The Round Table may not have been the flashiest feature of the Arthurian legends, but its concept—a circular meeting place where all voices are equal—is possibly the most enduring. That core concept drives the relatively new group, Women in Ranching, with its unique organization into “Circles.”
Instead of pursuing dragons or the grail, the group’s goal is far more down-to-earth (but possibly as monumental); support ranch women as leaders and get their voices heard to help safeguard the future of ranching and working landscapes.
The Women in Ranching group was somewhat spontaneously created as a social community for ranching women, but quickly grew into a space for the women to build confidence in leadership skills and set goals in their personal and professional lives—a Circle.
“A Circle is community, and that’s one of the foundational pieces of these gatherings; building community in a spirit of collaboration,” explained Wendy Millet, director of the TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, CA, and cofounder of Women in Ranching.
Millet, together with cofounder Elaine Patarini, director of Education and Innovation Sharing at the Paicines Ranch of Paicines, CA, got the idea for the first meeting while talking at a conference in 2015 and hearing from so many women about how isolating it can be for ranch women on large, busy ranches. Just a few months later, 26 women convened on the Paicines Ranch for three days in January 2016 for the first Women in Ranching meeting.
That first group—now called Circle One—has met for three years and spawned two other circles. In 2017, Circle Two formed at the TomKat Ranch, and also met this year. Circle Three held its first meeting this summer at the Diamond Cross Ranch in Montana.
Millet, who has attended all of the six Circle meetings to date, said that no two meetings are the same.
“But there are some common elements to them all,” she said. “In pretty much all of our group work together, we make sure that we are in a circle and every voice is heard. That’s an essential part of what we do.”
Another constant is field tours where participants go outside to look at the range and discuss things like soil health with the aid of topic experts.
“And then there is the big leap—setting goals—that is another big piece that occurs for all of the workshops,” Millet said. “Beyond that, there’s usually great food and a lot of laughter.”
Circle Three had just met a week before WLJ talked to Millet and two other members of Women in Ranching; Julie Ott of the James Ranch in Durango, CO, and Virginie Pointeau, communications director for the Western Landowners Alliance (WLA).
Just a couple weeks before Circle Three met for the first time, Women in Ranching joined WLA, which will now manage the organization, logistics, fundraising, outreach, and communications for the growing network of Women in Ranching Circles.
“When I think about the future of ag, a lot of young folks coming into ag these days are not from ag families or ag backgrounds and a lot of them are women.” — Virginie Pointeau, Western Landowners Alliance
Pointeau said combining the two groups just made sense because of WLA’s mission.
“We’re a landowner-led network across the West dedicated to the health and prosperity of working lands. … Our whole mission—our whole purpose—is to amplify the voices of landowners,” she said.
“So, it really made sense to focus on a group that’s basically trying to bring women together to create this network, get their voices and their stories up and out there for the world to see.”
Women and the future of ranching
“I live in a world of men,” noted Ott. “I have three sons and a husband. I have sisters and mothers close by too, but I have a lot of male influence in my life.”
Numerous demographic analyses bear out Ott’s description of a male-dominated ranching world. According to the 2012 Census of Agriculture (most recent complete data), 86 percent of primary farm operators were male. Two-thirds of the secondary operators were female. When all operators of any level were considered, only 30 percent of anyone with decision-making power on farms or ranches were female. Additionally, the average age of primary operators has been creeping up about one to two years every census.
But the picture of the typical rancher might be changing.
“When I think about the future of ag, a lot of young folks coming into ag these days are not from ag families or ag backgrounds and a lot of them are women,” observed Pointeau. “From my experience, more than half are women.”
“…[Y]ou see these can-do women from all walks of life, who say, ‘Yeah! I just fell in love with ranching’—Darn, that’s inspiring.” — Wendy Millet, TomKat Ranch
As a specific example, Pointeau spoke of a member of Circle Two who has hosted ranching apprentices for several years. Out of about a dozen apprentices so far, only two were male. Millet also pointed out how several members of the Circles—where participation is mostly limited to active ranchers—did not start life in agriculture.
“Everybody reads articles about how ranching’s so hard and nobody makes it in ranching, then you see these can-do women from all walks of life, who say, ‘Yeah! I just fell in love with ranching’—Darn, that’s inspiring.”
The trio also talked about what they see as the unique strengths women bring to the table of ranching. For Ott, it was a focus on relationship building and stewardship.
“In my experience, women are really good at that, and relationships are what life’s about. It doesn’t matter how many cows you have or whatever. People are what matter. If the people aren’t happy, families break up and ranches are lost.”
For Millet, one of the strengths women bring to the ranching table is a focus on the future, either because of an innate interest in nurturing the next generation, or because women “haven’t been on the front lines of ranching and are not as bound by the old traditions.”
“There’s just a willingness to try out and embrace new ways of doing things in the women ranching community. They tend to be about reaching outside the norms,” she said, specifically highlighting strategies like direct marketing, low-stress handling, a strong focus on soil health, and utilizing holistic management. She and the others did acknowledge that some of those were “kind of old but starting to be ‘new’ again.”
“We feel like that’s where agriculture is going and where the food system is moving people. The people who are hopefully successful and are going to keep these ranches going and together are the people willing to embrace the future and think more holistically.”
Julie “circled back,” saying the effort to empower women to know the importance of their individual talents, interests, and skills “that may not have been valued as much because so much of our ranching communities are about production,” is one of the most important things Women in Ranching is doing.
“It will only make everybody stronger,” she said.
For Pointeau, the themes of supporting ranching women and welcoming newcomers to ag, the continuation of ranches as economically viable, and the maintenance of whole working landscapes were linked together in a cycle that will continue into the future.
“One of the things we want to make sure is that, when given the airtime, women are actually stepping up and using their voice and using it in a powerful way,” she said of the Women in Ranching Circles.
“What I would love to see is to make sure we’re doing everything we can to empower people to be on the landscape and make a viable livelihood on the land because the ecology and the economics are inexorably tied.” — Kerry Halladay, WLJ editor
