It's Her Wyoming Life: The Now-Solo Face Of State's Largest Ag YouTube Channel

CAMPBELL COUNTY — Erin Galloway is at home in one of her John Deere Gators. She herds cattle with the Gator while dashing around the few thousand acres she ranches south of Gillette. 

The Our Wyoming Home Ranch stretches out amid a scattering of pyramid and tabletop buttes, and it’s the setting for a popular YouTube channel about ranching and producing local food. 

Galloway uses the enclosed cab on the Gator as a confession booth and sharing space for "Our Wyoming Life" social media videos. Shooting footage with her smartphone, she documents her daily life raising cows and other livestock and selling her locally raised meat, eggs and vegetables from her farm store just off Highway 50.

Her audience continues to grow, with nearly 290,000 subscribers to the YouTube channel.

On a recent Tuesday morning under an Indian summer sky, Galloway zipped between the two sides of her ranch, a spread that once belonged to her late stepfather Gilbert. On one side, a state brand inspector waited to verify her cattle. On the other, hunters prepared for the start of antelope season.

The brand inspector's visit is a vestige of the Old West designed to ferret out cattle rustlers. Galloway needed his approval before sending five Black Angus cows to her processor in Sheridan, where they'll be butchered and potentially shipped to customers across all 50 states. 

"I usually send steers to processing about every three to four months," she told Cowboy State Daily while maneuvering in her Gator. "They go into my farm store or online on my website."

The inspector confirmed the brand, and Galloway jumped back in the Gator, racing across the highway to prepare for the start of the annual squash harvest. 

This is the life of a college dropout turned ranch hand turned internet influencer and mother of three, and it unfolds online for the world to see, heartbreak and all. 

Galloway doesn’t like to talk about her divorce or how in 2024, her ex-husband Mike announced the split on YouTube.

Since taking over the "Our Wyoming Life" channel and other related social media, Galloway has become the new solo face of the OWL brand as she continues to capture herself confronting the many challenges of ranch life. 

"The main thing that I'm also trying to convey on social media and whatnot is just how much local food has changed the ranch and how important that is to me to grow food for people,” explained Galloway while taking a rare break in a room just off the main shop space where she grows microgreens and cartons eggs. 

As for her followers and fans, “They can see it from the beginning until the end and learn about that process along the way. That's just something I really feel super passionate about — local food and raising food."

There’s something soothing about living on camera, exposing her hustle and tenacity online, she said. 

"It's sharing your experiences so that other people don't feel alone,” said Galloway. “We all think that we're the only person going through things and we're not. It is therapeutic.”

Passing Storm

On a mid-August day, Galloway sat in her enclosed Gator on summer pasture, clouds gathering behind her. 

"Long time no see. I haven't posted a video in almost two weeks," she told the camera. "I came down here to film and there was some clouds and now there's a thunderstorm. And I mean this is just kind of what my life has been like the last couple of weeks."

As the storm rolled in, she explained why she'd been absent. Her biological father had died. The county coroner had notified her as next of kin. 

"My parents divorced when I was 13. My father was an alcoholic," she said into the camera as rain began to fall. "The last time I saw him in person, to my recollection, is in the year 2000 before I went to college.” 

Despite being estranged for years, she'd chosen to handle his affairs — cleaning out his apartment, making funeral arrangements, dealing with what needed to be done. As Galloway recalled the ordeal, the storm intensified around her. She kept going, vulnerably projecting deep emotions, and drawing in an audience that Galloway said skews male in the age range of 40 to 65. 

Six weeks after that stormy August afternoon, Galloway reflected on what the video revealed about the relationship she continues to build with her fans.  

“I hadn't made a video for a while,” she said, and her audience noticed.

Like an old friend who finally gets around to sharing a meaningful detail about themselves, Galloway introduced the world to her other father. 

“I talk a lot about my stepdad on the channel because this was his ranch. I don't think I've ever talked about my biological dad, since I've been doing social media,” she said. 

“I really found out how many people go through similar situations,” added Galloway.

This pattern of vulnerability followed by support has defined much of the OWL channel. 

In April, Galloway filmed herself pulling a dead calf, her grief palpable on camera as she tried to revive the newborn.

"Come on. Come on, baby. Come on," she pleaded.

When it was clear the calf was gone, she told viewers, "Pulling a dead calf, having a dead calf is never what we want to happen. It is inevitable. You are going to lose animals."

The comment section filled with messages like: "I cried for you and that momma. What a hard day ... You are rocking the ranch life Erin. These videos are always so full of information and what really happens during life on a cattle ranch. Love watching your channel."

Galloway told Cowboy State Daily, "My approach to that is always, ‘Hey, maybe I can explain my entire thought process or why I did what I did. If I feel like I've made a mistake, I have no problem admitting that."

Those following along are "all over the United States and a lot of international viewers as well,” she said. 

Many live in cities and increasingly, the new fans tuning in are women. 

"Another part of my audience is they maybe used to have a tie to agriculture through a parent or grandparent or relative or something, and then that is no longer happening any more,” Galloway explained, adding that she hopes to fill a void or scratch an itch with some who’ve always wanted to live the ranch life. 

Super Fans

Growing up in San Francisco, Jeff Lake didn’t herd cattle or shear sheep. He also didn’t dig the city’s chic neighborhoods and hippie culture. 

Lake spent 20 years working with ground crews for Continental Airlines in California. Then he started taking serious steps toward finally ditching the city and getting into agriculture. 

Four years ago, he discovered Erin while searching YouTube for hay videos.

"I was going to grow hay in California," Lake recalled. "Found ‘Our Wyoming Life.’” 

What started as internet fandom turned into an annual summer volunteering gig on Galloway’s ranch, then last year, employment. 

For someone who "hated every minute" of growing up in San Francisco and felt "born in the wrong place and time," the ranch represents a dream deferred and finally realized. "I get to do what I've always wanted to do — work with animals, drive a tractor."

He experienced his first Wyoming winter last year, with temperatures dropping to minus 30 degrees. 

“For a city kid from the coast, it was brutal," he admitted. But Lake stayed.

When asked what it's like working for Erin, he said, "It touches my heart to see her helping other people. And I just have to do what I have to do to support her."

Also helping is Martha Larson, 26 weeks into her seasonal job with Galloway’s other inspiration: the nonprofit Edible Prairie Project, whose mission is, “Bridging the food insecurity gap through sustainable food production, equitable distribution, and cultivating community connections,” according to its mission statement. 

A retired teacher who grew up on a Montana ranch, Larson didn't expect to spend her retirement picking kohlrabi, a vegetable she’d never heard of before joining Galloway in the spring. Now she’s excited for the arrival of harvest season. 

“To see everything grow and start and be complete,” she said with a smile. “Local sustainable food. There's the need for people to get fresh food that you know where it comes from." 

When asked what it's like working for Galloway, Larson said, "I've worked for a lot of different people, but she probably is the person that has been most appreciative." 

Asked to identify Galloway's superpower, she settles on a single word: "Patience." 

Personal Best

Now 43, Galloway looks back on nearly a quarter century of life on the ranch and sees how important it is to show up for yourself and be patient with your personal journey. 

“I never would have thought that that 20-year-old version of me would have turned into knowing what I know about cattle and how to run a ranch,” said Galloway. 

Her path to direct-to-consumer sales started accidentally. In 2010, pregnant with her first child, she saw an ad: the Gillette farmer's market was looking for vendors. She went to five Saturday markets, made some jam under Wyoming's cottage law, and "got hooked."

"I can produce something from the ranch that I think can benefit, obviously the family financially, but also I could see it turning into a job for myself,” remembered Galloway. 

What started with a few leisurely batches of jam is now spreading into faster-paced social media videos for TikTok and Instagram. 

“They are growing faster than my YouTube. But I have such an established relationship, and YouTube is where I really feel like I know those folks,” said Galloway, who continues to attract branding sponsorships from companies like Bekaert Fencing and Barn Owl Cameras, both technologies that make the ranch more manageable. 

"It's been so nice to just in the morning open up my phone and check the app and see how my water tanks are doing, and check my cows and see the antelope drinking at nighttime,” said Galloway, detailing how the Barn Owl Cameras let her remotely put eyes on several parts of the ranch all at once. “I have a little murder of crows that comes down to one of the stock tanks during the day. I never got to see that stuff without these cameras."

Likewise, Galloway continues to offer windows on her world with every new online video. 

"I would say though, for my journey, I'd say I'm right smack in the middle of it,” she said. “I'm not done yet. I have a lot more. I want to do a lot more. I want to achieve goals here on the ranch and in the nonprofit and on social media as well."

Soon a team of a dozen volunteers from Devon Energy will arrive to help harvest the squash garden. There’s delicata, butternut, Georgia candy roasters, pie pumpkins, kabocha, buttercup, spaghetti squash and acorn.

Long and yellow with green stripes, the delicata is Galloway’s favorite. 

“I like to just cut them in half, scoop the seeds, roasted with salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic. Oh, and you eat the whole thing,” said Galloway with a smile. 

The volunteers loaded tubs under Larson’s direction. Lake dashed around on the Gator and Galloway stood in the bed of a trailer as it filled with hundreds of pounds of squash, each a brightly colored prize for making it to the end of the growing season. 

"I think in order to be successful in agriculture and really in a lot of things these days, you have to have a lot of grit and you have to show up on the good days and you have to show up on the bad days," Galloway said. "I don't feel the need to be like, ‘I'm doing the hard things…’ I just do my job, and I turn on the camera and I document that."

Contact David Madison at david@cowboystatedaily.com

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.