Stewards of the Soil: HK Ranch Puts Sustainable Values into Practice

Emily Clauson grew up on her family’s ranch just outside of Minot, North Dakota, a place that currently provides the community with eggs, goat milk, and beef. For Emily, farming is fundamentally about the relationship a rancher has with their animals and the deep reward of producing a "healthy, wholesome source of food" for families. Driven by big goals for their operation, Emily enrolled in the 2024 FARRMS Farm Beginnings course, seeking the knowledge and skills necessary to transition their vision into a sustainable business plan.

A core value at HK Ranch is being a good steward of the land. The Natural Resource Management session in the Farm Beginnings course was instrumental in helping Emily refine specific environmental practices for her Whole Farm Plan. To preserve the land and maximize its life, HK Ranch implements rotational grazing during summer and bale grazing in the winter. As Emily notes, these management practices allow the land to properly regrow, provide essential nutrients and cover for the soil, and ensure the herd is grazed efficiently. The course helped Emily take these sustainable ideas and develop a practical and realistic business plan with clear goals to continue growing the ranch responsibly.

The program helped Emily solidify this path and, importantly, develop a game plan for communicating their environmental stewardship. She plans to use social media and in-person connection to give customers a realistic look into the process behind the food, noting, “I learned a lot about marketing from Farm Beginnings and am coming up with a gameplan on how to market our product well with what I've learned.”

HK Ranch had clear values before Emily took Farm Beginnings, but the course provided her with the roadmap to put them into action. Emily now has a concrete plan for accomplishing their goals and providing a healthier food option. Ultimately, she sees this as a community effort. "Supporting local, sustainable foods is so important. Your business is helping feed the families of local farmers/ranchers. You are helping them continue to be able to provide a healthier food option to their communities."

Looking to the future, HK Ranch plans to expand its offerings of grass-fed, antibiotic-free beef to the Minot area community while working closely with their other business, Frontier Meats, for processing.