Blue Creek Farm
My father was a child of the 1950s, so I grew up on classic Western movies. Later, my dad would realize his cowboy dream and start a cattle ranch outside our hometown of Saint Peter, Indiana. After college, I moved to Colorado and became a cowgirl/mule packer. I worked on horse and outfitting operations and guided mule trips into the backwoods of Routt and White River National Forests. After a few years, I left that wandering life and returned to my roots to run the family cattle operation.
After two years of drought, we noticed many negative changes in our pastures and the cattle brought to us by a lack of grazing management.
We had erosion, noxious weeds, and a decline in cattle health because of these changes in the land (an extensive and different subject). So after much research and deliberation, Mom and I decided to take the herd into a Management-intensive Grazing platform for land and cattle management. What's healthy for the land is healthy for the cattle. So I became a Regenerative Rancher before the term became popular. We began selling Grassfed Beef after a couple of years.
Later, a friend introduced me to a cowboy from North Dakota, Chip McGregor. Chip and I have melded our lives and dreams of cattle ranching and Grassfed Beef production this past year into one and started Blue Creek Farm Grassfed Beef. We are big thinkers. Our vision is to provide a healthy life to our cows and to land that owns or rents us while producing beef that is good for the people and the land that we love. We are building a community around healthy land and animal management practices, building soil, and saving the world one burger at a time. After that, we would start our Grassfed Beef Operation. We now have pastures all over Southeastern Indiana and sell Grassfed Beef direct to consumers.
Our biggest struggle is time. Agriculture alone is a sun-up to sundown-everyday life. But throw direct-to-consumer sales, marketing, and other jobs and responsibilities into that, and it's a 365-day/year gig.
It's a beautiful life, but there is burnout. I find the best way to get through the long days and stresses of ranching is to spend time with Wade, my 9-year-old son, and the cows out in the pasture and not rush through my work. A soil biologist told me a few years ago, "You will know you are doing what's right for the land when the ladybugs show up. Not the introduced orange ladybugs, but the native red ladybugs of our childhood."
We look for ladybugs, Red Wing Blackbird nests hanging in tall grasses, turkey eggs buried in deep, thick forage of four-leaf clovers, and Milkweed covered in Monarch caterpillars. It's a marathon, not a race. But during farmer's market season, look out!
The dog days of summer can move pretty slow, but the "morning webs of dew" (Wade came up with that one) decorating the fenceline and pasture on early August mornings are breathtaking.
Chip and I met because of writing. I am an award-winning, farm/ranch life-themed children's author. Adolescence in nature with parents who immersed their children in wildlife gave me a gift.
Chip writes poetry, short stories, and narrative and has spent time studying journalism. Chip is a 5th generation rancher. A childhood spent as the son of a flower child and horse trader and 15 years of US Army Ranger training and deployment has given him perspectives you don't see daily. I'm looking very forward to reading his novel.
We enjoy the creative process on paper and in business. Encouraging creativity in Wade is a passion for us. There are just so many perspectives to life. Empathy for living things is a must and rewards us with a beautiful life of creativity. The best moments for us are brainstorming sessions at the kitchen table. Funny, but the 9-year-old comes up with the best business ideas.