A Hidden Valley in
the Shadow of the Butte

The first settlers came to this particular area in 1851. The first successful farm in the valley was the Osborn family's Spencer Butte Dairy, which thrived from 1866 to 1894.

The land changed hands a few times before it went to Lawrence and Mollie Christensen in 1920. Larry was a logger and Mollie was a housewife, gardener, and small farmer for the first years they worked the place.

The ranch story really gathered steam when the Christensen boys, Hank and Bobby, started raising livestock for rodeo events up and down the west coast. Their enterprise and fame grew until they were ranching about 10,000 acres--about half owned and half leased--in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Hard times hit in the early '80s--sky high interest rates, anyone remember the Farm Aid concerts?--and the banks repossessed the ranch. It was sold to Rolf Strohmayer, a German who had made his fortune in postwar Germany through his concrete company. He purchased the 3,000 acre ranch in about 1985 but sadly died in 1991, leaving it to his widow.

She sold 2,600 acres, retaining about 500 acres with almost all of the buildings--8 barns and 1 house--and sold off individual parcels during the following 20 years. Spencer Shadow Ranch was born on the final 340 acres with 10 buildings in 2014. We named it Spencer Shadow Ranch since we sit on the sunny side of the Butte.

Doug's path to ranching was not a straight line--which may be why the ranch works as well as it does. A West Virginia boy who went to Korea with the Peace Corps, earned a master's in Korean history and then a law degree, practiced in New York and Tokyo, traded securities, and wrote a book along the way. A little over thirty years ago he moved to Eugene, Oregon--and in 2014, Spencer Shadow Ranch was born.

Life has a way of leading you places you never plan. One thing led to another--a series of pleasant, unexpected turns--and eventually the questions that filled his days became: How do you take 340 acres of somewhat neglected and over-hayed land and make it better each year? How do you raise cattle that never have an angry or anxious moment? How do you feed a community beef that's better than anything money can buy at a grocery store?

He designed the silvopasture system--1–2 acre patches of well-spaced native oaks interspersed with 4–5 acre open meadows--that Washington State University published as a case study. He developed the rotational grazing plan that divides 280 acres into 9 paddocks (with more in the planning), each resting months between grazings. He and Nature have selected the herd over twelve years to thrive in this particular valley's conditions--animals that can thrive on grass and hay, through Oregon summers and winters, without ever spending a night in a barn.

And he writes the letters. The "Beloved Clientele" emails that go out before each processing date discuss ranch economics, cooking tips, Latin phrases, and the occasional tangent about Korean BBQ marinade or the depreciation rate of a Mercedes-Benz.