Nobody Said It Would Be Easy
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” United States President John F. Kennedy
My uncle, Jack Malmberg, taught me this lesson for a lifetime, nearly 50 years ago. But he had an empowering twist, he made the hard fun.
One powerful lesson was sorting our yearling steers and heifers, fresh out of winter in a confined feedlot, which meant they were frisky and needed to remember some of their horse handling gentleness. We gathered the 600 head into a remote fence corner and let them settle as we strategized.
Jack framed our task, explaining, "We are two on horseback, four minds, and eight feet." he pondered as he surveyed the herd. Then he looked me directly in the eye, "We are up against 600 minds and 2,400 feet. Keep a handle on your horse, pause, spin, stop, calculate, and maneuver. Don't run flat out." Reiterating the understood rule of saving horsepower because the worst sin of a cowboy is running out of horse before we have finished. And so, we begin.
More like a chess match than a team penning or rodeo, we communicate with a nod, a hand flip, and half a step of our horse, his head slides left or side passes right. Jack would ride by when things got edgy and softly remind me, "Nobody said it would be easy."
We drove our herd of steers off before the herd became restless in the early afternoon and had them on fresh feed and water before sundown.
That was 50 years ago, on Beaver Creek ranch south of Newcastle, WY. I walked away from that day, knowing there was never a job too hard for me to get done. And it applied beyond work with cattle and a saddle horse.
PURSUING THE HARD
Financing- It's easy to ask for a loan and get a yes or no. It's hard to ask what we need to do to get a loan. It's hard to understand what our loan officer needs to make a credible pitch to their loan committee or what they need in their file when the auditor comes around. We will get more information when we ask what we need to get a loan. At some point, we may realize the requirements do not align with our values, and we can choose to say no, but it will be an informed no. The hard serves to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
Bureaucracy- Bureaucrats dwell on the process and checking boxes. If we are to protect our ability to restore land and protect our profitability, we need to dig past the box-checking. A task as simple as executing a grazing permit should not be easy. We need to understand our range conservationist challenges internally with wildlife interests, mineral interests, recreation demands, and what they need in their files to respond to audits. How can we help them support our responsible management efforts? At a minimum, we should provide our rangeland health monitoring data, our actual use grazing report, and a current grazing plan. The hard serves to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
Endangered Species- Those serious about regeneration know that diversity and complexity add to resiliency or regeneration. By definition, if we have a conflict, the road to diversity means asking the hard question, "What species can we add?" Not the easy question, "What can we kill or remove." In being committed to asking the hard question, I have consistently found that an endangered species brings awareness of the depletion of their habitat. When fixed, we have better conditions for our livestock.
I have seen this personally with sage grouse on Wyoming's sagebrush steppe, where we need to add insects and forbs for chick survival. This results in better plant density and a more functional mineral cycle for improved soil health and healthier cattle. I have seen this personally with salmon in the Pacific Northwest, where putting irrigation water instream supports their habitat temperature and passage. This results in more shade on riverbanks and rivers connected to flood plains, which provides more amenable conditions and more feed for livestock.
Hot-season irrigation in cool-season plant environments depletes rivers and supplements unnatural growth that will not be sustainable. The hard serves to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
Absentee Investors- In working with Wall Street investors, it is hard to relate the importance of trusting and supporting the on-site land manager. The foundation of a ranch sits on the unique environment of every community. The water cycle begins where the raindrop lands. The mineral cycle begins when plant material and shit rot at the soil surface. Energy flow begins in photosynthesizing leaves growing from the soil surface. Plant succession and diversity result from disturbance at the soil surface, which creates germination sites. The production of a ranch and the healing of local environments depends on the land manager closest to the soil surface. Top-down management may seem easy, but it severs that critical connection. Better to make the hard choice to incentivize and share equity ownership supporting that connection to the land. The hard serves to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
Grass Finished Meat- It is easy to mainline animals with the new drug, glyphosate, GMO, and other life-debilitating ways of treating symptoms at the expense of soil, animal, and consumer health. It is easy to market and brand meat products with sexy slick copy. It is hard to document soil health with credible data, enabling land managers to make better decisions. Healthy food and responsible climate mitigation sit on the foundation of healthy soil. The hard serves to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
Implement Holistic Management, grounded in the values of the decision-makers, rooted in a functional ecosystem, avoiding unintended consequences, planning for desired outcomes, and implementing informed decisions daily. Do this not because it is easy but because it is hard, which serves to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
These hard choices have resulted in:
A ranch increasing stocking rates exponentially, including a US Bureau of Land Management allotment increasing yield by 260%.
Reducing ranch intrinsic capital investment by 40% to align value with production.
Reconnecting 8 miles of creek to floodplains with grazing management and beaver.
Relocating to a geography, economy, and sociopolitical environment in tune with our values.
Focusing on value-based decision-making and building relationships with like-minded people, animals, and landscapes, while making it fun.
I appreciate my Uncle Jack every day for making the hard fun and applying that edge to my life. Check out a recent story about Jack.