Return to the Range
The geography major returned to raise cattle on land her ancestors worked for more than 125 years.
A FIFTH-GENERATION CATTLE RANCHER FROM MONTANA, Fox couldn’t have had a childhood more different from her college classmates. She was riding a horse by the time she was 2 and driving a pickup truck long before she had a license. Among her first memories is getting up early with her grandfather to feed the cows before school. She vividly recalls having to go home at lunch during the winter, too, so she could cut holes in the ice for the herd. “I had a very different upbringing,” she says. “But it really instilled an amazing work ethic.”
Now Fox runs her own 320-acre operation with her husband, Stephen, and their four children, ages 12 to 19. Members of the Gros Ventre tribe of the Fort Belknap Indian community, they own F Diamond X Ranch on land that Fox’s ancestors have worked for more than 125 years. “It’s in my blood,” she says. The ranch’s primary income comes from raising grass-fed Black Angus beef cattle and heifers for breeding. With no full-time help, Fox and her family do just about everything, from hauling hay to caring for injured animals. “About a month ago I was home alone and this 600-pound calf somehow got a leg caught in part of an old windmill. I said, ‘How am I going to do this by myself?’ But I got a horse, got a rope and pulled him out. That’s a typical day,” says Fox, who is often running on very little sleep. During calving season, she says, “two to three hours a night is not uncommon.”
Fox also knows she has to sometimes think outside the box when it comes to improving her bottom line. From 2014 until late last year, she was a rancher and spokesperson for Wild Sky, a company that sells all-natural beef to retailers and restaurants nationwide. Wild Sky is an enterprise of American Prairie Reserve (APR), a nonprofit dedicated to building a so-called American Serengeti—in the Great Plains. (APR counts fellow alumni Gib Myers ’64 and Alison Fox ’02 among its leaders.) Fox received financial incentives in exchange for promoting Wild Sky and adopting certain conservation standards at her ranch, such as installing animal-friendly fencing. That extra income paid for a new barn. “We’re always willing to try some things that aren’t conventional,” she says.
Fox never expected to return to the range after leaving for Dartmouth. “I was going to live in the suburbs and ride a train to work,” she laughs. “The ranch was not part of the equation.” She worked in communications and advertising for about a decade, and she discovered along the way that city life was not for her. “I lived in Spokane, Washington, for a while,” she says. “My neighbors didn’t like me because I had a goat in the yard.”
She moved back to Montana in 2008, and a year later helped found Island Mountain Development Group, a Native American economic development corporation, for which she still serves as CEO. Fox realized that she had missed not only her home state but also ranching, so in 2013 she and Stephen bought her late aunt’s ranch, about 15 miles from where Fox grew up. “Ranching isn’t something you just pick up and leave,” she says. “I went to Dartmouth because I didn’t want to be a rancher anymore. But it’s kind of funny how you come full circle. You realize this is what you’re meant to do and who you’re meant to be.” She hopes that her children will keep the family’s agricultural heritage alive. Each child is currently responsible for a small herd of cows; her youngest has even borrowed money from the local bank to buy heifers. “There’s so much history here for us,” says Fox. “It’s just part of who we are.”
“I’m Native American. We have a very strong connection to the land and the animals. It’s who we are.”
HEATHER SALERNO is a freelance writer based in the New York City area.
