Est. 1984

We are a working ranch

that is dedicated to educating livestock growers and community stakeholders

about regenerative, holistic grass-based ruminant production.

Every ranch has a story.  Ours began in 1981 when Robert teased Cheryl about showing her 4-H project sheep that he called “woolies.” Little did he know that he was staring 15 years into his future when together, with his now wife, he would be planning on a napkin how we could have 300 ewes.

So, this little love story started at the county fair.  Cheryl was a freshman Animal Science major at Washington State University and Robert had completed his college education and was raising wheat and registered Angus cattle with his family.  It was not long before they knew that their common love of livestock and desire to live on the land would be what forged together their business and their 38 year marriage.

Beginning in 1984 after Cheryl’s graduation, the Cosners married and worked on Robert’s family ranch raising grain, hay and registered Angus cattle marketed to commercial breeders.  The couple had a keen interest in cattle genetics and nutrition as well as Cheryl became interested how to better market the registered bulls.

In 1989, shortly after Robert’s father began easing out of the ranching, the couple took over half the registered cow herd and began to manage the cattle for forage based genetics that better matched the arid terrain of their customers who were mostly located in the Central Oregon desert.   With no equipment and only half the cattle and land available to them after a partnership dissolution, the Cosners began to look for ways to create increase profitability without investing in more equipment.  This led them to focus on grazing and move away from farming operations that required inputs that cattle did not.

Having attended a 1983 lecture by Allen Savory about his then Holistic Resource Management decision making framework, Robert and Cheryl were already beginning to put into practice some of the principles behind sustainable management.  In the fall of 1989, Robert and a very pregnant Cheryl attended the first of many formal trainings in Holistic Management during a one-week intensive workshop in the Arizona desert.  With only 305 deeded dryland acres and 500 dryland acres in leased land, the Cosners began to figure out how to grow their 60 cow herd without incurring any debt and better utilizing the acres they had.  They came home with a goal and a plan.

By 1998, Robert and Cheryl had grown in family and livestock. Their family included three fabulous children, their cow herd had 125 registered mother cows and they had added 125 purebred ewes and 5 goat does to their operation.  They were marketing 25 registered bulls per year and had developed a reputation for having excellent genetics for desert cattle.  Cheryl had completed her Masters of Business Administration in Marketing to add to her Bachelors of Agriculture Science and minors in Agriculture Economics and Animal Science.  The couple was still immersed in a two year Washington State University Food and Farming Systems Project that featured education based on Stephen Covey relationship principles, Allen Savory’s Holistic Management land, grazing and financial planning, Bob Chadwick’s consensus building and Siroelli’s economic development.

After nearly a decade of looking for a place to stretch their wings, Robert and Cheryl found their current ranch located in the foothills of the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon. In the late summer of 2004, the Cosners packed their two daughters and son, ewes with lambs, their best cows with calves and  goats and moved 125 miles east and across the Columbia River to their new home.  This sprawling, rugged and steep 2,200 acres would not only challenge all that they knew about ranching but it would provide the basis for much of what they share in their group education today.

Since this move nearly 18 years ago, Robert and Cheryl have faced challenges and solved problems that have shaped how they manage their operation today.