JLBrinkmeyer Ranchhouse, cozy and authentic, set in beautiful southern Iowa

Our ranchhouse is nestled in the rolling hills of southern Iowa. Here you can embrace nature and see the stars. Our Wildlife, Wildflower, & Wild West themed bedrooms are on one level with comfortable queen size beds. Try out our porch swing or cooking on our woodburning stove. Brinkmeyer Family Ranch-raised beef, honey & 'Fields of Joy' beef tallow soaps & lotions are available to buy. Read more below about our environmental practices & improvements for the benefit of the earth and our ranch.

Our quaint ranchhouse is unique and the property is expansive. If you're looking for a cozy place to relax, get some fresh air, or experience a breathtaking sunset, you will find that here. Your dog is welcome, but please - no dogs in the beds, and please clean up after your dog in our houseyard. For your convenience we keep our kitchen stocked with plenty of coffee and teas for you to brew, a sampling of our honey from the ranch, cooking oil, sugar and a variety of spices. The kitchen is fully equipped. We'll have some of our ranch-raised beef in the freezer portion of the refrigerator (for purchase). We have a gas grill on-site or you can cook over the fire outdoors or atop our woodburning stove in the living room. There is cast iron cookware in the kitchen to use for those purposes. Give it a try! We have plenty of towels to use in the bathroom, shampoos, soaps, and a hair-dryer. There's also an iron and ironing board downstairs to use if you need it. Additional bedding and pillows are available for floor mattresses. We hope you'll feel right at home at our ranchhouse.

Guest access
Guests are welcome in our ranchhouse and the houseyard. Safety first: a ranch representative must be contacted to discuss our pastures and timber. We are continually rotating pastures which involves moving cattle from one part of the ranch to another. Please contact the host before exploring outside the houseyard. Thank you.

Other things to note
We are actively involved in ongoing environmental improvements of our ranch along with providing the best care possible for our livestock. These are thoughtful, intentional practices, requiring their own expense budget line, including building five additional erosion control ponds - added to the ten already in place. All 15 ponds help prevent soil erosion and enable us to utilize only the flow of gravity and pure rainwater as our cow herd's only water source. We closely monitor, and continually rotate cow groups from pasture to pasture, so that their feed source made up of grasses, clovers and other legumes remains fresh. This allows at least 3 out of every 4 pastures to rest, recover and regrow for an estimated 75% of the growing season. This rotational grazing system helps keep our soils from eroding and progressively more healthy. We harvest large round bales from our alfalfa fields to use as feed for our cows during winter months. Cover crops are another important environmental practice we have established. Utilizing the unused nutrients in our rich soils after the primary crops are grown with 100% no-till crop production, provides not only the environmental benefit of keeping nutrients on the ranch, it enhances appropriate nutrient balance of our soils, and also provides an efficient feed source for our herd. Our tillable crop ground contains a minimum of 10% grassed waterways and edge-of-field grasses to prevent soil erosion from Iowa's often heavy rainfall events. We strongly support and encourage the utilization of cover crops to rebuild organic matter that has been lost through previous generations, as one additional way that we can be responsible agriculturalists. Our timber and pastures are picturesque, and Decatur County is well known for some of the best trophy white-tail deer in the country. (We can show you several examples from our ranch). Water fowl, and game birds, like turkey, pheasant, quail, along with pollinators have made their homes on our ranch, alongside our cow/calf herd. Our strong environmental practices benefit the wildlife, and enhance the growth of wildflowers, along with clover, alfalfa and other legumes that also support pollinators. All pollinators, including our own honey bee hives, benefit from these practices.