Producer Features

Stretching a ranch’s resources to support three families isn’t the easiest task in the world, but as Nerbas Bros. Angus proves, it can be done.

Jerry Baker started Baker Angus in 1982. What started out as a small plot of land that had housed his father’s dairy has, after 45 years, grown to 900 acres of hay and cropland that comprises the home ranch in Vale, Oregon.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When Brad and Kim Black ended up with several acres of switchgrass, they decided to graze it. This decision has permanently changed their grazing program.

The Phelps and Gorham Purchase of 1788 was an acquisition of 6 million acres from the commonwealth of Massachusetts for $1 million (to be paid in three installments) and the preemptive right (first option to buy) to the title from the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy for $5,000.

The soil at Table Rock Farm, in Castile, New York, is no longer the same as it was decades ago. Jeffrey Jordan, crop specialist, should know.

The drought of 2012 left many ranchers across the U.S. de-stocking rangeland. Steve and Sheila Grudzinski’s 400-head cow-calf herd in Loup City, Nebraska, on the Split Ear Ranch was among the casualties.