Red River Graziers Club
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experience for the groups that hashed it out. It was a learning experience for everybody. “One bunch organized the questions for the breakout sessions. Someone else was constantly bringing in new people. Everyone was doing a piece of it. The person making the calls is the key to get everyone there, but is not the key to making it grow. That’s up to all the other people who are involved, and excited about it. “Everyone is in a hurry to learn as much as they can, and they want to see other people’s operation and what they are doing to make things better. Most of the people in our group had already had lots of experience with Holistic Management. We brought in people who had never even heard that term, but meeting with the grazing club they got to see Holistic Management in action.
Pushing to the Next Level “I went to my first training with Kirk Gadzia at Ghost ranch. I was already trying to get ready to do rotational grazing. We had discussed this with the Noble Foundation, which had gotten us interested. I wanted to understand what we were getting into before we built any fences. So I went out for some training in Holistic Management, came back and drew up a plan for all our cells and pastures, began moving the cattle, and started building fences,” says Addison. “We are still learning, just like everyone is, still pushing it to another level. I have a son, Brett, in Oklahoma and he gets an intern in the spring and has 300 cows on ½ acre for an hour and a half. He’s getting unbelievable animal impact and good performance on the cattle. “We also learned a lot from one another just about electric fences, and setting up stock tanks or water lots, or a different type of water system. A person might be trying to figure out how to do something, and then they are exposed to someone who has actually done it already—and has already made the various mistakes to learn how to do it the way they are now. “I felt like our initial forming of this group was more about helping each other to learn from somebody else’s mistakes and successes. There are a lot of people out there who would love to know how we do what we do. From rancher to rancher and neighbor to neighbor, that’s still a really good way to approach this.” The meetings have grown over time to where they are now attended by 45 to 50 people. “We started out by letting everyone bring their own lunch and that worked,” says Jerry. “Then some people wanted to have someone bring sandwiches, or cook hamburgers. It got to where we needed a meal at the meetings. “In the morning we would talk and then go tour, and then come back in the afternoon to talk about what we observed, and not necessarily critique it. We had some ranchers who said they didn’t want anyone coming to their place and telling them what to do. So we just handled it that way. On that ranch we’d just have show and tell and that was it. The guy still had a lot to offer because they already had a good operation and they didn’t want any new ideas. They were very happy with what was working for them.”
Keep it Going Addison says that the biggest challenge for a group like this is keeping it going. “It takes someone with a lot of commitment. When we first started, I called people and kept in contact, trying to find times that would work for everyone to get together for meetings. As time went on, my 12
Land & Livestock
January / February 2014
Brett left, Walt center, and Jerry—all three were at first grazing club meeting and still keep in touch and share information. schedule got pretty full and I didn’t have as much time to do this. I turned it over to richard Teague and he was very involved and instrumental in keeping it going. We kept it going for quite awhile,” says Addison. “We still have our organization, but one of the mistakes we made was that we tried to do too many meetings per year. We started with about 10 ranchers. Our thought was to do this for a year, until we figured out a system that would make sense,” he says. Many of the ranchers were enthusiastic from the beginning and invited friends, and the club grew very quickly. “It’s easy at first, and then it comes back to that one person who keeps it all going. It really increases their work load—having to contact everyone and let them know about meetings. Keeping it going is the big issue. Like most volunteer organizations, at some point everybody runs out of steam,” says Addison. “We had a really good group of people who were all very sharp and had really good input. We did learn from each other, and from just getting together and talking about ideas. When you do that, and everyone is pushing for more meetings and more places to tour, the next thing you know you are meeting every month. It should probably be just quarterly or maybe just twice a year. Then the person who is doing the contacting would be able to do it more effectively,” says Addison. “But to continue our red river Graziers I think it would take someone who is semi-retired or a spouse who is interested enough to keep up the contacts. It needs to be someone who is more or less directly involved in the operation. We managed to keep it going fairly well for about 5 years or more. people come to me now and ask if we can go to so-and-so’s place and I just don’t have time to pull it together since I am really busy running my own operation,” he explains. “I think everyone benefitted from what we did. It put us all into a group that had respect for one another and for what each one of us was doing, even if it was different from our own operations. We could see it was working well for them,” he says. He feels that anyone could start a group in their own area, as long as they have someone who is committed enough and has the time to make the contacts. “If you just send someone an e-mail and tell them you’re going to have a meeting, it’s too easy to just let it slide. If you call someone on the phone and tell them you’d like to have a grazing club meeting, and have a core group of people that you contact—and get a commitment from them—then it can be very successful,” he says.