Ranch Life | The Montana Ranch Adventure

I was a lucky one I guess. My Dad always insisted on living in the country, we may not have had a huge place growing up, but we always had outside space to play and explore in without worry about traffic, predators (other than a coyote here and there), or hearing the neighbors! How amazing that was to have back then. We had each other, just our siblings for the most part, unless we traveled via horse or bike to the nearest neighbors. We had to bike to the neighbors to play in their barn (it was of course, way cooler than ours) always listening for Dad’s whistle calling us home for supper, We pretended to play Army in the tree groves in the pastures, we enjoyed being able to enjoy riding horse through many pastures to the next place to visit and of course play in the closet creek we could find!

I do remember we spent one summer living in town, oh how I was so jealous for a while after that summer. Biking on pavement paths, walking to the ice cream parlor, just a few blocks to the bowling alley, just a quick drive to the park, not to mention friends in the same neighborhood (meaning you didn’t have to jump on a horse, bike, or in a car to get to). Oh and I almost forgot – FAST FOOD! I always thought that was the life, I enjoyed college, being in town, just a moments jump to whatever we needed.

Now that I have kids of my own, looking back there really is amazing things in both Country living and City living, it is just a toss up of how you want your family to experience life. As I watch my own children growing up in the country on the ranch, able to play in their very own private creek and dams (shared with all the neighbors kids of course), able to go learn to pick wildflowers and enjoy picking and eating as many wild berries as they can get their hands on, able to look out their window and step foot in the horse pasture with horses just waiting for them. Not to mention the occasional sighting of black bears, snowmobiling without having to drive anywhere, and exploring little caves (dugouts really :P).

I realize that this is the life I (whoops, I mean WE) chose for them. I hope someday they will look back and also realize how amazing their childhood was and be grateful for all they were able to experience living out on the ranch.

Any family ranching and farming operation goes through different transitioning stages and for many operations it is some of the hardest discussions and changes to go through. Currently we are exploring options for our own ranching and farming business. I’m hoping that through this post and future post regarding our experiences as we go through this process over the next year can help shed some light onto this topic, or maybe you all can help to enlightening us.

Our operation as many of you know consists of two operations ran by two families in two states with two very separate tax situations. It is ran as one single business with all of us making the major decisions together, there is a lot of co-mingling of funds, expenses, business stuff that occurs which makes it tricky to separate out into a partnership, LLC, S-Corp or other business entity.

Before moving to Montana, The Rancher’s parents and us sat down with a lawyer in South Dakota to get started on setting up a business entity and to start the process of estate planning as we made these major changes. After a lengthy meeting and a not-so-easy-on-the-checkbook bill, we weren’t any farther ahead than before the meeting. How disappointing.

As a young women who has her Master’s degree in Business who has been in the family for nearly 8 years now I couldn’t help but ask the question, HOW did we not get this done? Why are we such a mess to set up as a business entity? What can we do to fix this?

I started researching more indepth. Finding out that our major obstacles will be the tax laws, how the debt was situated between the two families (us and the in-laws), as well as the land ownership. To solve these, I still haven’t found the answer.

But after moving to Montana, I resolved that we would at least get a team of professionals in our corner to help us sort out the mess, I had a goal of doing that before 2015. However, because of a few certain major obstacles taking up the majority of time in 2014, we were unable to get anything accomplished. There is always room for more goals – so 2015 – here we come!

Stay tuned as I will continue to write about our experience as we move forward with our business and estate planning on the Kougl Ranch. We ranch for a living; We ranch to provide food for the world, We ranch for our families and especially for our future – – these kids.

……if our parents can figure it out! – –

The Montana Ranch Adventure

Category Archives: Ranch Life

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