Regenerating California Rangeland through Custom Grazing
- 10 hours ago
- 6 min read
Matthew and Riley Rose-Stark are a new generation of ranchers who have started out by running someone else's cattle on someone else's land to create their regenerative grazing operation, Keystone Land and Livestock. They have been managing a 4,700-acre ranch near Colusa, California and now have the experience and resources to also have some land and cattle of their own while continuing to grow their grassfed organic beef and custom grazing business.
While Riley came from a ranching background, Matthew was a city boy. They met at the University of California-Berkeley and Matthew ended up getting an unfulfilling tech job. He then went in search of farms and ranches that were producing healthy food while improving the landscape with regenerative practices. It was through that he was introduced to Allan Savory and watched his TED talk and read the Holistic Management® textbook and became excited about restoring degraded lands with animals.
Regenerative Grazing
Matt then got a job at the Sonoma Mountain Institute. "We were managing about 1,000 yearlings on several leased land bases across that area, moving the cattle using poly and high tensile electric fence," says Matt. "There was heavy emphasis on intentional planning and management of their grazing impact and conducting extensive monitoring at dozens of monitoring points to assess the outcomes of that impact.” Riley was also doing contract grazing with sheep and goats to address fuel load issues on private and public lands. With that experience and a passion for the work they decided to start their own business.
Matt and Riley started leasing Riley's family's rangeland in 2022. The land had been leased to a conventional grazier and after three years of drought the land was badly degraded. They found three ranchers who wanted their stockers custom grazed for the winter of 2022-23.
This program worked well for Matt and Riley as first-generation ranchers and they focused on improving the fencing on the bottom portion of the ranch and began their planned grazing as well as investing in some baseline monitoring so they could prove how they were improving the land health and productivity.
40% Stocking Rate Increase
Matthew and Riley partnered with Point Blue Conservation Science as part of their rangeland monitoring network and they took soil samples and bird counts (since birds are an indicator species of ecological health. They also got a grant from the Savory Institute through their EOV (Ecological Outcome Verification) program for baseline short-term and long-term monitoring with plots across the ranch as well as taking courses in Holistic Management.
The upper part of the ranch they manage with a separate herd of 160 cows on contract with another cattle supplier. They have not been able to graze that as intensively because of the rough terrain and less infrastructure like water and fencing. they do what they can to create complexity by adjusting the dates they bring the cattle in and out and also through strategic placement of salt and minerals.
The results of their improved management is a 40% increase in production and stocking rate. In the first year they brought in 450 yearlings. In the last two years they have been able to graze 650 yearlings. The biological monitoring has also shown increased soil cover and biodiversity, with an increase in perennial plants. That increase has also improved profitability.
Matthew and Riley also developed a partnership with the Audubon Conservation Ranching program, which certifies ranches whose managers are implementing grazing practices that create better habitat for birds. Many Holistic Management producers are now certified as Bird Friendly Land to help them market their good work and the results they are achieving to the public. Because of that partnership Matthew and Riley received a grant for watershed restoration. They used the funding to build beaver dam analogs which are in-stream structures built with locally harvested materials that mimic the way beavers build their dams. These dams restore the function of riparian areas because the structures capture sediment and increase the sinuosity and complexity of streams, resulting in more vegetation, cooler water temperatures which lead to higher successional macro-invertebrates and animals being able to thrive in the water and riparian area.
“We had a crew of restoration professionals from a company called Symbiotic Restoration come out here," says Matthew. "Some friends and I worked alongside them and culminated the project by putting on a workshop with Audubon Conservation Ranching. About 35 people from the community came out to install more of these structures, using rocks and brush in the area. By the end of our growing season, we could see the extent of improvement; as the creek dried up, the pools of water were sticking around a lot longer than in the past. We are extending the amount of time that this riparian habitat can be productive and useful for wildlife.”
A Herd of One’s Own
Being able to have a few cattle of their own (and not just seasonal stockers) and sell beef shares has been a new part of Keystone’s business. “At this point it constitutes only a small portion of our income, but is something we have built up organically over the past two years,” says Matt. “Our grazing season is December through May, depending on climatic conditions and weather.
“In the summer we graze a much smaller piece of property on the California coast. It has cooler temperatures and more grass during the summer. It’s only about 100 acres and not all of it is grazeable, but for the summer we bring our little grass-fed/grass-finishing herd out there.
“Initially we thought we’d get a few cattle to raise meat for ourselves and friends, but we enjoyed having our own cattle so much that we kept buying more. Now we have a small herd and we are actively raising and selling halves, quarters and eights of beef to local folks.”
Matt and Riley have two breeds they are experimenting with and crossing—Murray Grey and Bonsmara. “We also brought in some Bonsmara because of their efficiency and their heat and insect tolerance. It’s so hot here during the summer that we wanted to introduce some of their heat tolerance and their disease and pest resistance because we don’t do a lot of interventions like deworming. We want low-maintenance tasty cattle.
“We are still figuring out how many of our own cattle we should have, and how to fit this in with the rest of our operation, but it’s been nice to have them. During the grazing season when we have a bunch of other cattle here, we run ours with those stockers. Our cattle can be very helpful to influence those yearlings and show them what to do and where to go, especially at the beginning when we are trying to train those stockers. Ours will find the gate first, for instance, and will respond properly to pressure and release. This has worked out very well for us, to still have a few cattle of our own in the off season, but at a much smaller scale, to give us a bit of a break.”
Planning for Perennials
When they first began their business, Matt worked to get an NRCS EQIP grant to be able to install 4 miles of buried pipeline, 35,000 gallons of storage, and eight 1,000-gallon water troughs, and a solar pump. Now they are in a better situation to handle drought years and maintain the stock density and recovery they want. While they use a lot of temporary poly fence, Matt would like to put in more high-tensile fence to reduce labor in the future.
Matt is pleased with the results they have achieved with their efforts, particularly the increase in perennials, which are another key indicator of improved soil health. “We’ve been seeing some perennials showing up again in certain areas," says Matt. "It may just be 10 or 20 acres here and there with a significant stand of native perennials coming back up." While California's Mediterranean climate means that most of the rangeland is covered with annuals, Keystone Land and Livestock continues to plan and manage their grazing to increase those perennial numbers throughout the landscape, creating greater resilience and productivity in good rain years and in drought.
