The sun drops behind the ridge, the air turns cool, and someone strikes a match. An outdoor fireplace turns a porch into the place everyone ends up, long after supper is done.
The first time you walk a piece of land you could call your own, it’s hard to think about anything but the view. That’s exactly the moment to slow down and ask the questions that make a dream ranch a good one.
Horses in the pasture at sunrise. It’s one of the first pictures people hold in mind when they dream of land. Before you fall in love with a listing, it helps to know how much ground that picture really takes.
One starts as a steel shell with soaring ceilings and room for everything. The other starts as a house, built the way houses have always been built. Both can become the ranch home you’ve been dreaming of.
Look up in a great timber room and you see the bones of the house. Heavy beams, tall posts, the whole frame holding up the sky. How those timbers meet is where timber frame and post and beam part ways.
Push-button heat or a fire you tend by hand? How pellet stoves and wood stoves compare for a ranch home, from power outages to fuel and upkeep.
Hardwood or softwood, piñon or ponderosa, BTUs and seasoning: a ranch guide to understanding firewood, including the woods that burn too hot.
No power line, no problem. How to power a cabin, a shipping container retreat or a weekend place on raw land, from a quiet inverter generator to solar and batteries.
When the power goes out at the end of a long county road, a standby generator keeps the well pumping, the freezer cold and the house warm. Here’s how to choose one for a ranch.
The chainsaw, the log splitter and the firewood rack: how we’d set up for a winter of fires on the ranch.
Soapstone, cast iron and Idaho-built steel: the wood stoves we’d want at the heart of a ranch home, and how to design the hearth around one.
From a showpiece processing room to a custom Wyoming-built cooler to a DIY room in the shop, three ways to bring a walk-in game cooler home to the ranch.