Pistachios and 400 lbs. Mexican Calves are a Perfect Match
Seven years ago, I was a newly minted 80 year old. I was contemplating what project I could envision for I knew that the V6 had to do more with diversity to be around for at least another 62 years.
At the south east corner of the V6 is one hundred acres of ex-dry farming ground that was part of one thousand acres of farming parcels that until the year 2000 were annually cultivated and planted to oats or barley with 200 pounds per acre of Nitrogen fertilizer and sprayed with 2,4,D for weeds if needed. Then in May these acres were cut raked and three string bailed and hauled to the barn with my gas guzzling Harrow Bed.
I’d rather ride a horse than drive a tractor so it was an easy reason to apply the Holistic Management test to my farming operation. What I found was that most years I could buy my hay needs from my neighbors cheaper than I could raise it. Well it didn’t take much time into the year 2000 before I was selling all that pile of iron to be replaced with stocker steers eating grass. Now the soil was going to get a new lease on life by starting the rebuilding of Organic Matter,regaining the characteristics of a soil sponge and allowing our Mediterranean annual grasses to return along with the smell of a living soil.
I’d rather read than watch television so it wasn’t long into my new grazing practice on the 100 acres that I read a magazine article by an author that was several steps ahead of me. He started by telling me that tilling the soil was man made but grazing the land with ungulates (hoofed with split toes) has always been practiced by Mother Nature. He also went on to say that the shedding of a winter coat was a fertilizer, that Saliva was a fertilizer and that about 85% of what my cattle eat each day leaves as poop and pee a fertilizer.
It’s now 2015 and my 100 acres has been grazed for 15 years and each year the soil beneath my feet gets healthier but I still needed more income so that if some of our nine grandchildren might want to come back to the ranch and carve out a living it would be possible.
The older I get the faster time flies. So it was time to get a move on. Several years ago I was reading about the value of planting Pistachio trees and I thought why not plant the trees and bury the irrigation lines then bring the water to each tree to the surface and use a dripper. It will also keep the buried water pipe cooler in the summer and still leave me able to carry out my weed and grass control program manually, without using herbicides like RoundUp.
It’s time to be counted among the “do’ers” it’s September of 2015 and I’m ready to plant some trees but there’s a lot of other farmers that want to plant Pistachios, so I was left with only one choice and that was to buy root stock that would have to be grafted with nut bearing fruit wood in a year or two. Well it’s now February of 2023 and I have been feeding my hopes for an improvement in my bank account all the things that a Pistachio tree could possibly want 13,600 trees (136 trees/acre) for the last seven years. I have protected them from gophers in the ground, wild hogs that like to root, ground squirrels that want to eat their bark and one year deer probably 10 to 20 strong dined on my newly grafted trees so I did a lot of regrafting. I retaliated with an 8’ tall fence and a half mile of trench three feet deep filled with leach rock to keep my neighbors gophers from invading when they would use the empty gopher tunnels from my war with the gophers on my side of the fence. I built seven Barn Owl boxes solely for Barn Owls. The Audubon Society provided me with working plans. Barn Owls only hunt at night and that’s when gophers like to come out of their homes to stretch their legs and maybe look at the stars and that’s when the Owls will dive down with wings designed to not make any noise, grab an unsuspecting root chewing, buck toothed, fur ball and carry him or her off to their house for dinner and I say “Right on, enjoy your meal and if your still hungry have a second helping.”
I’m operating now on persistence only as my wife Zee is asking if all these bills for the month are for the Pistachio Orchard? I answer in a somewhat subdued voice “Yes but you’ll notice that not one dime was spent on a pesticide or herbicide.”
What came next, was an eye opener for me. After reading an article in The Stockman Grass Farmer about a wine grape grower that was using sheep to keep the grass and weeds under control in his vineyard. I said to myself, the load of 400 pound Mexican steer calves (123 head) that I had just bought two weeks ago and I was feeding 1,000 pounds of hay a day that cost $200/day. They needed to be eating all the grass and weeds that are right now growing in the Pistachios much like the sheep were eating the grass and weeds in the grapes. This year we have had ample rain so far, leaving plenty of moisture in the soil and our daily temperature has been on the rise so things should start to grow.
The following is a story worth telling. With many shouts and hollers that Armageddon will be the result of what I’m about to do. This outcry came from some family members, some neighbors and “nobody does that.” I put the 123 head I just recently bought into the orchard that I am now electric fencing into five single electric string 20 acre pastures. I shout over to Juan is everything ready? I hear a loud yes. Okay calves go eat some grass but not the trees please and that’s exactly what they did and there now doing just fine. But if we find a sick one he gets a shot of Draxin using a Capture dart rifle.
So It won’t be necessary anymore, to mow at two different times this summer down all the tree rows with a tractor and mower that takes a man two days each time and costs $350/day = $700 X 2 days = $1,400. I’m not going to hire five workers for 5 days of work, each with a weedeater in hand to trim around each Pistachio tree so that you can see if a gopher is eating on tree roots or if a dripper might not be dripping. Cost $5,000 and if I have to do it twice this year $10,000.
So what am I getting in return? Well the $6400 goes away and the calves did a better job of trimming the orchard than 5 guy’s with weed eaters and at $200 a day for 14 days feeding hay cost me $2,800. The fertilizers will be poop and pee, shed hair and saliva each delivering different necessities for a jubilant healthy soil all for free. A conservative weight gain of one pound per day per calf at a market value of $2.00 per/pound times 123 head equals $246 per day in my pocket. Total cost $9,200 gone. Income by grazing for 14 days $3,444 plus increasing soil health. So my ledger shows that I went from a $9,200 cost to a $3,444 profit for a total turn around of $12,644. For me the longer I can stay the better. But this gravy train will have to make a whistle stop in late February or early March, as it will be necessary to take the calves out of the orchard when “bud break” starts and drive them to our mountain pastures where we will gather them from time to time through the Spring and Summer to use them for different Rodeo events, like Breakaway roping, Team Sorting, Cutting and other events. The calves will be kept on the V6 native pastures until June of 2024 and then sold as 900 to 1,000 pound feeder steers. I’m already planning for next year but as the trees get bigger the Pistachio /cattle mix probably won’t work as the tree leaves will shade out more ground meaning no sunlight equals no grass.
The pistachios will have a light crop this year but I’m told by people who know say that when I become a brand new 90 year old, the orchard will be in full production. So it’s time for the V6 to once again reinvent itself. The many different opportunities that are Mother Nature friendly are just waiting to be exploited like laying hens, bees for honey to sell at my son John’s and his wife Barbara’s Parkfield Cafe. One granddaughter Lauren and her husband Cian have refurbished an old cabin on the ranch and made it into a music recording studio. I would never have thought of that in a million years so it just goes to show that the sky's the limit for different ways to make a living at the V6. So whatever dream a grandchild might dream or a city kid from downtown Los Angeles it can come true. But for it to happen it will take passion first then commitment and persistence then the work part will come easy.
And to those that worry, that a Cowboy might become obsolete on the V6, rest easy as there will always be horses to ride and cattle to be gathered on The Cowboy Side of California.
See Ya,
Jack