GOSHEN COUNTY – It’s five degrees outside – and it’s getting colder. 

A dry snow is falling over the Lazy JM Ranch near Veteran, and the ever-present Wyoming wind is blowing enough to make the black angus cattle look like they’re in a snow globe. There is a wind chill, but no one is brave enough to see what it is. It doesn’t matter anyway – the cattle need fed, no matter how cold it is.

Kody McClun is bundled in a Carhartt jack and coveralls. As he looks over the bulls that are his family’s business, snow settles on his mustache. He’s the fourth generation of his family to work the ranch and, no matter how bad the weather gets, there’s a little smile on his face  he’s happy to be there. 

“There are days that are worse than others, for sure,” he said. “I guess there are days in other jobs that aren’t the best, either. It’s pretty neat to be your own boss and do what you want on a day–to-day basis and work towards your dreams and goals on your own instead of making somebody else rich.”

That’s the reality for McClun and other young farmers who have come back to their family farms and ranches with intentions of taking over someday. While elsewhere in the country, their generation – the infamous millennials, as they’re known – are changing the country’s economy and workforce, McClun and the next generation of producers combine modern technology with an old-fashioned work ethic to keep their family farms alive. 

Colby Ochsner is the third generation of his family to raise cattle on his family’s ranch outside of Lingle, and the fifth generation to produce cattle in Goshen County. According to him, it’s a great job. 

“I feel that it’s a privilege,” he said. “Some days it feels like a privilege, like when the weather is nice. When it’s 20 below and the wind is blowing and you’re chopping ice, that’s tough.”

McClun and Ochsner are both products of Goshen County School District No. 1. McClun graduated in 2011 from Southeast High School, and Ochsner in 2006 from Lingle-Ft. Laramie High School. They both hold Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Wyoming – Ochsner in business, McClun in farm and ranch management – and Ochsner has a Master’s degree in sustainable business. Their roots are similar, but their paths home to the family farm aren’t. 

McClun said he has never imagined doing anything else. 

“As it came time to graduate high school and figure out what I wanted to do, I couldn’t think of doing anything else,” McClun said. “I had the scholarships for college, so I went for something that would help me around here. 

“I came back and here I am.”

As a matter of fact, he didn’t even like being in Laramie.

“I knew this is where I wanted to be,” he said. “I had a hard time in Laramie, honestly. It’s such a different culture. As conservative as it is in this county, even just in Laramie it’s very liberal and there’s a different way of thinking. 

“What we did is we have a house in Laramie, so we’d come back on the weekends and help out and just get out of there. We pretty much went to school, then came back here whenever we could. I guess it’s really hard to fathom doing anything else really.”

Ochsner, however, took the years after graduating high school to decide if the farm life his family had embraced for so long was indeed his life. After college, he moved to Seattle, where he earned his Master’s and spent time travelling.  After a few years bouncing around, he realized  his place was back on the family farm his grandfather, Jack, had started. 

“As a kid, I didn’t know for sure what I was going to do,” he said. “I was looking for extracurricular activities all of the time to keep me off the farm. 

“When I went to school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I studied business and I worked in construction. I was like well, I might as well go home and work just as hard.”

Ochsner said he never felt pressured to come back to the farm and that his father, Jacob, and the rest of his family supported him through all of the trials and tribulations a young adult faces – and that might be the ultimate reason he came back. 

“I was able to make that choice on my own,” Ochsner said. “Today, looking back from my dad’s perspective, I wonder what his thought process was. Deep down, he probably wanted to see me back, but when I was that age I was pretty far out of my mind. That was a luxury that makes it easier to be here now.”

Even though the land is the same land they grew up on, both McClun and Ochsner have used their education to help their respective outfits use technology to be more efficient. 

McClun said his family has begun to utilize GPS tractor technology, and the stuff he picked up at UW has come in handy around the ranch. 

“I got some good out of it,” McClun said of his education. “A lot of it was telling me what I already knew. I had a hard time listening to somebody talk out of a book when I’m living it, but I did get a lot of good out of it.”

Advances in farming technology have made the business aspects of things costlier, Ochsner said. It’s necessary to keep up with it, but he fears the day is coming where the input and output won’t match. 

“Your inputs just keep getting higher and higher,” he said. “Long story short, my grandpa was here and they bought their first tractor. When they first chopped corn, they had a one-row chopper on a two-wheel drive, non-cab tractor. They didn’t want to run over any corn so they went through the field and they chopped the first row by hand. 

“They could buy that tractor and implement for like $2,500. If you look at the cost of equipment today, most farms probably need at least a 200-horsepower tractor that’s going to be over $100,000 new. It’s not similar to the price of your outputs.”

To narrow the gap, both McClun and Ochsner have embraced marketing as one of the most affordable, but important tools at their disposal. As costs rise, marketing becomes more important.

“You have to be a good marketer as a farmer,” Ochsner said.

McClun and his family produce all of their own feed for their cattle, and that helps them take pride in their product. 

“We have a bull sale every year in April and we take a lot of pride in what we call ‘real-world cattle,’” he said. “They’re just practical cattle for practical cow guys.”

As McClun said, some days on the family farm are better than others. Some days are cold, some are sweltering hot and through it all, the cows need fed, or the water needs set, or any number of tasks need to be completed. The work is never done on a farm, but for McClun and Ochsner, it’s not just work – it’s continuing a family tradition they each hope to pass down to their own sons someday. 

“I feel pretty lucky, really,” Ochsner said. “For others doing whatever they’re trying to do, especially if they’re trying to get into agriculture, it’s pretty difficult. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to do it and work alongside my family. 

“On the days when I think about it, maybe when things aren’t going right or something is broken down, I think about all of the work my grandpa did and my dad did when things weren’t as mechanical. That makes you feel lucky. We’re still able to do it.”