If you’ve been following our journey here at Uncompahgre Farms, you know we didn’t start with a grand corporate strategy. We started with a lot of heart, a lot of trial and error, and a deep, grounding sense of respoonsibility to raise cattle directly for our community. For us, practicing regenerative agriculture means more than just moving hotwire fencing to build up the soil. It means looking closely at every single piece of the ecosystem we are borrowing from, and asking ourselves how we can be better stewards of it.
Every year, our grass-finished beef provides quality protein to our neighbors at the local markets. But it has always weighed heavily on us that a beautiful, natural resource was being left out of that loop. Millions of cattle hides across the country are treated as waste, destined for a landfill. To us, these animals are so good, and we appreciate them too much to let any part of their earthly body be squandered.
Leather is an incredible, timeless material. It’s what protects our skin when we wear chaps in the brush, it’s what holds our gear together in saddles and saddlebags, and it’s what brings warmth to a home when turned into a rich, hair-on rug. We wanted to find a way to honor the animal by preserving that gift, and we wanted to do it right, using only natural tannins like chestnut, mimosa, and oak bark, instead of the heavy chemicals found in commercial processing.
A Mobile Tannery for the Community
True to our belief that sharing equipment builds community, we didn’t want to keep this craft to ourselves. We wanted to make it accessible for other first-generation folks, small family farms, and students who want to learn how to turn a forgotten resource into something beautiful for their own land. So, we took an old livestock trailer and built all the equipment we needed right into it, and we call it the Rugged Ranger.
The Rugged Ranger is a mobile, shared-use tannery trailer designed to travel from community to community. Once a student or neighbor walks through a training session with us to learn the ropes of the equipment, they can trailer The Rugged Ranger right to their own ground for 2 to 3 weeks at a time to work on their own hides.
It might look a little messy, and we’re learning in motion every single day, but it’s our small way of keeping things in a full circle. It’s about respect for the livestock, empowering our neighbors, and trusting that these small ripples make big waves on the Western Slope. If you are interested in taking part and hosting a workshop in your community, please reach out to uncofarm@gmail.com. Thank you for supporting healthy soils, the foundation for a thriving community!