How I Started Ranching
How I Started Ranching, Ruthie King
How did I get from point A, Los Angeles suburbs, to point B, rural California rangeland? How did I make the transition from studying architecture to studying manure? How many more points on my path will there be, what sort of angles and shapes am I drawing on my life trajectory?
I am a curious person by nature. I have been intrigued by all sorts of occupations, hobbies, subjects… so when it came time to saddle up and choose a life path, I balked. I went to college and picked a major, because that was what was expected, and I loved having a purpose for four years, especially with that purpose being learning and creating. But then, with graduation, loss of purpose. This is a period of time in so many people’s lives when they struggle with identity, and I was no different. Plus, after four years of trying to live in New York City, I was anxiety ridden with a degree in architecture during the recession, when building construction had come to a halt.
When I moved to rural Washington, I sought out community. I lived on various farms and ranches where projects were taking place, mostly small building projects but I tended towards the bigger picture infrastructure. Paddock fencing for acres of pasture rotation, renovating barns to legally produce raw milk, raising 30 ft tall bents for massive hay barns… soon I found myself itching to learn more about the role animals played in an integrated farm system, from the smallest micro organisms to the complex ruminants grazing the plains. 
I learned as much as I could from books and local farmers, but the information was piecemeal and not always accurate. A big part of my reason for joining the Grange in Washington, then Colorado, and now California, was to connect to a historic group of land stewards who were based in collectivity and rural community building. I found again and again that I was being taught the “right” way to do things, without a basis in the reasoning or the contexts. So when the opportunity came up to work for a residential training program designed to intentionally guide future farmers through the complexities of sustainable ag, I leapt.
Now, I consider myself a lifelong student at the School of Adaptive Agriculture. I teach a few of the classes but the beauty of this diverse program is that we have dozens of instructors, experts, mentors in our network who all contribute their knowledge and skills. SAA is not a school with a centralized knowledge bank, with a celebrity farmer or rancher speaking from a pedestal. This school’s philosophy is based on asking high quality questions, seeking information that can be analyzed critically, understanding that our scientific knowledge is immense but also limited, and that we have just as much to learn as people as we do as farmers or ranchers. The food movement needs diversity to reach resiliency, so we cover a broad range of scales, forms of production, and philosophies coming from a diverse body. Students, myself included, are challenged to find where their unique personality and context fit in to strengthen our agricultural system.
After four years of working at the school, taking classes and going on field trips, hearing stories and getting inspired, I finally started my own business. I work with Eliot, a graduate of the program, running sheep, poultry, and pigs on over 17 acres of this beautiful land. We have a comprehensive list of values and strategies we use to achieve them, we built spreadsheets and action plans with checks and balances, we process our relationship dynamics with each other and the animals constantly, and we constantly adapt our systems to improve. Nothing I read prepared me for the struggle of business ownership, but the people I learned from inspire me to persevere through the hardships. I have a strong understanding of the foundations needed to run a business, although the practice of it is so much harder than I thought it would be, and I have to remind myself to be patient and forgiving.
After working on several dairies, CSA farms, managing animals for the school, and working in the non profit world, I had a sense for the challenge of agricultural production, but my respect has deepened for agricultural producers now that I am sitting in the drivers seat, attempting to make a living at this profession. Luckily, I work as a part of a farm collective, and the 6 of us support each other through the ups and downs. I am fortunate to be in a position to start my own operation with a lease agreement and transfer of ownership that is generous and stable. The New Agrarian Collective is fostering our group in the hardest years of our lives, and it is shocking and amazing to witness our diverse paths that led us here, converging to create something greater than any of us could have achieved alone. I am committed to sharing my successes and especially failures, so that more people will feel empowered to go down this path.
