Mudflows Devastate the TLR Neighborhood

As most customers will remember, Turning Leaf Ranch was nearly burned in the River Fire of August 2020.  Although the ranch was spared by the fire (thanks to the many(!) firefighters on the scene), our next concern turned to the giant burn scar that lies just feet from the property line.  TLR is at the base of the beautiful Santa Lucia mountain range that runs parallel to the Pacific coast.  These rugged mountains are remarkably steep, covered in brush and scrub trees, and they hadn't seen fire since the 1940s.  This sounded like a recipe for mudslides this winter, as the fire burned and killed scores of trees, and interrupted the soil's ability to absorb water.

Late in January, as the recent storm approached, we watched with trepidation as areas around burn scars were all evacuated due to the risk.  Sure enough, our fire region was eventually evacuated, and we huddled in town at a hotel room until we got the all clear from the county to go back.  We knew the risks were low, so the sheep and goats were not evacuated, but the house pets did spend a few days at the SPCA.

Despite what we thought would be low risk, our neighborhood did end up being greatly effected by mudslides, as a large watershed burned by the River Fire shed huge volumes of water, and washed thousands of cubic meters of mud from up on the hill.  A neighboring horse ranch was nearly destroyed as mud crashed into houses, destroyed out-buildings and horse stalls, and completely changed the topography of the facility.  With each large pulse of rain, a huge flow of water, mud, and rocks came racing down the hill.  The roads around TLR were all shut down for days, and we had to sneak passed road closures to get up to the ranch to feed the animals.

Several fundraisers have been set up to help the horse ranch at GoFundMe:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-river-road-stables







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Current and Future Herd Composition of Turning Leaf Ranch

Image
 When we began marketing our pasture-raised animals to the public, we believed that our grass-fed lamb would be our flagship product.  The whole-animal lamb sales we had done in the past were met with rave reviews, and our own culinary experience with the lamb led us to believe that it truly is a remarkable offering.  We raise a breed of sheep (American Blackbelly) that is known to have one of the premier flavor profiles of all sheep breeds, especially when grass-fed and pasture-raised.  The first round of animals that we had processed for market were four lambs, and one goat, as we had assumed the demand for the two types of animals would be asymmetric toward lamb. As we soon found out, however, the market for goat meat is remarkably underdeveloped, with few producers, who struggle to meet the demand of a very large and underserved market.  Among these producers, many follow "conventional" practices, feeding concentrates to accelerate growth to a large size as ...
Read more

Bulk Hay Purchase - Fall and Winter Feed at TLR

Image
 Throughout the season, we make various bulk purchases of hay to get us through the dry summer months, and the slow-growing winter.  Historically we have experimented with wide array of options for feeding hay, including Bermuda hay, orchard grass, oat hay, teff grass, and alfalfa.  Based on this experimentation, we have found that alfalfa gives the best return on investment, with high protein content, high palatability, and high utilization by the animals.  Alfalfa is the gold standard for protein, and all other feeds use alfalfa by way of comparison for the amount and quality of protein they contain.  Alfalfa is also high in minerals (the "Ash" content in the image below), which ensures that the animals are not eating empty calories, and are instead eating a ration that truly produces healthy animals and healthy meat.  Alfalfa has a digestible energy content of 10.7 megajoules per kilogram of dry matter, and sorghum Sudan grass has a digestible energy con...
Read more

Biden Administration Pushes for Meat Processing Diversification

Image
 When we think of a meat butcher, many of us think of the familiar picture of the portly gentleman in a white smock, preparing cuts of meat right down the road for us to purchase fresh as can be.  And of course, we all know this picture is largely outdated, save for a few exceptions.  Instead, the modern meat packing plant consists of a huge team of employees all trained with highly specialized skills (rather than the broad-spectrum knowledge of butchers in the past).  The production line is essentially a (dis)assembly line, with each worker making a limited number of repetitive motions to accomplish one narrow portion of the butchering task, as the product moves by at a set speed on meat hooks and conveyers.  Employees work in close proximity to one-another, and conditions are ripe for a highly contagious disease like Covid-19.  The meat packing industry has also consolidated over time,  just like every industry has, with the bulk of the supply moving...
Read more