Colorado ranches are trying to survive. The solution is selling more than beef, preserving land for more than cattle – By Jennifer Brown (Colorado Sun) / June 26, 2022
Ranchlands, which leases the Chico Basin Ranch southeast of Colorado Springs from the state land board, is finding other ways to make money
PUEBLO COUNTY— Anja Stokes has a load of salt blocks on the flatbed of her pickup truck as it bounces across a prairie dotted with silvery sandsage and cholla cactus blooming in hot pink.
The cattle see her coming and bellow, though some refuse to move out of the dirt road until the truck bumper is only inches from their rumps.
The 25-year-old, who grew up in Portland and studied international political economy in college, slides out of the truck to chuck blocks of minerals and salt near a water trough. Then she rolls up her sleeves to tinker with a water pump so she can fill the metal trough, plus a mud-bottomed, natural one that has dried up. At sunrise, Stokes was on horseback with a handful of other workers at Chico Basin Ranch, moving cattle to this pasture where the prairie grasses are higher and greener.
She is an apprentice, training to one day run a cattle ranch.
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