The Setting

Climate

The Rocky Mountain Front region is known for gusty winds and sudden, occasionally extreme air temperature changes. Here it is possible “to slip on the ice, fall in the mud, then get up and brush off the dust.”

Blessedly, the ranch is not often subject to these extremes, tucked as it is in the interior river valleys of the mountains.

Thirty five miles downriver at Augusta, Montana the frost free growing season is typically May 29 to September 10, which amounts to 104 days to grow your petunias. Augusta is about 4,000+ feet in elevation, but at the K Bar L Ranch the elevation is 5,000 feet, meaning an even shorter growing season. Augusta gets about 14+ inches of precipitation per year. At the Ranch the annual precip would be slightly greater.