Grass Nomads LLC— Moving with the Seasons

BY ARIEL GREENWOOD

About a year and a half ago, my partner Sam Ryerson and I decided to formalize our working relationship as a company: Grass Nomads LLC. We thought it made good sense to create an accountable, legal framework for our work together and with other clients and partners.

We gave ourselves that name because it felt true. Like the nomadic herders who have and continue to make their way across the plains and hills of Earth, we move for opportunity, sustenance, and to find our place between the tugging polarities of freedom and obligation. To be nomadic is not necessarily to wander, but rather to live in deep familiarity with an extensive range of people, places, and animals rather than a singular or central home.

Practically speaking, we live in a rotation. October through April, we manage cows on an extensive ranch in Northeastern New Mexico with Triangle P Cattle Company. That high, windy prairie stretches west along the tiptoes of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. We work cooperatively with other partners in the company, with neighbors, and with our broader community of people in the Southwest. Come Spring, we loaded up our dogs and horses and point north to Montana when the green grass began to grow up from the loosening grip of winter. Up here, we work with Cayuse Livestock Company to manage a few thousand yearlings in the foothills of the Beartooth Front.

This summer marks our second year of doing this work together. It’s an opportunity that allows us to more or less achieve some of our near-term holistic goals: to work outdoors in agriculture, to work closely with animals, to have a community to invest in, to be able to devote time to organizations we believe in—all while making a living with livestock.

Like any way of living, this approach has its pros and cons. Picking up and moving again helps us keep our edge—we can’t become too complacent about the objects we acquire, and because we are not in one place year round we try to invest as much as we can in the relationships we forge while we are around. We don’t have much of a slow season—as soon as we ship cattle off the Montana ranches, we head south to begin fall work in New Mexico. This rotational lifestyle also means as soon as we start to feel settled in a place, it’s time to pack up and move again.

What makes it easier is the wonderful people we meet and know across the West who share our passion for taking care of land and animals while looking out for people in a world that often undermines all three. And, of course, our animals. We train our own horses and dogs, and when it comes time to move cattle—the crux of what we do--the union of horse, dog, and rider means we feel like we are working with family— a community we bring along with us.

This past winter, we resumed management of cows and yearlings in New Mexico, spending our time in a couple of cow camps while clearing everything out of a sunsetting lease and migrating northward to establish a new one.

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