ranching

Etymology

verb

1. present participle and gerund of ranch

noun

1. The business or activity of operating a ranch, of farming or raising livestock.
   Ranching is his way of life.
2. A ranch.
   At a later stage we may presume that other plants were found useful, such as the artificial fodder plants which began to be cultivated for cattle when the purely pastoral system of husbandry by nomad tribes came to an end, just as cattle ranchings will do in America at no distant date, it is said. 1889, an article on The Migrations of Plants by de Candolle, Stallybrass, Hooker and Wallace, published in The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, volume 169, page 465
   (I am taken to mountains so high you can't breathe; step out of your capsule: zam! you are flat in the aspens. Surrounded in every dimension by solitary ranchings; no sound but the lowing of kine, the flashings of cow-grass.) 1938-1968, published in 2001 in When prophecy still had a voice: the letters of Thomas Merton & Robert Lax, edited by Arthur W. Biddle, page 401