Welcome, a quick introduction.

Look at me, learning new internet platforms.

Hello friends and family, whomever may stumble upon this new-to-me space.

For some time now, I’ve felt in a holding pattern with my writing. I have much on my mind to say, and I haven’t known where to take it. Instagram has become a platform I try to reduce my interaction with to the healthy minimum. Intermittently, I’ve posted my musings about just about anything I’m passionate about to my website blog at havstadhatco.com. As life evolves and my work evolves, it’s become clear that Havstad Hat Company is not the encompassing vehicle to take this other side of my work and passions into the future.

Havstad Hat Company is not going away, rather it’s becoming more compartmentalized in my mind for what it is; it is one of my crafts and one of my businesses. I fell in love with the art of traditional western hatmaking in 2013 at the age of 22. How fortunate I feel to have stumbled my way into my first apprenticeship, and then my second, and since then the journey has been so rewarding. When I left college with my degree in Physical Anthropology, with a focus on primates, I wasn’t exactly groomed to be a business woman. I can think of no better schooling than starting your own company at age 23. Graceful? No. Effective? Yes.

For 8 years now, I have been making my living building custom, handmade hats. This craft has taken me all over the world, but the most exciting place it has taken me to, is to this farm I now call home here in Madras, Oregon. To exhibit my work at the premier trade show in Japan along side my mother was a closer runner up, and taking my husband backstage to hangout with and deliver a hat to Shania Twain is right up there too, but honestly the most exciting adventure my work has afforded me is this chance to build a first generation farm on these Central Oregon plains with my partner Chris Casad.

If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that starting in 2017 I began to divide my year up into a hatmaking season, and a farming season. The transition from full time, 12 months a year focused on my hat business took time to figure out. As of this year I feel comfortably settled into the seasonal rhythm. I’ve learned how to shift from a one-woman show, into a collaborative business owner who employs others to help manage things. As such I get to be more of a creative in my studio again, it’s been fantastic. Also in 2020 I took a great leap and built a 1000 sq ft workshop on our farm. Since 2015 I had been operating out of a 32’ Airstream Excella that I converted into a mobile workshop. It was a profound chapter of life and the mobility served me greatly, but this next chapter is in SO many ways, about establishing deep roots. That next step, establishing deep roots, is what Range Revolution is all about.

Over the next few month’s I’ll begin revealing what I have been working on for over 2 years via this Substack newsletter. But also, this is a place for me to be sharing my agricultural writings that have been sitting in the hopper, waiting for me to find a home for us. So, if you’ve read thus far, if you’ve followed Havstad Hat Company or Casad Family Farms, if you have supported our work in any way or just left an encouraging comment, thank you. I’m looking forward to what it will feel like to be excited to share my writings again, and to share the journey of the next chapter for us here on these volcanic plains of Central Oregon.

Love from Madras,

Cate Havstad Casad