SHEPHERDESS

COLE BUSH

Shepherd
Entrepreneur
Advocate

“Bush has pretty much single-handedly made shepherding cool again, especially among the urban California crowd.”

“Meeting with a muse of pastoralism, between ancestral methods and business of the future.”

“As a queer-identifying woman with an urban-upbringing, she hopes to make more space in the shepherding world for nontraditional practitioners like herself and foster deeper connections to the land in the process.”

“She deploys innovative herding techniques to improve the local ecosystem.”

AS SEEN IN…

I have many names, but the one that fits me best is my middle name, Cole.

I’m known for shepherding animals, people, and projects. I’m also an advocate, entrepreneur, and a consultant that sits at what I call the ‘radical center’ — the liminal or balancing point of differing perspectives, cultures, values. I find environmentalism and ranching, historically and currently, in some places are still at odds. I hang out on the bridge between the two - and am a part of helping to renovate that bridge!

Being with animals reminds me of what it means to be human, intimately connected and a part of the natural world. We, as a people have forgotten that we all come from agrarian roots. SoCal-raised, I am earnest, all American with a pioneer past embedded in my story - one that many folks in North America hold. My ancestors are of two places — the one from Brittany, France sailed to the Americas on the Ark and Dove and traveled West by wagon to homestead in Utah, and the other from the Four Corners, a region of the Southwest where Colorado, southeastern Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. This lineage weaves an amalgamation of Spanish, Mexican and indigenous peoples.

I am often asked how I came to this work. What I can say is, pastoralism is a calling. It has to be - because it is unlike most careers. Tending to animals is an all consuming way of life. No matter their size nor species, they need you 24-hours a day, 365 days of the year. 

As a first (more like ‘skipped’) generation agrarian with over a fifteen years of experience in caring for flerds of several hundred sheep and goats, along with teams of over a dozen dogs and human shepherds - leading the treatment of thousands of acres on private and public lands using ancient prescribed grazing methods - this work has taught me that we all want to find meaning and belonging. Meaning in our lives and work, and belonging in community. It is such a big part of our personal journeys. 

“THE MORE YOU PUT LOVE INTO A LAND BASE AND THE LONGER YOU WITNESS EARTHS RESILIENCE IN ITS SYSTEMS AND IT’S ANIMALS (DOMESTIC AND WILD), YOU GROW SUCH A DEEP SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY THAT TO ENDURE THE UNFORESEEN CHALLENGES IS AN HONORABLE DUTY THAT I THINK ALL HUMANITY SHOULD FEEL.”

At the root of finding a sense of ‘meaning’ and ‘belonging’ is learning to care - for oneself, for the land we live on, and for one another - because “caring" is love in action. And love in action is what liberates us all.

I’m remembering that to truly care is to love those around me, those whom I will never meet, the natural world, and myself. From there, the decisions I make can come from a place of compassion, a place necessary to truly be a part of resilient living systems.