To be quite honest, I never gave much thought to Earth Day and what it represents. My wife said when she was in high school the teachers would take them out to clean up the community on that day. Probably hoping they would have a bit more respect for the space around them.
We all should be playing our part to preserve this beautiful world God has created for us to enjoy. Stewardship and sustainability are two things we take very seriously on the ranch. We recognize that all we seem to have is a blessing that needs to be nurtured. We get the opportunity to care for the land and the cattle that roam it. We realize we are responsible for providing a healthy, nutritious source of food for our fellow man.
Raising cows and calves is unique in the fact that this act of stewardship shows its benefits in a relatively short amount of time. For instance, by utilizing Rotational Grazing – moving cattle to different areas of pasture on a regular basis — helps spread manure more evenly across the land. The manure then feeds the microbes in the soil which create a healthier, richer soil. That healthy soil then grows a nutritious grass for the cattle to graze on their next rotation. Also, we gain the benefit of thick, healthy grass that is great erosion control!
Grass alone, however is nutritionally worthless to humans. So God created cattle to eat the grass and turn it into delicious red meat. Not all of the earth can be used to grow grain or vegetables. Much of the earth is made up of grassland. Without cows and other grazing mammals, these parts of the earth would grow up in unusable vegetation.
We also recognize that a good, productive mother cow is another benefit to the earth. She should be raising one calf a year after her second birthday. So, over the course of her life she should be able to produce 10 to 15 calves. What an efficient mammal! The mother and her calves grow and thrive on the sustainable grass. Her calves are either grown to be mother cows or bulls, or they are turned into delicious beef!
We have heard in the media that people believe that cattle consume too much of our Earth’s water. This is very misguided information! Cattle drink water in ponds, creeks, and wells. We hope humans are not drinking from ponds!
In the end, the Lord supplies us with our necessities, including cattle, grass and water. In all His wisdom, God created cows as an efficient, renewable resource to feed the people of His earth. We are pleased to be a part of the process of feeding the world, and doing so in a sustainable, responsible way.