SABO RANCH FIELD DAYJune 19, 2010 11:00AM-4:00pm  303 Pony Rd, Harrison, MT

 PROGRAM:

11:00- Cow Milking and Welcome and Wander

12:00- Tour of Sabo Ranch Cattle (Devon and Jersey) and other Livestock, and Off-Grid Living. 

Tour Topics will include  Off-Grid Living, Heritage & Grassfed Cattle breeding, A2 Milk development, Eating seasonally, Management Intensive Grazing, Redeveloping Locally Grown Food Sources. 

1:00- All Local Food Lunch

(2:00-4:00)- Free Afternoon Classes

- Good Food/Good Health- Eating Local all Year Long

with

Tanda Cook and Sarah Marshall of Clearwater Health

- Family Dairy Animals- Keeping Your Animal Healthy, and Your Milk Clean

with Jenny Sabo, and Dave Scott of Whitehall,

Adults: $15.00 each, Children FREE

Only 80 spaces available,

Reserve your space now- (406)685-3248, saboranch@gmail.com

Much of this event is OUTSIDE, dress accordingly.  Please leave dogs in your car, to keep them safe from protective mother cows.  There will be a safe field for dog walking about 1/4 mile away from the cattle.

Bring your swimsuits and towels, and stop for a relaxing soak at Norris Hot Springs on the way home, just 13 miles south, near the junction of Hwy 287 and Rt 84.

John Thiebes, with Riley and Kiril Sabo on the truck, feeding our herd of Rotokawa Embryo Devons, Red Angus mother cows and their Devon/Angus calves (and a few A1/A2 Jersey heifers) the last hay of the year, as we wait the impatient weeks for the first green grass of spring. April 2010.

John Theibes, one of the best "big brothers" our boys have ever had, gamely trying on 7-year-old Kiril's birthday crown.

Sabo Ranch Intern Blog- John Thiebes         April 20, 2010

                This will be the final full day working with the Sabo’s as their intern, and although my appreciation for ranching and all of its related sciences and arts has deepened, my ability write about them has not. So, in an effort to keep pace with some of the more esteemed agricultural writers, I want to embark from here on my own agricultural work having left with one last blog entry.

          The greatest highlight of this entire experience has been observing how a family operation such as this one actually works. Behind their reputation as producers of flavorful, nutrient dense beef are years of fine tuning a system that juggles land stewardship, animal husbandry, direct marketing, education, observation and local adaptation. On top of that you include trying to raise a family, mentor an intern, and find the time for the occasional game of ping pong and you very quickly fill a day, and then fill three months almost as fast. But the amazing thing about a system such as this one is that it never remains the same, and something that never remains the same never runs out of things to teach you.

          For my own farming and ranching endeavors I have taken away the lesson that none of these things happen overnight.  As Jenny says, “an overnight success, twenty years in the making”.  If you want to raise healthy animals then you need to steward healthy ground.  If you want to sell those animals than you need to create a market that will support it. The way to achieve a profitable and sustainable system like that is to educate yourself as to the factors which drive that system. 

          For instance:

          Good soil starts usually having something green growing in it, mostly grasses and legumes. That soil builds its health through cycles of intensive grazing and long rest.

          You can get healthy animals by creating a herd that is genetically adapted to meet both the local environmental demands, such as the severity of  the winter or forage availability, as well as the production demands that you place on them, such as the timing of calving and amount of weight gain.

           A good rancher understands that you cannot turn an ass into a horse by fighting nature. Only by working within the limitations of your environment can you create realistic demands of your animals. Anything else will result in a system that is both inefficient and labor intensive for you and the animals.

          But it doesn’t matter if you have the finest grass feed, organically raised, tenderized, localized, grassfed beef in the world, because if no one knows why they should consider buying your product over what they find in the supermarket, or doesn’t know that it exists in the first place, then all you have is a cow, not a profit. This is where talking to and writing for the public becomes essential to the viability of an operation outside of a conventional system. If you are selling beef in a manner that adheres to your own personal values and in a way that is site specific, then every step, including getting people excited about what you are producing, must be taken by you.

          The stewardship and the marketing must can take off at full steam. It seems to me that you can take this on at the greatest possible pace. You can never have too much grass or plant too many trees, just as you can never reach enough ears in spreading news that you can provide healthy food that was raised in a sustainable fashion. But if you start breeding livestock before you know what your land can sustain itself and that a market will support your finished product, then you are in danger of dropping all the balls at once. If there is one lesson to take from nature it is this. Things take time.

          But things also take doing. And it is in doing these things mentioned above that a farm starts to take on a life of its own. This summer I am going to take what I have learned from the Sabo’s and try it out on 3 acres of pasture just outside of Bozeman. The family that my friends and I are renting it from are giving us this opportunity so that I can implement the ideas and tools that I learned here at the ranch. The pasture is full of weeds and after trying spraying and grazing, the family was giving up. But after explaining that weeds are indicative of an imbalanced soil and improper grazing, they were willing to give it one more try.

          Now, we are raising chickens, sheep, goats and pigs as well as growing a vegetable garden and collecting waste food from restaurants for compost and animal feed, all within a system that is designed to take advantage of the local conditions of our rented ground.

          If there is anything more exciting than having been given the chance to work side by side with the Sabo Family, then it is to be able to take what they taught me and put it into practice in Bozeman.

The easiest way to get a bale of straw back onto the pile: Flying Knee Kick

I’m getting ready to milk Toffee. Before we milk her, we brush her down, wash her udder, put salve on her teats and then squirt out the milk that has been sitting in the teats. Toffee has been giving us on average 2 gallons of milk per day.

And then to work…

Another Rancher come down from the mountains to train with sword master Ben.

             A few days ago I came across a very interesting idea in a book called “Soil, Grass and Cancer” by Andre Voisin. He writes, “The living organism is the biochemical photograph of the environment”. Its meaning is simple. We are a repackaging of our environment.

            Scattered in the soil there was once a multitude of different mineral compounds that coalesced and made my life possible. If in that soil a mineral was absent, it is also absent in me. If present, then it must also be present in me. This especially holds true for something like a blade of grass. It spends its entire life in a small patch of soil and in doing so, is a complete, single photograph of its environment. I, however, have never been a complete, single photograph of my environment. I more closely resemble a blurry collage of thousands of environments than a sharp photograph of just one. I’ve lived in a dozen locations and eat, on a daily basis, food that is grown all over the world. The blade of grass is the exact opposite. It lives, grows and dies within the limitations of the soil it is rooted to. Any disease or deficiency can be traced back to the soil it grows in. The old saying that a rancher isn’t in the business of raising cattle, but in the business of growing grass should be taken one step further. They should be saying that they are growers of soil.                   

             At the Sabo Ranch, we all do our best to help the soil grow right along. Synthetic chemicals are never sprayed. As a result, biological activity in the soil is high, letting organic matter build and nutrients cycle. The pastures are alternately grazed and rested, allowing for both stimulation and recovery. As cattle graze on a 100% grass fed diet, they naturally disturb the plant community, adding carbon below the soil and nutrient rich manure above. They are also given a well balanced selection of all natural minerals, vitamins and probiotics, some of which cycle right back into the soil. During the winter months when grass is sparse, the Sabo’s use hay that was baled from their own fields. This ensures quality feed, reduces feeding costs and replaces the minerals that were mined by the grass to cycling back into the soil. Great care and attention is put into this system because it is the basis for maintaining a healthy soil. Without which, the grass would not be as nutrient dense and the beef would not be as tender and delicious. The best part about Sabo beef is that it is an almost exact biochemical photograph of the Sabo Ranch environment. And what do you see when you look at their Devon herd? All you have to do is look at the soil. 

            In the last few years, I have slowly been becoming more aware of the relationship that exists between soil, food and well being. I found that once you begin to see this relationship, you cannot hide from it. Barren stubble fields once conjured up images of a vibrant country harvest and wheat being ground into flour to bake fresh bread. The realities are much less idyllic. Stubble fields are the equivalent of an open wound to the soil. After harvesting the wheat, that wound is tilled with steel or sprayed with herbicides. It is then left open to the wind, rain and sun, causing erosion, runoff and baking. It rests for a year in this state and then is put back to work. This soil is assuredly not in good health, yet it is this health that is transferred into the majority of the plants we consume. The final link in this chain of causality is that the health of the plants we eat, ultimately translates into our own health. How can you then believe that food is just food and that pleasure rests in having a full, bloated belly, regardless of what you put in it?  How can you believe that dirt is just dirt and that your health only matters when something is wrong?        

            Ultimately, food must become synonymous with place. At the Sabo Ranch, I eat good food because that food comes from a place that is cared for. The milk that I got from the cows today is tasty because it is a product of grass. That grass is a product of wind blown loess from the Tobacco Roots Mountains that has settled over thousands of years to create a productive pasture. The egg that I fried for breakfast had such a golden yolk because the chickens are allowed to embody that relationship between food and place as they scratch around for their meal outside in the Sabo‘s backyard. If Voisin were alive today to comment, I’m sure he would say only one thing. “Biochemically Picture Perfect”.

Sabo Ranch winter chickens and ducks, outside enjoying the sunlight and space in spite of the snowy ground. Photo: Kiril Sabo age 6-3/4

One week has passed since I first arrived at the Sabo Ranch and today, as I write, the sun is shining and the snow is slowly retreating, revealing what will soon thaw into the great mud fields of spring. The ducks happily make a great deal of noise (but not much else) and the chickens are beginning to lay more eggs as the day length increases. Inside the greenhouse the peach tree is beginning to blossom above dwindling supplies of kale and swiss chard. The dairy and beef cattle are turning last season’s saved bounty of grasses into milk and meat and in a few months, will give birth to calves so that the herd will continue to grow.

 The winter weather in Harrison, MT has been mild. Snow storms blow in one moment and then pass to reveal blue skies. Nights have been cloudy and cold, ensuring that in the morning, ice will have to be broken off the watering tanks, nature’s way of providing me with a certain level of intern job security. The sun is beginning to shine more often, powering solar panels and allowing the cattle to shift their energy use away from protecting themselves against the cold to putting on more weight and growing their calves. According to Jenny, the wind has been unusually still for this time of year and as evidence, the wind turbines outside of my cabin have remained, for the most part, in a state of motionlessness. It is amazing how aware you become of the weather patterns when they directly influence how much energy you can consume and also when they are the motor that drives your business, the business of turning grass into quality meat products.

The routine of daily life here at the ranch is sheltered on one side by the Tobacco Roots, at times veiled in clouds and at times stark against big sky. It is sustained and nurtured by South Willow Creek, whose waters wind through now dormant pasture but in the spring and summer will create a microclimate for excellent grass production. The routine has been designed to exist within a framework of practical self sufficiency, tempered by the realities that face a business whose ideals fly in the face of our multinational, industrialized food system. This framework rests atop a family economy that has struck a harmonious balance with the natural world. It is one that moves and grows at Mother Natures pace. It works to slowly build the soil over time as poisons and pesticides are replaced with patience and passion. It is within this framework that I am trying to learn as much as I can so that someday I can create a routine built around similar ideals.

But like any good routine, it is often thrown out the window. In grade school, these are called field trips. In college, these are called internships. On the ranch, these are called any number of things.

For instance, one such break in the routine occurred last week in the form of a visit to the veterinarian. We loaded up one of the horses to have his foot looked at because he had a severe cut. When we arrived there was already another trailer in front of us waiting to unload a cow into the chutes. An old time rancher poked and prodded the unseen cow out of the trailer and low and behold, the poor girl’s vagina was dangling inside out, outside of her body. I would later learn that what I was looking at was a vaginal prolapse, which occurs in pregnant cows when they are suffering from increased pressure in the abdomen, most likely associated with the approaching birth of her calve. The vet secured the cow and then proceeded to push it back in. After much effort on his part, everything was back inside and over with, or so I assumed. He looked around, asked for a volunteer and then in the same breath, picked me. What I then performed was something that I will never forget. He gave me a quick rundown of the tools I would be using for my end of the operation and how we would then proceed once it got underway. I was armed with a scalpel, a plastic cap and a pin. He moved his arm into the cow’s reproductive area holding a long plastic tube that had a plastic cap on the bottom and a removable needle coming out of the top. Once he reached the designated area with the tip of the needle, I cut a small X into the cow’s side, pulled the needle out and then capped the tube, securely fastening what had once been outside of her body to the side of her stomach.

SABO ABBY (Sire: Rotokawa 93, Dam: Rotokawa 958) photographed Feb 2010, after a winter eating only standing grass and 20 lbs/day of 1st cutting hay.

SABO ABBY, just after she was born in a May Montana snowstorm, the first of our 2008 calves. Abby is an ET(embryo transplant) calf, borne and nursed by one of our Red Angus heifers.

SABO ABBY is the first of our growing herd of purebred Rotokawa Devon cattle.  The eldest of our 8 current Rotokawa Devons, Abby is gentle, intelligent, and remarkably easy keeping.  Although she was carried by and born to our most slender Red Angus cow (in her first pregnancy!), Abby is showing her Devon genetics well.   We will be harvesting embryos from Abby this summer.   We look towards increasing our Montana-born Rotokawa Devons for ourselves, and other cattle ranchers seeking their easy keeping, easy fleshing, tender, 100% grassfed genetics.

ABBY is not for sale, as we are building our current herd.  We will not be selling our Rotokawa embryo Devon heifers (Sabo Abby, Belle, Callie, or Dora), but will be harvesting embryos once from each of them, and might have embryos for sale if all goes well on that endeavor.  ABBY’s full brother, Sabo BEN, is for sale, photos coming soon!

We have more Rotokawa ET bull calves (born May 2009) here than we will need, and will be selecting which to sell next spring, 2011.  They are looking terrific at the moment, even in the dead of winter!  Look for a post coming soon with photos of our 2009 crop of Rotokawa Devons!

For more information about our Rotokawa Devons, or our Devon crossbred cattle, contact us at (406)685-3248, saboranch@gmail.com

 

Jules, log splitting completed, is ready for a hot woodstove on a cold winter morning.

Jules’ favorite Auracana hen, sitting in the laying box ready for her fresh morning egg.

Jules drives the manual shift Mitsubishi hay feeding truck with Kiril, Riley, and Jet the Labrador in the back

Jules feeds the birds in the chicken house, his daily task since he arrived.

Jules milks Jersey cow Lila

 Throughout my first week here on the Sabo Ranch I have done many significant things that benefit the ranch, ranging from occupying the boys, to feeding chickens and ducks, to driving cattle. The job I do the most is feeding chickens and ducks before my breakfast. It is a simple but essential task. I have to make a judgment about how much they are eating from the amount of feed that is left over from the day before, and check on general health for the flock.

On my first full day at the ranch one of the three horses got very sick with colic (accumulated sand in its intestines from eating hay off the ground in the bare corral). Because of this, Jenny Sabo was a little agitated and nervous so she gave me rushed instructions that I did not fully understand.  As a result I did not give the calves the correct feed.  After a bit we sorted things out and got on the right track.  Earlier that day there was a mother cow and her bull calf that needed to be moved to a lower field.  We droved them into a long fenced-in area and picked out the mother and her calf. We then pushed (scared) them into the trailer so they could be transported to a better grazing field, where the bull calf would not be able to breed the heifer calves.

In the first few days I was asking many questions so that I could get more acquainted with the place, the people and the way things work. However, after a while I became more comfortable and was able to asses a situation and make a good choice on my own. For instance when I noticed a tub of water tub that needed to be refilled I jumped to do it.

The work that is most challenging is milking cows. There are four dairy cows but only three are producing milk at this time.  All of these cows have calves that need to become more comfortable with humans, this is accomplished by grooming each calf with a curry comb, which I have started doing while Jenny milks the mother cow.

Over the next week I hope to master the art of milking and to become more independent with more things than just feeding chickens and cows. Something that I have been learning on the side is how to drive a manual transmission vehicle. I also hope to master this in the next week.

Jules practicing safe shooting with Mark's rifle. 8 shots in the bullseye at 70 yards, his first time shooting a rifle. What a ringer!

Jules at the edge of the Buffalo Jump at Harrison Lake. There is a steep 100 foot drop beyond the edge pictured here.

Entry Three

Febuary 11th 2010

By Jules Feeney