Belgrad, MT
Dave Tyler and Becky Weed epitomize modern day pioneers, blending historic roots with 21st Century business savvy. Drawing from the rich history and inspiration of the early settlers’ love for the fertile Montana landscape and combining it with today’s entrepreneurial world of Internet-based businesses and rural FedEx delivery, Dave and Becky created the Thirteen Mile Lamb and Wool Company. The family-run businesses offers certified organic products and meats from their flock of sheep and herd of cattle in southwestern Montana.
Nestled in the Gallatin Valley about fifteen miles north of Bozeman in southwestern Montana, Thirteen Mile Farm is located on one of the oldest homestead sites in the area for the same reasons it was a choice spot for early pioneer settlers: abundant springs along a mountain base creates moisture for the pastures and the topography provides shelter from the brunt of severe storms. Dave and Becky own 160 acres and rent 200 to 300 acres; they grow organic hay on about 200 acres and the rest is used for pasture raised livestock grazing on a diversity of greens.
Topography and climate proved to be important criteria in selecting the location for Thirteen Mile Farm’s ranching efforts. “This valley is an unusual spot compared to the typical arid Western landscape, more like a Midwest farm,” comments Dave. “Even with the six years of drought we’ve been having in the area, our valley keeps greener that most of this region, enabling us to raise more animals per acre on more reasonable amount of land as the added moisture enables greater hay and grass production.”
Drawing from his engineering background and Becky’s training as a geologist, the husband and wife pair, both originally from the East Coast, moved to Montana and started Thirteen Mile Farm in 1987. At that time, both Dave and Becky held full-time off-farm professional careers and started ranching on the side. Their love for the independent ranching lifestyle motivated them to grow the business to full-time for both of them in 2000. New to ranching and the livestock business, Dave and Becky garnered knowledge by reading many books and periodicals, including “The Sheep Book” by Ron Parker and the Stockman Grass Farmer Journal, a Mississippi-based monthly newspaper focusing on grassfed livestock issues. Shortly after they moved to Thirteen Mile Farm, Becky apprenticed at a neighbor’s large-scale 2,000 sheep operation to tap into local knowledge, experience and approaches.
The mainstay of Thirteen Mile Farm’s business comes from lamb meat, since it currently provides a much higher profit margin than wool and fiber processing. A typical sheep herd for the farm consists of about 270 ewes (female reproducing sheep), 8 rams and approximately 400 lambs for butchering. “The mainstay breed of our flock is the Corriedale and we’ve introduced different genetics to create our own breed that provides both a high-quality carcass and wool,” explains Dave. The lambs are born in the spring and, as they mature, are brought to a USDA-inspected processing plant 180 miles away in Great Falls for butchering. The butchering process on average starts late July with the first born and fastest growing lambs and continues through late spring the following year as lambs mature.
Thirteen Mile Farm’s lambing schedule is a little different from conventional ranchers approach, since the bulk of their meat business is specialty direct market to restaurants and customers who ideally want their product year-round. “Most meat producers will sell their whole crop at once for efficiency reasons, whereas we want to stretch ours out as long as possible to meet our market demand,” explains Dave. Typically, he will bring in about 30 lambs for processing to a processing plant 180 miles away in Great Falls. Dave will have five chest freezers on-farm for storing about 40 lambs at a time. Most of their restaurant clients are in the area and Dave and Becky deliver directly on-site, with their restaurant sales growing roughly thirty percent over the last few years. Other meat goes directly to the customer through mail order with folks ordering from a whole lamb to select cuts through the company’s on-line ordering site. “We got a good deal with FedEx shipping given the volume we sent out,” explains Dave. “We ship in insulated boxes, usually via second or third day FedEx based on the customer’s choice. Dry ice is necessary for smaller shipments. If the order is half lamb or bigger, dry ice is not needed.”
“We’re raising more lamb and less beef nowadays, down to four beef steers this year. The reason for this is that we don’t have access to enough land to sustain a significant beer herd, meet the demand for our lamb and take good care of the pastures. Our lam is really distinctive and has received strong reviews,” explains Dave. Loyal restaurant customers identify the lamb as from Third Mile Farm on their menu, and David Rosengarten, former food editor of Gourmet magazine, recently called Thirteen Mile Farm leg of lamb and ground lamb as the best in the country in his food newsletter and show on the Cooking Network on cable TV.
In addition to word of mouth, Dave feels their website has proved to be a strong marketing effort. The website, which Dave manages, contains extensive detail on the farm and animal management as well as on-line sales capability. The website also details important educational issues regarding the taste and health issues of pasture raised (grass fed) meat and domestic livestock predation Thirteen Mile Farm is certified “predator friendly” by the Predator Conservation Alliance, which means they avoid lethal control (shooting, trapping, poisoning) of native predators. The farm is also certified organic by the Montana State Department of Agriculture. “Our decision to seek organic and predator friendly certification is driven by our commitment to habitat and landscape protection more than the need for an eco-label per say,” explains Dave. “The label does provide a good tool for communicating with consumers about the risks and rewards of responsible agriculture.”
While lamb meat continues to be the business mainstay for Thirteen Mile Farm, the on-going drought in the area causes Dave and Becky to think strategically about diversifying their business, leading to further development of the wool processing area. “We’ve seen the climate in our valley change dramatically over the last 15 years with increasingly drier conditions, causing us to realize that we won’t be able to increase and perhaps even sustain our current meat herd,” explains Dave. Thirteen Mile Farm first started shears the whole herd at once, hiring a professional sheering crew to come in early spring. A typical ewe will bring in ten pounds of fiber. Until recently, Dave and Becky would then ship the fiber to various processing facilities across the country to make the fiber into yarn. Local Montana women work as independent contractors with home knitting machine to produce various sweaters, hats and blankets for sale through the website and selected specialty retail outlets, like the Yellowstone Association in Yellowstone National Park and the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota.
The expense of shipping the wool for processing and the fact that no regional processing plant existed led Dave and Becky to their current large scale undertaking: building their own wool processing facility. Converting an existing barn on the farmstead, this facility takes the fiber through the washing, picking (cleaning) and cording (combing and raking wool) stages, resulting in unspun roving or batts ready for spinning, felting or quilting. “Needless to say, this is a complicated project and a large investment for us. We’re hoping that by cutting out the middleman and doing more of the processing ourselves, we can increase our income long-term on the wool processing side of the business. We are also providing custom processing services for other fiber producers,” explains Dave.
The facility opened for operation in 2004, now employing four part-time people. They currently take fiber through the cording stage since they found a strong market for the resulting unspun fiber, including home hand-spinners and various artisan products, including felt bedrolls and specialty horse reins. Dave and Becky have recently added a spinning machine to take the fiber through to yarn. “It was quite a challenge to find appropriate equipment at a reasonable cost, but we’ve worked with a machinist to put together a combination of old and new equipment to create a suitable spinning frame,” adds Dave. As the washing portion of the processing utilizes a lot of hot water, a solar hot water heating system was installed to heat the water (with a propane back-up) and a grant from Northwest Energy, Inc. in Montana helped defray the cost of this system. Having researched various federal and state grant programs under which the facility may have qualified, Dave and Becky found the application process too lengthy and complicated and instead used a bank loan to finance the facility.
While Dave emphasizes there is no “silver bullet of advice for folks interested in starting in ranching,” he encourages people to explore natural, grass-fed, pasture-raised livestock, given the continued market demand. According to a 2003 study by the Leopold Center, a majority of survey respondents were aware of a set of perceived benefits of pasture-raised beef. “Our Western lifestyle, which we love, could really exist in a lot of places in the country, providing that you find a place with the right topography and climate. Think about being close to a processing facility and a more major metropolitan area to save on driving time and transportation costs,” advises Dave.