My Time on The Drift - Day Six and Seven

With over 100 years of history behind me, and hopefully many more before, this is our journey on the Green River Drift in 2020.

Tuesday, June 23 - Day Six and Wednesday, June 24 - Day Seven

Tuesday marked our first day on the Mesa. The Pinedale Anticline is located here along with a winding maze of dirt roads and at one point hundreds of rigs covered some of this area. When the "boom" was going on this area had a lot of traffic which caused some issues, but luckily for us, most of the cattle stay on the western side of the Mesa. This leaves a big open swath of sagebrush and grass for the cattle to graze. We have three reservoirs the cattle can use when water is good, but this year only one had water. This meant we needed to get cattle at close to the top of the Mesa by the cow camp where a water tank and small corrals are located. Water dictates each stop during the trail north to our summer allotment and each year can be a bit different because of it.

Today, we gathered around the Mesa cow camp and pushed the cattle diagonally across the Mesa towards the Hennick Draw. This long draw ends at the East Green River Road and in less than a mile the Tyler Water Hole is a welcomed oasis for everyone.

The cattle didn't walk as well as they have been but between the longer days and more grass we expected it. We have had the same issue on the desert in years past yet we still had to leave as we only have an allotted time we can stay on our allotment. I believe some people have a misconception that we don't have to pay to use the resource and we can use to for however long we want. This is not true. We have to pay per head of cattle and are only allotted a short period of time, May 1st to June 21st, that we can utilize the grass. Sometimes spring comes early and we can turn out on May 1 and other times, we have to wait for the weather to warm up so the grass can grow appropriately before we turn the cattle out.

The Federal grazing fee for 2020will be $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM) for public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management and $1.35 per head month (HM) for lands managed by the USDA Forest Service. The 2019 public land grazing feewas $1.35.

Much of our schedule on The Drift is dictated by our on and off dates for our Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the United States Forest Service (USFS) permits. The great thing about each of these is that it is much cheaper for our ranch to operate off of these permits than private grass. If we had to move to private grass, we would need to heavily restructure our operation and more than likely have fewer cattle.

There are many misconceptions about ranching but I hope this blog helps anyone reading understand how our family business and many others like ours operate. We are hard-working, kind, passionate, and selfless, almost to a fault, to the life we love.