Much like my grandfather, Ralph, I was raised on the ranch and loved ranching but had to leave for a time to earn enough money to begin ranching on my own. Megan’s and my dream was to turn the ranch operation back to a natural way of managing the land and livestock. Our main goals were to raise our cattle holistically, regenerate the ranch lands and produce healthy and nourishing beef. Megan had struggled with chronic illness for more than 10 years before we were able to start our ranching endeavor. Through the health trials that Megan endured we realized that much of the food available today is not as healthy as we believed it to be. Much of our food is highly processed and full of chemicals and GMO’s. The nutrient dense food that was once produced by our farmers and ranchers now lacks the nutrients it once contained. Our foods no longer nourish and heal our body as God intended. We had met with both natural and western medicine doctors and virtually all of them at some time or another talked about the importance of healthy food. They weren’t talking just about a healthy diet but about the food itself. We began to dig into what the doctors meant by “healthy food” and discovered that in order for our food to truly nourish our bodies it has to be grown on healthy land in healthy soil. The more we studied the more we began to realize that conventional agriculture practices were not able to produce the same quality of food that our grandparents produced and consumed. We began a quest to discover how we could raise truly healthy beef. Our search led us to regenerative agriculture and the principals of soil health. We knew that this was our path forward. We are passionate about what we do and believe that healthy soil creates healthy food and ultimately a healthy environment for our family and yours.  

Healthy soil is the foundation of a healthy environment and is necessary for the production of healthy food. When we began our ranching program we immediately began moving the ranch away from conventional practices by implementing regenerative methods. Today our cattle are raised on pastures free of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. We no longer till the soil so we can preserve and promote the natural biology of the soil. We keep our soil covered by being careful not to overgraze. We maintain living roots and above ground biomass growing for as much of the year as possible. This is not only good for the soil microbiology but is good for the environment.  Living plants sequester carbon from the atmosphere and put it back to work in the soil. This is a critical step in the carbon cycle that all living things depend on for life. Contrary to what you might hear, livestock is a very important part of our ecosystem and when managed properly, cattle facilitate the regeneration of degraded environments. We don’t use insecticides or other chemical parasite controls or pour on wormers which not only can add unwanted chemicals to your food, but they also destroy natural soil microbiology. Soil is the most important part of a healthy landscape. We believe you cannot have healthy food without healthy soil.

We have carefully selected cattle with the genetic makeup to allow them to thrive in a holistic grassfed program. It takes an animal that is well suited to its environment and can thrive with minimal inputs while producing not just healthy beef but beef that tastes good. Our cattle are not raised in a concentrated animal feeding operation, rather they are grazed in a herd across the landscape which allows ample rest time for the rangeland to recover each season. This rest period is critical to a healthy rangeland. We calve our cows in cinque with nature, meaning that we calve in early summer on lush grass pastures during warm weather following the pattern of the wildlife in our area. This helps to reduce stress on our mother cows and is much easier on our calves. It also reduces sickness in our newborn calves because they are not born in confined pastures that can become dirty and crowded. We do as much of our cattle work horseback as possible in accordance with low stress livestock handling techniques. We work closely with a Holistic Veterinarian to tailor a herd health plan to the specific needs of our livestock. We never use implanted hormones and antibiotics are used only when necessary to save the life of an animal. Animals that have been treated with antibiotics are sold through conventional markets when they have made a full recovery and are never sold as part of our Certified Program. We have been able to achieve herd health through the promotion of gut health, by supporting the animals natural immune system with year around vitamin and mineral supplementation, by providing an all grass, Non-GMO diet, low stress livestock handling and by raising our cattle on healthy range lands rather than in confinement. We have found that cattle raised in their natural environment for the entirety of their lives do not require all of the synthetic chemical substances that cattle do when they are raised in a conventional feed lot.