The Wray Ranch, located just west of Irricana, is this year’s Alberta Beef Producers (ABP) Environmental Stewardship Award winner.
The ABP announced the Wray family had won the prestigious stewardship award at its annual “Stampede Summit” on July 10.
The award, which is co-sponsored by the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited, comes with a cheque for $10,000. But more importantly, the accolade brings attention to the great efforts the Wrays have put into making their cattle operation more sustainable over the past 25 years.
“It’s an honour,” said co-owner Tim Wray on behalf of himself and his wife Joanne, who moved back to the family ranch to raise their children about nine years ago. “It’s very humbling, and it represents a bigger network of people and energy that is part of this award. It feels great.
“A steward takes care of things they don’t own,” added Wray, who is also a pastor. “One view of the world in my faith tradition is that we don’t own this world. We are part of a creation, and we get to be co-creators as part of that.”
Co-owner Doug Wray was also thankful to the Alberta Beef Producers for recognizing the hard work he and wife Linda have put into making their land more sustainable these past few decades.
Doug decided to re-seed 1,000 acres of his family’s 113-year-old ranch back into mixed perennial forage grasslands and get out of the crop-growing business 25 years ago. He has never regretted the decision.
“We think we have restored the productivity of the ranch in many ways, and leave it in better condition for the next generation,” he said.
The Wray family has embraced regenerative agriculture practices and short rotation grazing to ensure their land remains healthy and resilient.
Regenerative agriculture practices focus on creating greater soil health through best management practices.
“You realize you are not farming plants, but rather the plants are farming the soil,” explained Tim. “Once you wrap your head around that, you begin to see each and every species as like a superhero character. I want to have that character on my land.”
Since they started managing in a regenerative way, the Wrays have noticed better drought tolerance and much higher organic matter in their ranch’s soils.
“The beautiful thing about that is it grew the soil,” explained Doug. “Our organic matters in our soils have gone from somewhere below three per cent to somewhere above five [per cent], and even touching six per cent organic matter.”
“We play a lot with poly-cultures, and we always try to have a mix of things growing,” confirmed Tim. “We have created some interesting results and challenges from that, but we have also seen benefits.
“There are research papers out there which show that if you can have three species drawing on sunlight at different levels, and drawing on water at different levels, your drought tolerance completely changes.”
Short rotation grazing has also been a key to the Wray Ranch’s success in creating healthier pastures. The family moves their cattle every two to three days, and uses portable fencing to ensure the cattle are intensively grazing only a small area for a short time before moving along the next one.
While the Wrays love what they do, and love using their plants and cattle to create healthier and more productive land, Tim acknowledged the way they manage their ranch, which focuses on preservation and enhancement of existing grasslands, is often out of step with the prevailing land use trends in Rocky View County today.
“I understand why farmland is getting ripped up,” he said. “First off, the County gets way more money by having an industrial tax base. And farmers get way more money by having grain cropping. And so, there is a massive economic push to just let go.
“But anyone who stewards those prairie grasses also knows they are a cherished ecosystem, and they give of themselves too. There is an economic return on those prairie grasses, but the (financialization and development) pressures are very real.”
