Our farm began with the idea of providing our family with clean, healthy meat to put on our table. We wanted to raise animals in a natural setting, free from the chemicals and environmental harms that are associated with the industrial food chain.
We started by converting our conventional 2-acre yard into a pasture, ripping up turf grass and planting diverse plant species for our animals to graze. Our first livestock were poultry, and we rotated enough chickens around that property to start a small pastured poultry business.
From that humble beginning, we grew to a 240-acre farm in the beautiful Pend Oreille valley in NE Washington State.
Ramstead Ranch has made a big transition. We started as a homestead-scale farm where two to three family members do all the jobs and never take a break. We've transformed ourselves into a humming business where a team of dedicated individuals share responsibility to get the production work done, the regeneratively raised meats processed and packaged, and the happy customers served reliably and with professionalism.
We feel this is an important part of the process to help make regenerative agriculture a viable part of a thriving future. When we can demonstrate the potential for healthy growth and scalability, we inherently invite more ranchers and livestock producers to mimic nature and benefit from regenerative practices.
The growth and transition of our ranch has been personally transformative as well. We've learned a lot along the way, and we've picked up some incredible tools and strategies to help our selves become the leaders our ranch needed.
One approach that has helped us develop our team and enroll and empower them to take on new responsibilities is the Scrum/Agile approach to team work. It's a system developed by the tech industry, but we've found it incredibly useful to apply to team work on our ranch. It's been a game changer, and its effectiveness demonstrates to us that you have to be willing to think outside the box to get better and improve yourself so you can continue to innovate and have new experiences. You can't keep doing things the same old way and expect new results. The Scrum/Agile approach that we've applied here at Ramstead has revolutionized our team and our work. It's really getting fun around here!
Related Episodes
Join us as we welcome Eileen Napier of Ramstead Ranch, who shares her remarkable journey from humble beginnings on a two-acre property in Washington to establishing a thriving 240-acre regenerative livestock operation. Eileen and her partners, Stan Hayes and Jean Hayes, embarked on this adventure w...
