Jackson Wyoming Information - Did you miss me?

Did you miss me?

Sorry about the hiatus but I was working in Veracruz, Mexico and things were a bit too primitive to write and file columns about Jackson Hole. Nice place though, Veracruz, lots of interesting archaeological sites and other things typical of rural Mexico. Read my novel Murder in Mixteca and you will see how I feel about the place. Soy muy simpatico.

The Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce took a poll a couple of summers ago, asking what the visitors found most appealing about the valley. Number one was, of course, the Tetons. Surprisingly, the second most attractive feature was the haystacks on the Porter Ranch south of town.

When I was a kid the ranch was thick with elk in the winter time. They fed with the cattle, picked up wisps of hay that fell to the ground, and were often seen with their front hooves high on the wooden cribs, stealing hay from the stacks. Of course, in those days long ago there were no subdivisions in that part of the valley, just a half dozen ranches feeding their cattle from horse-drawn sleighs and the winter spectacle stretched for miles.

For those of you who have read my previous columns, you may remember my writing about the birth of the cattle business in Wyoming. For those of you who haven't read that column, here's the short version: In the 1870s a herd of cattle was being moved from Texas to Montana. They'd left late in the year and were caught on the plains of eastern Wyoming by winter weather.

After a few days of blowing snow the thin-blooded cowboys abandoned the cows and headed back south. The owner returned in the spring to salvage whatever remained of the herd and was astonished to find that the herd had mostly thrived through the cold and snowy weather. It seems that the combination of high-protein grass and winds that scoured the snow from the ground had provided more than enough pasturage for the winter. Once it became known that ranching was possible on the high plains the migration of settlers began.

Ranches were set up on the main watercourses, on the wetlands, and the native hay was cut and stacked in order to feed the cows during the winter. At other times of the year they grazed on the higher elevations, land which would eventually be claimed by the government.

In order to increase the areas, which could be turned into hay ground, irrigation canals were dug by hand or by horse-drawn equipment called "fresnos". Water rights were divvied up according to who was first on the water and then on down until the high water was gone. For instance, the Porter ranch is second on the water drawn from the Gros Ventre River. After the Hansen ranch, which is first on the water, they irrigate from what is left over after the Hansens have turned their water into their ditches. The Melody Ranch is the third, and last, working ranch on the water. In the old days there were over fifty working ranches in the valley but now, lamentably, there are only six.

The Porter ranch waters out of thirty ditches on the northern part, down to three on the lower, wetter, areas. Once the irrigation system and the hay grounds were established it was a matter of waiting until mid-July to cut. The idea is to get the hay down when it is still young enough to be easily digested by the cows. Also, the wetter the area the tougher the hay, and the marshier areas produce what is called "slough" or "canary reed" grass. That grass is stacked together and fed to the mature cows. The finer hay found on the higher, drier ground is saved to feed to the calves. On the Porter ranch the upper, northern, part grows fine hay while the lower part grows the courser hay.

These facts mean that the hay is mown and stacked first on the upper ranch because once the water is turned off, the land begins to dry out from the upper ranch down to the southern boundary. The haying cycle follows the drying of the subsurface water. The timing also depends on how much rain falls each year. In a wet year it may be necessary to cut the hay earlier because the hay will lay down, and be un-cuttable, if left to grow past its optimum.

As I mentioned earlier, the ranches became economically feasible by grazing the cattle on the higher elevations in summer while the ranches tended to their irrigating and mowing on the lower elevations. When the herd was moved from the high ground they were sorted and all calves branded to prove ownership. Some of the beef were sent to market and some were kept, to be fed over the winter. Those were the seed stock for the following year, including the pregnant cows, which would calve in late winter or early spring, heifers (virgin cows), the seed bulls, and a few immature bulls.

That was the system, which was set up in the last century, before the government claimed all lands that had not been deeded as private holdings. Once the summer ranges became government land it became necessary to obtain permits from the government to graze cattle on what has become mostly Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands. That arrangement was accepted as the norm until the recent past, when other interests have laid, noisier, more effective, claim to the federal land. It's a complicated, and emotional, history but the upshot has been that the ranches have lost much of their legitimacy in the public's eyes and the traditional users have lost ground to other interests.

Because of the loss of summer range, the ranching economy has become less and less feasible because of the economics of grass. In a sort of recompense, however, the areas of hay land surrounding the ranches have become very desirable real estate, especially here in Jackson Hole. More of that later.

One of the interesting things about grass is that it responds positively to the presence of grazing animals. When animals like cows and buffalo are confined, and the grass is grazed evenly, it responds by "stooling," or spreading out. If the animals are left to make their own grazing choices they will move constantly, searching for the more tender grass. That results in woody "bunch" grass dominating the grazing lands. If the animals are confined, or there are enormous numbers like the seas of buffalo which fed the plains until the late-nineteenth century, the grass is consumed indiscriminately and it responds by stooling, or thickening into more of the fine grasses. This contradicts the notions of most environmentalists, but getting them to think outside their ingrained prejudices against the ranching culture has proven to be mostly futile. But that's another story altogether.

On the Porter ranch the hay cycle begins when the grass begins to green and the approximately 450 cows and 450 calves are moved to the mountainous summer grounds. Water is turned into the upper ditches and the watering process begins, a constant dance across the land, closing and opening head gates, changing water from ditch to ditch, sheeting the dry patches with surface water, cutting it off from areas which are growing too quickly. And that is working what is apparent on the surface. A good water man has to also keep in mind what is going on beneath the surface. The valley bottom is alluvial fill deposited by the Snake River in its meanderings. That fill is covered with a carpet of grasses on the ranch lands but the fill, made up mostly of quartzite rocks and sand, absorbs water very readily. Depending on the make-up of the fill beneath the ground, water moves downhill at a varying rate and the good water man knows how much water must be let onto the pasture to gain the optimum growth rate on the grass. The amount will vary with the weather, as well. Rainy summers, of course, mean a smaller demand for time spent irrigating and more time spend on readying the haying equipment.

The history of haying in Jackson is interesting in its own right. In the old days all the hay was cut and stacked using horse-drawn equipment. Mechanical scythes cut the hay and mechanical rakes moved the hay into "windrows". The man on a "Buck" rake then pushed the windrows of hay to the place where the hay was being stacked. At the stack, one of several contraptions was used to put the hay into storage: the overshot, the plunger, the crane, and the one used on the Porter ranch, the "beaverslide". The old-style beaverslide was 18' wide with two men atop the stack, arranging the hay with pitchforks after it was raised to the top.

A "loose" stack of hay is called that because it will settle as much as ten feet in the first week after stacking. In the old days the stacks were smaller and two good men would fork the hay into a work of art, making it capable of shedding water like an umbrella and keeping it open to the circulation of air. Hay bales will often catch fire from spontaneous combustion if the hay is too green and air can't circulate through the stack - that circulation being one of the other plusses of loose-stacked hay.

As an aside, I was living with my grandfather when he needed someone to look after him and one day in the spring of 1977 a young man came to the door. He said that he'd been feeding cattle the past winter, a particularly long and snowy one, and had run out of hay. He had decided to examine an old haystack that had stood on the margin of the fields until it appeared to be little more than a pile of gray, dead matter fit only for compost. However, when he dug down into the stack a couple of feet it was as green and fragrant as the day it had been stacked. Intrigued, he had checked with the owner and had found out that my grandfather and his brothers had been the ones who stacked in hay - in 1936! The young man shook my grandfather's hand and thanked him for the example of workmanship that haystack represented. He was moved enough to have tears running down his face when he left. And that is another of those important things that we are losing - but that's yet another story.

Lemme seeoh yeah, stacking hay.

Warren Robinson was the guy who set things up the way they are now done at the Porter ranch. As the foreman, he decided to make some changes and thought to re-design the whole thing. He put up a backstop and sidestops, widened the beaverslide from 18' to 24'. He re-designed the slide so it had six points, meaning that each "shot" of hay could be place in any one of six different places on the stack. That meant that two men were needed only for the last few shots, to dress the stack so it would shed water from its "cap". And that is the method used to this day.

Once the hay has been mown and windrowed, hotrod buckrakes are used to push the hay to the beaverslide. The man operating the beaverslide indicates at which point to leave the hay and he then raises and flips the hay onto the stack: left front, left center, left rear, and the same on the right side. And after that stack is finished the men move to another field. The sequence of haying on the fields are: 1- Below Liz's 2- Bull Pasture 3- Upper Field 4- Wort Field 5- Calving Field 6- Big field 7- Bill Wilson Field 8- Phil Wilson Field and 9- Lower Liz's. The ones designated Phil Wilson, Lower Liz's and Below Liz's are the ones adjacent to the highway leading into Jackson, and those that lend so much to the aesthetics of Jackson Hole.

The present foreman, Randy Ballinger, is leaving Jackson. Born and raised in Cody, he is finally leaving the state under the pressure of change. The federally managed summer pastures are under tremendous pressures from environmental interests which have re-ordered federal priorities, but that may be the lesser of the evils. A subdivision just south of the ranch has outgrown its boundaries and there are tremendous pressures to subdivide the ranch. To give you some idea of the pressures facing the owners, if the whole ranch were developed at the same density as the adjacent Rafter J subdivision the owners would realize almost half a billion dollars. I purposely did not put that in italics or underline it. It speaks for itself, and should speak volumes about the changes this area faces. In a previous column I wrote, "Don't move here. Please." Perhaps I should now say, "Please move here and help get this over with." There won't be any more haystacks and there won't be any more working men who know how to build them, but that's the price of change. I guess.

-Jon Horton