Alexis Canen greets us at her family ranch in eastern Montana. It’s a warm day in late June. She’s wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and a medical boot wrapped in a blue sack on her left foot. The sack is to keep out the dust. The boot is to protect her wounded foot from further injury. Her red merle Australian shepherd wiggles at our feet in greeting.
“That’s Mocha,” says Alexis. Mocha sports just three legs, but the lost limb fails to slow her down. When Alexis offers to show us around in the ranch’s side-by-side, Mocha leaps into the dump bed without hesitation.
We have come the Mahlstedt Ranch to learn about an ambitious infrastructure project designed to provide water in more locations around the ranch. We—the five staff members of the Northern Great Plains Joint Venture—admire the scenery while Alexis navigates the side-by-side with her one good foot.
The Mahlstedt Ranch is nestled along the foothills of the Missouri River drainage. The views are straight out of the pages of a coffee table book featuring working cattle ranches of eastern Montana. Puffy cumulus clouds set against a backdrop of cerulean skies, green grass waving gently in the wind, and herds of cattle grazing on distant hills. It is serene. But its serenity belies the extraordinary amount of labor that keeps a multi-generational ranch like this running.
Like many residents of the Northern Great Plains, Alexis is part of a long ranching legacy. The ranch was established in 1912 when John and Mary Mahlstedt, along with their nine children, homesteaded the area. Today, the ranch is managed jointly by three generations—John and Mary’s grandson George and George’s wife Jeanie, their daughter Tana and her husband Ross, and their daughters Alexis and Tienna.
“My whole life was centered around having a ranch and improving it, building it up, and having the family take over,” George told me when I spoke to him a few weeks after our visit. Now in their late 70s George and Jeanie have stepped away from many of the day-to-day ranch operations. It is a role Alexis has embraced since graduating with her bachelor’s degree in international studies in 2021. Her sister Tienna, who lives seasonally on the ranch, manages the books.
“I like that what I do is different every day. I’m always learning. It’s a mental challenge to figure out how I could do this better or why a crop or animal reacted in a certain way. There’s always something to think about,” says Alexis as we crest a small hill gaining our first views of the breaks dividing the two watersheds.
One example of “doing things better” is the recently completed water infrastructure project. “It started with Grandpa’s old maps,” says Alexis. Decades ago, George envisioned adding new wells, multiple stock tanks, and a lengthy pipeline to connect them. The idea was to encourage cattle to graze areas they normally wouldn’t. Because cattle stick close to water, George reasoned that by strategically installing stock tanks that could be controlled independently throughout the ranch, he could start to shift where the cattle graze, which would in turn improve the soils and grass.
“Our long-term goal with the water is to graze the land so that we are more drought resilient, so that the next time we hit a really bad drought we have more banked forage and get by for a year or two without having to cull the herd as much,” says Alexis.
Drought is a naturally recurring event in the shortgrass prairies of eastern Montana. And with hot, dry weather comes grasshoppers. Although grasshoppers are part of natural cycles, it can be scary to watch them work their way into precious forage. By one estimate, thirty pounds of grasshoppers consume as much forage as a six-hundred-pound cow.
“But by utilizing the range more holistically, you get a mix of plant species that grow to different heights, which improves overall rangeland condition and resilience,” says Tayler Scherr, who helped facilitate this project while working as a private lands biologist with the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies (she’s now a science integration specialist with the joint venture).
A variety of plant species growing to different heights provides habitat for several species of nesting songbirds like Baird’s sparrow, chestnut-collared longspurs, and Sprague’s pipit. And grassland birds eat a lot of grasshoppers and other insects considered pests. In other words, a healthy rangeland is diverse, and diversity is key to weathering the tough times.
Diversity is something the Mahlstedt family has also applied to their business strategy. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” said George. “There’s been many times when the wheat prices are down, but the cattle prices are good. And the reverse can also be true. But I also just happen to like all kinds of livestock and farming and the whole works.”
In addition to raising cattle and growing some crops, the family manages a thriving business breeding registered American Quarter horses. They also offer vacation packages for hunters and plan to add a wedding venue along the divide where the views are unmatched.
In their newest venture—agritourism—they offer custom and pre-planned vacation packages to people interested in experiencing ranch life firsthand. When Tana proposed adding agritourism to their business model, George wasn’t sure it was the right path. “He wasn’t against it,” said Tana. “It’s just out of his comfort zone. A lot of ranchers are very private, so it’s not a natural inclination to open the gates to visitors.”
But much to George’s surprise, he enjoys sharing his stories with visitors. And Tana said that when visitors come, they love hearing her father’s stories—about the land, his family history, and what it’s like to be a rancher. “He makes ranching come to life for them, and the people love it because they get to talk to a real cowboy,” said Tana.
Diversity in the Mahlstedt Ranch business model has not only led to multiple income streams and a hedge against bad years in any one venture, it’s also a way to build on the different strengths and interests of family members. Tana’s first love lies with the horses, but she also loves talking with people and learning from them as well as sharing the ranching story with people who have no idea what ranchers do and why what they do is important. “We want to shine a light on the agricultural story and show that we love and care for our land and animals passionately, and we’re doing all we can to make the land and animals be their best,” she told me. Alexis’s interests lie in the cattle operation where she’s outside all day spending time with the animals and taking care of daily tasks. Alexis’s sister Tienna is more interested in the business side of the ranch, which allows her the freedom to live elsewhere for part of the year.
Alexis slows the side-by-side to a halt. We gather around a new stock tank that was installed last fall. The tanks are connected to multiple wells via high density polyethylene tubing. Connecting the tanks to more than one well not only increases water pressure but provides a safeguard in case one well fails. Alexis turns on the spigot and a stream of cold, clear water quickly starts filling the tank. Mocha, seeing an opportunity, leaps over the side and splashes around in the cool water. George’s decades-long vision has finally been realized. While it’s still too early to see changes in their rangeland, in the coming years Alexis hopes the new pipeline will help make their operation more sustainable. “I want to get to the point where I see that the soils and land are healthier. I want fat happy cows,” she says.
The NGPJV in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund provided financial assistance for the water infrastructure project to promote ranch sustainability and resilience for the benefit of keeping grass in grass and birds on the land. We thank the Mahlstedt family for their hospitality and time.