Ranchlands Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Terry Gardner is an artist who has been involved with Ranchlands for almost 10 years. He is originally from St. Louis where he had a career balancing commercial and fine art. He was influenced early on by old westerns on tv and in film, gaining a love and appreciation for the American West.

After moving to Colorado, Terry left the advertising world and took up painting full time. He describes himself as “an expressive tonalist, where values and colors come from the soul to engage with meaningful brushstrokes”. In this episode, we talk to Terry about his journey through the art world and how he has connected with the subjects of his paintings as well as the land.

Learn more about Terry here.

Janelle Pietrzak is a weaver who lives a colorful life in the Mojave desert of California. Along with her partner Robert, who is a welder, she cofounded and runs a shop named All Roads, where they sell an assortment of their handmade textiles, metalwork, and more.

Janelle and Robert focus on their respective crafts, while often collaborating on special projects. They also partner with skilled artisans across the globe and strive to use the best materials to make functional items that will last.

Learn more about Janelle and All Roads Studio here! 

This is a special podcast episode that features a conversation between the Executive Director of Western Landowners Alliance, Lesli Allison, and Ranchlands’ founder and CEO, Duke Phillips III.

Western Landowners Alliance– also known as WLA– is an organization of landowners, natural resource managers, and partners dedicated to keeping working lands whole and healthy for the benefit of people and wildlife. Lesli and her team at WLA support working lands through political advocacy, education, storytelling, events, and more, and they have established themselves as one of the most effective champions for large-scale, private lands conservation.

Ranchlands and WLA have been longtime friends and collaborators, and there is a significant amount of overlap between our missions, goals, and philosophies. So it was a great pleasure to connect with both Duke and Lesli to hear their thoughts on the current state of working lands conservation and the outlook for the future.

Learn more about The Ranchlands Collective

Learn more about The Western Landowners Alliance

Parker Fitzgerald is a photographer and director. He co-founded a Portland-based creative studio with his brother, and they’ve combined their expertise in design, strategy, and visual media to work with an impressive range of clients–from behemoths like Nike and Honda to more niche brands like Leatherman and Pendleton.

Learn more about Ranchlands

Learn more about Parker's work

Helen Richardson is a photojournalist who has been working at the Denver Post for more than thirty years. Over the course of her long and successful career, she’s covered everything from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the Southeast Asia Christmas Tsunami to all of the major Colorado wildfires since the 2002 Hayman Fire. Helen has also had a front-row seat to the massive changes in the journalism and media landscapes over the past three decades, and, as you’ll hear in this conversation, she’s been able to successfully evolve and navigate these shifts to continue telling important stories.

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Mike Giordano is a Ranch Apprentice at the Frying Pan Ranch, a Ranchlands operation located outside of Amarillo, Texas. Born and raised in Massachusetts, Mike grew up with horses and spent much of his teens and all of his college years playing competitive polo. Upon graduation from college, Mike joined the US Army, where he served as a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, 2nd Battalion. 

While overseas on deployment, Mike stumbled across a YouTube video that featured Ranchlands, and he decided then and there that he wanted to work with Duke and the rest of the Ranchlands team. He successfully interviewed for the job virtually, while still in Syria, and just a few weeks after leaving the Army, he was on the ground in New Mexico, working as an intern at Ranchlands’ MP Ranch.

Learn more about the Ranchlands Collective

Dan Flores is an environmental writer whose work helps us better understand the complex and fascinating history of people, animals, and wild places in North America and beyond. He’s the author of eleven books, including Coyote America and American Serengeti, and he has appeared everywhere from the Joe Rogan Experience to the upcoming Ken Burns documentary on the American Buffalo. His newest book is titled Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America, and, as you’d expect, it is excellent. It’s a sweeping “Big History” of humans’ impact on the North American landscape– a sobering yet optimistic examination of the ups and downs of people’s ever-evolving relationship with the natural world.

If you’re a member of the Ranchlands Collective, then this podcast episode will be a timely addition to the insightful Q&A write-up that Dan so graciously provided for Collective members. In it, he provides some context around an exclusive game-camera video that shows coyotes and ravens scavenging the carcass of a cow on our Frying Pan Ranch in Texas. Given Dan’s expertise on coyotes and his wide-ranging knowledge about the interactions between North American wildlife, this Q&A is a must-read. 

Read Dan Flores' Work

Learn more about the Ranchlands Collective

Tammy VerCauteren is the Executive Director of The Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, a highly effective conservation organization whose mission is to “conserve birds and their habitats through science, education and land stewardship.” Tammy joined the Bird Conservancy in 1999 as an ecologist, performing research on burrowing owls along the Colorado-Wyoming border. She fell in love with the work and the mission, and eventually assumed the role of Executive Director in 2008. Since then, she has driven the Bird Conservancy’s growth and evolution, making it one the the West’s most effective and collaborative landscape-scale conservation organizations.

Birds and healthy bird habitat are of the utmost importance here at Ranchlands. We’ve worked with the Bird Conservancy on our Chico Basin Ranch to establish bird banding stations several times per year. And just a few weeks ago, Audubon certified both the Chico Basin and Paint Rock Ranches as bird friendly habitats. So we were thrilled to have Tammy join us to discuss the importance of bird habitat, challenges facing the grasslands of the West, and how everyone from ranchers to consumers can plan a role in protecting these vital ecosystems.

Learn more about Bird Conservancy of the Rockies here.

Learn more about Ranchlands bird-friendly beef here.

Teal Blake is a renowned Western artist whose paintings reflect his deep love and appreciation for the tradition of ranching and cowboying. Teal was born and raised in Montana, and he’s spent most of his life entrenched in the worlds of horses, cattle, and ranch life. He’s worked as a professional bull rider, ranch hand, and ranch manager, but at his core, he’s always been an artist. In 2014, Teal was invited to join the Cowboy Artists of America, a legendary organization with a membership that includes many of the West’s most well-known and highly respected painters and sculptors. Teal and his art also have a long history with Ranchlands– he’s attended Ranchlands artist gatherings, and he recently created the artwork for the Ranchlands Collective logo. 

Teal is a wonderful storyteller, so we know you’ll enjoy this episode. Ed and Teal discussed his upbringing in Montana and the unique mix of art and cowboy culture that shaped his life. They talk about his time as a pro bull rider, his work on many ranches throughout the West, and why he feels that humility is one of the most important characteristics. They also chat about Teal’s need to get out of the studio and onto the land, the importance of friendships with other artists, the need for full commitment to art, and how putting creative work into the world attracts like-minded creative people.

See Teal Blake’s work and connect with him on Instagram

Learn more about the Ranchlands Collective

For this week's episode, Ranchlands’ leather shop manager Madi Phillips and Ed headed to Sterling, Colorado, where they sat down with Freddy Z and Duncan Clarke to discuss leatherwork, craftsmanship, and the art of creating useful and beautiful leather goods by hand.

Learn more about CCI here.

Learn more about the National Children of the Incarcerated (CIPs) Scholarship Program here.

Learn more about Ranchlands Mercantile here.