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Life on the Range with Tyler Lu
181 Plays3 months ago
What does it take to leave the city behind and embrace the life as a cowboy? In this episode, we trace Tyler’s unique path from competitive running, to beekeeping and vegetable farming, to life as a regenerative cattle rancher. Tyler shares the transformative experience of building a relationship with the land, the day-to-day realities of cowboy life, and the complex dynamics of being a non-binary person of color in a traditionally conservative rural setting. We also dive into the myths surrounding the cowboy legend, exploring the true, multicultural history behind the iconic figure.
Tyler’s journey is one of both personal and professional evolution. As we discuss the social challenges of transitioning from an urban environment to a rural community, Tyler opens up about their experiences of belonging, identity, and ambition. This episode invites you to reimagine the past, present, and future of the cowboy.
In this episode, we cover:
- Tyler’s winding journey from beekeeping, to vegetable farming, to ranching in rural Montana
- The day to day lifestyle of a regenerative rancher
- How Tyler’s relationship to the land has evolved over their time as a cowboy
- Navigating the social dynamics as a city dweller moving to a rural community, and the added complexities of being a non-binary person of color in the rural West.
- The real history of the cowboy and how our popular culture mythos doesn’t capture the complex and multicultural history behind it.
- And much more...
More about Tyler:
Tyler is a long haired, tattooist and body modification enthusiast, Asian, non-binary agricultural labour who is working up to starting their own enterprise, dreams, and place in life. They grew up in the city life of Georgia and spent most of their formative years in San Jose California where they found their love for a career in the agricultural sphere. Tyler and their dog Sage the border collie are currently residing and working in Roundup Montana.
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller of You Should Have a Podcast, who also wrote our theme song.
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Transcript
Preconceptions and Kindness in Rural America
00:00:04
Speaker
I'm quick to judge sometimes based on this upbringing of like Damn, these people might be racist, but I have no clue until I actually speak to them. And when I actually do speak to my neighbors right or my neighbors come up to me and talk to me, like I find that, wow, like these people are actually pretty kind and intelligent. And also, we share a lot of different similarities and interests in our actual work and like why we're actually here on this piece of land.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:46
Speaker
You are listening to Agrarian Futures, a podcast exploring a future centered around land, community, and connection to place. I'm Emma Ratcliffe. And I'm Austin Unruh. And on the show, we chat with farmers, philosophers, and entrepreneurs reimagining our relationship to the land and to each other to showcase real hope and solutions for the future.
Tyler's Transition from City to Farm Life
00:01:16
Speaker
Hi, everybody. This is Emma. This episode is made up of a number of snippets recorded over a series of conversations that I had with my friend Tyler. We talked about a wide array of topics covering a lot of our favorite subjects on this show. And I think this episode in particular gives a great insight into life in rural America today.
00:01:38
Speaker
So Tyler is an Asian non-binary agricultural laborer, tattooist, and body modification enthusiast who is working on moving towards creating their own path and career in farming.
From Runner to Agriculturalist
00:01:50
Speaker
They grew up in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, and spent most of their formative years in San Jose, California, where they found their love for farming. Tyler and their Border Collie Sage are currently residing and working in Roundup, Montana.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah. Well, first off, thanks for having me. I guess to begin with, I, I started out as a pretty avid runner and pretty competitive runner. And that's kind of how I ended up in ag. I was specifically looking how to enhance myself naturally through different things that it was consuming, whether it was from just like organic foods, all the way up to specifically making my own like supplements through a honey.
Sustainability and Regenerative Agriculture
00:02:29
Speaker
be pollen and be propolis and making those mixtures as a way to give myself a competitive advantage over everyone else. And then a couple of years roll by, I'm doing different things. I ended up managing a organic vegetable farm out in Lone Polk, California.
00:02:44
Speaker
And I didn't feel satisfied in terms of what I was doing based on, I thought the organic vegetable world was a lot of inputs that you needed and we weren't really recycling a lot of those inputs back into the soil, which kind of drew me out into like more of like this ranching style of how do you preserve a native pasture or native rangeland and recycle nutrients that you're actually taking from that area.
00:03:09
Speaker
And that kind of led me into this regenerative ag, ah more specifically of like focusing more on perennials versus annual grasses. I mean, in California, it's all annual rangelands. And so I didn't really have the opportunity to learn about perennials there.
Learning Sustainable Grazing in Australia
00:03:27
Speaker
That kind of led me to Australia, specifically, how do you do this pasture raise system within a silver pasture in Australia, focused on native grasses in the trees?
00:03:38
Speaker
And for listeners that might not know, could you quickly clarify the difference between annual and perennials? yeah An annual grass is something that comes in year to year. It needs to be reproduced by seed. And then that plant is then restarted as a another plant. And then the older one either dies or may live a couple of years afterwards. But they're separate plants versus a perennial. It comes back year to year and it's the same exact plant.
00:04:07
Speaker
but it also reproduces by scenes but that plant has the ability to stay around for it can be centuries it can be decades really. So jumping back to your story, you moved to Australia where you were working on a ranch learning about large-scale grazing and some silver pasture models.
High-density Mob Grazing at Milton Ranch
00:04:28
Speaker
What was your journey from there? I got interested in ranching specifically when I first started at Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills.
00:04:38
Speaker
I was working primarily with hogs, sheeps and goats and also chickens. It was more of like an organic style of ah farming. And so like that kind of exposed me to this alternative side of farming of what it could look like besides like a CAFO. And also introduced me to kind of like this small backyard hobby farm kind of deal that was a nonprofit.
00:05:02
Speaker
And the question that I kept button lingering around was like, OK, like we're doing all of this small production style farming with livestock. But what does that actually mean in relation to to the land itself? And so I was kind of just diving into different questions in terms of How does this actually in impact the landscape that this small production farm is currently conducting on this landscape? And that kind of led me into this regenerative AG ah more specifically of like
00:05:36
Speaker
focusing more on perennials versus annual grasses. And it still had a ton of questions of how do you actually produce a native rangeland aspect of grazing and converting old farmland to native grasses. So that's kind of where I found Bill and Dana, which is where I'm at currently, which is Milton Ranch in Roundup, Montana, where they focus on high density mob grazing that basically was converting old farmland back to native rangelands.
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, and that's currently where I'm employed now. So incredibly diverse experience going from beekeeping, vegetable farming, large-scale grain farming at Villicus and now ranching at Melton Ranch in Roundup, Montana.
Daily Life in Cattle Grazing and Land Management
00:06:20
Speaker
We've talked to a few people on this show that are in ranching, but for those of us who you know don't really know what that entails, could you describe a little bit what your day-to-day is at Melton Ranch?
00:06:32
Speaker
My day-to-day is pretty monotonous, right? Like most ag jobs, mostly consists of moving the cattle in the mornings, so putting up temporary polywire fence, a single line, and then taking down from their old split.
00:06:47
Speaker
And then in the afternoons, I'm either right now building fence in the actual ranch itself. And that allows us to really move the cattle in a certain way really quickly without having to put a lot of stress on them, moving them far distances, but also like it allows us to target specific areas that we see that needs attention where it's like we think that grazing could be useful here or it's like,
00:07:13
Speaker
Well, we have a whole prairie dog town here that's on the other side of this paddock and we don't want we don't want to disturb this town or the grasses there because they're already heavily impacted from this colony. So we just basically drop the line and move them.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, and that's kind of typically how it goes. And then afternoons, if we are usually in the springtime and summer times and also the latter half of winter, we'll do multiple moves a day. So it could be an additional move. So two moves a day or three moves a day afterwards. But yeah, it's definitely seasonal.
00:07:48
Speaker
Here at this ranch, we graze year-round and then we also supplement feed in the winter and then also at key moments in the last trimester for the cattle in the spring, just as they're about to begin their calving season, just to give them an extra boost of energy and also protein and and minerals. But it's primarily a year-round grazing operation here.
00:08:13
Speaker
One of the most joyful things I could do is opening up a fresh paddock and hearing 300, 200 cattle eat all at once as soon as you open this gate for them. like That sound is such a unique sound of them pulling the grass and ripping it and then chewing at the same time. It's so satisfying to hear that knowing that you've one provided something that stimulates them mentally, right? You're you're making them compete by a high density grazing aspect. So you're stimulating them that way, but you're also giving them what they need. But you're also in the back of your mind knowing that you're doing something for the land that is actually beneficial, whether that means to provide nutrients through your manure and urine,
00:08:58
Speaker
or allowing the canopies to actually open up for the next year so that your prairie actually thrives and then it can invite your birds, your elks, your deers to come on in.
Evolving Relationship with Land Ownership
00:09:12
Speaker
Something that comes up quite often on this show is the topic of land. For a lot of farmers and ranchers that we've talked to, they dev develop like a very intricate and important relationship with land. And I'd be curious to hear for you coming from an urban background, what has your relationship to land been like and maybe how's it evolved as you've spent more and more time out in these rural communities?
00:09:37
Speaker
Land to me growing up has meant really everything. Growing up as an immigrant family, my parents were immigrants, they never owned land, they owned a house, but they never owned land itself. So being born into that and then in a community that land is so valuable because it provides generational wealth and a sense of place.
00:09:58
Speaker
And a sense of place to me means historical values in terms of before you even got there, but also what your family or your friends make of this place, the memories that you share on this piece of land. So that has shifted for me where it's now more about, because I don't really have a family, right? Like it's just me out here. I'm not really making these connections and in memories with anyone else besides my bosses.
00:10:25
Speaker
And so I can't really say that has happened for me, but it gives me memorable impressions of what I want in the future based on my experience, whether your friends come and visit me on this landscape and get to see how I guess I move around the landscape, but also create these memories with them, because I hope to share that later on with friends and family of my own that I end up on.
Community and Acceptance in Rural Montana
00:10:53
Speaker
So I want to ask you about the social part of your experience. What has it been like living in a very rural community in Montana? It's been quite interesting. I mean, my perception of this rural America, right, growing up in the city has been pretty hostile and downright fraught in terms of the perception of people in rural areas are like these loaves that kind of live out here that are a bunch of hicks. And um'm I'm quick to judge sometimes based on this upbringing of like,
00:11:27
Speaker
Damn, these people might be racist, but I have no clue until I actually speak to them. And when I actually do speak to my neighbors, right or my neighbors come up to me and and talk to me, like I find that, wow, like these people are actually pretty kind.
00:11:43
Speaker
and intelligent. And also we share a lot of different similarities and interests in our actual work and like why we're actually here on this piece of land, whether it's the fact that they're conventional farmers, regenerative farmers, right? Like at the end of the day, they all still care about the land they are actually on because they want it to be passed on.
00:12:07
Speaker
Whether their practice says different is a different topic, I guess, but it's there's a lot more in common than people believe. Within the regenerative and conventional farming aspect, but also like just the idea of like the city slicker coming to a rural area. People are pretty dang accepting it and want to lend a hand to you when when you actually ask, basically.
00:12:33
Speaker
theyre They're willing to ah open up their doors for you and they kind of expect the same from you. So when I visited you earlier this summer, we had a really interesting conversation that I'd love to just pick up for a second.
Origins of Cowboy Culture
00:12:46
Speaker
You were talking about this interesting mythos around the cowboy and around the kind of erased histories of the people that really made the cowboy and also the the fashion of the cowboy that we see today. I'd be curious for you to pick up on that a little bit.
00:13:02
Speaker
and talk about the real history behind the evolution of the cowboy and kind of how we see them today. I mean, I definitely think that this like Western wear and this Western attire, we we kind of image in our heads is also a farce because it's many aspects of it is like of this romanticized cowboy of like what we see in the mass media currently is very white there's a lot of cultural appropriation that occurs within this arena of work when you just think about the music of country music
00:13:39
Speaker
That comes from Africa banjo the guitar the beats of it like a lot of that stuff comes from Africa and I mean a lot of this culture has to give thanks to a lot of these essentially slave laborers and indentured servants that that came before them Because that's honestly who actually worked in this field who were the laborers It was a bunch of black and brown folks who did the work and basically created this entire culture. So from the music you're listening to, to the attire, right? and So also even even just like the pure sport and enjoyment of watching competition, right? Like of rodeos. Rodeos comes from the word rodeo.
00:14:25
Speaker
And it comes from South America, where these cowboys would get together after roundups from a cattle drive, and they would show off their skills, whether it was roping, passing batons to each other. A lot of this stuff is is from Spain, right, originally, even with the Vaqueros, who entered into South America, and then were also in the southwestern part of the U.S.
00:14:49
Speaker
And so, yeah, I mean, there's that aspect, but then like the hat, right? The cowboy hat comes from Ossovakaro culture. There was no such thing as a caromans like shape, right? At that time, it was just one tall peak and then a wide brim kind of deal. And a lot of it was unstructured because they didn't understand how to form this thing yet, or they just beat the hell out of this thing.
00:15:12
Speaker
So there's the hat, then you have like the scarf. ah The scarf comes from Keros also, but it also specifically comes from Hawaii. So Hawaii, ah the cowboy's there, they're called Pani Olos, and they're the first cowboys west of the missip Mississippi. And so like there's images out there that you can look up where it's these cowboys who are hauling cattle on ships and and fighting off sharks in the water of Hawaii.
00:15:41
Speaker
So it was Spain who sent Hawaii, I believe it was initially five cattle, and they basically had no clue what to do with these animals. It's an island, right? So animals usually don't get that large on this island. That's not really a thing. And so they had no clue how to take care of this thing. And so then they asked basically, yo, like,
00:16:03
Speaker
send us people who actually know how to take care of these things. And I think the first ranch where it actually started was called, it's called Parker Ranch. And that is where the Pawnee Low Olos basically started. It was Vaqueros that were sent over to basically train the Hawaiians.
00:16:22
Speaker
how to ranch and also graze these animals in a way where they can reproduce again and that's kinda where it started and then there's actually a funny story of, oh I can't say it, Pawnee Ollows going to actually Cheyenne, Wyoming to compete in a rodeo and it was like one of the early on rodeos And they outdressed everyone because they had the scars, they had the hats, they had tall boots on. They just looked really slick and everyone kind of made fun of them because they were brown. This was like early 1800s. At that time, this this idea of the rancher wasn't brown, it was white already.
00:17:01
Speaker
And so they came out and basically outroped everyone, won the competitions and just like blew out everyone out of the park. And it was like an overnight sensation. And that's kind of how Hawaii's like cowboy scene emerged. It was like mid 1700s when that actually started.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah, so that's kind of where this dress that we we wear, which is called the wild rag, right? Comes from this Hawaii. And then also like the florals that you see on scarves or shirts sometimes, right? Like that is also directly from Hawaii. They wore that because that's a part of their actual cultures. They wore these necklaces of flowers.
Advice for Urban to Rural Transition
00:17:45
Speaker
So I think that today more and more people that are interested in getting into agriculture or ranching come like you from an urban background. To finish us off I'd be curious to hear whether you have any parting words of wisdom to share with people interested in getting into agricultural ranching that like you don't come from a farming background and are kind of thinking about what their first steps should be and how to contend with some of the challenges that you've had to go through with respect to moving into a culture and a community that might be very foreign to where they grew up. I think my best advice for someone who didn't necessarily grow up in the ag world and who wants to enter in should take chances whether it's successful or not and being open-minded about hearing harsh realities in terms of like
00:18:42
Speaker
jokes about racism or sexism like even though that it shouldn't be tolerated right in this day and age but i think that people should take those opportunities knowing the fact that they're going to hear those kind of words and those kind of sentiments because you have the opportunity to educate people in that community or the people that you work for That's not to say that's your responsibility as a person of color or a female to educate people who are conducting themselves in that manner. right like That's not your responsibility necessarily, but you have the opportunity to actually make a difference and change how they view and interact with the world purely based on allowing them to make that mistake and you pointing it out to them.
00:19:28
Speaker
And I think like a lot of these communities, like they're ignorant to the fact that they shouldn't say a certain joke right because that has been okay in their community for their entire life. No one's ever given them the given them that vocabulary to say something else or not to think in that manner. No one's no one's ever challenged that.
00:19:49
Speaker
And I think for communities to change and for rural America to progress, right, people who are younger and of color or or different diverse backgrounds should be willing to move into these places and and kind of cater it in in how they want to see this in the future.
00:20:10
Speaker
Well, I know that's what you've been doing, Tyler, for the last 10 years of your career. And it takes a lot of courage. So it's been incredible to watch you do this. I think this is a great place to end. Thank you so much for doing this
Podcast Conclusion
00:20:27
Speaker
interview with me. And for anyone listening that's interested in getting into ranching, truly recommend reaching out to Tyler, an incredible person, lots of wisdom and experience to share with people. so Again, thank you so much, Tyler. Yeah, thank you.
00:20:46
Speaker
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexander Miller, who also wrote our theme song. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave us a comment on your podcast app of choice. As a new podcast, it's crucial for helping us reach more people. You can visit agrarianfuturespod.com to join our email list for a heads up on upcoming episodes and bonus content.