Onward Ranch is proof that the Cariboo future is already happening.
Ty and Ingrid Johnston are the kind of people who make you believe agriculture can be both deeply rooted and boldly forward-looking. Together, they run Onward Ranch — a family operation built on stewardship, curiosity, hard work, and the belief that rural life can keep evolving without losing what makes it special.
Today, the ranch raises Black Angus and Speckle Park cattle, finishing beef on grass in the wide-open Cariboo landscape. But they don’t stop at the gate. Onward Ranch was one of the first ranches in British Columbia to deliver farm-to-table beef directly to customers in carefully packed dry-ice boxes, sending Cariboo-raised food to tables across the province. It’s local food with a bigger reach. Traditional values with a modern business model.
Because ranching here has never been about standing still.
Ty brings a rare combination of experience as a forester, agrologist, biologist, and rancher. He asks the kinds of questions that matter for the future: How do we care for soil? Strengthen ecosystems? Keep agriculture viable for the next generation? His work reflects something bigger than production. It’s about long-term resilience — for land, for food systems, and for rural communities.
Ingrid brings another kind of leadership. She is the founding Artistic Director of the Cariboo Chilcotin Fiddle Society, helping create space for music, connection, and joy across generations. In the Cariboo, community life doesn’t happen separate from work and land. It happens alongside it — in halls, at dances, through shared traditions, and in the people who choose to build something together.
Learning runs deep here too.
For Ty and Ingrid, ranching has always meant asking questions, adapting, and staying open to better ways of doing things. Ingrid’s path took that spirit even further through the prestigious Nuffield Scholarship, which gave her the opportunity to visit farms around the world and explore one big question: how can beef be brought to market in ways that are sustainable, resilient, and good for producers, communities, and the land?
Those ideas didn’t stay in notebooks or airports. They came home.
Today, Onward Ranch has become a living classroom. They host students from Thompson Rivers University’s Sustainable Agriculture Program, sharing regenerative practices, real-world experience, and the kind of knowledge you only gain by being out there in the weather, making decisions, solving problems, and getting your hands dirty.
That’s what makes this place more than a ranch.
It’s a business. A classroom. A testing ground for new ideas. A contributor to local culture. A reminder that rural communities can be innovative, connected, and full of possibility.
And these farmers don’t just grow food. They eat it too.
This is modern Cariboo agriculture: grounded, hardworking, community-minded — and always moving onward.
Cariboo. It’s true.
