First, and perhaps most entertaining, is a recent Rolling Stone article about Montana Senator Conrad Burns. The author, Matt Taibbi is being touted as "the next Hunter S. Thompson", and I must say his writing does remind me of the good Dr. His account of lobbying at a Burns fundraiser for a fictitious Russian energy company, "seeking regulatory relief" regarding their plans to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon is simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and horrifying!

So far I’ve seen no response from the Burns camp, and a couple of local reporter/journalists weren’t even aware of it, but hey, Dubya says Burns is the Republican’s Man from Montana, and better than that he’s "a plain-talkin’ fellow" who "speaks our language"; referring presumably to we hicks and "craven morons", us little people in the flyover zone.

On the other hand, we have Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who has proposed a bold plan for keeping MT’s cattle brucellosis-free, allowing bison (at least seasonally) into some publicly owned winter ranges north of Yellowstone, turning them into an asset (including expanded public hunting) and saving a pile of money in the process.

The best (and to now only) report I’d read was by Scott McMillion in the 3/26 Bozeman Chronicle, which someone has apparently decided to only include in their online subscriber section! For crying out loud… We can’t get meeting notices in the Comical lately either. The Jackson Hole Star-Tribune has an AP article about Schweitzer’s proposals, so that will have to do. McMillion’s is much more thorough, though…

In a nutshell, the Governor wants to remove all cattle from public and private lands in a couple of really pretty small areas near Gardiner and West Yellowstone. This would involve paying the handful of producers roughly double the going rate for their grazing, essentially making it economically attractive for them to not raise cows. This was one of many suggestions the Gallatin Wildlife Association has offered. Another suggestion was encouraging them to run non-disease susceptible steers or spayed heifers, or better yet horses. The horse prospect still holds promise, but perhaps the Governor is right in getting cattle out of the area altogether. That removes a major fang from the State Veterinarians and APHIS threats to yank our brucellosis-free status.

This move may also mollify the Montana Stockgrowers, who’ve shown signs lately of at least being willing to talk about wild bison. But then perhaps they have other matters on their minds, as they’ve gone through two executive directors in recent months.

I suppose this is a good development, although one of our significant points all along is that we don’t necessarily have to get rid of the cattle to have wild bison on the landscape. FWP’s own research clearly shows that brucellosis is at best (or worst) a seasonally contagious disease, and with a bit of common-sense management there’s no reason the existing public land grazing allotments, plus of course private land herds can’t continue as they are. Unfortunately FWP remains silent on this research, we’re told because "it fits our agenda". Exactly how our respective agendas got crosswise on this will probably come out during our upcoming mediation with Region 3 FWP, I suppose.

Again, though, we are talking a miniscule amount of cattle here (~200 head year-round, plus a couple of summer grazing allotments). One would hope it makes more sense to take twice the money, eliminate the headaches, and not run cattle in the middle of a bunch of wolves and grizzly bears, not to mention buffalo.

Beyond that, though, what went on in March…? Well, we came up against a couple of significant obstacles, which it appears have resolved, to our immense pleasure. With hints of spring in the air, we’re getting enthused about farming. Yes, it’s a recurring bad habit of mine, this springtime optimism, but no, I really am enthused with the prospects. We’re going to be growing some interesting alternative crops; camelina, golden flax, and canola, as well as experimenting with a couple of green manure alternatives (peas and lentils). Searches for camelina seedstock turned perplexing, simultaneously with a shortage of yearlings for our bison clients, so a noticeable amount of time in the earlier parts of the month were eaten up investigating alternative sources.

Camelina is a promising oilseed crop. It was common in medieval Europe, and still grown in a broad swath from Romania through the ‘Stans, although largely fell out of favor when more modern crops like industrial rapeseed and even wheat were developed. Camelina has some real strong points, though, including high yields of Omega 3 oils, not to mention it grows well in poor soils, doesn’t require a lot of inputs, competes well, and not least isn’t prone to the ripe seed shattering out of the pods, and so lends itself to easy harvesting.

Camelina has only been grown in the US in very limited amounts, though, mostly in north central MT tests. Available seedstocks are largely controlled by one entity, who are promoting a so-called "cooperative". That would be fine and good, and more power to them. I have prior experience growing alternative crops for one of the principals, and am just not into their terms, which include paying $1000 to join the "co-op", and then being paid a lousy price (projected to be $.09-.12/lb) over an 18 month period. Hello…?

Besides, one year we grew canary seed for them, under a "no price established" contract (never do that) that in practice resembles this "co-op" and got paid $.06/lb in a year when canary was trading in the $.12-14 range. Color me skeptical…

So I had seed inquiries going far and wide. Several likely sources in Canada turned up nothing (a couple had never even heard of camelina). MSU researchers referred us to the aforementioned co-op, and the only other North America university research was from Minnesota, where inquiries also ran into dead ends. Fortunately the Irish ag ministry has a very good paper on camelina, and they referred me to possible sources in Spain and France (the French one showed the most promise of any). We also had relatives with connections in Kazahkstan look into the matter, but lo & behold, an impulse phone call resulted in procuring two bags (two different varieties) right here in the Homeland, and not only that it was courier delivered to Bozeman! The guy’s kid goes to MSU, and brought it back from Spring Break. Much simpler than air freight from Kazahkstan…

And, it appears we may have an adequate supply of yearling bison after all, and so are massively relieved on both counts.

We also spent a noticeable amount of time on mechanical projects, something I despise worse than bookwork, which March also contains copious amounts of. To my intense chagrin, my mechanic neighbor is retiring (and moving), and so long-dormant skills will be resurrected. In spite of growing up on a farm during the days of cheap gasoline, I never did enjoy mechanical work, and only do it as a matter of necessity. We’ve had a couple of significant projects going, though. Our family heirloom ’52 Ford grain truck engine finally blew during harvest last fall. The plan was to replace it with a 350 Chevy, as my neighbor has a somewhat aged but still functional Suburban from which we could cannibalize all the necessary parts. The stock engine and transmission in the ’52 have been literally a lifelong vexation of mine. It’s a gutless little 6-cylinder, with a non-synchronized transmission that drove me into a frenzy more than once as a teenager. So the idea of having adequate power and a transmission that actually shifts without heinous grinding was attractive. I knew this would require surgery, but envisioned about half the cost my neighbor conservatively estimated. A Great Falls rebuild shop can restore the original engine for less than I thought, and so we’ll remain stock on Old Red. Probably better in the long run from a collector standpoint, if nothing else…

We also put a new engine in Cody’s cherry ’76 GMC pickup. That’s sort of a rite of passage I suppose not many teenagers get to do any more. Boy, they’re really missing out on all that greasy filth, bloodied knuckles, contorted straining and sundry other vexations great and small that invariably accompany such projects. The truck is now over at Jim’s, one of his last projects, for fine tuning and soon the road locomotive will roar into life once again… It’s a sweet truck, and a piece of Americana on the road, but Cody is already talking about using summer wages for a small biodiesel rig (he’ll keep the ’76 also). These oilseeds we’ll be raising are worth more as human health supplements than fuel, but we’re going to be brewing our own biodiesel, at least.

Stay tuned for progress reports into the spring and summer. It’s going to be interesting, and if nothing else colorful with blue, yellow, and gold blossoms. In fact, I’m tempted to put a big blue M out there in a field of gold. MSU’s colors are blue and gold…