Our story

Jeff's brother Kurt bought a couple acres from Bobbi Fowler, the matriarch of the Fowler family.  In the early 1940's, Bobbi and her husband Julien Fowler moved to Alaska.  Together, they homesteaded this farm 20 miles north of the current town of Delta Junction.  By the 1970's, the Fowler family had moved on but still retained ownership of the surrounding 300 acres.

When Jeff and Carol moved to Shaw Creek with their three young children in tow, they were astounded.  Seven owners in between the Fowlers and the McNabbs left their mark.  With each owner, the mess of trash and broken-down equipment grew.  By the time my parents arrived, the State of Alaska had condemned the houses, the barn, the airplane hangar, even the hay sheds! The main house had a host of problems. It had a flat roof (not great for snow load),  no running water and limited electricity, There was also an old dairy barn, pastures, the small airplane hangar, and a hay shed but that was it.   Jeff, Carol and their children set about the difficult task of making the house livable. Their first year in Alaska, they made only $7000.  "If we could've afforded to," Carol later recalled, "We would've moved back to Wyoming in a heartbeat."

Regardless of the challenges, God carried the family through feast and famine.   In a few years, Jeff and Carol built up enough capital to start up Shaw Creek Meadows, one of the many dairy farms in the state at the time. The family milked over 100 Holstein dairy cows, and Dad trucked the milk to Northern Lights Dairy in Delta Junction to be bottled. In between summer milkings, they hayed.    It was hard work but fulfilling work.

As time went on, rising costs made trucking the milk to be bottled elsewhere less efficient.  Jeff and Carol looked at taking their milk to the state-run Mat-Su Dairy in Palmer. Sadly, in the early 2000s the state closed the Mat-Su dairy, collapsing the Alaskan dairy industry in one fell swoop. 

Stress was high, and Jeff and Carol had no clue how they were going to make it.  They now had four children, but the two oldest were out of the house.  By 2004, all but two Holsteins were sold.  As Jeff and Carol struggled to make ends meet, they began breeding the Holsteins to McCollum's Galloway/Angus bulls, transforming the cattle herd.  A few years after the dairy closed down, an opportunity to lease land to a gold mine came up.  Jeff and Carol saw it as a gift from God.  A few years later Carol got the front gate security contract, which she has kept for almost 20 years.

Today, Jeff and Carol are still involved with farming and have been instrumental in building the Shaw Creek Cattle Company.  The Galloway Angus cattle they bred their Holsteins to almost 20 years ago serve as the foundation for our herd.  Their youngest daughter Hailey is heavily involved with the Shaw Creek Cattle Company and brings new genetics in through artificial insemination.  She and her husband Casey also own the towing company JC's Towing & Recovery.