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Dot Ranch

@dotranch

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Indigenous wench, veteran, 🐑🐐🐂 rancher, mother, doer of things. Short, gimpy, & fabulous. V-Mo @dotranch

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I don't care how hard you are, this lamb is built to MELT!

#NavajoChurro #NavajoChurroSheep #churrosheep #dibé #sheep #farm365 #ranchlife #farmlife #womeninag #womenwhofarm #veteranowned #nativeowned #DotRanch #ovina #agriculture #animalphotography #lambingseason #lambing #lamb #sweetdarling #lambageddon #boop by @dotranch

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6 months ago

Meet one of the incredible supporters behind our Spring Campaign: Mickey Willenbring, OFC Board Member!

Growing up in poverty and navigating an unconventional path into agriculture, Mickey knows firsthand how hard it can be to build a future in farming without support, resources, or connections. Today, as a ranch owner, she believes deeply in creating the kind of opportunities she once needed herself.

Through Oregon Farm Corps’ Future Farmers Fund, beginning farmers and ranchers can access training, mentorship, and continued support to build their farming dreams.

“Being a recipient of scholarship support is about more than job training. It’s validation that EVERY ONE belongs in agriculture.”

Your support helps change the trajectory of individual lives and strengthens the communities those future farmers and ranchers will go on to nourish. Donate to our Spring Future Farmers Campaign at https://bit.ly/OFC-SFFC or via the link in our bio.

Read more about Mickey and why she supports Future Farmers via the link in our bio! by @dotranch

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4 months ago

Radiation treatment feels, in so many ways, like an exploration of one of the sci-fi novels I read as a teenager. I think those novels of space wars, flesh blistering off under the hot atmosphere of Mars, the cold explosiveness of vacuum with a breached space suit, they helped both form my vocabulary, my imagination, and my tolerance for pain in the real world. If you compare 0 to 10 to what it must feel to boil off under the once comforting light of your own sun on a distant planet, why wouldn't a light burn feel like a 3 in comparison?

I am so grateful for all of my friends who have come together to give me rides to the daily radiation treatments. I am so deeply grateful to my health care workers who RUN back into the room to unstrap me from the table when my treatment ends, so that I don't have to bear an instant longer of the intense claustrophobia induced by that mask. My family, who have already suffered from cancer losses, who come together to pray for me, to help me feel beautiful and loved, and who stand by for Tyger at all moments.

This has been a deep dive in facing fear and kicking it straight in the huevos. Unfortunately I'm experiencing some technical difficulties with the cisplatin so they're switching my chemo to carboplatin for the next 5 weeks, after some intense neuropathy related issues. Cisplatin induced neuropathy can be permanent, so I'm really crossing my fingers that what I'm experiencing will be temporary and resolved soon. The oncologist is prescribing some new med for the pain but it has to run through the VA first so it'll take days to get here. That's okay, it's better than having a space suit rupture on Mars, and how else would I experience the humbleness of having to ask somebody else to open my mail? How else would I know what it feels like to have other people cook meals for my family? I never knew the power of love in food from folks who aren't even related. My sister C used to cook albondigas for me when I was sick, but that didn't truly prepare me for the magic of care and comfort in chicken broth from friends.

The going is rough, but oh, the lessons in all of this. The gifts in all of this. The gratitude. by @dotranch

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a year ago

Come see us at the corner of Monroe and 1st in Corvallis! We've got things delicious AND crafty, and a very rare public appearance of Tyger too! by @dotranch

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2 days ago

This might be one of the most satisfying final reveals of any piece of art in the last couple years. It's so simple, and yet I struggled so hard because of the neuropathy in my hands. I have SO many gems glued to the floor in my workspace. 😅

If this doesn't move to a new forever home on Saturday, I'll post it back up here for a candidate forever household. I realize this one is seriously going to get some comments from the same folks who make negative comments about my four horned skulls, but I hope the folks who enjoy memento mori will find this as beautiful as I do.

Tell me real, would you hang this on your wall outside of the spooky season?

#veteranowned #ranchlife #momentomori #boneart #skull #skullart #dotranch #navajoangoragoat #spookyseason #halloweendecorations #cancerjourney #fckcancer #nasopharyngealcarcinoma #cancersurvivor by @dotranch

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3 days ago

It's been so long since I made art that I'm not sure I remember how... but FAFO works for me too. by @dotranch

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5 days ago

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7 days ago

It's finally fall here at Dot Ranch!

So many farmers joke about how "when the busy season ends..." and I always dog myself a little by telling people I'm a rancher because I'm too lazy to be a farmer.

In today's diesel at 6.89 a gallon landscape, I might just be too broke to be a farmer, and I'm slowly realizing that in some ways, ranching requires much more consistent efforts than farming. We don't really ever get a quiet season with all the mouths that need feeding here, and statistically, with this many hooves and feet on the ground, there is ALWAYS an emergency of some kind.

Still, I wouldn't trade this life for any other job on the planet.

This year, maybe because of all the changes around here, everything feels just a little extra crisp. The sheep are in breeding groups *on time*, the calves are cute and just the right combination of heifers to bull calf, the turkeys are starting to lay eggs, the chickens are laying eggs, the high tunnel concept for rotational poultry is working, and we're preparing to begin fall harvest on the turkeys for the Veteran's Pantry Project.

For a year where so many things started off so wrong, some things are truly going right.

Sometimes, it's when life feels most fragile that it also feels the most REAL. Right now, the entire species is on the cusp of understanding just how fragile our planet has become. When we have so much hurtling out of control in the world, getting the breeding groups together on time seems so banal, yet also so deeply satisfying. I genuinely believe that this work of sustainable agriculture has never been more important than it is now. I know that no single moment is promised to any of us, and yet I find comfort in EVERY moment spent working towards the efforts of feeding community in every sense of the words.

Disaster can break us or it can invite us to explore our own resiliency. In a world that is increasingly taking our choices away, choosing to do good for the land and the beings upon it feels a lot more meaningful than beating our breasts while making grandiose proclamations ever would.

This fall, I'm grateful for the grit, the soil, the WORK. What are you grateful for? by @dotranch

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12 days ago

I absolutely love our Navajo-Angora goats, but if you've known me a long time, you might know that Nubians have always held my heart. The first goats I ever worked with were Nubians and I've never lost my love of them, so when a friend said her sister needed to rehome a pair of bucks, I said OF COURSE!!!

Meet ET and Elliot, two adorable (for now, lol) additions to the ranch. Hopefully we'll find them some Nubian does or doelings soon! Just sayin, if any of y'all know somebody in Oregon looking for a good home for some Nubian does, I might know a lady! 😁🫶🏽 by @dotranch

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14 days ago

This morning, in the darkness of predawn, punctuated by the rasping cries of fledgling roosters and the occasional irritated owl, I am grounding myself in the inestimable joy of the friendship of others.

It's my 7 months in remission visit to the oncologist, one year out of treatment, and I don't know if I'll be scheduled for a PET CT scan or not. I hope I will, because the anxiety of did this come back is almost unbearable, but like all fears, it's only as excruciating as I let it become at 3am, 4pm, in the middle of a conversation with a friend... I laugh but I also know the exact flavor of each medication delivered with the chemo.

My voice has withered and dried along with my salivary glands, but my eyes have widened for every bit of light that I thought I might lose. Keeping my vision was well worth losing my voice, and every color I perceive (lol, IYKYK) is etched in my heart. My hands are numb and painful, but the creations I still manage to make are all the more precious for it.

I stand in flowers my friend @manise2 sent, I look over the beautiful new rams @ty.y81 brought to me, and I treasure the memories of your voices and smiles. I still can't believe how this community has held me up through treatment and fear and all the terrible prognostications of that horrid first oncologist I had.

You all are amazing. If I died tomorrow I would die with a thousand names carried to Creator in my heart, written in flowing rainbow light.

I sure don't intend to die yet though, because I have work to do. So much work. And I love you all way too much to quit. by @dotranch

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21 days ago

There is no panic like hearing a screaming goat at dusk somewhere indistinct in the forest. Pretty sure I smashed through every single briar thicket on the property in an attempt to save the screaming goat kid that my mind had painted as wrapped in blackberries and facing the fangs of our local coyotes or worse, the claws of our local young cougar. Worse, it sounded like two goats, with a healthy screaming terror and the occasional kid bleats.

Turns out it was just one very stuck kid. Got her freed and sent back home to the neighbor, and then took the long sodden slog back through the rain to home.

Somehow, this feels like the most meaningful part of my day, and while I might be limping and covered in thorns, I'm happy to have helped a young friend.

#ranchlife #farmlife #goats #nokiddingaround #stuck by @dotranch

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a month ago

Somebody asked me if all my sheep have names and I was so happy to say yes. She also asked how do I sort them all out?

I have to admit, no matter how many times I'm asked this, I'm always surprised. When I look at my sheep, I see individuals with their own personalities, cliques, and heritages. I can often see their mothers and grandmothers in their faces, their sires in their horns and wool.

I know that some folks hold very strong convictions about the consumption of meat, and I myself deeply feel that animals can display varying levels of sentience. As a scientist as well as a rancher, I'm aware that the definition of sentience is in itself framed by cultural values as well as quantitative data. I personally feel that current standards of sentience fall short of explaining the world we share with so many beings.

For me, the definition of sentience is simple: the presence of empathy for others. Does this mean I feel some humans lack sentience? Yes. Awareness of self alone does not a sentient being make, in my worldview.

So how do I justify sending my beloved individual sheep into the food chain for others?

In practice, the logic is simple. Even for critically endangered breeds like the Navajo-Churro Sheep, not all individuals are suited for breeding. The math of farming and ranching is direct and brutal: we have to send lives to their end in order to feed the future, both of our own animals, and of our community. The separation of humans from "Nature" is such a distinctly "Western" viewpoint, and so deeply flawed that our very planet suffers from catastrophic climate change because of this false view. In our ecosystem, sentient beings often eat other sentient beings. Modern science is beginning to show that even monocellular beings collaborate. There is no such thing as bloodless existence, or a deathless diet, and while I respect those who stand by their convictions, I deeply believe that the concept of veganism is flawed, false, and rooted in colonial concepts.

I see my sheep as family, and yet I know that some of them must sacrifice for the others. The sorrow this brings to each of us on the ranch is real, and heavy, and so sacred. by @dotranch

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2 months ago