Cows and Fences: A Ranch Saga

When we know better, we really try to do better.

It often means NOT going the path of least resistance.

Back on a crisply moody mid-fall day in 2016, Nathaniel and I snooped around this epically dilapidated ranch. It was not the kind of investment property we were supposed to be checking out, but the allure of those wild rock formations, the elevation change I saw in the ariel map, and that arena beckoned us. Our realtor had given up scratching her head at this point after driving us to multi-family compounds, a goat dairy, and empty city lots; she was no longer surprised by the curveballs we went investigating.

But this place, this place baffled us all. Could this even be real!? We had to see it with our own eyes.

We walked through the dank, dark, honestly disgusting house pretty quickly. It was the land we couldn’t peel our eyes from. Our realtor went from building to building while Nathaniel and I giddily ran up the hillside to the base of what we now lovingly call Big Rock. We were truly blown away as we traipsed from the base, through the saddle, and around the south side of the rock and back. The views of the pasture, mountains, and entire area known as central Oregon were sprawling out from this fortress.

I remember very clearly, as an afterthought quickly before leaving so as not to take up more of our realtor’s time, I literally ran west from the house over a truly terrible wooden fence to check out some of the pasture. As a kid, I played for hours each day in a stand of junipers and as I dodged through the thick, overgrown, and unmaintained island of junipers between what we now call the Lower North and Upper North pastures, I felt just as I did as a little girl. The weather was turning, and sleet was stinging my face as I burst through the stand and out into the pasture. It felt like a meadow. I eyed an irrigation ditch that was completely clogged with a carpet of grass. Such neglect. Then I turned around, and Big Rock loomed over the top of the trees, and all of the dilapidation melted away from my conciousness.

We went back. Again and again.

“Every single fence on this property needs to be redone.” I knew Nathaniel had no idea what he was getting himself into. Hell, I was raised on 80 acres, and as it turns out, I didn’t have a clue either!

We sunk our teeth in immediately upon closing. Clearing the arena, tearing the house down to the studs, remodeling the tack room… Bit by bit we threw ourselves into project after project.

The ranch had four very distinct pastures, yet none of them were completely fenced. We finished these missing sections of fenceline with electric fencing. Then, as we learned more about intensive rotational grazing and we got more cows and then sheep, we did more work with temporary electric fencing.

Electric fence is cheap and so damn fast to erect. BUT, it is also only a mental barrier, NOT a physical barrier. Over the years, we had plenty of mishaps with animals not respecting it or forgetting to have it turned on. It caused some sleepless nights as we chased animals back in at 2 am. It caused damage to things we didn’t want the cows to access. We cursed it, but the alternative was building real fence and we already had so much that needed maintained.

Looking down at South, Middle, and North pastures(left to right)

Once we had kids, we were quite dependent on the cows respecting the electric divisions that allowed us to rotational graze at the capacity we had. The magic of intensive rotational grazing is the cows hit the grass hard for no more than a week. Then that grass has at least 21 days to rest. We were able to have more cows thanks to that rest period.

Then the summer of ‘23 happened(yes, 2023, the one that just ended like last week, haha).

Our cowherd dynamic changed with the addition of two beeves(younger cows, usually steers, meant to be butchered once they’ve gained enough). One steer in particular has zero respect towards electric fencing. He would literally walk right through the fence rather than go through the open gate three feet left of him.

At first, we kept putting the fences back up. Then he started taking down the fences for the horses dry lot, just for the hell of it, there is no greener grass in a dry lot for crying out loud. After a handful of occasions of him letting my horses out to pasture(dangerous for them as they aren’t used to it), we had to lock my boys into their stalls and runs. That is a lot of horse poop picking in the hot summer with an infant and toddler.

Push had come to shove. On the hottest weekend of the entire summer, Nathaniel was back to building fence, the first real fence we had built since BC(before Clancy). After three days of collecting supplies, digging holes, pounding t-posts, stringing wire, and hanging a brand new gate, we had a real fence in place of the very first electric fence we had put up in 2017.

I could count the weeks of summer by the electric fence strands I went around picking up. Slowly we went from having 5 pastures to 4, then 3, then 2, and finally just 1 big one like we had started with when we scrambled up the hillside and looked down at the 10+/- acres of pasture for the first time in 2016.

Our cows beat every section of pasture, mowing it down low, allowing no rest for our poor grass. Overgrazing is very typical/conventional, but we’d spent so much time devising rotation schemes and had seen for ourselves the beauty of intensive grazing; for that to literally be thrown away with the chewed up electric fencing we’d had in place since 2019 was just about devastating for me.

Every summer is hard here. Intensive land management paired with intense dry heat on top of parenting and adulting is brutal. We wonder what the hell we are doing here every June, July, and August. Pine-laden mountain properties with no irrigation popping up on Zillow lead our weary heat-stroked souls astray every damn season.

This season with that F’ing steer ruining my intrsive rotational grazing fencing structure had me vehemently opposed to living here another second. My heart had sold this dump.

Then a string of seventy degree weather came in September and the clogs in my brain started squeaking round again. We both became more receptive to bouncing project ideas off each other. Finally, the cool swing season winds filled our sails enough to decide that if we were going to live here, then we had to put in the time each Fall and Spring to keep this ranch restored and not let it fall prey to delapidation. We had to continue improving and renweing so that in the depths of winter and the fires of summer, we could rest and know the ranch could nearly self-operate.

So, we built another fence and our one pasture became two.

Then we built another fence. Two became the three permanent large pastures we strive to have. South. Middle. North. Restored.

We have a long way to go, but now we have a fence-building system, momentum, and a general plan of attack. Our moral is mended and our expectations far more realistic than ever before.

Thank God.