The Land that Won’t let Go
We thought we had to be ranchers.
You think you have to trust labels.
We're both wrong.
You know something is wrong with the way food is grown.
You've stood in the grocery store, staring at labels that promise so much but mean so little.
Organic. Grass‑fed. Cage‑free.
They sound good, but how can you trust them?
You're doing the best you can. We all are.
But deep down, you know you're being played.
The marketing, the buzzwords—it's all designed to make you feel good while selling you the same old thing.
Is that really what you want to feed yourself? Your family?
It's exhausting.
We know the feeling. We lived it—just on a ranch instead of in the grocery aisle.
The name wasn't supposed to stick.
Big Bluff Ranch was a joke—coined when my grandmother laughed at my grandfather Newell's dream of ranching.
"You're bluffing yourself," she told him. He bought the ranch anyway.
That was 1960. And for decades, we ran things the conventional way—because that's just how it was done.
You raised cattle, sold them into the system, took the prices you were given, and made it work.
Or at least, you did until you couldn't anymore.
When my grandfather Newell passed the ranch to my dad and mom (Frank and Vicky), things had to change.
The system was built on assumptions that no longer worked.
The land had been treated as an afterthought—something you mined for production, not something you nurtured.
But when Frank took over, the land wasn't cooperating, and neither were the numbers.
It wasn't enough to survive the system anymore.
We had to rethink everything.
This land has a way of holding on to people.
Newell tried to walk away from it once.
My parents, Frank and Vicky, thought they were just here for a summer in 1976.
I, Tyler, left for college, convinced I'd figure out something else.
But the land had other plans.
This isn't just "chicken‑scratch country" that somehow keeps three generations captive.
It's something deeper—a place that calls to you, that won't let you settle for less.
This isn't just a business. It's not just acres and animals.
It's a relationship with something that's been waiting for us to understand.
And when we finally stopped long enough to listen, the land was telling us something.
The land holds on
The Shift
You're looking for a better way to feed your family.
You want food that actually makes sense—nutritious, real, connected to the land.
But where do you even start? Who do you trust?
We were asking the same thing—just from the ranching side.
Something was calling us toward a different way, even when we couldn't name it.
Then, in the early 80s, my dad heard Allan Savory talk about the African savanna, about moving cattle like the wildebeest, about how the plants come first, not the animals.
That was the moment the shift began.
But just because you know something in your head doesn't mean you know it in your gut.
We learned it quickly, but we had over 100 years of bad agricultural practices to undo.
You can't reverse that in a month or a year or even a decade.
It takes a long time to learn the lesson the land is trying to teach you.
It's taken us 40+ years to truly understand what putting land first actually means in practice—to undo the assumptions we had inherited, to build new systems from the ground up.
The land was patient with us. It kept calling us back to what we knew was right.
We made decisions based on what was best for the land.
That's why we stopped raising cattle—they didn't fit here.
That's why we kept the chickens and turkeys—because they could regenerate the soil faster than anything else we had tried.
And now, that same land has told us it's time to bring ruminants back—not cattle, but sheep and goats, because they fit in a way cattle never could.
This journey is ongoing -
For us.
For you.
For the land.
Put the land first, and the food follows. Put the land first, and human health follows too.
The Proof
We've been doing this work—on this land—for over 40 years. We'll show you the receipts.
You don't have to take our word for it. You just have to look at the land:
✅ Creek Revival – Two miles of Red Bank Creek: dry gravel bed → year‑round waterway.
✅ Flow Flip – A creek that used to run dry by July now flows 365 days through Big Bluff Ranch (still dry upstream & downstream).
✅ Perennial Comeback – Native perennials are thriving, storing more water and resilience.
✅ Poultry Power – 200,000+ chickens & 2,000 turkeys have built soil instead of stripping it.
We track ground cover, dry matter, plant species diversity. Most ranches don't have those numbers. Those that do? Won't share them.
We remember the first time we saw native perennial grasses returning where there had only been weeds.
We remember the day my dad took an NRCS conservationist out to the range, and the guy nearly jumped out of the truck—staring in disbelief at Nasella pulchra (Purple Needle Grass) that "shouldn't be here."
Now? That plant is everywhere.
The land responded. It was waiting for us to listen.
"The land does not lie; it bears a record of what men write on it—a record that is easy to read by those who understand the simple language of the land."
When we heal the land, we heal our food. When we heal our food, we heal ourselves.
If you want to understand the deeper philosophy behind what we do, read our [Manifesto].
WHO YOU'RE HEARING FROM
I'm Tyler.
I grew up on this ranch, but I didn't grow up wanting to be a cowboy.
I earned a literature degree from Claremont McKenna, convinced I'd do something else—something “real”, something different from the agriculture I grew up in.
But the land pulled me back.
For the last 30 years I've learned how soil actually works—on foot, in 110‑degree heat, fence pliers in hand.
The Invitation
The Invitation
We figured this out years ago.
And we've been here, doing the work, ever since.
But perhaps now we truly understand what the land has been trying to tell us.
And maybe—just maybe—it's calling to you now too.
If you're tired of the confusion—tired of not knowing what's actually good, what's actually real—we're already here.
The same force that kept our family rooted in this challenging landscape for three generations is the same force that can guide you toward real food, real health, real connection.
We're not selling a dream. This is real, and it's working.
We're playing the infinite game—regenerate, rebuild, repeat.
If this resonates with you, stay in the loop.
We share the real work of regeneration as it happens—no fluff, no fake urgency, just proof.
Follow the regeneration. The land is calling.
