Resolution, range management, and megafarm madness

When I feel my eyeballs fusing to the screen and the css and php code coalescing into a pulpy jumble, I know it’s time to get out.

at pasture's edge

Out on the range with Jim, that is, to fill my brain with that beautiful acid green of Nevada County spring.

Except that this year, spring is crowding summer’s turf on the calendar, with seemingly no end in sight to the cool temps and Midwestern weather pattern of rain showers on a nearly weekly (or daily) basis.

For Jim, this year’s springtime shift away from our Mediterranean climate is a Godsend.

“Every day that I don’t have to irrigate is like heaven on earth. It saves me $65 a day in irrigation cost, and the lion’s share of that is for PG&E,” Jim declares as we rumble by truck across pasture land he leases bordering the Bear River, just east of the Garden Bar crossing. As usual, I hang on for dear life as Jim ironically observes: “The ground looks smooth, but it’s not” and stomps on the gas.

Yeah, Jim, no kidding. Even herders Bubbas and Red are on the scramble, balancing adroitly between the bales of hay and the odd assortment of junk that Jim has in the back bed.

Bubbas, through the window

There are 18 animals here on Jim’s leased 237-acre Bear River parcel. Gee, does that mean about 13 acres per cow? Not quite. Seems that in proper range management, there’s a difference between actual acres and effective acres. Actual acres are the total acres in the parcel. Effective acres are the usable acres—once rocks, creeks, and very steep terrain are subtracted. (Kind of like actual pixels and effective pixels when working out the resolution of a photo. Yes! I knew I had something in common with Jim: resolution!) So there are about 10 acres per cow, once Jim has backed out the unusable acres and arrived at a total of 170 effective acres.

But there’s more in the equation. A big, big deal for figuring effective acres is water. Once our oddball spring weather has passed, Jim intends on irrigating 35 acres of this land to maintain its carrying capacity year ‘round. Here’s the plan. Over the summer, Jim will clean out the existing ditches here, plus install a half mile of surface irrigation pipe. As summer winds down the system will be ready, enabling Jim to move about 20 miner’s inches of water from the Wolf-Hanneman canal beginning in the middle of August. This will effectively move up the onset of autumn on the newly-irrigated land. It will also create a protective greenbelt and firebreak; a plus for the land owner and for the safety of Nevada County.

As I ponder all this, Jim gets a call on his cell and takes it. It’s another order!

is it for me?

Our prolonged spring is also prompting Jim to enhance his planting strategy on this parcel. This year he’s been seeding for fall dryland grass production as well as for irrigated pasture grass. The dryland grass will germinate and grow during the summer, then the irrigated pasture grasses will come on line early with the newly irrigated acreage. The cattle that are here now will be moved to Jim’s larger irrigated pastures in a few months once the spring grass disappears, but eventually they’ll be brought back here and they’ll be able to stay here year ‘round, as more and more of this Bear River parcel’s pasture is productive year ‘round. The benefit is less stress for the animals, moving from place to place.

Jim completes his call and, just to see if I’m paying attention, launches into an impromptu math lesson.

All this for 18 cows, 35 acres, one firebreak, and a skillful partnership with nature’s endless variables. Then it hits me: this is real farming. This is not engineered or freakishly controlling. This is nature calling the shots, testing the resolve of a guy who pets his cows and glues his hat together with duct tape. And I can’t help thinking about a story I saw awhile back in the SF Chron: “Battle Over Slow Food Heats Up in Heartland” by Carolyn Lochhead. If you haven’t already seen this piece, it’s an overview of the controversies that surround Jim’s type of farming.

When I first skimmed it, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The megafarms are getting bent out of shape over guys like Jim. It seems ridiculous. Of all the assertions in the story, the statement by Deborah Stockton of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, rings most true for me. “What we are promoting is actually very, very old agriculture, and what’s considered conventional is new” is Stockton’s quote. I’ve heard Jim say exactly the same words when explaining the care he takes in nurturing the pastures that sustain his cattle.

What do you think, readers? This blog is open for your comments. And, while you’re dipping into SF Gate, check out this story about the USDA’s draft document on food safety at meat plants and what it may mean for small operations like Jim’s.

I’ll be writing more about this later, once I check in with Jim for his take on it. Until then, enjoy the pix of farming the way it used to be and, for the time being, still is—thanks to the hard work and resolution of ranchers like Jim Gates.

a good day

lupine

just a sip