We raise yaks in eastern Oregon for breeding stock, fiber, meat, and more
We’re Liz and Jerry, a couple dedicated to diversified, small-scale farming. When we met in 2000, we were both busy with full-time jobs in Portland. But we longed for rural life where we could spend more time outdoors, grow our own food and experiment with self-sufficiency in housing, water and power. In 2007, we began establishing what would become Amaranta Farm.
Amaranta Farm is located in the far northeast corner of Oregon, in what locals call “The North End” of sparsely populated Wallowa County. It’s a region of deep canyons, ponderosa pine forests, and glorious views of the Blue Mountains and Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness. Our yaks graze on canyon slopes and lounge in the shade under pines and old apple trees. We all share the land with elk and deer, porcupines, skunks, coyotes, wolves, cougars, black bears, and more.
From the beginning, we wanted to integrate modest marketing of farm produce with feeding our family. And we wanted animals that could provide for us in multiple ways. As we grew produce for our own use, we planted extra heirloom garlic to sell at our local farmers’ market. At the same time, we raised red wattle pigs to rejuvenate old pastures and provide meat for ourselves and our community. We’re proud of our successes with garlic and pigs but realized we needed animals and farm products that were more self-sufficient and better adapted to our abundant grasslands.
Yaks are efficient grazers, consuming about ⅓ of what cattle of the same weight do. They can be trained to pack and to pull. They produce a lovely, soft fiber that can be woven into yarn or felted. They are also delightful companion animals and pasture pets. Animals that don’t make the cut as breeding stock, draft, or companion animals provide lean, healthy meats for our family and our customers.
Of course, yaks also provide the manure that nourishes our vegetable and flower gardens and pastures.
In Tibet, where yaks were domesticated, communities make even more use of yak products: pelts, hides, bones, milk, guard hairs, horns, and more. In the future, we hope to explore more of these uses as well.
We maintain a small yak herd of between 15 to 20 animals. This includes one bull, seven cows, plus steers and calves. We like keeping our herd small so we can socialize with our yaks to ensure calm, friendly temperaments. Of course, we also enjoy hanging out with the herd, giving scratches and watching calves bounce around their moms.
In addition to raising yaks, we are finishing work on our solar-powered strawbale house, thinning trees, replanting pastures to reduce weeds, and improving water systems.
Our farm name comes comes from the Greek amarantos meaning, “never-fading.” It captures both the philosophical and practical aspects of what we do on the farm: how both plants and animals nurture new growth throughout winter and burst with new life in spring and how we hope this farm will keep us active and healthy as we get older.
I grew up in an outdoorsy family in Seattle, Washington. Throughout childhood, I tended a menagerie of animals (frogs, snakes, a ground squirrel, a mouse, a rabbit, and more), which led to a growing interest in human-animal relationships across cultures. I went on to become a cultural anthropologist studying agrarian life in Nepal. After several years of living as a family member and raising my son on a farm in Nepal, I realized I’d rather grow food and raise livestock myself than research how others grow it. I drew on lessons from Nepal to develop a lush urban farm in Portland, Oregon. Now at Amaranta Farm, I take advantage of more time and space to continue experimenting with food growing and deepening my connection to animals and wild places.
I grew up on a small farm near Silverton, Oregon. I was the laziest of the eight siblings, damming irrigation puddles and thinking about steam engines at 6 instead of picking strawberries. A few years later, I spent my days in the fields mostly daydreaming about building radios. I studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University, graduating in 1978. I worked as a digital design engineer for 40 years, much of it on raster scan displays and camera interfaces, occasionally taking a year off to travel through Latin America and Asia. I never did feel at home in the city, so it was like coming home when we bought this property. I am now happily puzzling through those old engineering issues of house building, off-grid power, water, tractors, greenhouses, and fencing.
