Windy Wyoming by Dawn

August 21, 2007

What a change in landscape! I'm in Nebraska right now, looking out the window and all I can see is corn. Miles of it. And houses and cars and trees- nothing like our visit to Laramie, Cheyenne, and Yoder. Wyoming has a total population that just hit 500,000 (ranked 50th by population), and most anyone you ask knows it happened sometime last year. Which means, not being a corn growing state, you also don't see many houses and cars... trees they have, but they are concentrated in certain areas.

Wyoming does have cowboys. And we had a wonderful chance to meet some of the most sustainable Wyoming cowboys yesterday at 2 events hosted by an ex-chemist turned cowboy, Mike Ridenour. Mike and his wife Cindy and their daughter Mary run a beautiful ranch. On their website they proudly state, "Our grass fed beef and vegetables are raised for maximum flavor and health benefits by a family committed to sustainable agriculture and good food." We could see this is true when at our first event, we were joined by many other sustainable ranchers who were drawn to the Ridenours just for this reason.

We gathered at their ranch and climbed aboard a trailer piled with hay- 20 of us sat atop as Mike drove us to a scenic spot on their ranch to see cows and the never ending flat Wyoming land. We hopped off of the hay, and all stood and talked about ranching, slaughterhouse issues and politics- I mostly listened, with some questions thrown in... everyone shared their stories and knowledge so willingly! The Wyoming wind was blowing hard, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. We also had with us at the Meadow Maid Foods tour, our friends from earlier in the day- Rik, Mike and Nate from the University of Wyoming ACRES program and Adam and Janell from the Big Hollow Food Coop. I think there were some good connections made for future projects here in Wyoming.

After the tour, we all headed to the Yoder Community Center for food, entertainment, and more good conversation. There was a wine tasting from a locally produced family winery- Table Mountain Vineyards, run by the Zimmerer's- and they were there to pour for us too. The music was provided by Sangre and there were letters read from 3 representatives of Wyoming politicians who could not attend. I even heard that Dick Cheney gave a call to say he was sorry he couldn't stop by!

I had time to talk to some of the Ranchers we had met earlier during the tour, Frank Eathorne of U Diamond Ranch and Jim Kruse of a ranch with no name. Jim told me that real cowboys don't name their ranch. He loves New York City, has a brother that is 7 foot 3 inches, and a son that he might send to visit us back at the office. Jim also runs a ranch that has maintained their sustainable practices for 100 years. He says that Wyomingites do things a little differently, and from the ones I've met so far, I'm really glad that they do.

And just to leave you with a little fact on Wyoming (ok, Jim passed this one on to me too), there is a town, not too far from where we were that night that has the population of one. It's called Lost Springs and the woman there runs a restaurant and bar and does things her own way.

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