December 30^th 2009

In addition to being a guest ranch and spa, Echo Valley Ranch is also designated as being a cattle ranch with a one hundred head cow/calf permit and a 10,000 acre Crown Land lease attached to the property to serve as open range grazing for the herd. For those that do not know, a one hundred head permit equates to 85 bred cows resulting in 85 cow/calf pairs, ten heifers and five bulls. That adds up to 185 animals if every cow “takes” and you do not lose any of them. This is what we started off with as city slickers back nineteen years ago and we did not have a clue as to how to manage such an operation. We had a real cowboy to help us however, Glen Brady, a true blue Native who knew exactly what to do so all was well.

Four years ago we sold our herd primarily because the restrictions placed on the import of cattle by the USA made it just about impossible to be in the ranching business; it was not so much a matter of the USA putting a ban on the import of Canadian beef (dead or alive), because one cow in Alberta was found to have the mad cow disease, it was because most of the BC cattle were slaughtered/processed in the USA, and Canada not having sufficient capacity to fulfill that function for themselves! I discovered this when my idea of getting all of the local ranchers together and selling good beef directly to our own supermarkets was blown out of the water – there was no place in BC that could process the beef for us!!

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