COWBOY CANADIAN
COUNTRY THE CONSERVATION ISSUE
Canada’s Legacy SAVING GRASSLANDS
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ROB DINWOODIE Range Renaissance Man @cowboycountrymag @CowboyCntryMag @cowboycountrymagazine
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Canadian Cowboy Country December 2024/January 2025
THE CONSERVATION ISSUE
EVERYTHING'S CONNECTED
WEST
IN THE
PHOTO: TERRI MASON
FROM THE SOIL AND THE GRASS TO THE BIRDS AND THE BEASTS
Rich soil and clean water are not an endless resource. The Canadian ranchers, pasture managers, wildlife, grass and soil specialists on these pages all have a stake in our future. They have spent a good portion of their lives looking down at the ground, and they are the ones who truly know that the world is at their feet. cowboycountrymagazine.com
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LIVING LEGEND
BORN TO BE A COWBOY Rob Dinwoodie
PHOTO FROM ROB DINWOODIE COLLECTION
BY KEN MATHER
Rob on his mare, Quill, an Appendix Paint that he trained.
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Canadian Cowboy Country December 2024/January 2025
LIVING LEGEND
R PHOTO FROM ROB DINWOODIE COLLECTION
From left, poet Ken Mather, The Open Range Band, rhythm guitar singer/songwriter Rob Dinwoodie, mandolin player Dixon Zalit, and bass player Kevin Bader.
ob Dinwoodie was born on a farm in central Alberta, east of Edmonton, on land that his great-grandfather from Scotland had homesteaded. One of six children, he did his share of farm chores, looking after cows, pigs and chickens. His love of horses came early when he got his first horse at the age of eight years to ride to school. He recalls spending much of his school time daydreaming about the places he could ride after school and on weekends. Rob’s earliest exposure to the life of the cowboy came from Will James’s classic 1927 book, Smoky the Cowhorse, that he got from the school library. Rob was particularly taken by James’s illustrations in the book and studied them and began to draw, and later paint, his own depictions of the horse and cowboy combination. This began Rob’s lifelong commitment to cowboy art. Although he has never had formal training beyond a few basic workshops, he has created hundreds of sketches and paintings. He has provided the images for two books, horse-trainer, Miles Kingdon’s Beyond the Next Ridge: A Cowboy's Story (2019) and historian Ken Mather’s Ranch Tales – Stories from the Frontier (2014).
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Rob’s love of horses and cowboy life continued after his family moved to Armstrong, B.C. in 1969. He took part in high school rodeo in bareback riding. After high school, Rob kept his rodeo permit and also worked as a rodeo clown and bullfighter. He was in Manitoba playing hockey when he met and married his life partner Jocelyne Lussier. They lived in Alberta for a time but, in 1982, moved to Winnipeg to study at the University of Manitoba, where Rob obtained his Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. After graduation, he worked in the Plant Science Department at the university. One cold night in Manitoba, a friend introduced Rob to Ian Tyson’s CD, Cowboyography and Rob saw the way he could combine his love of the cowboy and his love for music. When they moved to Vernon, Rob began experimenting with cowboy music. His interest stayed as a spare-time hobby when, in 1991, he got a job working for the B.C. Ministry of Forests in range management. But his connection to cowboy music took a turn for the better in 1992. As Rob tells it, “I saw a sign at the O’Keefe Ranch near Vernon, promoting a Cowboy Festival, and so I pulled in to see if I could maybe sing a song or two. Ken Mather was the manager and not only agreed to me singing a song but signed me up for the weekend and allowed me to show my art…
that was it, I was hooked.” Rob’s “one-andonly” cowboy song, Born to be a Cowboy was well received and was the first of dozens of songs that he would go on to write. After his successful debut in the O’Keefe Cowboy Festival, Rob was approached by the owner of the restaurant at the ranch to ask if he was interested in entertaining buses of tourists arriving for supper. Rob agreed and for the next eight summers, he and Jocelyne entertained tourists, mostly from Germany, who were fascinated by cowboy life and music. One year, the couple entertained for 48 different bus tours! Before long, Rob and Jocelyne were getting invited to cowboy festivals across Western Canada and were featured on the “Window on the West” stage at the Calgary Stampede for fifteen successive years. Rob has always looked for ways to share his cowboy music with audiences. In the early 2000s, he staged a program entitled “Lasso the Moon” at the Powerhouse Theatre in Vernon. This was followed by cowboy dinner shows at Lone Pine Ranch. In 2009, Rob contracted with the O’Keefe Ranch to host a Cowboy Dinner Show featuring his songs accompanied by Dixon Zalit and Ken Mather’s history and cowboy poetry. Almost every year since then, Rob has performed a cowboy dinner show with a different theme to entertain locals
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WHAT WORKS FOR US
Trembling Aspen Ranch BY TERRI MASON
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Canadian Cowboy Country December 2024/January 2025
WHAT WORKS FOR US
—Interview with Logan Dolen Ranching the regal Canadian elk is a whole different world… How elk rancher Logan Dolen got into raising this majestic ungulate was unusual. “It was me and my sister who were actually the first to buy elk,” said Logan. “We had convinced Mom and Dad first, so I saved up my 4-H money, and we bought three animals. We boarded them at a neighbour’s place for the first year till we got our facilities built.” Facilities are an understatement. Elk fencing is a huge cost; it must be 8-foot-high page wire because they can jump anything under that. Once the Dolen family completed their facilities, everyone was into elk, and the family started increasing the herd size. These days, it’s just Logan and his parents. “I just always thought they were a really cool animal,” said Logan. “And at that time, the Alberta government was really pushing diversification in the farming field.” The herd size has remained static for a while now but will increase as more fencing projects get completed. There are some similarities to cattle; Logan has cross-fenced pastures and rotational grazes the herd “as best he can.” It’s tough because of time constraints
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between the elk, his oil patch job, marriage, kids, etc. So, what does a year in the life of an elk herd look like? “Cow elk start calving around the middle of May,” said Logan. “I go out and check daily for new calves and try to ear tag them when they’re born. When they’re first born, for the first week or so, they’ll just lay there a lot of the time. If the mom’s not too close, I can jump out and tag them and then jump back in the truck.”
AT A GLANCE NAME: Trembling Aspen Ranch ESTABLISHED: 1998 OWNER: Logan Dolen NEAREST TOWN: Spirit River (1 hour NW of Grande Prairie, AB) SIZE: (Elk Facilities) 400 acres (160 ha) ELEVATION: 1,970 ft (600 meters) PRECIPITATION: 18 inches (455 mm) BREED: Canadian Elk HERD SIZE: 120 head (60 cows, 60 bulls)
He also begins graining the cows in the feed bunks during calving season, just to keep the herd quiet. “The cows stay on the grass with their calves until the fall. At the end of August, I sort for breeding pens. The last couple of years, I started AI (artificial inseminating) about 15 or 20 head of cows to improve the genetics.” Breeding season is about mid-September to mid-October, and after the breeding season, the calves are weaned, treated with Ivomec™ (deworm), vaccinated and treated for ticks. Logan also places the AI’d cows in one of the other breeding pens for a backup bull to cover anything that didn’t catch. Bulls, too, require special treatment. “I generally start graining them about the middle of February to improve their condition because they start growing antlers between the middle of March to the start of May,” he explained. “Bulls shed their antlers between February and April, so roughly 60 to 70 days after they shed their old antlers when they’re just getting ready to split for their fourth and fifth point, I harvest the antlers from
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