Learning from the Land: Women in Ranching

[Music] as I'm walking on that land and looking at the sky and looking up at clouds and looking at the grass it's like the boundary between me and all of that softens that is the most profound sense of belonging I've ever had in my life [Music] from a really early age I thought I was going to be an actor I started acting when I was 7 and took acting lessons and was in plays and in my early twenties realized that that really wasn't going to be the right career for me and I started looking for what did I love as much as I loved acting and it was the natural world that got me involved in environmental issues graduated with my master's in environmental education all of that was sort of preparing me for the moment when I brought my students here to the ranch where George was living and working as a cattle rancher and that was in the fall of 2000 so I've been here for about seventeen and a half years I'm making it hot I was a cattle free in 93 vegetarian environmental educator from California and he was a third-generation cattle rancher when I came to the ranch I I talked with George about the fact that I really I didn't feel like I could make my living by selling calves into the industrial market which is what most ranchers in this part of Colorado do and George said you know it's what I've done my entire life but I never liked it either we started to say well how do we build the alternative that meant that we certified organic it created support and it helped us then reach out and look for other support and that eventually then became taking interns and that eventually became having an apprentice program our own curiosity made us want to reach out to young people who were also curious my family has a kind of small cow calf operation in Wheatland Wyoming and that's like really where I guess the or the first love of Agriculture came from I had grown up kind of more with that like recreational environmental side of land I I didn't really know much about how to see a landscape as a working landscape here in the swarming and that kind of covers day-to-day operations to sort of looking forward and planning you know our production plan of what we're gonna do feeding ration pasture house venting writing all of the above I guess that first year in ranching it was so new and exciting and there's almost like this honeymoon phase of ranching and now as I'm getting into it and it's not like tasks aren't fun anymore but they're less new you know fixing a fence is fixing a fence but there's something about like building on that familiarity and rather than being told how to move the cows being like how should I move the cows or what does this pasture look like and so kind of being able to take those leaps pass understanding what you're being told to do but then kind of being able to move beyond that and thinking about why you're being told what you're being told to do when George and I started the apprentice program I don't think we had any idea that almost all of our apprentices would be young women I think young men are raised in our culture to feel like it's not okay to say when they don't know what they're doing that it's not okay to say that they actually don't know how to drive a stick shift and so they have a tendency to just sort of feel like they're supposed to figure it out for themselves whereas these young women for whatever reason feel really comfortable saying you know I'm I'm fine driving this truck but I'm having trouble shifting with this one can you come show me the women who were applying were they were able to demonstrate in the interview process that they were so eager to learn whereas the young men sort of felt like they needed to show us what they already knew I was thinking about it probably shouldn't mean until January third isn't I haven't well that's probably because my guess is it's looking like if I'm gonna go to California Jimmy right after Christmas okay after Christmas so it means then you could you know for Christmas and come back it seems to them like I asked why like why we're doing something a little more often than maybe they're used to or like or questioning something a little bigger picture like organic or like certifications not that I'm against doing those things but just coming back to like making sure we're achieving the purpose of why we thought we were doing something I've been really lucky because I've been able to work for strong women in ranching you know they've paved a way for me to come through and working for George and Julie I realized it doesn't feel unusual for me to be a woman in ranching okay now it's the real deal you wanna go I think we really do consider our relationship with our land and our animals to be one that is about reciprocity and one that's about learning from learning from the land and the animals as much as we're asking it to do something and I think that that I think that thing about deep relationship really appeals to the young women who want to go into agriculture to be in these types of landscapes is very humbling and that feeling is grounding there's more opportunity to pause and feel I think that that desire to nurture life may be biological in women even in those of us who choose to not have children biologically ranching gives you this place where you get to participate in nurturing new life and so that's one of those moments when you know I see their passion in their drive their commitment the cattle in the land they have this relationship that you get to be a part of and you kind of have to learn how to share in that relationship with them like you can't really control it but you can you can use it to your benefit and to the lands benefit into the cattles benefit and being able to be allowed to be a part of that relationship I think is incredibly powerful [Music] [Music]

Channel: Gazette Visuals

Views: 7,381

Rating: 4.9365077 out of 5

Keywords: sustainable agriculture, cattle ranching, environment, colorado, women, local, news

Id: wmKl4oQdqF0

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 22 2018