Why am I photographing cows?
Admittedly, cows are not my usual subjects, however, I am planning to write and photograph an article on eco-friendly cattle ranching in eastern Colorado.
Perhaps some of you remember the blog I had, "Colorado Micro-farm," where I described our philosophy of running a small family farm and expressed our desires to begin producing food - clean food.
Well, I have a goal to combine my love for REAL organic farming with photography, hence, the idea for the article was born.
This poor cow is standing in a pasture overrun with black mustard. This is due to overgrazing. If this pasture were to ever be useful for grazing again, it would take decades... maybe even centuries for this to return to a grass pasture.
So, imagine the following scenario:
Rancher Smith has several thousand acres on his ranch. Ignoring the useful information from ranchers who have sustainable ranches which says that you shouldn't put more than 1 cow-calf unit on 40 acres of our high desert eco-system, Smith loads up his ranch with as many head of cattle as he feels will make him a nice profit.
In an effort to fatten the cows up more, Smith buys alfalfa hay at the local feed store, drives his truck into the pasture and dumps the bales.
Cows are lazy creatures. They'll hang out by the alfalfa bales until they're gone, and then just graze the area around the spot where they know that Smith will return to dump more cow candy (alfalfa).
This causes overgrazing. Now, species of plants that would not normally grow in a grassy pasture will begin to take over. Mustard is a prime example. Yucca is another. So is mullein. The bad part of all of this is that cattle don't feed on mustard, yucca, or mullein. So, the field eventually is taken over completely by these species, and then they become what the county refers to as a "noxious weed." These are plants growing where they are not wanted and which have no natural predators to eat them and keep them in control.
Now that Smith's ranch is becoming taken over by plants that his cattle won't graze on, his profits become smaller because he needs to truck his cattle to other pastures which he leases out from other ranchers. Since his profits become smaller, he can no longer make a living ranching, so he takes a job in town to make ends meet.
Now Smith doesn't have the time to devote to his ranch, so it declines in quality even more. Now that his ranch isn't making the money it once did, he contacts a realtor, who contacts a developer. Smith sells off his ranch little by little, or all in one chunk.
The ranch is now gone - replaced by hundreds of cookie-cutter houses, pavement, noise, street lights, malls, and pollution.
If you're still hanging in there with me, the article I'll be writing will feature Lasater Ranch, an eco-friendly, all grass-based ranch in eastern Colorado. Visit their web site and support them by buying their beef if you can.
Thanks for reading.
-Tracy
The Colorado Springs Photographer
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:11-12
