Our Wyoming Life
April 19, 2017 8:00 AM   Subscribe

Join us on our journey as we leave a life in corporate america to come back to Wyoming and help on the family ranch. Our Wyoming Life features our Wyoming ranch and our ranch family. Giving you a look into the workings of ranching from raising cattle to raising and harvesting crops. Erin will join you weekly out of the garden, showing you how she helps provide for our family through growing produce and selling at local farmers markets, and Mike will take you along as he tends to the animals and land of ranch, from calving to fencing to planting and harvesting hay. posted by Blasdelb (18 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Just hope you saved up or had a big option win, just chatted with a guy who's brother farms ten thousand acres of wheat, rich? No the guy ubers all winter to make ends meet. And that's a cash crop.
posted by sammyo at 8:16 AM on April 19, 2017


While stressing that I don't actually wish anyone any harm, I keep waiting for one of those vanlife/back to the land stories to degenerate into an actual horror story. In fact, someone must have already written/staged this, right?
posted by praemunire at 8:18 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


So, not to be directly snarky, but what's the cash cow/savings they have to support and cushion this kind of life?

Cause I know a lot of people who went back to the land and everyone who didn't have a substaiantal nest egg to fund it ended up in not gentle poverty real quick.
posted by The Whelk at 8:31 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I keep waiting for one of those vanlife/back to the land stories to degenerate into an actual horror story. In fact, someone must have already written/staged this, right?

You bet.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:44 AM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


While stressing that I don't actually wish anyone any harm, I keep waiting for one of those vanlife/back to the land stories to degenerate into an actual horror story. In fact, someone must have already written/staged this, right?

He left his downtown office for an enriching life on the land. But now it's winter and those summer crops lack options (and protein content). At least with Uber, he can make some money in the barren months, and bring the choice passengers home for his new startup, "Farm to Table". [Fake]
posted by Slackermagee at 8:46 AM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


[Fake] but amazing. A+ would watch
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:48 AM on April 19, 2017


Maybe "Dorm to Table" if there's a college nearby.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:55 AM on April 19, 2017


Tagline, "It's like Delicatessen for Uber."

Ill stop with the derail now and get back to the read
posted by Slackermagee at 9:02 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't actually wish anyone any harm

One of my favorite things about the high desert is wandering out to the ghost farmsteads just a few miles from pretty much any town where someone was able to farm for a few years until the water went away again.

I similarly don't wish anyone harm per se . . .
posted by aspersioncast at 9:05 AM on April 19, 2017


They moved back to a family ranch, and neither Mike nor Erin were gazillionaires with a whim to raise cattle. There is no "cash cow" except for those big four-legged things. Could Metafilter please try to actually read/watch the posted material before popping off? The AMA went pretty well, too.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:18 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


~150 cows is a pretty marginal operation in my part of the world. My BIL ran one about that size as a side-business for a decade or so, but couldn't really make it pay enough to support a family. His idea was that it would provide enough income for his family to get by, so providing a stable cushion that his main business, which is riskier, wouldn't be as big a problem with its ups and downs. It was profitable, but the operation never provided the return he wanted at that scale, even with going toward specialty high-value supply like certified organic or lean beef programs. Going bigger would have meant having to hire help, and then the race is to get as big as you can to increase margins. That wasn't a game he wanted to play, especially with another, growing business as his main focus.

I'm not surprised they need a bunch of side businesses.
posted by bonehead at 9:52 AM on April 19, 2017


I don't wish anyone harm per se...

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that nobody watched the video. The comments so far seem emblematic of the famous rural/urban divide. Half snark, half schadenfreude, 100% incomprehension. I'll admit that the use of the trope "left the corporate world behind" on the part of the rancher doesn't help but how else do you describe it? I'm not particularly interested in watching this guys channel but I am sure a lot of people will be if he hits his stride.
posted by Pembquist at 9:59 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


The comments so far seem emblematic of the famous rural/urban divide. Half snark, half schadenfreude, 100% incomprehension

Commenting on how the fantasy of escaping urban life to an alleged pastoral arcadia serves to camouflage the actual desperation in the economy (as it has done since at least Roman days) is anti-rural? Please recalibrate.
posted by praemunire at 10:04 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


The comments so far seem emblematic of the famous rural/urban divide. Half snark, half schadenfreude, 100% incomprehension

From the AMA:
Trump was and has been very supportive of the coal industry. Coal miners buy our local beef and produce that Erin raises and takes to market. Taxes from coal mines help provide our kids with an amazing public school system. We believe in responsible use of our natural resources and hope that the clean coal industry grows.
From another comment, asking if they support regulation and the EPA:
I believe that we are stewards of the land but some people don't. Those people need someone standing over their shoulder.
It's one thing to try to understand people who've been doing this for generations. I'm not trotting this out as LOLTrumpSupporter--I'm rather trying to highlight here that I don't think there's anything to deeply comprehend, here. These aren't people with an entrenched rural way of life where we can talk about how the future will impact that and how they need to adapt. They chose to do this, including a way of life that they themselves consider to be heavily reliant on the coal industry, now--not 50 years ago. They don't seem to have done any deep thought on how their choice of political support reflects their views on the role of government. There's no there there.

It's one thing to comprehend people who're just trying to keep getting by, or people who just want simpler and quieter lives, but those people aren't the ones out promoting their Youtube channels.
posted by Sequence at 10:31 AM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Just hope you saved up or had a big option win, just chatted with a guy who's brother farms ten thousand acres of wheat, rich? No the guy ubers all winter to make ends meet. And that's a cash crop.

My family has been farming wheat for over a hundred years. The last few years the market has been quite bad. Many grain farmers are used to cyclical markets and can ride it out, provided their deb load is low. If they're in debt up to their eyeballs, it can crash in a couple seasons. Some farm families up here were getting used to getting some oil royalties as a nice side income but that went into the doldrums as well. So now we're hoping either one or the other comes back. Until then, we're stuck.
posted by Ber at 11:56 AM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


"It's one thing to comprehend people who're just trying to keep getting by, or people who just want simpler and quieter lives, but those people aren't the ones out promoting their Youtube channels."
So +1 to the number of people who clearly haven't watched the damn videos I guess. This dude clearly hasn't chosen your simplistic two dimensional stereotype of rural life, he is a trained radio personality who has explicitly chosen exactly the kind of public life he is presenting to us. The whole plan is to supplement the ranch income by mixing in his skills from his old career.

If you're incapable of seeing your rural neighbors for the complex people they are, that doesn't mean there isn't anything deep to find in them, it just means you aren't being kind enough to pay attention.
posted by Blasdelb at 1:18 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


his dude clearly hasn't chosen your simplistic two dimensional stereotype of rural life, he is a trained radio personality who has explicitly chosen exactly the kind of public life he is presenting to us. The whole plan is to supplement the ranch income by mixing in his skills from his old career.

If you don't ping on the con involved in selling a lifestyle to people while actually funding the lifestyle through the selling, then...you don't, I guess.
posted by praemunire at 3:24 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Look, I didn't mean to get fighty about this. I despair at the douchebaggery that the morons who occupied Malheur exhibit so I don't think the clap trap icon worship of some of the more disingenuous of rural life poseurs should be treated with patience but on the other hand I do feel like the aggressive fun poking and derision of someone who wants to live a certain lifestyle that happens to be marginal economically and rural is just bad and places a social media marketing instagram filter over what might not be exactly so cynical.

I personally think it is a weird oversharing media landscape that we now live in but I am old so my conventions are obsolete. It seems like everybody is trying to make a buck off of their stylized life story and I have begun to get a little less aggravated by it and maybe even tolerant. The nauseous conventions of reality television have placed the pale so far outside what I used to consider it that this guy's video seems downright honest and naive. I am not searching reflexively for the product that is being sold so it gets points for that. On the other had maybe I just need to give it time.
posted by Pembquist at 9:34 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


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