Kate Mannix is a rancher who works alongside her family on the Mannix Ranch in Montana’s Blackfoot Valley. The Mannix family has been ranching and stewarding their family ranch since 1882, back when Timothy Benjamin Mannix purchased the land from the Northern Pacific Railroad. For generations, the Mannix family has served as loyal caretakers of this spectacular landscape, and, over the years, they have evolved their business and land management approaches so as to continuously improve the ranch’s soil, water, flora, and fauna.
Kate was born and raised in California, but moved to Montana for graduate school, where she fell in love with both ranching and the Rocky Mountains. A few years later, she was accepted as an apprentice into the Quivira Coalition’s New Agrarian Program, a unique program that connects aspiring farmers and ranchers with experienced regenerative agriculture practitioners throughout the West. After a stint in New Mexico, she eventually found her way to the Mannix Ranch, where she fell in love with Bryan Mannix, who is now her husband. So today, Kate is officially a Mannix and is an invaluable part of this storied ranching family.
Kate and I connected virtually and chatted about everything from the business of ranching to her favorite books, with a lot of fascinating topics in between. We started out by discussing the history of the Mannix Ranch and how her family has managed to maintain such a successful family business for so many generations. We talk about challenges facing her ranch and the business of ranching, and the importance of land conservation and regenerative practices for the business’s sustainability. We talk about her time with Quivira, her stint as a vegan, her current love of hunting, and her family’s thoughts on her career path. She also shares some inspiring and instructive thoughts on her recent battle with cancer, and some of the lessons she learned from the scary, life-change experience. We discussed a lot, so please check out the episode notes for a full list of everything we covered.
I’ve wanted to have Kate on the podcast for quite some time now, so I greatly appreciate her making the time to chat. This was an educational and inspiring episode, so I hope you enjoy.
Photos courtesy of Kate Mannix
This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Ranchlands.
Visit www.ranchlands.com to learn more about their top-notch vacations, leather goods and apparel, or to explore their excellent blog, the “Ranchlands Review.”
THANK YOU, Ranchlands!
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EPISODE NOTES
Topics Discussed:
- 5:10 – Kate walks us through the family genealogy related to the Mannix Ranch
- 7:40 – Kate describes the Mannix Ranch operations
- 9:40 – Kate explains why her family got involved in grass finishing their beef
- 14:10 – Kate talks about why she thinks the Mannix’s have been so successful in managing a multigenerational family business
- 18:00 – Kate describes some of the challenges she expects the ranch will face in the coming years
- 23:00 – Kate directs us to resources about the relationships between grazing, grasslands, and climate change
- 27:30 – Kate explains how she fell in love with ranching
- 35:30 – Kate talks about moving from her ranch work with Quivira in New Mexico to Mannix Ranch in Montana
- 39:00 – Kate discusses what her family thinks about her career path
- 40:00 – Kate explains why she stopped being a vegan
- 45:30 – Kate talks about when she started hunting
- 51:00 – Kate explains her connection with Red Ants Pants, a women’s workwear company
- 54:30 – Kate discusses cancer and chemotherapy
- 1:09:30 – Kate’s book recommendations
Information Referenced:
- Mannix Family and Ranch
- Rusty Sagebrush – Botanically Dyed Natural Textiles
- Blackfoot Valley
- Cow-calf operation
- Ranching For Profit School
- Bob Marshall Wilderness
- The Quivira Coalition
- Soil Carbon Cowboys
- Defending Beef, Nicolette Hahn Niman
- For the Love of Land, Jim Howell
- Jim Howell
- Daniela Ibarra-Howell
- Mescalero Apache
- Sacramento Mountains (New Mexico)
- Ranchlands
- Sieben Live Stock
- Cascade, MT
- Alexis Bonogofsky
- Quivira’s New Agrarian Program
- Regenerative agriculture
- Paleolithic diet
- Kate Kavanaugh
- Laird Hamilton
- Adam Gall
- Meat Eater, Steven Rinella
- Red Ants Pants
- Sarah Calhoun
- Girls Leadership Program, Red Ants Pants Foundation
- Phantom Ranch
- Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika Jaouad
- Pema Chödrön
- Black Lives Matter
- Lincoln’s Melancholy, Joshua Wolf Shenk
- Regarding Willingness, Tom Harpole
- Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
- Roughing It, Mark Twain
- Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Nnedi Okorafor
Enjoy this episode? Then you might like these too:
- Alexis Bonogofsky – Taking a Stand for the West
- Sarah Wentzel-Fisher – Conservation in the Radical Center
- Sarah King – Collaborative Conservation in the American Southwest
- Juanita Vero – A Deep Love of Place
- Heather Hansman – Demystifying Water in the West
- Kate Kavanaugh – Regeneration & Restoration
- Daniela Ibarra-Howell – Healing the Land Holistically
- Matt Pierson – Finding New Solutions for Food Insecurity
Visit the podcast page for a full list of episodes where you can filter episodes by topic and guests’ vocations.
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