when the stroke found him there. Even after the stroke, he hiked and found peace on the lava.

I enjoyed Medberry's descriptions of Idaho landscapes, but I wondered about a few points in his discussion of cheatgrass. He's correct that the exotic annual grass fuels wildfires that damage native vegetation and the wildlife habitat it provides. But I cringed when I read that cheatgrass is "[a] poison brought here by cowboys, for cows." In its native range, cheatgrass is an insignificant grass that doesn't inspire purposeful sharing. Researchers understand that the grass was inadvertently introduced to the U.S. West.

The stark black and white cover photo of a hiker leaning against gravity to climb lava echoes the contrast between Medberry's marathon health and lava stroke. Natural resource issues are rarely as clear cut and the actors, both people and plants, are rarely completely good or evil.

The oldest profession?

Rancher Glenn Elzinga says herding might be the oldest profession. I wonder if he also knows shepherds have a long record of improving human culture. Shepherds brought civilization to people in the 4,000 year-old Epic of Gilgamesh. A couple thousand years later, shepherds starred in many Greek myths. One story traced the roots of cowboy poetry to the shepherd Daphnis, who composed the first pastoral poem on the island of Sicily.

Today, the profession doesn’t maintain the workforce it did in ancient times and it provides fewer cultural innovations, but shepherd still watch flocks of sheep in the U.S west. Herders live 24/7 with bands of a thousand animals. With the help of herding dogs, the shepherd guides the flock to browse a variety of plants and avoid poisonous fare. The animals are watched at all times and can be kept away from areas protected for other uses. The herder sleeps nearby to help the guard dogs protect the sheep from predators and theft.

For years, I wondered why herding sheep made so much sense, but herding cattle was, well, unheard of. I wondered until I heard Glenn Elzinga’s keynote address at the 2015 Idaho Sustainable Ag Conference. He's developing a "new" approach to ranching: he's herding his cattle.

After lunch, I lurked with intent and buttonholed Glenn as we walked back to the afternoon session. I followed up with an email. Later, I asked if I could write about him. He and his wife Caryl agreed. My story on Alderspring Grassfed (and herded) Beef was in the Fall 2016 issue of Edible Idaho.