Congratulations! Beautiful ranch you have there. I know how much work, or at least how much care it takes to keep such land in top shape and improving native grass and forages.
It is interesting how those 'Badlands' crop up in such a large area of the middle of the USA and Canada. I wasn't aware how much your country looks like the SD Badlands. And here in SD, small areas of similar formations are scattered across at least the west end of the state. We live about 15 miles 'as the crow flies' from some very rugged badlands formations, not in the park, but east of it and partially on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Indian Reservations, and maybe 30 miles from Cedar Pass, the northeast entrance to the park. There are outcroppings of badlands soil and even some small hill formations on some of our land on the south and west ends of our ranch. Then there are similar lands in the northwest part of SD and southwest parts of ND, that I've seen, all with some similarities it appears. There was a sea over the SD Badlands in ancient times, so it makes me wonder it the same is true of the Sask. Badlands?
Your award puts your family and mine into 'the same club', so to speak, as we were winners of NCBA's Regional (ND, SD, NE, and KS) Stewardship Award 16 years ago. The Matador Ranch in MT was the overall winner that year. We were privileged to spend a little time on that ranch about five years ago visiting friends who managed it, and it is awesome! We were pretty fortunate, as we did not have to repair damage from previous misuse, but more to manage the grasses the previous two generations cared for as best they could through the drought years, and probably had better options during drought via better transportation to bring feed in, or to haul cattle out rather than having to trail them many miles or sell them during hard times than our two previous generations had.
I'd not heard that comment about green needle grass previously. We have always been very pleased when stands of it were prospering here, and this is a bumper year for it and many other of the ones we prefer. I've never seen western wheat grass so good in our 57 years here. I'd better amend that! Shorty has lived here all his 78 years!
Tam, I've admired you art for years. What a wonderful and visible legacy for your family that is! Take care to preserve it protect it from time and the elements as best you can. Some precious Jones and Calhoon family history has been damaged or destroyed in a flood and/or poor storage many years ago, so we have treasured what we still have, especially photo's and a few old letters and memories written by previous generations. I'm making copies and getting one of those fireproof gun safes to store copies and originals above the 'high water line'!
mrj
