From the Fields - Trevor Airola

By Trevor Airola, Calaveras County rancher

Things are very optimistic right now. The grass is growing. We have had really good rainfall, and we just had a little bit of snow, so we’ve got some good moisture in the ground. Now we are getting some warm temperatures, which are really helping the late-spring grass.

All of our water is snow runoff, which is delivered through an open-ditch system. We have a riparian water right, which dates back to the Gold Rush era to divert water from the Stanislaus River. Our ditch system is one of the oldest ditch systems in California.

We are starting to prepare for summer irrigation, so getting our ditches cleaned and getting our system up and running to make sure it is ready to start irrigation in the middle of May. To be proactive, the irrigation association that I’m part of voluntarily agreed to a 10% reduction in our water usage.

Right now, we’re getting ready to do our second round of preventative vaccinations on the calves. Then we’re going to wean them from the cows so that we can market those calves in June.

I had three steers butchered last week. I’ll be selling those direct to consumers. This is my second year of selling direct to consumers. Doing this definitely extends my profit margin. It is more challenging to carry the overhead, such as the cost of feeding the steers. But it doubles my profit margin per head by doing it this way.

New this year: I received a federal Conservation Stewardship Program grant to do prescribed grazing to promote better pasture management. This incentive grant is for moving the cows from pasture to pasture and managing feed quality and soil health. We move the cows around, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service samples our pasture and provides a report of how we’re doing in terms of managing feed quality and soil health, which helps me with management decisions.