About Us
What is Short Spade Ranch?
We are James, Athena, Isaac, and Samuel Rees. Short Spade is our livestock brand. You can see it on the top left of your screen. It has been in existence since before the State of Missouri started recording brands. Athena inherited it from her grandfather. His initials are H. D., so he put the two letters together and turned them on their side to make his brand. When he had to register his brand in 1971, he also had to name the brand. He decided that it looked like a kraut cutting shovel that his grandmother used to make sauerkraut, but didn't want to name the brand Kraut Cutter. He decided it looked like a Short Spade as well. Thus the name was born.
It is fitting for the cattle we raise since they are a small breed. Short Spade Ranch just fits.
Why Wastani?
We have had cattle since shortly after we were married, over 20 years now. We raised full-sized cattle for the majority of those years. Where we lived at the time, farmland was getting harder to come by so we started looking at different types of cattle that would work on smaller plots of land.
We came across Miniature Zebu almost by accident. We were out driving one day and saw these three animals that looked like weaned calves, but they were full grown. We ended up buying those Zebu and thus our adventure began!
Not being satisfied with the unnaturally small size of the Miniature Zebu, we started the pursuit of producing a moderate framed brahman type animal. We began with the help of our friends at Bottelberghe Farms, a Zebu crossbreeding program. Through many years of intensive selective breeding, full of trial and error, the Wastani Cattle Breed was born.
This Old Farm
It has been our dream to purchase a farm. We were finally able to do so in 2017. The farm we bought hadn't had anything done with it for many years. Needless to say it needed a lot of work. The fence, the pasture, the lack of pasture water, and a house that needed work.
We bought it in February and didn't get to move in until October. We put in almost a mile and a half of fence, over one hundred metal corner posts, around 2000 feet of waterline, cattle waterers, a pond, and more. That was just the land.
The house had been upgraded over the years, but the original part of the farmhouse had not. We're pretty sure it was from the early 1900's. We were just going to change out the carpet, take the wallpaper off the walls, and paint. Well that turned into taking the walls all the way down to the studs. After a lot of sweat and hard work, the house looks great!