Year Three

As we enter our third season on the ranch these words spring forth. If Square Mile Ranch was a tree in bloom, the 300+ families we feed (you) are the silver and green shifting leaves, glimmering around us. What we are working to achieve on this land does not grow into the important and beautiful thing we intend it to be without you. Sure, we need someone to buy our products, but that is the barest version of this story. The heart of the story is and will always be, connection. ⁣
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In connection, there is reverence, intent, and pleasure. Reverence is easy. It is the soil, the microbes, the beasts, the water. Intent follows instinctively, it is seeing the deserts ahead and doing something about it. You are likely here because you too sense the coming deserts. One is the lack of nutrient dense food, another is the missing next generation of farmers and ranchers. But you are taking stock of the stars, making food choices to rechart that course. Luck has it - all things want to heal - it truly takes very little for the natural world and people to respond spectacularly. ⁣
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Then follows pleasure. I don’t think I could have even written that word a year or two ago. Pleasure seemed a thing that belonged to someone else. But on the eve of this season, it seems to have appeared. It is the emails and letters you send of your beautiful meals, it is hearing about your children or parents, it is photos of your babes on our sheephides. It is starting to save packages of bacon, sirloin steaks, and lamb chops for ourselves. It is seeing the delightful success rate of the hundreds of trees we planted last year, snow melted to reveal thousands of buds on tiny branches. It is writing to you. ⁣
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Reverence, intent, and pleasure.⁣