James Ranch Artisan Cheese

The nature of dairy and cheese-making is that a daily routine comprised of specific duties must be completed in a timely manner, without exception. Early mornings, late nights, and long days are often part of this routine. Cheese has to be made every other day so the bulk milk tank doesn’t overflow. The intensity of this routine is balanced by down-time in the winter when the cows and Dan and Becca rest. Making most of their milk into cheese allows for this downtime while providing a product that is saleable throughout the winter. The cows calve in the spring as animals in nature do thus aligning with their philosophy of operating as close to nature as possible.

The Mentors

Dan and Becca run the cheese company together. Becca manages accounts and sales while Dan focuses on cheese production and dairy management. The Jameses met at the University of Washington, and lived in Seattle for several years before deciding to return to Dan’s childhood home on the James Ranch in Durango, and to a life in agriculture. After visiting cheese makers and dairies in Europe and New Zealand, they moved back to Durango, where they started a 100% grass-based dairy and cheese making operation to utilize the best resource available on the James Ranch – grass. They sold their first cheese in 2003, and later added whey-fed, pastured pork to the product mix.

Doing exhaustive research, visiting farms both domestically and internationally, and starting slowly helped Dan and Becca build a successful business. They understand how important it is for new agrarians to have a strong start-up skill-set, as they face the daunting task of starting an enterprise from scratch. Helping to train this next generation of producers, and giving them an excellent head-start in their endeavors is a great privilege and joy for Dan and Becca. They are committed to passing on the knowledge they have gained to help create farmers and food producers who can operate in such a way as to sustain themselves, and help us all move toward a healthier food production system.

In addition, apprentices will work with Tarryn Dixon, NAP 2018 apprentice, in the cheese room; and with Lukman, NAP 2019 apprentice, in the pastures and milking parlor.

FAQs

Want to read more? Here’s our June 2017 New Agrarian Newsletter profile of James Ranch Artisan Cheese.

2020 Applications are now closed

Check back October 2020 to apply for a 2021 apprenticeship at James Ranch 

2020 Apprentice

Alex Prediger

“In college I was steeped in hard science, on my probable way toward a veterinary degree. I worked in research labs, loved learning (and animals!), and the narrative was that school was the place you learn. During my Junior year I had my first environmental ethics class and Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer came in to speak about Traditional Ecological Knowledge versus Scientific Ecological Knowledge. To us she posed the thought: “Though the Earth  provides us with all that we need, we have created a consumption-driven economy that asks, ‘What more can we take from the Earth?’ and almost never ‘What does the Earth ask of us in return?’” – Excerpt from the New Agrarian Voices Blog post

2019 Apprentice

Lukman

Lukman is joining us from Indonesia. He has been living and studying in the US for many years now and will graduate from Fort Lewis College this spring. He is very excited to be continuing his education in agriculture and we are pleased to introduce him as this years James Ranch apprentice. At James Ranch Lukman will participate in both dairy and vegetable production throughout his 8 month apprenticeship.

2018 – 2019 Apprentice

Tarryn Dixon, Second Year Apprentice

Food is the driving force that led me to an interest in a career in regenerative agriculture and ultimately to the James Ranch.  Cooking is a creative outlet, a source of curiosity, and a sense of home. Family gatherings center around eating; I come from a supportive family of great cooks.  Dinner parties with friends are a chance to share recipes and try new flavors. Shortly after high school, I moved to Austin, Texas to attend Texas Culinary Academy earning a degree in Culinary Arts.  Cooking as a profession could take me anywhere, teach me more about food than I had ever imagined, and keep me from working the desk job I had always feared. Restaurant work was full of passion, fast paced, and hot.  I loved it. Working with my hands to create meals people would never forget became my passion. Cooking lead me to jobs all over Texas, eventually taking me to Alaska, then Idaho. I worked for a lot of brilliant chefs, in very dynamic kitchen environments.  Each one taught more about flavor, consistency, and product quality. It was in Idaho I found a love of mountains and the surrounding nature I had never felt before. Idaho also introduced me to raw milk. It is legal to buy in the supermarket there, and I was hooked.  The flavor, texture, and health benefits of raw milk were something I couldn’t live without! Ten years into my cooking career I began to feel a shift within myself. I started to notice small cracks in the restaurant system that did not sit right with what I foresaw as the future of food.   There was a need to put forth effort to bring in local, sustainable, delicious product. Every restaurant, hotel, and resort I had been employed were sourcing basically the same ingredients with a few exceptions trying to bring in local product. Cheap, mass produced items received from large industry food purveyors. It all came down to what was cheap and convenient in order to keep food costs low.  As a cook I had no idea what would help the local community, the environment, and the earth. I didn’t feel connected to the people producing the very meat, vegetables, and ingredients I was so enamored with cooking. I knew restaurants and chefs were creating relationships with farmers and producers and I wanted to be involved. Independent research lead me to interests in humane animal raising and butchery,  biodiversity in farming, and land stewardship. Determined to get out of the kitchen and closer to the source of where good food came from, I left Idaho in search of a new life. On a whim, I landed in Durango, Colorado and a friend introduced me to the James Ranch. Their philosophy and way of life was just what I had been searching for. Humanely raised grass-fed beef, organically grown produce, and raw milk cheese from grass-fed Jersey cows.  Cheese had always been a huge part of my life, and I saw an opportunity in cheese I had not noticed before. Dan was bringing together the things I was beginning to love; raw milk, land stewardship, and a relationship with the animals he was raising. The apprentice position had already been filled for the 2017 season, so I began working for The Harvest Grill, a food wagon here at the ranch that put out the best burger I had ever tasted. It felt good to leave my cooking career on a high note serving quality product that was sourced locally in a restaurant with the same ideology I had come to recognize is needed in the industry.  This apprenticeship will not only teach me the traditions and methods of making yummy raw milk cheeses, keeping me close to my culinary roots, it will also bring me closer to the land, animals, and sunshine that makes creating good food a possibility! Tarryn is returning for a second season as a apprentice at James Ranch!

2017 Apprentice

Emma “Louie” West

The hot, arid desert of Phoenix, Arizona was not an ideal place to develop and interest in gardening much less agriculture. That interest would emerge many years and a few journeys later. As a child my parents, both involved in the arts, raised me to love music, painting, and other outlets of creative expression. I followed these interests into a performing arts high school where I was a music production and performance major (violin and piano studies). As a dedicated advocator for women’s rights and education, I was lucky enough to forgo part of my last year of high school to pursue a unique opportunity to do research on the women’s education in China. It was in Asia where I found a deep connection to the land and realized the vital importance of environmental work and food safety for developing communities.

After returning home, while continuing my involvement with the arts and humanitarian work but no longer wanting to pursue those fields, I sought out a new home. My love for the outdoors and an emerging interest in conservation brought me to Durango, Colorado for college as an environmental studies major. A few years in, finding many similar approaches in conservation and humanitarian organizations emerging with a general lack of forward progress I decided I needed to look in a new direction and leave school.

My curiosity in wildcrafting and foraging had led me to develop a thorough knowledge of regional edible and medicinal plants during my years living in Durango, but I realized that I had little concept of where and how the majority of the food I consumed was grown. After getting connected to the local farming community, I rekindled my interest in food in both a culinary and agricultural perspective.  I had grown up cooking with my mother but farming with small local operations gave me new insight into the importance of food for both overall wellbeing and environmentally sound stewardship of the land.  Various agricultural practices such as permaculture and Korean Natural Farming caught my attention and spurred me to delve deeper into understanding different aspects of farming on industrial and small scale levels. All of my interests tied back to food and I realized that sustainable agriculture and the philosophy and practices behind it created a road towards progress in environmental, humanitarian, and even social fronts.

In the spring of the next year, a farming friend told me about the New Agrarian Program apprenticeship with James Ranch Artisan Cheese. The opportunity to learn about holistic land and animal management coupled with learning the age old craft of cheese making was a perfect melding new knowledge and hands on work that I had been searching for. Little did I know that Dan, Becca, Claire, and the rest of the James family would become such wonderful and important people in my life. Their philosophy towards their land, animals, and each other has given me an entirely new perspective and has seeded an even deeper love for this land and the people in it than I knew I could have. I am beyond blessed to have received this opportunity to learn and continue to look forward to my new understanding of agriculture and where it will take me.