From Utah to Nevada to Florida, Ramzi and Laura Hughes, along with their nine children, are sharing what everyday life is like on the ranch and connecting with people across the globe through their YouTube channel, “Anchor Brand Ranch.” Through their real and authentic videos, they provide viewers with a glimpse of the daily routines and challenges of ranch life.

The Hughes family’s roots in ranching stretch back for generations. Laura was raised on a cattle ranch near St. Augustine, Florida, where her family has been raising cows on the same land since 1565! Ramzi grew up in Southern Utah, where his family has a cattle ranch at Pine Valley Mountain and the Beaver Dam Wash.

Ramzi had just returned from serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Brazil when he met Laura, who was attending Southern Utah University. They married and made their home in New Castle, Utah for 16 years until they were presented with an incredible opportunity. While working with his family on the Pine Valley Mountain ranch, Ramzi heard that some land outside of Alamo, Nevada was up for sale.

“When we saw this place for sale, it was just like a sliver of hope that it might work,” he said. “It was crazy of us to try, but it had always been kind of a fantasy to buy the big ranch in Nevada.”

Once they decided to look at the ranch, Laura, Ramzi, and his parents spent a day touring it with the previous owner. That’s all they needed to help make their decision.

“A few days later, I woke Laura up at three a.m. and said, ‘Do you want to go try it? And she said ‘Yeah, let’s go try it.’ So here we are.” Ramzi said. “It’s been almost four years that we have been out at the new ranch.”


Life on the Ranch 

What initially drew Ramzi and Laura to Nevada was the large amount of open space, and that’s exactly what they got with their new ranch. Their Nevada home is an open-range ranch that stretches 30 miles long and 30 miles wide. Open range means there are no fences, so their 800 cows are scattered over a large area of desert and mountains.

“It’s a lot of work, lots of riding, lots of working on pipelines and springs, but it’s fun,” Ramzi explained.

The town of Alamo is 40 miles away and their closest neighbor just happens to be the United States Air Force as a portion of their ranch is located on the Nevada Test and Training Range, or Area 51 as most people know it.

“We’ve got a great working relationship with the guys there,” Ramzi said. “It’s all a restricted area, so we just have to work with them and communicate with them where we are going and what we will be doing. They are great neighbors, and [the agreement] gives us a good chunk of land for our cattle to graze on.”

Their nine kids – Ram, Roxi (the only girl), Rio, Riley, Rance, Ryler, Robbie, Ridge, and Rhett – also enjoy life on the ranch. Ram, the oldest, is currently serving a mission in Brazil, and Roxi is currently waiting for her mission call to arrive. As for the school-aged kids, every morning they load up in the pickup truck and drive themselves to school.

“Whichever one of the kids has a driver’s license gets to be a bus driver,” Laura said. “When Rio headed to school this morning, seven of them headed out in the pickup truck to go to school.”

Attending a small school in a small town certainly has its perks. The Hughes kids get to be involved in a variety of extracurricular activities, but where their passion truly lies is in rodeo. All are involved with the younger kids participating in events like steer riding and mutton busting and the older kids team roping. It’s an event they are finding a lot of success in, too. Ram won several trucks when he was team roping and Rio won two trucks last year.

Ram with one of the trucks he won through roping. Photo courtesy of Western AgCredit

“They are team roping addicts. We are currently driving to Utah about eight days a week for rodeo,” Ramzi jokes.

While the Nevada ranch keeps them busy enough, the Hughes family also runs cows in Utah with Ramzi’s father, as well as in Florida. The Utah ranch is about two and a half hours away, which makes it possible for the family to wake up early, put in a day’s work, and get home late. The Florida ranch, on the other hand, is a quick airplane ride away. Until a few years ago, Ramzi and Laura would pull the kids out of school to homeschool them and stay in Florida for the winter. That got more complicated as the kids got older and more involved in school activities, so now they visit the ranch several times a year.

The Anchor Brand ranch in Florida


The Anchor Brand YouTube Channel 

After being repeatedly encouraged by a friend to share their adventures on YouTube, Ramzi gave in and created the Anchor Brand YouTube Channel.

“It was supposed to be just a joke of a YouTube channel that nobody would ever see,” Ramzi said. “To appease my friend, I punched a few buttons until I figured out how to set up a YouTube account. I put a couple of clips up and it’s just grown from there.”

Growing any social media channel takes a lot of work and dedication, but what helped grow their viewership was when Ramzi reached out to Heavy D Sparks of the Diesel Brothers to help them recover a bulldozer that was buried on the Pine Valley ranch. The Diesel Brothers gave them a shoutout on the episode that featured the recovery, and their subscriber numbers jumped. Today, the Anchor Brand channel has over 65,000 subscribers.

While people from all over the globe watch their channel, Ramzi says it has really resonated with the older generation who grew up on a ranch or had some tie to agriculture as a child, but for whatever reason aren’t involved anymore.

“These people are now sitting in their recliner watching our videos, and they get really emotionally attached because it just brings back their childhood,” Ramzi said. “They love it. If I go a couple weeks without posting, I’ll start getting emails and my wife gets phone calls.”

Hughes family photo, courtesy of Western AgCredit

Their viewers are also extremely loyal and even send gifts to their kids. A follower in Pennsylvania has gifted one of the kids several guns for his birthday. Another follower in Georgia routinely sends the kids gifts from Amazon.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Laura said. “We’ve met a lot of nice, thoughtful people through it all.”

Some viewers have even made the effort to visit the family.

“There was a guy who was dying of cancer, and he showed up at a rodeo the other day just to come see our kids rope one more time,” Laura said. “He was barely hanging on and that was his last wish to just come and watch our kids.”

Since launching their YouTube Channel, Ramzi and Laura have also started their own line of merchandise, as well as a Patreon account where viewers can subscribe and access exclusive content.

For other farmers and ranchers who are looking to share their agriculture story with others, Ramzi has some advice.

“Don’t give up and keep going. It’s like a job, and the more you put into it, the more it is going to grow. Also, be sincere and show the real stuff. That’s what the people who watch Anchor Brand Ranch like to see. We aren’t faking anything. Nothing is staged. It might not be as fancy as some YouTube channels, but it’s real.”

Keep up with Ramzi, Laura, and their family by visiting the Anchor Brand YouTube Channel, youtube.com/@anchorbrandranch.