I first met Zachary Jones last summer. He was a participant in HMI’s Ranch and Rangeland (R&R) Manager Training Program, and we hosted his class’s final session up at our summer camp here in the mountains of western Colorado. Just prior to the session, I read about Zachary and his family’s ranch, Twodot Land and Livestock, in an article about “mob grazing”. That article made Zachary sound awfully smart, and I figured I better meet this guy. Prior to his arrival at our camp, I didn’t know he was enrolled in the R&R program, so when he stepped out of his little white car, all smiles and full of energy, and said he was “Zachary Jones from central Montana,” I was pleasantly surprised.

We had a great week of training, and I had the chance to begin to get to know Zach, and to pick his brain about their Northern Plains grazing operation. Zach is an ambitious, savvy young rancher in his late 20s. He’s married to equally sharp Shannon Agee (now Agee-Jones). They met as track and field student/athletes at Montana State University in Bozeman. Shannon was an All-American pole vaulter and Zach was a conference champion hammer-thrower. Zach grew up on his family’s 24,000 acres (9,700 ha) of beautiful rolling prairie, near the little town of Harlowton, and Shannon was raised in the more urban, but still distinctly western town of Helena—Montana’s capital.