Based in Eastern Kansas, the site features both native Tallgrass prairie lands plus forested and cropland, for examination of sheep-goat management in a variety of environments. She has led transition of her family farm to Holistic Management and earned its accreditation as the official demonstration site for the Tallgrass Network. She is also an accredited Savory Professional Educator and is excited to offer education and support in Holistic Management throughout the region.
Request for Proposals: Agrarian Trust Seeks Federal Grant Administration Services, Apply by 07/18/2025
Be sure to check out all of our previous episodes for more small business tips, resources and insights. I think we need to kind of take a step back and look at the history of where we come from and how food is a part of it.
- I just think that there’s a lot of opportunity for us to grow and look at other dynamic natural ways, natural functions to address how we create good food for people.
- We, as a people have forgotten that we all come from agrarian roots.
- Their goats and sheep reduce fuel load for wildfires, enhance native habitat by eating invasive species, and promote soil health and watershed function.
- For Cole, as her friends call her, Shepherdess is about “the marriage of innovative approaches and land stewardship.” As the hazards of climate change, from wildfires to invasive species to erosion, close in on her beloved corner of Southern California, she deploys innovative herding techniques to improve the local ecosystem.
- She is also partnered with designer, Laura School in Shepherdess Holistic Hides where they purvey fine hides from California, raised and grazed to urban and on-line markets.
- The outfit is helmed by Brittany Cole Bush, a SoCal-raised leader in regenerative agriculture.
Listen to Brittany’s stories about why goats love poison oak so much, all the way through to working with organic cow hides in the fashion industry. At the root of finding a sense of ‘meaning’ and ‘belonging’ is learning to care — for oneself, for the land we live on, and for one another — because “caring” is love in action. And love in action is what liberates us all. To be caring for the animals while experiencing their interaction with the environs that I grew up in, the familiar smells, the colors, the sounds, affirmed that I am doing the work that I am called to do. Transhumance uses all of the skills I’ve built working throughout California, while grounding the knowledge I’d gained by studying pastoralism and the art and science of shepherding in Spain and France.
The programming, beautiful setting, and the community of EcoFarm was exhilarating to experience that recharged my own enthusiasm about my personal work in the field of land stewardship and livestock. The San Diego Foundation is providing lunch for the event, so please RSVP to to ensure we have enough food and seats. I have interests in designing and managing the development of technologies to help streamline operations, monitor biological metrics on the ranch, and create better communications internally and with clients in the contract grazing world. So again, that’s all really localised or regionalized if you think about it. These animals not only produced these beautiful sheepskins or goathides, they were part of our original food system and again, that is an added value product of producing good food. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the years is that these inputs have depleted our soils and have depleted the resiliency of our landscapes.
A healthy ecology is one that has functioning biological processes and symbiotic relationships to the animals that rely on productive cycles and feedback loops in nature. As land stewards we can usher in practices that help restore the momentum of the Earth’s powerful ability to recover and adapt but it takes proactive tending to do so. In short, well-managed grazing can support the transition back to a healthy, functioning ecology that is fire safe and fire ready. Food production that really focuses on making our landscapes, our natural landscapes better and improving things that have been degraded on our natural landscapes. And there’s more and more faces like me who folks who haven’t come from agriculture who are pivoting and shifting.
Can Shepherding Change the World? Shepherdess Brittany Cole Bush Thinks So
Although an often temporary solution, chemicals do not solve the underlying problem of an ecology out of balance. Subsequently, Julie began working for the Kansas Rural Center, in December 2011 assuming the position of executive director. In that role, she led several strategic investments and grant initiatives, including farmer education and training programs. She also led a new focus on the nexus of public health, meet brittany cole bush community food and agriculture. Year in land stewardship and fire hazard reduction programs in Californiaʼs Bay Area.
This Shepherding School is for:
- Like there’s no law that says that you have to do this, it’s, you just know that it’s the right thing and we’re gonna figure this out because we don’t wanna kill each other.
- These animals not only produced these beautiful sheepskins or goathides, they were part of our original food system and again, that is an added value product of producing good food.
- And I don’t think that people are purposely being separated or they don’t know where their food and their products come from.
- So, the first one is what I’m so passionate about which is what I call modern day shepherding.
Prescription grazing with sheep and goats as as land management tool. I am impressed by how hard everyone works with and for these fiber animals to bring us quality products. Looking forward to another great episode – excited to learn about how she manages the animals. Brittany Cole Bush (BCB) is a modern-day shepherdess and the founder of Shepherdess Land and Livestock, a targeted grazing business based in Ojai, California providing climate beneficial vegetation management services. Their goats and sheep reduce fuel load for wildfires, enhance native habitat by eating invasive species, and promote soil health and watershed function. Through her own journey to create a viable career in agriculture and land management, her mission to open pathways for others has taken flight through her project The Grazing School of the West, a nascent non-profit organization.
“Meeting with a muse of pastoralism, between ancestral methods and business of the future.”
Through her own journey to create a viable career and livelihood in regenerative agriculture and land management, Cole will share how prescribed grazing sheep and goats in the west is opening pathways for next-generation agrarians seeking impactful work that addresses climate, public safety, vital food and fibersheds, and social change. My biggest joy, on the other hand, is meeting and beating the limiting factors and challenges I’ve faced. We grazed hundreds of acres as contracted land stewards with hundreds of animals together working to build a more fire safe and resilient community in the Ojai Valley. We have begun to create our own culture of being SoCal shepherds. We care for one another, have pride in what we do, and are part of a regional guild of folks who are practitioners, entrepreneurs, educators, and the like who are running beside us with the shared mission of making our region a better place. All the while having a quality of life that is fulfilling, rewarding, full of friendship and camaraderie and it’s worth every square inch of sunburn, hours of thirst, chasing goats or guard dogs, or getting tangled up in electric fence netting.
Since 2012, BCB has developed and managed the treatment of over 3,000 acres of both private and public lands annually using prescribed herbivory as a tool for restoration, remediation and fire hazard reduction with sheep and goats in Northern California. BCB brings her experience in start-up and expansion of sheep-goat enterprises to mitigate fire hazard in the public parks of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Tallgrass Network brings together market opportunities for the Midwest and a network of landowners and managers. Shepherdess Holistic Hides is a collaborative project of designer, Laura Schoorl and shepherdess, Brittany Cole Bush. Together they purvey tanned sheep hides mindfully sourced from the American West.
Instead of throwing the C02 upwards the animals help bring it back down to the Earth and into the soil with the help of their plant pals and the animal’s basic biological activities of dunging and urinating. It’s quite a match made in heaven when we are looking to find alternative solutions to the current norm! Along with machinery, the use of chemicals has been prevalent in the management of fire hazardous vegetation.
Rarely I have the time to realize the finished objects but visualizing through inspiration sometimes is enough. I’d already been plotting to knit a couple of projects from the book, but it will be even more fun as part of a KAL. I’m so inspired after every episode, and really appreciate all the work you put into it. I would love to hear an interview with a herding dog trainer.
They value sourcing from producers with humane, ethical & ecologically-sound practices and are driven by their mission to connect conscious consumers to thoughtfully-sourced and tanned hides, diverting waste streams from animal agriculture into the creations of beautiful heirloom additions to peoples lives. Together we are offering business planning utilizing Holistic Management, in a Field School designed to help you get started or advance a profitable contract grazing business with a flock of up to 200 sheep and/or goats. I’m remembering that to truly care is to love those around me, those whom I will never meet, the natural world, and myself. From there, the decisions I make can come from a place of compassion, a place necessary to truly be a part of resilient living systems. Being with animals reminds me of what it means to be human, intimately connected and a part of the natural world.
In order for beginning farmers, ranchers, graziers, or land-base entrepreneurs to even get started there needs to be access to land and capital. The limiting factors I’ve struggled with tremendously are the realities of student debt, the cost of living, health care, and land access in a place where the value of land is so high that development will always win over small or mid-scale agriculture. My journey to starting this business has taken me over a decade as so many pieces needed to be created or acquired.
She is also partnered with designer, Laura School in Shepherdess Holistic Hides where they purvey fine hides from California, raised and grazed to urban and on-line markets. The Shepherding School of the Midwest will be held on the Princeton, Kansas, Demonstration farm for the Tallgrass Network Savory Hub. Participants will work with the small flock of sheep on-site, where integration with larger livestock herds for invasive species and cash flows management are the desired outcome.