Blue Creek Livestock: Building Soils and Herds

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Today’s guests are Tangy and Matt Bates who operate Blue Creek Livestock in Delta Junction Alaska. They aim to provide their community with fresh, natural meat – beef, lamb, and pork. Since the beginning, Blue Creek Cattle has been building soils and herds.

Tangy and Matt talk about the opportunities and challenges of farming in Alaska. The opportunities are plentiful, providing farmers and ranchers with room for creativity and profitability. The infrastructure, however, is not what it is in the lower 48. For example, there were challenges getting replacement heifers and custom butchering. The Bates faced a “huge learning curve” with the need to process and market their meat. With no one local to handle their volume for processing, they built their own butcher shop.

“It has gone extremely well, and it just took that bottleneck out for us.”

As they found their input costs higher than their revenues, Matt began researching cover crops and intensive grazing, and it made sense to him. Some in Alaska thought it wouldn’t work there, but it has been very successful – with great forage producing fat cows, as well as lowering input costs.

Next, they plan on burning bones from the butcher shop to make biochar.

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