Hi all,
Some of you may know it already, but in around a week I'll be boarding a plane for Rapid City, South Dakota for what promise to be some of the coolest six weeks of my life so far. I'm basically going to be a cowboy for the whole summer, living on a a big-ass ranch with thousands of cattles. I really want to try to write about it, so that will be the purpose of this thread.
So, first, background.
My dad has been working for the
World Agroforestry Center recently. He somehow managed to convince them to pay for a trip around Africa, to visit their different operations as well as other research centers. He wrote
a couple good pieces about it. (I recommend the second one, especially if you're going to follow this.)
Basically, he met that half-crazy guy in Zimbabwe, Allan Savory. Allan fought in the civil war tracking "terrorrists" for Ian Smith, then turned around and became an opposition MP pushing for black rules, before loosing elections and going into exile in Texas. He also has been walking barefoot for decades now, which I find cool.
In addition to being a complete jerk (Which explain why his ideas, known under the name of Holistic Management, took decades to spread) Allan Savory is also some kind of ecological genius. His major insight is that cattle and other grazing herbivores are a natural part of the grassland ecosystem, and that the common wisdom about fighting desertification - that the soil should be left ungrazed to rest - is deeply flawed.
Sure enough, his ranch is now thriving, with waterholes and spring even in the dry seasons. His main problem is actually that he doesn't have ENOUGH cattle, so he's letting hundreds of wild herbivore, from antelopes to elephants, graze on his ranch, while trying to convince locals to lend him their cattle.
Now, my dad usually use the family as proofreaders, so I was reading the lengthy mail that basically contained that second piece with a few more personal details, and as a way to express how cool I though that was, I send a mail jokingly asking if they were doing internships. Well, my dad never was really good with irony, so sure enough he arranged me an internship.
Sadly they don't take interns in Zimbabwe (It's not worth it, as most European interns don't speak a word of Shona or Ndebele), but an offshoot of the Savory Institute, unimaginatively called Grassland LLC. is actually spreading Holistic Management in the U.S. They basically rent themselves as managers, to the delight of the ranch owners that see stocking rate rise three- or fourfold within a few year.
Among other properties, they manage three ranches near Belle Fourche, SD (One of them is actually in Montana, right across the border), totaling 100,000 acres (400 sq. km), raising several thousands heads of cattle. The three ranches are managed by an handful of people, including a full-time intern and the most badass couple I've ever heard of (The wife gave birth on the ranch at 5 am, and was back branding cattle in the afternoon.)
So, I'm going to land there, a total wimpy town kid from wimpy Belgium, and I'll be expected to manage herds of cattles hundreds strong. July/August is apparently the hardest month of the year, with mosquitoes, hailstorms and temperatures in the 30°C combining to make your days miserable as you have to separate hundreds of calf from their mothers, brand them and generally avoid being trampled, so this is going to be fun, and hopefully not to !!FUN!!.
The thread's title come from the "Intern Shack", were interns reside while on the ranch, which is just what it sound like: a barely habitable structure with no water or electricity. Thankfully they have apparently recently bough a house in Belle Fourche so we can get our laundry done and I can update this topic. Expect (roughly) weekly update during my stay there, and feel free to ask any questions.
TL;DR I'm gonna be a cowboy! And I'll write about my adventures!
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Topic: The Little Shack On The Prairie: An internship in South Dakota (Read 5404 times)