The Next Chapter of Grass Roots

Forty percent of American farmland is owned by someone over sixty-five. When a ranch doesn't have a successor, it doesn't get passed down. It gets sold. To a developer. To an investment fund. To someone who might never run a cow on it again.

For the past few months I've been telling you about a ranch in Montana. A plan. A maybe. Something Andrea and I were exploring.

Well, it's not a maybe anymore.

Let me back up.

Chapter one was Andrea and me in 2007. Greenhorns on twenty acres of leased pasture in Arkansas. No experience, no multi-generation family farm, and no money. We built our first chicken coops with scrap lumber and baling wire and learned to farm by getting it wrong until you don't.

Chapter two was Grass Roots. We helped organize forty small farms to work together to build the food system nobody else was going to build. One that connected farmers directly to conscious eaters like you.

Chapter three starts on the porch of an 8,000-acre ranch in Montana. Two ranchers in their seventies spent decades building this ranch and a beautiful herd of cattle. And they aren't looking to just cash out. They want to hand it forward.

And Andrea and I said yes.

A view of the open range in Southern Montana with the Bighorn Mountains off in the distance

I moved out here eight days ago. Andrea and the kids are still in Arkansas, helping Chuck and Claire keep Falling Sky Farm running while we figure out what chapter three actually looks like day to day. We've hired a young couple to manage this ranch. Two operations, two states, a whole lot of people growing into new roles at once.

I call Andrea every night. Some nights I tell her about the sky out here. Other nights I sit and watch the Bighorn Mountains go dark and don't say much at all.

Right now it's just me. Feeding close to 500 cows and bred heifers at dawn. Helping move 275 young heifer calves to a fresh paddock in the snow. Getting lost on rangeland where they put navigation lights on posts because people actually get lost out here. I'm not saying that's happened to me yet. I'm not saying it hasn't.

This is grass-fed beef country. Eight thousand acres of native range. The kind of grass and genetics and grazing management that takes a generation to build and one bad sale to lose forever. Eventually, you're going to taste it.

We're not here to own this place. We're here to take care of it for a while and set it up so the next generation can do the same. We've learned everything we know the hard way. Part of chapter three is making sure the folks coming up behind us don't have to.

There are mornings I wake up and think, what have I done?

Then I remember: I felt exactly this way the first time I built a mobile chicken coop.

Two thousand acres of farmland disappear every day in this country. Once it's gone, it's gone.

I'll be sharing this journey as it unfolds. The wins, the screw-ups, the nights I question every decision that led me here.

Your farmer (1,500 miles from home, still figuring it out),
Cody