The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #253 - Brittany Masters & Jonathan Sepp

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon:
Friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I'm about to have. I feel like it is a long time coming. The backstory on today's conversation, quite a while ago now, I don't even know, maybe a year ago or so. I love listening to Rob Wolf's podcast. He's a friend. I've had him on the show multiple times. He's also my personal hero and sort of the reason I'm doing what I'm doing, but that's a whole tangent. But in any case, he was talking a lot and continues to talk a lot about an awesome ranch in Montana called Roam Free where they raise bison. Although I'm wondering if it's bison or like bison, bison, bison, or I have a lot of questions about bison. But in any case, he was talking about this incredible ranch and at the time I think they had an incentive going on with Costco. And so I reached out to Rob because I wanted to help maybe promote the whole Costco thing. And so I had a call with one of the founders, Brittany Masters and it was just so incredible talking to her. I learned just in our short call so much that I had no idea about when it comes to bison, to regenerative agriculture, to so many things that we will touch on in today's conversation. So I was like, can you just please come on this show so we can talk about all the things? I'm so excited now to be here today with Brittany as well as John Sepp. They both founded the ranch and I have just so many questions for them. So Jonathan and Brittany, thank you so much for being here.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. This is a great opportunity for us as well.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I'm really excited and I just learned so many things. So you're in Camas Prairie, Montana. I asked what city and you said that there's like 30 people there. So I can't even, I'm trying to like envision what it looks like. How far away is the closest, like, civilization?

Brittany Masters:
It's maybe 80 miles.

Melanie Avalon:
80 Miles.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, it's typically where we'll go do shopping and that kind of stuff you know that's really any sizable grocery store gas station is about that distance but Camas Prairie where we're at is a massive basin it's about i would guess three hundred thousand acres all put together And yeah, there's i think last time they did a census there's somewhere between 30 and 50 people that live down in this big basin that was created during the ice age when a very large inland lake that was held together by an ice wall i don't know if it was a lake or a sea the Missoulian sea lake Missoula anyway this very large body of water as temperature started warming this ice wall broke apart and a massive torrential flood of water that lasted many years washed over montana out to the sea and in doing so created very unique shapes in the landscape and mountains and valleys and one of these big valleys is Camas Prairie and You know it's probably the only thing it's known for is just this unique shape that the land has out there a lot of geology students come out and study that every year and you can just because it's not developed you can still see how this water eroded in such a unique way.

Melanie Avalon:
That is so cool. And now I'm getting flashbacks to my call with Brittany. And I feel like at the beginning of our call, I drilled her for like 15 minutes about, I was like 80 miles, I'm like, how do you live? And what do you do? And what's the bathroom situation? And oh my goodness, okay. So many things, that is so cool. So how did you find this area?

Jonathan Sepp:
I moved here in 2013 when I exited the military, I had been working in Montana doing some survival related stuff from what my time in the Air Force. And so I was just familiar with Montana and as a whole had been on and off living here part time in the later years in the Air Force. So as I was searching for land because I knew I wanted to exit and be involved in raising bison, I was looking for affordable pieces and that's how I ended here. Where we're at specifically is within a reservation here and so land prices are incredibly affordable based on the remoteness and lack of development and you know just somebody's willingness and ability to get in and make something out of it.

Melanie Avalon:
I just have to know, how often do you go into town? Pretty, pretty often.

Jonathan Sepp:
every week every week we drive really fast miles an hour so it doesn't take me about an hour

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. Well, that's not too bad. Okay. You knew you wanted to, you know, raise bison, which it seems like a very specific thing to know that you want to do. Like, do you just have an epiphany one day? Is it something, were you raised in any way around this type of work? Where did the interest come from?

Jonathan Sepp:
No, I wasn't raised in it. My dad was in the military to growing up. My mom was a school teacher. And almost every year, my family moved 14 times in 18 years before I left the house. And every year that we would move, we would usually it was coast to coast, we would drive, it's just the nature of being in the military. And so as a kid, growing up in that environment, my family, we'd be driving coast to coast, inevitably every summer. And my birthday was always in August, which would be moving time. And it just became like a birthday tradition that we'd stop off in Montana and South Dakota, and look at bison, it just was the only thing that was there. And what I grew up doing, and I had a lot of fond memories doing that from a very, very young age. And so it was just what I counted on. And somehow that stuck with me that I always said later in life, I'm going to raise bison. And that's how it started.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, and how'd you meet Brittany?

Jonathan Sepp:
We can back way up but starting a ranch is extremely difficult even in an affordable place like canistery and so i was working multiple jobs after i left the military to try to pay for the ranch as i was starting it and i met her. I want a fencing company on the side was taking a break in washington and i met her on one of those breaks from fencing and the rest is history i met her there and ironically when we met she was about to take a sabbatical from her work at bowing. To go take fence out in patagonia in the national park in south america and i thought that was so funny i said you know i have more than enough fence for you to do at home and anyway we formed a relationship she came out and little did she know she hated fencing.

Brittany Masters:
I've been fencing ever since.

Jonathan Sepp:
That's how we met and that's how everything got started.

Brittany Masters:
Yeah, I came a little bit after the work, you know, the hard work of building the ranch was done.

Melanie Avalon:
Like if the power goes out type situation, like does that happen sometimes? And you like, just what is it like? It just happened. It was panic.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, it happens all the time out here. And interestingly, like, you know, we have multiple plots of property, one of the, you know, I guess you could call it our flagship branch, we had never had power on it. So that just received power. It took us years to be able to trench that in and bring power finally to it. But I'm not planning on it being consistent and regular, you know, just storms and a lot of things happen out here. So when you're that far away, it's just you're just used to it. It's part of it.

Brittany Masters:
Yeah, we have a few generators and you know that that help out but our main house when the power goes out I go to town

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, backup generators. Yeah. Or yeah, you just have to be prepared for it, you know, and just be ready to live with it.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm just, I'm just so in awe. I feel like I'm not resilient with the elements or anything. So this is like a whole nother world for me. And speaking up, cause you mentioned, you know, multiple ranches and I was reading, I think on your site about how, so does the size of your ranch change?

Jonathan Sepp:
Absolutely all the time so we have least ground we have own ground we have sister ranches we have some custom grazers we work with and we manage all those different systems you know under one roof but yes it's constantly changing and fluctuating in size based on all.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so and going back to the bison, and I said this in the very beginning, but so what is bison, bison, bison? Is that different than bison?

Jonathan Sepp:
So bison, bison, bison, three times over is the scientific name for bison. And actually, excuse me. It's just bison, bison twice over, not to get, not to get too confusing. Three times over that it can't, that comes from the native that that was a native Cheyenne expression where you'd say that three times to describe the animal. And that's where the scientific name comes from. It's like saying canine for dog. And they, they, the sound for that, that word came from what native Cheyenne, their impression of their hoof prints as they would run across the Prairie sound sounded like. So that's how that word became a thing. And now we've shortened that all the way down to bison or buffalo. Buffalo can be used interchangeably. People get that confused too. It's just a colloquial word for bison or bison, bison, which it's like saying, you know, dog versus canine.

Melanie Avalon:
Is that onomatopoeia, where the word sounds like what it is? Maybe not. I don't know. I think that's a phrase for it. So, so I'm just going to call them bison for the sake of clarity. So bison and Buffalo, same thing.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, and Buffalo, you know, is just kind of like how the word dog came about comes from French trappers that had settled Western America very early on, you know, they would see bison on the Prairie for the first time. And, you know, they termed them as a version of a cow shortened, which in French, and I'm going to butcher this. It's labouf is how you say a cow. And that got turned into buff, and then eventually buffalo. And that's where that word comes from. People think you can't use that to describe an American bison. But that's not true. There is an African water buffalo, which is a different animal altogether. But you you still can use the word buffalo or American buffalo to describe a bison that's appropriate and okay.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm so excited. I was literally just about to ask about the water buffalo. Okay, this is so great. I want to compare them to cows as well. But before that, their location, because I'm just remembering now, I completely forgot about this. I grew up in Memphis, actually. And there were buffalo or bison in one of the parks that we had there. Are they everywhere in the or where are they in the US?

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, in North America, you know, there's some in Mexico, United States and Canada, you know, and the United States and Canada holds, you know, a majority of, you know, we there's close to a half a million now, which is way different. We used to have 80 million of them pre settlement. And then in 1871, we were down to less than 300 less than 300. Yes. And so now we're back up to about a half million, almost all of them are privately owned. So about, you know, 99% are privately owned. And they're split pretty evenly between Canada and the United States and those numbers.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. Okay. I do have more questions about that. But so going back to the different animals. So how do they compare to cattle?

Jonathan Sepp:
You know, they're both bovines, but that's pretty much where the Comparisons end I guess in my book and i'm you know, really specific when i'm looking at You know differences in animals, but I can just tell you the main overarching differences You know maybe to even back up further. Why don't we just talk really quickly about where cows come from bison have Been around forever. In fact, they're the oldest Still living land mammal in North America. They're the only existing land mammal from the ice age that's still around So they've been around for a very very long time here in North America cows comparatively are the original GMO, right? They didn't exist in nature You know past a certain, you know, let's call it and they've been evolving for a long time with human intervention But you know, they've significantly involved evolved in the last five thousand years But prior to that really there were different bovines out there that people bred To create what you would think of as the modern cow today and so Just like you know, you think about people breeding dogs and you look at that evolution as they got smaller and teacup sizes You know their brains shrunk and their joints became weaker And if you were to put, you know a poodle little poodle outside now It would die quickly if left alone in the wilderness, right? They're not they need to be tended to and so that's you know cows are a domesticated species. Just like dogs are there Bison are not domesticated. And so physically mentally they're very vastly different animals, although they're both classified as bovines and It's the way that they eat the way they walk there are different levels of aggression. Their intelligence is vastly different bison are Second maybe only to elephants in terms of the animal kingdom when it comes to intelligence on earth Even just like the susceptibility for disease, you know There's pages and pages and documents and forever of things that cows can die from Bison have a very few very small list of things that can actually affect them And ironically most of those diseases came from cows and so they they have a they're they're kind of like not to sound this will sound bad, but I like to compare them to being the The cockroach of the animal kingdom because they're real survivors, right? You know if you think about a cockroach at then times a nuclear blast could go off and they'll they'll keep living Bison are going to be the same way. They can they can survive a lot because of all these Adaptations that they've developed Since the ice age

Melanie Avalon:
So was that severely dwindling population when it was 300, was that because of the, wasn't there a great massacre?

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, it wasn't just that there were lots of factors that brought them down to that, but that was a large portion of it In fact, what really started bison numbers dwindling? Was when people were settling the west and manifest destiny They brought a bunch of cows over because they were easier to control you could put them behind a fence You could move it to where you wanted it to go. They weren't really going to run away And you know bison were not that way but with that brought This lit these diseases that ended up not just affecting bison But vast populations of wildlife within the united states in a very short period of time So bison were just happened to be a part of that list but elk and wolves bears a lot of large numbers of species during this great transplantation period died out and didn't completely die out but their numbers dwindled and they suffered because they were not prepared for disease that modified animals bring And so of course on top of that. Yes, we certainly there was a historic vote That congress made I believe it was in the 1860s maybe 70s to Pronounce bison as an extinct species and that was purely political to say that you know the the Settlement of the west was complete man has won We have wiped out this animal that seemed to be a nuisance to us and replaced it with what we want And so if you even see one again, we want to make sure that they're extinct as our mark and statement on it That was our government did that and Of course that didn't happen. There was a few You know heroes during that time that thought that was stupid and did their best to preserve the species You know, in fact our ranch now our main flagship ranch exists on the singular Guy that that back during that time saved the largest herd Since he has passed away. This is the first time that bison have been back since that time But his name was michelle pablo that gets real deep in the history, but he was a um, a half tribal rancher that Because he was exempt From leasing laws and federal government during early formations of reservations where we're at now was able to raise a significant number of bison Back to about 800 head here in montana and most bison in national parks and wherever you go in the united states Where canada are really due to his efforts here

Melanie Avalon:
I remember when I was talking on the phone with Brittany, she was saying something about how is the raising of bison practice like what you guys do, is that keeping the population alive or helping it grow?

Jonathan Sepp:
Absolutely the you know we because the species is almost exclusively privately owned if it weren't for private ranchers say all private ranches when array when away right now in their animals and you just depended on what's in a few national parks the species would die out within a generation or two the genetic bottleneck is way too small and there's just not very many animals. And in my opinion and estimation those animals are not even wild although a lot of people kind of complete the two and think yellowstone bison wild that's what's preserving it good job government it couldn't be more opposite than that it's really private individuals and ranchers. That have bison in natural herds not with millions of tourists, you know, influencing their breeding and grazing habits. That are doing the real efforts of keeping those genetics alive and without that and the wide genetic material that we have now they wouldn't exist if we stop ranching them and of course you need to pay for that so commerce is saving those animals.

Melanie Avalon:
Can you elaborate a little bit? I'm really interested in what you said about them not being wild in the national parks. So how are they handling them in the parks?

Jonathan Sepp:
You know and i i'm not trying to stretch anything i would just say there's a very hard line view that the only wild bison left or in yellowstone and although although the park allows animals to predate on them they do round them up they do handle them they do sort them and separate them just like we do on a ranch but the main difference being you know they're not allowed to leave the park perimeter you know as soon as they do they're either hazed back in or hunted at different times of the year so they have a pretty strict perimeter they're basically running what we're running as a ranch just with massive amounts millions of people worth of human interaction and that changes in animals behavior versus our animals we interact once a year if i can help it to you know during our roundup and even then we we try to minimize that and not process animals if we can help it so the behavior of the animals the way they breed their strength the way that they choose mates in there creates stronger breeds outside of that in my opinion than inside national parks but if you but from you know a far away perspective emotionally that's not usually how people think about things

Melanie Avalon:
That's so interesting. And I mean, clearly this is a really important tenant to all of this and you literally call your ranch Rome free. So to clarify, because we started the beginning talking about your history with fencing. Are there any fences or anything or do they literally Rome anywhere?

Jonathan Sepp:
They can run free but not too free we should put an answer we actually really we have a lot of fence way more ten times amount you know ten times i would say what would be average on a ranch if i was running cows or anything else in there And it's not just to control and contain the bison it's to concentrate graze them in a pattern that would mimic how wolves used to move bison before humans settled to affect better grasses in a better environment and rather than turning wolves out, although we have plenty of wolves all over the property that still chase the bison around we. You know intervene just with our piece of ground to make sure that we're optimizing them to regeneratively regrow the best native grasses that we can possibly grow. Which in turns end up ends up benefiting the bison as they return to eat that so we use it as a control method to mimic that environment without being able to access the entire environment and do that we're limited by landscape always.

Melanie Avalon:
So cool. So wolves are a predator of bison.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yes, wolves and grizzly bears.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, and you have grizzly bears. Yes.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, they do. Only a couple of times have they ever interacted and they're actually fairly respectful, the ones we have on our ranch. Sal's will come over every year and then up and the ranch is kind of one big mountain. They then up in the sides of this mountain up there and they will pick off some that might have been bitten by a snake or something now and then, but that's pretty rare and when they wake up and after they've had a cub, they typically leave our ranch to go to a summer range. So they don't hang out all year and during the winter, they're sleeping about 70% of the time.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh wow, okay. The grizzlies and the wolves, do they only go after bison that are... Do they go after like a healthy bison or do they go after ones that are kind of struggling?

Jonathan Sepp:
You know it's just nature though any predators gonna go after easiest food so young ones newborns sick ones really old ones or ones that are standing outside the herd even if it's larger don't try to get that and you know it's just. Whatever the easiest picking is that's what nature will typically you know accommodate.

Melanie Avalon:
Have you had any experiences? There's always those videos of the bears showing up in people's living apartments and stuff. Have you had any close encounters?

Jonathan Sepp:
the time. Really? Yeah, all the time. Predators, I mean, not just have I had lots of bear encounters, wolves have zero interaction with people in zero interest. They're only targeted animals. And typically, they chase the elk, not the bison, although they have gotten a few of our bison out here. Really, most of my close encounters have either been with bears or mountain lions, a mountain lion, I should say. I almost got eaten this winter in front of Brittany. But I cried. Yeah. Yeah. It was a case of mutual misunderstanding. I think it didn't recognize that I was a person. And I obviously didn't know it was in a tree. So, you know, we both escaped unharmed.

Melanie Avalon:
whoa, okay, that's crazy. Okay, so I'm, it's so fascinating though what you're saying about, you know, mimicking the natural patterns from the wolves with the grass and all the things, because I know there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of confusion out there when it comes to so many things with farming, just the effect on the environment, even when you talked about the grass, but like people will talk about like the water consumption of raising animals versus like a plant -based system. What are your thoughts on that, on the water usage?

Jonathan Sepp:
Everybody has an agenda. And when I read those statistics, it's just all emotion, zero fact, you know, they'll bend statistics to make it fit their profile. And before you even get into that, even if you wanted to raise a vegan food system where we live, it would be impossible. This is one of the driest places where we're at, Camas Prairie is the driest place in Montana, and one of the driest places in the West, believe it or not, even though we're in Montana, and you couldn't raise crops here, you can't grow them, the soil doesn't support it, the landscape doesn't support it. So really, the only thing that you can have is an intelligent razor that selecting grasses and willing to go where nothing else is to get that. So that eliminates and really in any, you know, plant based food system, a majority of the West, you shouldn't be growing a lot of things that people are growing where they are anyway with piped water and lots of infrastructure that's moving that there. So, you know, when I look at those statistics, they never account for that. The other thing about those statistics is usually their water consumption is based on the amount of rainfall on a large piece of area. It's not about how much water the animals drinking. And it's not like the bison drinks 1000 gallons of water and retains that it leaves and goes back into the environment and waters your grass. It's not the case with vegetables that say lettuce that you're growing that is accumulated in that head and then shipped to market. So a lot of times it's just because I feel like people are trying to bolster a case because of insecurities to justify a position, they will completely morph and flip statistics of where they feel insecure about that. And so I don't tend to get into that a lot with people. I kind of I've looked at it enough a long time ago to know, you know, this there's there's reality and living it and being here. And then there's people that don't understand it that just they want the emotional snippet to support their case. So.

Brittany Masters:
The last part of that too is just water retention and water quality you know if you if you don't have any grazing animals and you're just taking from the land you're not gonna be able to retain the soil is not going to be healthy enough to retain water which hurts your watersheds so it comes full circle.

Jonathan Sepp:
Exactly. Yeah. And monocropping is the worst thing you could possibly do for the environment, particularly in the West, whether even if you're just growing dry cereal crops, it really has a negative effect versus any type of grass -based system, which is what's supposed to be here. That's truly what retains moisture on the ground. Grass retains 30% more moisture than any other plant in ground cover. And so when I hear people hemming and hawing, I just kind of roll my eyes because it's just people conveniently skip over the biggest fact right there at the beginning and write these detailed scientific papers missing the main fact, you know, where they omit that to make their evidence seem more clear.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, thank you for that. And I think for me, just stepping back probably the one of the things that seems it just seems overwhelmingly obvious to me, because people will talk about with raising animals, you know, not killing animals, they have a big issue with that. But if you just look at, like you mentioned, the monochromping system, all of the life that I assume you're wiping out doing that, like insects and rodents and like, I feel like you're just wiping out a ton of stuff. But we just kind of ignore that, or that camp kind of ignores that little fun fact.

Jonathan Sepp:
And I mean they're entitled to do that it's when like government you know or science wants to start formulating legislation or hard line opinions around that is where I'll draw the line. But you know the emotional vegan is entitled to their opinion on that and all that is is i find typically because they're afraid of their own mortality and so they find they do so much. Mental gymnastics to try to get away from that rather than accepting the fact that everything will die and something has to die for something else to live. They you know they they spend so much time to get away from that it kind of like they feel like good about themselves to filter and push this out kind of on everybody else it doesn't affect us out here, but i can imagine you know all of your grocery buyers in california. Where you know who are living on in this kind of emotional state without reality are making your decisions as to what they're putting on the shelf for you that would be very frustrating to me.

Melanie Avalon:
It's just so intense and emotionally heavy and this is why I'm so grateful for people like you doing what you're doing and helping to spread more awareness about everything. I'm curious, because we've been mentioning the government a lot in this conversation. Well, I've always thought like in a parallel universe, what would have happened if the system had been set up to benefit with taxes and everything, like the regenerative type of system versus the plant-based, the cereal grains, all of that, would it be sustainable? Like, is it sustainable? If you could just like flip a switch and make all the farms and everything in the US regenerative and similar to what you're doing, would that work? Would that be sustainable?

Jonathan Sepp:
I guess, what do you mean by sustainable? You mean like, would it be, would there be enough food? I haven't done the big calculation on that. I mean, you have urban sprawl, which has really affected a lot of things. So you'd have to look at your calculated land mass, but would you get higher efficiencies a hundred percent? You would, would, would you have a greater biodynamic environment that ends up affecting everything else around it in a positive way to create even more efficiency? Absolutely. You could say that. Would it, would you say that would it be enough to support absolutely everybody? I think it would, but urban sprawl is another problem that we've dealt with for a long time, you know, and when you take up valuable range land, and we've seen this a lot, just having, just in the last few years in Montana of every person from a coast suddenly wanting to move here and buy their 10 acres and, you know, put their mark on it and exit that out of a ranching structure, that's pretty devastating long -term. You don't ever get that ground back and that, that has a vastly greater negative effect than I would say, just the method of raising even, or maybe at least equal to, so that's something that we've experienced here and it has all sorts of ramifications of cost increase on land, you know, inflations and then inability to, for ranching families to continue to succeed here, whether you're raising beef or buy some pork chickens, it doesn't matter, you know, that eventually affects you, even if it's not just the lack of land, it's the lack of ability to afford. And so those are kind of, it's compounded problems on top of, I feel like what we are already dealing with. So would everybody switching regenerative solve all of that? If everybody took their lawn out in the United States and started growing their own food or sharing an area for animals to graze all of that grass, you could, I could guarantee you fix all of the food problems there, but it's not practical. And I don't see that ever happening.

Melanie Avalon:
The issue with the people moving in, they're like starting farms and getting land or they're just getting land.

Jonathan Sepp:
And typically what's happened in the West here, and not just Montana, but Idaho, South Dakota, anywhere that's beautiful, Colorado, yeah.

Brittany Masters:
Colorado, that's pretty a good example

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, people will all do the same thing. They come from a concrete jungle. They say wow, this is beautiful I like the view of the mountains. I want this to be my spot. I'll pay any amount of money They go to a rancher that's going to retire. He's like hell. That's a lot Have at it. I'm about to die. Anyway, i'm going to go to fiji. They buy it They chop it up sell it off to the rest of their friends It no longer is branched and they put a plastic fence around it and tear up the grass native soils And and put in what they want in there, you know some type of sod Which doesn't give you the same root equivalent and then it doesn't get grazed and they mechanically cut it and all of that goes to waste So rather than converting Starches to protein you're you don't get any of that anymore. You don't even get the starch. You don't even get that benefit You're not even putting corn in, you know, it's all going away. So that's that's what i'm discussing

Melanie Avalon:
That's so interesting because I feel like I know, I feel like I know a lot of people that are tangentially, I know what you're talking about this concept and it never, it never occurred to me that that would have negative ramifications. So I'm just like really thinking about that right now. That's so interesting.

Jonathan Sepp:
And ranching needs to happen in bulk and volume. You cannot, regenerative rotational grazing, you need volume for that to occur. You need a volume of animals, 30 ,000 hoof pounds per acre minimum, and you need to be able to have enough ground to rest that for 400 days. That's significant volume. You need thousands of acres, really, to be regenerative, depending on what your soil type is and your grasses and moisture, right? But in this area, you need thousands of acres. In Texas, you need, you know, some tens of thousands of acres because of how dry it is. So you know, I always like when you see somebody's like, Hey, in Texas, I've bought 300 acres and I'm regeneratively grazing that I kind of roll my eyes a little bit at it because it's not getting the rest that it needs. It requires so much input. It goes against the principles of less input of using the animals to do the work, setting up the infrastructure by giving it enough rest. And that's getting harder to do to find volume pieces as people are chopping up ground.

Melanie Avalon:
So if a person was listening and they wanted to move to Montana because it's beautiful and maybe experiment with raising some things, like is there any way they can do that and not have a negative effect?

Jonathan Sepp:
It's a free country and listen i thought for our country so i believe in that too people are free to do what they want but if you wanna like make an ethically good decision because those things that matter for you i would say. Don't go and chop up a ranch you know don't move to a place that's a new subdivision of a ranch that they're just you get twenty acres and now i get my twenty acres and i'm gonna put some you know. A cow or goats or whatever on it and think you're gonna do that it doesn't work that way i would shy somebody away from that i'd say if you're trying to be ethically responsible build up and you know stay within a limit of a city and you'll have more of that to enjoy. By being able to in short distance in order go visit those things but i'm not also gonna control anybody's decision if that's their dream and they have you know this picture in their mind and a lot of people really romanticize the west and they kind of want to participate in that when they get money and live out there the romantic fantasy i'm not gonna stop that either but you know if that was something they cared about ethically i would warn him against it.

Brittany Masters:
I think there's also a concept you know that hasn't been done much but i've heard a few people talking about it where you do have these home subdivisions but the fencing is planned and such you got all of the pastures around the houses are available for one grazing unit.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah like a co -op a co -op you know subdivision we've seen those becoming popular but again i like around big sky i still roll my eyes at that because they're so tiny and it's like they just put baby goats there for to like get people to buy overpriced land.

Brittany Masters:
There is a concept in which if you really wanted to make it work, the house is a bit in the way, but that's not the majority of the issue. It's the 20 acres that are all sectioned off by a fence that doesn't allow grazing animals to move between the fence lines or wildlife for that matter. So there is a potential for that.

Jonathan Sepp:
Definitely. It's better than the alternative. Absolutely

Melanie Avalon:
I'm so, so fascinated by this conversation because I'm just thinking back. I recently interviewed, his name is Michael cumer and he has a supplement line. He actually lives in Atlanta, but he was talking all about homesteading because he homesteads in Atlanta. And I was just really fascinated by that whole world and like everything that he raises and it feeds his family and all the things. And my natural evolution, whenever I've had a conversation like that has always been like, well, the, you know, even better than that would be, you know, going out to like Montana and having an actual ranch, but now I'm like, okay, so many things I never even thought about this is really fascinating to me. Wow. Okay. And then I'm really curious. So going back to this terminology and everything. So, you know, roam free, when we buy things at the grocery store, there's often all of these labels, like free range, grass fed, all the things. So how many of those are actually regulated? What should people be looking for in your packaging? How do you label it?

Brittany Masters:
Yeah, so this is an interesting one. I feel I got into the food world really, really, I was very green. I knew really nothing about the food world when we got into this. I had only looked at it from a consumer standpoint from a paleo person. I was an early paleo person back in the day and had really felt like from the outside looking in that all of these new brands were just doing the right thing. Look how many awesome companies there are out there really changing the food system. Then when I got into the food business, we started our company in 2017. I still sort of had that naive perspective. I learned very quickly that even the natural food space, organic food space, whatever you want to call it, is pretty much owned by all of the large conglomerate players. All of the emerging brands that are getting into this space are doing it with the hopes of being sold to a large conglomerate. The goal is still very much the same. It's distribution. Get on the shelf and make your money later when you sell the company. With that comes, you're competing with really, really large, usually foreign national corporations and the government is beholden to them as well. There isn't a lot of regulation around labeling, whether it's environmental labeling, humane welfare labeling, anything that goes on that package, especially when it comes to the USDA, it's not really that regulated and you can pay to play, so to speak. We continue to put stuff on our label because the consumer expects that they'll be able to look at the package and determine all of the benefits that they're buying. We really just encourage people to know who the farmer rancher is that is making your food. That's really the only way, unfortunately, is to do a little bit of your own research. Actually, just recently in June, we're opening up our ranch for people to come stay and see and experience how their food is raised because we think it's one of the most important things for people who want to participate in the food system to do.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, I definitely definitely want to learn more about that hands -on experience. Before that, some more questions about the labeling. So because I've been I've been really, really haunted by this question. And it actually comes up, you know, it comes up a bit like in my Facebook groups and things, which is what you just spoke about, basically, because if you go to, I'm trying to think what chains are the most national, like Publix, Kroger, Ralph's, you know, grocery stores, Walmart, you'll see these brands that have all these labels about being organic and grass -fed and all the things. Do you think that movement, I know you just spoke about it, but just to clarify a little bit more, do you, I know it's just your opinion, but in your opinion, that movement, is it having any beneficial effect on the system or is it a net negative?

Jonathan Sepp:
I don't think it's a net negative. I think the intention is good behind what people wanted, and I always think these movements start with something good. I think inevitably, the ideal is captured and turned into a monetary device, organic is the best example of that started with a group of people that said this is pretty bad stuff for putting on fruits and vegetables that were growing. Like if I have to wear a suit to spray all of this, why would I eat this afterwards? And so let's find a way to do this without that. That's how it started. And now, you know, like, even though I could be organic certified, it would cost me, I don't even know, I'm just going to throw a number. It's probably 50 to $70 ,000 to put that label on my package. And when you're already running thin margins, and, you know, high volume and outputs, you'd really have to make that label work. And so big food companies do that, they do put it on there. And they do use those labels. And by the way, I'll also back up and say, people that own those labels are equally as guilty, if not way more guilty than the food companies that purchase the labels. For instance, whoever owns organic, I don't know who they are. They're probably awful people, because they've totally sold out, right? Like now it's just do you give them cash, so I can put that on there to get an incrementally higher sales number in such a volume. That is, mentally, what's wrong with it that although it starts a good way, people end up selling out to that. And that's why when we formulated our brand, we said, we got we have people all day long knocking on our door, put this label on put that on it means this, you should be a part of this movement. We don't do that. We want the brand to stand alone and separate for people to seek that out and say, No, I, I can go and visit their ranch. I know what they're doing. I know where this comes from, I can meet them and I can go and look at it for myself anytime that I want. And verify those things versus just zero regulation and trusting that because the company paid the money that they're doing that, which more often than not is not true.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, this is so fascinating. So I'm an entrepreneur, I have a supplement line, so nothing related to food. Actually, my next supplement is a food like product, but it's still a supplement. Point being, I'm so, so intrigued and fascinated by bringing a product to market and labeling and the, you know, communication with the consumer and all of this stuff. So, so the evolution of your, of your brand, when you, well, first of all, when you first started, how did you sell to consumers? Like, how did you find an audience?

Brittany Masters:
Yeah, so we did it probably the most non -traditional way. Obviously now, looking back, it's kind of funny. But we decided we only had a handful of animals at the time when we started our brand. And the goal was just to sell the animals that we had on our home ranch. And so we made a line of bison bites fairly quickly. I mean, how long did it take us? Maybe six months from beginning to having the packages done. And we did it all local. So we had a local smoke house. I did the design and packaging. And we did the recipes in our little kitchen here. And we actually built out an Airstream trailer that was part exhibit, part retail space. And we took it on a tour, like 40 ,000 miles in the first summer. And we just stopped at every single place that we could. It took us 40 ,000 miles in a few months. But we sold out of everything that we had. And we kind of came back to the ranch and we're like, okay, better grow the ranch because we are out of bison. So that's how that started. And we got a ton of feedback, obviously, from folks. And we changed our recipes a little bit. Since then, have expanded into other co -packers and whatnot. But that was sort of the first, I don't know, first six months of our business. And it was fun and incredibly exhausting.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. Okay. That's so cool. So it was when you were doing that traversing in the, um, wait, what'd you say you're in? You're in like a.

Brittany Masters:
It was a converted Airstream trailer. We found it in a like a junkyard like 2500 bucks or something. Now you can't find an Airstream for, you know, less than 30 at least. And John basically done in a friend of of his, you know, popped a big huge hole in it and completely redid it inside and out. And we turned it into a bison exhibit talked all about, you know, the benefits of bison for the land for the for human health. And then at the end of this really cool we hadn't we even had remember that we had like a 3d experience of the ranch.

Jonathan Sepp:
We did. Yeah, we went all out. Yeah, we basically it was an educational experience. And then at the end, you could purchase our product. And we were able to go to a lot of places, museums, schools, concerts, parking lots, you name it that we would give free tours. And then if you wanted to buy at the end, you could we'd ask the customer to try some, and then we'd use that feedback of like, I didn't like the taste or different price points of what sat well with the consumer and what we could swallow to make sure that we were going to be able to still make money at the end of the day with the ranch and the venture. We did all of that because ranching just by itself and selling the animals is very, very, very hard to make any money unless you inherit your operation. And walking into a purchased operation on our own. When I met Brittany, the reason I had some two jobs on the side was because I didn't think I was going to be able to make the ranch work. I actually had built everything over a number of years and had put it up for sale. When I met Brittany, she was the one that convinced me not to and said, rather than giving your animals away to a brand, you know, which I used to sell to a brand that is, I won't name who they are there. They like to have this image of doing what we are doing now. And we saw the power of that, but I was giving them all the authenticity and the value behind that in animals for nothing. And Brittany coming from Boeing and being a brand marketer, she said, we need to retain and own our own brand that allows us to keep our own margin in it. And that's really the genesis of how we got started because when we met, I told her I'm selling this and she had come out to the ranch and we were fencing and she's like, you can't sell this. This is so beautiful and peaceful and amazing and all this work. Let's kind of save it and grow it instead. So that's how we came up with the whole brand and roam free and just like the tenants of what we were going to do, which was ranch first, brand second, but the brand retains the value and the story behind it. And we're not going to give that away anymore.

Melanie Avalon:
This is so cool. So before it's possible, people were maybe eating your products, but not realizing it under this other brand that you sold to, would sell to.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, I'd sell sell it to him through a third party intermediary who would just kind of like take batches of animals they'd Process him and they'd go into you know, somebody else's Products and they mix that with whatever they could get at the time, you know Probably putting who knows what else in there and that also felt like a travesty that you do all this work And then at the end of the day, you know, it just gets mixed in with Whatever they decided to put in to their products and that was disappointing also to see just from a personal level not You know anything else included?

Melanie Avalon:
I've thought about that concept a little bit, like I'll go to Whole Foods, for example, and they'll have the packaged meat in the refrigerators where you can see the brand and everything, and normally it's these larger brands, but they'll have the meat counter and it'll say local, I guess I could be asking them where it came from specifically. Basically I've thought about the concept of like, am I getting the jackpot here? Like, is this actually a really amazing farm ranch doing something or is it not? So yeah, this is so, so fascinating. So when you did the tour, what most resonated with people about everything you were doing and also what did you learn about what people wanted to actually eat?  

Jonathan Sepp:
I think just what resonated was that it was real. They're like, you actually are raising these animals and doing this. They like that. They could tell it was homemade. And something within that echoed within the consumer to say it's not a large food corporation that has built something to mimic the look like it's somebody that's doing this, which is typically what you do see out there, even in the bison world. But it really, they really are doing it. And so I think that's what people liked and resonated with. And we like to be able to share that stuff. So it was, we were able to also just develop a stronger core group of people that wanted to be reliable customers with us and give us continued feedback. And we have customers that have stayed with us that byproduct every month since the time that we started our business all that time ago. I don't know how many large food corporations can say that they would keep in touch with customers and have that same level of following with actual human connection that's going on. So, but I think that's what got us started and it helped grow it to a certain point that, and we weren't making money at the beginning. Our idea was we'll get to a certain size that will make money. We wanted to build and price the product like the consumer was gonna buy it as if it was made in a massive factory affordably, even though we were losing money year over year with the intent that long -term we grow into where we're at right now. And now we've reached that point and it's definitely more stable and realistic in terms of like, do we have income and cashflow to continue expanding and growing? And we're finally at that point, but it's taken. Seven years. Yeah, seven, eight years to do that. You know, that's about how long it takes. So when you see a food brand pop up and like, you know, and Whole Foods and it seems like this amazing story and they're, you know, suddenly crushing it up all of a sudden, I'm always wary of that. I just don't believe that story. There's no ways to cut corners in this. There just isn't. The animals only grow so fast. The land only grows so fast and you can only grow a business so quickly. So when I see that stuff, I like to investigate a little bit further. And every once in a while you do find a brand that like they figure something out and they grow quick. They find a product that's available fast, but we don't have a forest to cut down. We only have a few trees that we have to trim branches off of. So that's the reality of ice. And then you can only grow so quick with that and grow so large with that.

Melanie Avalon:
So when I first connected with you guys and you were doing the Costco incentive, did Costco come to you or do you guys go to Costco for that?

Brittany Masters:
We knocked on Costco's door for seven years. Yeah. Yeah. No, we we definitely You know pursued that that relationship and and we did so because they have a great model, I mean they You know, they they are Costco so they do have a you know high expectations but they take a very very very small margin just enough to basically get it On the floor and they're great partners to have you know, they don't they don't ask you to do more You know something beyond your means and they they do believe in brands, you know Making a fair cut of the products they sell. So yeah, there's a good relationship

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah it's a very good relationship and it's different like when we very first started we before we started knocking at costco we knocked it all the natural organic stores and. You know those stores are like vegas casinos they don't build themselves right you know that money has to come from somewhere to build. The allure of the beauty of all the things that you see in there with custom products that are making money that all comes from somebody and that's the brands and ultimately the consumer paying a higher price point When you get to costco and you go look in that building and it's bear cinder block and you know that's truly why you're getting the best price they don't actually make money on the goods that they sell a lot of people don't know that they only make money on the membership that it takes to get in there. And that's a very successful fair good model and people don't know this but the largest if if a lot of people think if i were to say what is asking what is the largest natural organic retailer in the world or the united states even they would say whole foods natural grocers name some other store it's not that those stores You could probably add them all together and they'd still pull in comparison to what costco actually sells in true natural organic produce and foods so they do have a very responsible. Like buying team that we have gotten to know and people that actually care and different checks and balances in there and i you know. Not just because i sell there but have learned a lot about that organization have become a costco advocate for other brands for other consumers to say that it's a very very good system and a very good company their values are very strong and they actually stick to them it's not fluff it's not show it's real i like it they're good a good partner.

Melanie Avalon:
This is so good to know. I love Costco and I had no idea about any of that. I'm gonna feel even better when I go in there now. So are you still in Costco?

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, absolutely. It's never a forever thing. We petition every year and stay a part of it... could shut off at some point and that's okay you know we we don't want it to we like it and they they don't know it but but Costco actually is the genesis of bison in the United States I mean I think we did a calculation on it at one point and it was like something like 60% of all output of bison commerce is Costco without them whether you're buying a grain fed bison product or a grass fed or generative it doesn't matter you know even if you just care about the species they are the powerhouse that is keeping that species alive as the retailer nobody else does that and they buy an enormous amount of fresh from somebody that we know with a different bison brand in there and even though it's not grass fed I still encourage people to go in and buy it just because you're doing good just by supporting the animal which ends up supporting the bison industry itself but they really can fluctuate and affect and hold up markets they hold up a lot of like nut markets cashews in particular Costco used to buy only a specific size of cashew and they were the largest cashew reseller I think in the world I think they still are and they grew all of these cashew plantations to such a degree around the world and so much commerce with people planting trees that they started to run out and people were having problems and so they were trying they started doing too much behind the scenes to try to meet this cashew size that Costco wanted they found out about this and decided to just start buying all cashews not just the jumbo ones that fit in their containers but all cashews small and big and chopping them up and putting them on chocolate covered pretzels and things like that to continue support cashew industries and stop people cutting down cashew trees just to make a certain size that they needed so they'll they will go above and beyond and never tell anybody about that kind of stuff to support different markets and make sure people are doing the responsible thing and they're incentivized to do that even if they don't know that that's what's happening and that's I think what makes them a amazing

Melanie Avalon:
That's so great. This makes me so happy. So when you were talking with them and pursuing them, did you always know, is it still the chili that you sell there or is it a different product?

Brittany Masters:
We sell a number of different products. We sell a chili. Right now, we're in the northwest area with our fajitas. It's my favorite product we sell, but it's prepared sous vide, so it's really, really tender and perfectly cooked sirloin. And then we also sell a chili Colorado, which sounds like a chili, but it's not. It's more popular in the southwest, but it's sort of a Mexican stew. And we still sell a number of smoked products as well, Bison Bites, and we are about to launch a new smoked product in about a month.

Melanie Avalon:
That's incredible. That makes me so happy because I remember I think when we first were talking, it was like the first trial run at Costco. So I'm really happy to hear that, you know, that it's going well. That's so, so amazing. You should probably touch on because I realized I left out a major topic. The health benefits of bison, is it superior to cattle?

Jonathan Sepp:
Yes as far as beef goes you know significantly less fat but better fat it's a very lean meat it's later than chicken or fish. What is the same time it's a red meat so you can enjoy the taste as if it were beef and get even more protein program than you would be. A lot less cholesterol and even if you're even aside from just like the main points if you're looking nutritional panel and what people look at and in particular the bison that we raise the mineral and nutrient analysis of meat that comes off this ranch will be significantly higher than any beef product and it's only because mainly not just that we. Are regeneratively raising them only on grass birth to death on the ranch but that bison grow slower much slower than beef so your processing age is later than a beef. But just like a tree that grows slower your rings are gonna grow tighter it's the same with bison me you have a much higher mineral count of iron the vitamins you know the the sub. Items that people don't measure on boxes the items that i think are important to us you know as far as like what should you how do you optimize your health in that sense so any bison product you have. Is going to be in general more superior but a particular in particular a regenerative one or grass fed and finished one but that's only a very small portion of the bison market actually there's a lot of people that still finish bison on grain and so which is okay and we don't. We don't knock that just to be clear but there will be you might not get all of the benefits if you're trying to optimize your system it will still be better than beef though.

Melanie Avalon:
So that's a myth buster for me, because I had heard, I don't know where I heard it, but I had heard that all Buffalo and Bison were grass fed, that there was not grain fed. So I guess that's not correct.

Jonathan Sepp:
Well, they're all grass fed. They're just grain finished. Yeah.

Brittany Masters:
I'm also fed differently i mean a great finish bison is gonna be different than a grand finish cow bison don't naturally eat grain so they are typically fed grain in pasture you know so they're not it would be a vastly different yeah look at it at a feedlot compared to beef.

Jonathan Sepp:
It's called a free choice feedlot even when we don't do this just to clarify we're only grass fed and finished on pasture. But people that do, it's not like what you'd think if you're ever drive through like Bakersfield in California and you see just cows packed and stacked on top of each other in their own manure. It's still a very large open field and ranchers will pulverize grain and mix that into grass that the bison eat and they can choose at their own will to go up to one of these stations and eat that and it helps to gain weight so that the rancher can make money. You don't have near the amount of disease or difficulty that you would. In fact, bison, if you were to pack them into a feedlot like that, even if you forced them to eat grain and everything there, people have done studies. It's not even financially profitable or possible. They end up losing weight and dying. So they still, because they're a wild animal, have to retain a fairly natural setting even if they're finished on grain. So it's different shades that you're looking at within there and that's why I don't condemn it. It's just we have decided we want to optimize what it is that we're doing and not participate in that. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
So even the grain finish is still relatively lean meat very.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah. Mm -hmm. And bison meat and the way that the protein grows, the fat is intra -fiber, not extra fiber like beef. So like you look at a nice marbled steak and you see like a big piece of white fat that runs around that. With bison, the fat grows in between the striations of muscle. And so even when you do that, as you cook a piece of bison, you can't, it's really easy to overcook it. Or if you do, what happens is because there's so much more surface area in the fat in the meat that it dissolves and leaves the meat very quickly because it heats and turns to a liquid and you lose it in your grill or pan or what have you much faster than beef, which retains that. So that's just another interesting fact. So even as you cook it, it does get leaner.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh wow, I did not know that. That is so cool. Do you know the actual fat breakdown, like the omega ratio for it or the fatty acid profile?

Jonathan Sepp:
I could definitely send it to you if you wanted to put that in here. It's like a chart on the podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, yeah, that'd be great. You can just put in the show notes.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah, I'll do that. And I just I try. I don't have it off the top of my head right here. But it is very interesting to look at every time I can tell you where are a few really good charts that show some significant differences in there for those different mineral counts.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Okay, so we will definitely put a chart in the show notes. So for people purchasing, so you're in some Costco's, are they a certain geographical area?

Brittany Masters:
Yeah, so right now it's seasonal too, so that right now we're heading into our spring season and we're in the Northwest, so that's Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Utah. It does include Alaska and Hawaii, although we're not in those states. Towards the fall, we'll be in the San Diego area, which includes Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado.

Jonathan Sepp:
They're also parts of utah i believe in that and i'm shifting move product around sometimes and we don't always know so even our song or region sometimes it will kind of lead over a line into a different. Distribution center but that's generally pretty much most places west of the mississippi minus texas that their their own region.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, very cool. And then can people order online?

Jonathan Sepp:
you can order jerky online all of our other products are prepared and fresh so they're just refrigerated and they're in the in department 19 which is like those big stand -up refrigerated cases in front of the meat stuff of pre -cooked things and we do that on purpose to make it easy just as i was talking to you about like how bison changes as you cook it if you don't monitor it it's easy to overcook it and so we like to control the outcome so that people have a good experience and soothe being is a french method designed for wild animal meat to retain and break down collagen and fat in the animal by keeping it all in one area as you cook it at a slow slow rate so you don't burn it all out and ultimately it ends up being more healthy for you to eat that way and that's how we cook all of our products so we do take all of that difficult work out for the facility and it comes out perfect almost every time like that and you retain all the benefit of it

Brittany Masters:
Then online, obviously, we do sell whole bison, half bison, and quarter bison, which is all harvested right on the ranch. We have a bit of a delivery route two times a year that goes through the west coast, and then anyone on the east coast, we can coordinate shipping of meat too as well.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah but that's like if you order that we take those bison off our flagship place we harvest those ourselves and it's all custom cut and wrapped for each consumer is that what website is that on.

Brittany Masters:
Hightail100 .com

Jonathan Sepp:
The height it's high tale one hundred like the number one hundred dot com if somebody wants that it's a highly custom experience where you know we will. Depending what cuts you want out of that we will change and modify each order and we also like deliver that in a freezer truck already inside of a freezer for the customer a lot of times too so you have to do is your garage and it's done. And you get like ninety nine point bison you know straight straight from the best spot we like reserve the highest ends for that.

Melanie Avalon:
That is so cool. It's in a chest freezer situation. Yeah.

Brittany Masters:
we do a stand up. It's a stand -up freezer and yeah we take basically we hold back a hundred of the most premium bison out of our herd for the high -towel 100 customers.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, that is cool. You guys do such cool things. That's amazing. People can order directly from the ranch, the jerky and things like that.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yeah yeah you can order jerky just go from free dot com you can go on there that's art that's the room free website not for like the person that wants a quarter half a hole i tell one hundred but anybody can go on there in order and will ship that.

Brittany Masters:
Are you developing new products at the moment? All the time.

Jonathan Sepp:
We've got a lot of new products in the pipeline ready to go for this year. So keep your eyes open, not just at Costco, but maybe some other grocery stores too. Also, we'll make some of those products available online as well.

Melanie Avalon:
It's super exciting. And what's the most popular and what is your respective favorites?

Brittany Masters:
Oh, it's probably the same, huh? Yeah. I know. Yeah. We have a whole muscle jerky. Yeah. It's just salt and pepper. It's my favorite. It's available on our website and it's just a traditional kind of cowboy jerky. It's not, it's sugar free and just meat and spices.

Jonathan Sepp:
And it's hand cut we hand slice each portion and dry it and as far as dry products, that's definitely my favorite I eat Every day I eat one pound of our fajita product that's my favorite and I have a little cheat code because I Eat mostly just meat where I I buy I go to costco and I buy our own product, which is really funny No, you make it and I have a fridge full of it and I eat one pound of that Every day pretty much of just the meat and I pull that out and cook that sometimes I'll do the veggies and and mix that in but I love just the meat. We can't interestingly enough I can't Do all of that in the processing and make it cheaper for myself than I can in bulk selling it to costco It's cheaper for me to go to the store and buy it back myself Just because shipping just because of shipping. Yeah, and they take care of all that for us So it's funny how that works, but that's for sure my favorite product

Melanie Avalon:
That's so funny oh my goodness i love that well okay this has been super amazing i think listeners can now see why i like the second i talk to britney i just had to have you guys on was there anything else that you want to touch on or put out there for listeners about everything that you're doing.

Brittany Masters:
We are opening it's called the high tail, which is our you know, we had talked about having multiple different ranches This one is sort of our flagship ranch and we There were a bunch of homesteads on it There are about six homesteads that were all but you know, a big pile of wood and rock and we have reconstructed them And we'll be offering all inclusive stays at our ranch starting in july And for everything from a hundred percent regeneratively raised breakfast luncheon dinner meals To all the activities you can actually participate in regenerative agriculture if you want to get out there and move bison with us reseed areas Monitor the grass. We've got pretty much, you know a full regenerative experience lined up for for people that come visit us. So Thank you.

Jonathan Sepp:
yeah i'm excited about it will be very intimate in the way that nobody offers you to truly work right next to end up with bison day in and day out this will be the only experience that i'm aware of that you can get this close touching the bison working with the bison daily and we will. You know work with customers if they want to get to that level turn round ups and things like that but at a minimum we. Don't fence around your cabins we don't stop you from going you know within a reasonable distance of them you know we it's it's a for.

Brittany Masters:
American safari. Yeah.

Jonathan Sepp:
But it will be a real experience and being close to bison in that sense for a very small group of people we didn't want to build at large we didn't want to affect anything with the animals so. Like britney said we've only restored we spent years restoring six historic homesteads built about a hundred and thirty years ago. People can stay in one of those across the ranch you want to really see other people other than maybe at me all times but that's how we want it to include you know very minimal we didn't want to overwhelm the animals with people either.

Melanie Avalon:
That's so cool. And how long does it last?

Jonathan Sepp:
The stay you mean you can book it for five days at a time. Okay. Yeah, so it's a five -day stay that we Offer and this year we'll have six of those openings around different events. We've also built a private fine dining restaurant that will only serve obviously our Bison as well as a few other regeneratively grown local items, but mostly featuring just The best of all the best cuts that you could possibly have from the best bison So if you like eating healthy and having you know It tastes really really good as well in a beautiful setting watching the bison grace you get to do that

Melanie Avalon:
Oh my goodness, I love how you just casually slipped in that you created a fine dining restaurant. Um, there's so much you're doing. I'm obsessed with fine dining. So you created a restaurant on your property.

Jonathan Sepp:
Yes yes just for the gas we may open it every once in a while to you know the local area but we're so far removed it's really really built it as a way to showcase. The bison that we're proud of that we raised for people and doing them the best justice of cooking them and serving them you know to the most of our ability.

Melanie Avalon:
That is so cool. I'm so this is so cool. Okay. Are there pictures online?

Brittany Masters:
Yes, it's called hi the hightail ranch .com and it launches tomorrow. I'll send you a link.

Melanie Avalon:
whoa it launches tomorrow and you and you guys are here taking this time thank you for being here you must be like in crazy launch mode oh my goodness yeah

Brittany Masters:
Sure some things up after this call

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, okay. Well, I will let you get to that launch. That's incredible. Thank you so much for you guys. Everything that you're doing. It's so inspiring. I cannot encourage listeners enough to check out everything that you're doing and try these products. And the last question that I asked every single guest on this show, and it's just because I realized more and more each day how important mindset is. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Brittany Masters:
Oh, man, so many things. I wake up every day and I'm grateful. I think I'm I'm not You know wasn't born into ranching and I i'm from seattle originally so I wake up every day and look out my bedroom window and You know just open space and you know blue sky and feel really really grateful to be doing what we're doing and You know still being able to do it. So That's mine What are you grateful for john?

Jonathan Sepp:
motorcycles. I love I mean, absolutely grateful for everything we have going on here. I I'm grateful for being able to live in a current era where things like this matter to consumers because without that, this wouldn't be possible. I it's you know, because of people like you people having discussions and the ability of just the internet to be able to conjoin and reach people over topics that are apparent and matter. That's really, really cool to be able to see that and be alive at this time and see that I'm grateful for that. It makes regenerative ranching possible. It makes having bison possible. And that's our primary love. So that's what I'm grateful for.

Melanie Avalon:
I love that. And I feel the same way. I'm just so grateful to be alive in this time where we can actually like, you know, create content and reach people all over. I know people give like social media and all that about rap, but I think there's so much, you know, great potential with it as well. And well, okay, well, this was just a fabulous incredible conversation. Again, so grateful for everything that you're doing. I can't wait for listeners to try all the things and have a great launch tomorrow. So exciting. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you guys. Bye.