hello welcome to Kate's Ag today i'm going to be touring A Land of Grass Ranch
and seeing their sheep shearing operation i really hope you enjoy today's video
we probably won't take time to tag any new calves we'll probably spot some new calves
this morning but we won't take time to tat to tag them this morning because the shearers are coming
but we just want to make sure that there's nobody that needs attention high Fin
it's really bothering me to keep these cows out here and just mow down this grass i'm feeding
them as much as i can um in hay still but still they're going after the green grass and it's
and it's really hard for me to sacrifice this one pasture but i it's letting the rest of the
ranch grow and they're and they're doing i was up touring around yesterday and and the grass is
growing i mean it's working but it's like oh every time i drive through this pasture i go holy moly
so you've been heavily affected by drought heavily affected by drought and and i'm gonna my plan
right now is to sell about half of these cows um i thought about selling them last fall but
in in about August and September there was essentially no cow market you couldn't like cows
were no selling at the at the auction because everybody else is affected by drought too so
um so i had enough hay so i thought well i'll keep them over and hope for some rain
and if it doesn't rain you know i don't know i guess they'll go to they'll ship them to
Nebraska or some place where where it's been raining but it sure as heck not raining here
so yeah it's i'll sell half the cows and half the sheep and it'll take me three or four years
to recover to the same income level as i um as i'm at as i was at last year put it
that way because that's really sad here's the story while we're touring around um
so i grew up in Oregon my dad had tree farms my mom was a librarian and
when i was 10 we had to sell our house in town because my dad wanted to buy another
tree farm and he needed the down payment from the house in town so we moved out to the country
and bought a few cows and i had these um little these two little Holstein heifers
that he bought for me bum bum calves and i didn't know diddly about how to none of us
did nobody knew how to take care of calves so when i was 10 i told my dad i'm gonna i'm gonna
have cows i'm gonna have a ranch and he was like why in the world would you want cows and i said
they're just like trees only i get to harvest my crop every year instead of waiting 40 years
and he thought i was crazy and my mom said the only way you can get a ranch is to marry a rancher
and i said i don't want to marry a rancher because i am not a gardener or a cook or a clean you'll
see my house that's not clean that is fantastic so yeah anyway so i didn't marry a rancher
but i went to work for this guy in Utah who it was perfect because everything he was thinking
came out of his mouth and so and i didn't when i he had he had a big ranch and
when i got there i didn't know how to ride a horse i didn't know how much to feed a cow
i didn't know how i didn't know anything and and he taught me i worked there for about seven years
and then i went back to Utah state and got my Masters and came up to my i got to Montana because
i was a County Extension Agent in Whitehall from Madison and Jefferson counties so then
i met my husband at a conference in Great Falls we were going down the county road we were going
up to the mountains one day to go riding and he said we passed this place and he said this
place might come up for sale and i said let's try he said the guy had died Alister Graham had
died and he wasn't sure what was going to happen to the ranch and the Grahams bought this ranch
in the 1880s sometime and so we ended up being the first you know the first people outside of the
Graham family to own the ranch we bought it that's awesome it was super it was fun it was super cool
neither one of us knew anything about sheep and so but we decided that since
the Grahams had sheep we better have sheep just to keep the heritage of the ranch
well that's really fascinating and awesome what you're doing and you're also working very hard
to do direct to consumer as well i do i i sell grass-fed beef and lamb that started when i was
down in Whitehall because i had a heifer that was open and so she was essentially a crop failure
and i thought to myself if i take her to the auction they're gonna steal her
from me because they'll think there's something wrong and there wasn't she just wasn't pregnant
so i called up the local natural food co-op and i said hey i've got this natural grass-fed beef
do you guys want a beef and they said sure and so i got into direct marketing with a crop failure
but it's kind of grown from there so um i really agree do you also do that with your wool
i make a lot of things out of my wool i make mattress pads and yarn and roving and socks and
what else i have to think about what's on i go to the farmer's market and so
that's very cool do you have a website that people can look at to learn more about your operation
i do it's: www.a-land-of- grass-ranch.com i don't see anything that's having problems
i see that i have some work to do in terms of fencing but i don't see any
problems and what type of calves do you have on your ranch Black Angus Black Angus and and
Targhee sheep um with a little bit of Hampshire i've got one Hampshire ram for the the sheep too
and why did you decide to start making products out of your wool um i i i don't like to send
everything to china i'd like to make as much stuff as i can i um i think that you know this is this
is not a huge ranch and so the more i can make my commodities into products that people really want
the better off i'm going to be and the better off they're going to be and we make them in the U.S.
and that's so important it's important to me um you know i believe in buying local i believe in
in making things that i can in the U.S. i want to keep the infrastructure going
um the the infrastructure for wool is is shrinking all the time and um
so if i can keep little meals going it turns out you know when you put a pencil to it i um i don't
make a whole lot of extra money but i hope a whole bunch of other people stay in business
so that's good and that's that's the most important part that people don't realize
is it really supports your local economy yeah yeah exactly so i um there's i oh i sell pelts too i've
got lambskin pelts and yeah so yeah that's pretty fun and i there's a guy in Simms he just retired
so i don't know where i'm gonna go now but um you know i keep the guy in Simms busy i keep the
wool mill down in Cardwell busy well as it my stuff is a component of how busy they are
the other okay so the other thing is is i really don't like people to tell me what to do and
and so if i go if i sell in the commodity market somebody else is telling me what price
my stuff is worth and and then they make all the money the middlemen make all the
money so very true yeah so i try really hard to um be the middleman too and then
i can set my own price and i don't have somebody else telling me what it's worth
um and i think you know i think that's a huge frustration for ranchers across the country is
89 of beef is processed by three international companies so number one they don't have our
national interest at heart and number two they they set the price yeah and you know 89
that is nuts my little direct marketing thing is a part of that 11 where they're not they're
not telling me what my beef is worth and that's so important is bringing the control back to the
producer i think so and i think you know it's it's really easy to wonder why people why more
ranchers don't direct market um and the system is it it's really hard to break out of that system
it's not because ranchers don't know how to do it oftentimes they carry an operating loan and so
and the operating loan has to be paid usually in the fall because usually they sell their calves in
the fall that's when they pay back their operating loan and so you can't move from selling calves
to raising to feeding out yearlings until they're until they're fat um because you got to pay off
that loan and so you can you know you get in this vicious cycle um of how to definitely it's
a big struggle for today's small producers yeah it's really hard to get out of that that whole
system so um i'm fortunate that i've been doing this i've been selling grass-fed beef for
23 years that's incredible it's uh yeah and so i'm not i'm not impacting the world by doing what i'm
doing no you are you're making a great difference well in your community and in turn that's the most
important aspect i thank you i appreciate that sometimes it feels very small but at least i'm
kind of plugging away and you know and and if somebody comes well during covid my friends
called me up and they said Lisa how do you do this and i told them and so now they're doing it too
which is so cool because you know it's expanding you can get everyone involved right and it's you
know and it's it's important to cooperate it's so important to join together and then
you know when you have a little bit of strength in numbers so so what i'm doing is i'm pressing
wool we got this machine that's ran by hydraulic cylinders and what i'll do is the guys will shear
sheep they'll kick out bellies and the fleece and i'll pull the tags and the bellies out of
the fleece and we'll take it put it in here i'll press it up into a nice tight bale so they can uh
ship them a little easier that's awesome thank you so much yeah so this is a hydraulic packer and and
we can come in here and i'll show you my wool bag so these are two years worth of my wool there's
like 500 pounds 600 pounds probably 500 pounds in each one of these bags they
they hydraulically compress them because that's the way China likes to have them they can ship
those really easily and this is my wool that i'm saving to go to the um go to the mill
okay and this is what it looks like what you're going to see very nice it's so it's really soft
oh wow it is very soft you you test it you test the strength of it um by pulling on it
what what happened the reason that we shear before lambing is because um wool gets a weak spot in it
every time there's a nutritional there's there's stress on the you
and having a baby is very stressful and so there'll be breaks in it if or if they um don't
have good nutrition during the summer time or in the winter time or anytime there'll be a break so
that's really interesting i had no idea it's important to so it's of course when you're
weaving this or or spinning it then it's really important that you don't have any any breaks in
it because then your yarn will break or your thread will break so the health of the sheep
is very important it's it's critical yeah and and there's different breeds
have different fineness of wool they measured in microns so my sheep the average wool is like
20-21 microns which isn't nearly as soft as like Rambouillet but it's a whole lot softer than other
breeds so really interesting and what would be the next step after this yes um so this would go to
be washed and get all the dirt out and that'll take about half the weight um out of the wool so
so wool is is sold by weight and you get paid on the clean weight and my sheep have dirty
wool because they lay in a corral every night and people tell me that well you know you should keep
them cleaner by not putting them in the corral but if i don't put them in the corral then the coyotes
eat them and i don't have any wool so i'd rather have dirty wool than exactly so it'll be washed
and then bun if you wanted to stay in the United States and manufacture everything in the u.s like
Duckworth Wool does that yes they they'll send a semi-load of wool to Texas where it's washed and
then from Texas it will go to North Carolina where it's spun into thread and then from North Carolina
it goes to New England to be knitted into fabric and then it goes someplace else to be turned into
clothes so it's really interesting yeah but it but it's it's also really frustrating because
you have to cover the entire country to turn it from yes a sheep to a piece of cloth and a final
product yeah doable but it's really expensive so the the price of wool clothes is not in the wool
it's in the processing that's what's so expensive definitely and you're also a Montana Farmers
Union member so how is Montana Farmer's Union uh been a benefit and health i really like i like
Montana Farmers Union's attitude their their philosophy that two things cooperation and local
independent markets those are both real that's why i'm a member is because i support that so
um i really believe in cooperation i really believe in family farms working together for
indie for fair markets yes put it that way and and value added the value-added aspect to me that's
critical to agriculture is you have to add value to your own product this place had a spot of black
wool somewhere in it and that's no good because they could not buy it so if that were to get into
this uh bag of nice white fleeces and a piece of black fiber got pulled with core samples you would
actually have to discard the entire bag because there would be black fiber in it really yeah
hello you're adorable yeah oh you are so cute
i'm now here with Hannah who is an apprentice and that's just amazing so
could you explain a little bit about what's going on today sure okay so um the sheep are all in here
they're gonna walk through this little alley that you can see is set up here
all the way up to the shearers and we're gonna keep pushing them through one after the other
to get shorn or sheared and then it will be kind of a fast moving they all have to stay
really tight together so that they keep following one another and hopefully the
shearers will always have a sheep to shear and they'll pop out the back i imagine or somewhere
in that area and they'll just there's food that we laid out for them yesterday so they'll just be
uh freshly sheared and a little bit naked and then they'll go eat their food and live their lives
and yeah that's awesome they sling and they strap themselves in that to help their back
this this is a like a one and a half horsepower um drive and they put their clippers
this is their clipper oh okay that they share with you very interesting so they've got five stations
and then when they're all done they just kick them out the door like that wow
and it's really inspiring what you're doing being a woman in agriculture
oh thank you you know i love what i do and i wouldn't do anything else
and my thought is that if i can do it anybody can do it but i also really appreciate other women and
um working hard there's there's a difference and it's really nice to have that support
and in fact that's one of the things that i really love about the Montana Farmers Union
is the the Women's Conference and the support of women and the education
um i you know i it took me a long time to realize just how important it is to have a community and
that's and that's what Farmers Union does that's what every organization does so um so i i really
uh i really enjoy being a member and i i'm pretty darn frugal Katie i don't spend my money on very
much stuff but i do buy a membership every year to Farmers Union so um so thank you thanks for coming
out and thank you so much for having me yeah my website is: www.a-land-of-grass-ranch.com so so
if you'd like to learn a little bit more about your operation you can go to your website yep
and also purchase products as well on your website i have i put up a story about the ranch every week
and it's whatever i'm thinking about one time it was about chainsaws one time it's about
the monopoly markets one time it's about the drought so you can read stories about
the ranch and you can buy beef or lamb or wool products or whatever
you want that's awesome thank you so much for watching today's video make sure to like
and subscribe and i hope you learned a little bit more about where your wool comes from bye