Colvin Ranch celebrates 20th anniversary of conservation easement

Colvin Ranch in Tenino celebrated 20 years of its conservation easement, inviting the community to come together for its annual Ranch Day event.

Drivers entered the ranch, carefully maneuvering around cows grazing in the field, and made their way toward an area where informational booths and music were set up. 

A crowd of about 350 people came to the ranch on Sunday, May 18, to listen to speakers talk about conservation efforts, see the cattle on the ranch, listen to bluegrass and eat steak sandwiches.

The annual event began about 20 years ago when the ranch first obtained its conservation easement, with a few years of breaks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Colvin family offered ranch tours on a hayride to visitors so they could see the historic farmhouse and barn, and how their ranch operates. Visitors also had the opportunity to go on wildflower walks where they were led through a native prairie and told about the plant species they witnessed.

Children got an up-close look at an orphaned baby cow as the Oly Mountain Boys played in the background, and people learned about various local conservation and agricultural organizations at the booths.  

Jennifer Colvin, the fifth-generation owner of Colvin Ranch, moved back to her family farm from California two years ago to take over operations from her father.

Her husband is her business partner, and her parents and mother-in-law help out, too. It’s the first time the ranch has been fully woman-owned in its 170-year history, she said.

Colvin said she loves seeing people at the ranch and that it’s the one day of the year they invite the public out to see the operations and learn about what they do there.  

“You can really kind of see that connection between the work that we're doing here to raise cattle and the food that people then feed to their families, and so that's always really rewarding,” Colvin said.

“For me in particular, it was really special to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our conservation easement and to recognize and acknowledge all of the work that our conservation partners do to help us here at the ranch with all of our conservation work.” 

Wayne Fournier, Thurston County District 4 Commissioner, mentioned during his remarks at the event that May is Prairie Appreciation Month.

Fred Colvin, Jennifer’s father, spoke about how people attending the event either directly or indirectly help operations at Colvin Ranch, and felt joyous to see the next generation carry on the ranch.  

The Colvins also honored a former U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) employee Marty Cheney, who helped get the conservation easements in place two decades ago.

Colvin presented her with the first ever “Colvin Ranch Parner Conservation Award” and emphasized that the work at the ranch very much is a partnership between her family and organizations like NRCS who help them with these efforts.  

Cheney said she worked with Fred Colvin years ago to develop the plan, and monitor the fields and progress for the first few years. The grazing plan changes yearly to meet the needs of the land, she said.  

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) had a booth at the event for the first time this year.

WDFW owns the Violet Creek property across the street from the Colvin Ranch, which the Colvins help to maintain, said Bill Kronland, WDFW employee who manages the Scatter Creek wildlife area. He said the Colvins have generations of knowledge about grazing prairies and that they’re working together to create habitat for the little critters in the area.  

Every year the size of the herd gets a bit bigger, with 325 cattle currently roaming the property. Colvin said she’s thankful for the customers of the ranch, whether it’s restaurants that buy their burgers from the ranch, Olympia and Yelm Co-op customers who purchase beef, or the Thurston County Food Bank bringing fresh local meat to its patrons.

Colvin Ranch doesn’t supply to stores like Safeway, so people are deliberately seeking out locally-sourced meat and supporting them, she said. 

“The reason why we were able to do the conservation work here at the ranch and help keep agriculture alive in Thurston County is because of our customers. It's the folks that go out of their way to purchase their beef and pork from us. None of this would be possible if we didn't have a viable business," she said. 

The conservation easement on the property protects the native prairie from ever being developed, Colvin said.

It also includes a grazing plan that is updated yearly so the Colvin family can manage how to feed their herd while also protecting the ecosystem. Cattle are pulled off of certain areas of the property when native plants, like the camas flower, are blooming and setting seed.  

“Once those plants have set seed, we'll bring the cattle back in to graze. They provide some natural fertilizer. Their hooves will kind of stomp the seeds in the ground a bit and help those plants out,” Colvin said.

“So we're really working with nature here to do what's best for the native plants and animals that live here, but also provide some really good forage for our cattle.” 

The Colvins also do intensive rotational grazing in some of their meadows, meaning fields are sectioned off with temporary electric fencing and cattle are rotated through the sections every couple of days.  

“So what that does is it allows the cattle to always have fresh grass to eat, and then the sections where they've grazed, it gives that land and those plants a chance to regrow so that by the time you kind of work your way through section by section through a field and you get to the end, you're ready to kind of cycle back to where you started,” Colvin explained.