FIELD NOTES
Land and life at the confluence of Earth and Sky
Listening to the wind at the old Howell Ranch, out west of Gunnison
I stopped by the ranch I used to manage, on the north side of the San Juans, while driving between Gunnison and Montrose. I don't pass this way often anymore, but it's always cathartic.
This is the low country at about 7000 ft elevation (in October, before the snow); the high country is up in the aspen at over 9000 ft. We didn't feed cattle through the winter here, just ran a few hundred pairs and some yearlings from the low country up to the high country and back, from May to October.
Southwestern Colorado Beef Symposium highlights forages, climate change
The Southwestern Colorado Beef Cattle Symposium, hosted by Colorado State University Extension - Montezuma County, covered economics of the cattle and hay markets, best practices for calving, management of forages, tools for tracking and predicting the weather, and an update from the USDA Farm Service Agency. I especially enjoyed the talk on forage management by retired forage specialist Dr. Joe Brummer, who I’ve known for twenty years.
I also enjoyed the talk on using weather information for management decisions, by a freshly minted PhD in atmospheric science.