Winding Creek Ranch

Jeri Walker, Founder

Alberta, Canada

Jeri Walker of Winding Creek Ranch fires up the grill in Alberta.

Smoked pork loin from Winding Creek Ranch

2025

Winding Creek Ranch is serving up comfort food that brings families back to the table

Jeri Walker started her blog Winding Creek Ranch in 2021 so that she could share home-style recipes that she grew up with on her family’s rural Alberta ranch. The blog has since blossomed into a destination where people can find recipes for easy, comfort meals.

Planting the seed

Becoming a full-time blogger was never part of Jeri Walker’s life plan. In fact, when she started Winding Creek Ranch in early 2021, she barely knew what WordPress was.

“It was just me, a camera I was still figuring out how to use, and a bunch of handwritten family recipes,” she says.

It also happened that she and her husband were living on an old cattle ranch in rural Alberta, growing veggies, saving seeds, and making everything from scratch — not to follow some kind of a trend per se, but because that’s how they wanted to live (and eat).

Then the pandemic hit. And almost overnight, Jeri’s work in medical transcription completely dried up. That’s when her husband (ever the encourager) suggested she start sharing their lifestyle online.

At first, she hesitated. “I thought, who’s going to want to read about how I make air buns or smoke salmon?”

But she gave it a shot, anyway. And pretty soon, strangers started making her recipes.

“I still remember the day one of my posts hit #1 on Google,” she says. “I just stared at the screen. It didn’t feel real.”

Crispy air fryer chicken wings from Winding Creek Ranch

Taking root

It became clear pretty quickly at that point: the blog was getting eyeballs.

Then, just a few months in, she qualified for her first ad network. “I had no idea what I was doing, but I remember thinking, wow, this could actually turn into something,” she says.

By 2023, when she joined Raptive, a Google Certified Publishing Partner, her hobby had blossomed into a business. But one thing never changed: she didn’t want to charge anyone to access her content.

“I don’t want to put my recipes behind a paywall,” Jeri says. “Most of my readers are just trying to get dinner on the table.”

That’s why ads made so much sense. They let her keep everything free, and still make money. “Ad revenue made all the difference,” Jeri says. “It meant that I could pay for my gear, better tools, and eventually quit my day job too!”

“Honestly, I don’t want to even mess around with the tech side of ads,” she elaborates. “I’d rather be in my kitchen working on recipes. So Raptive helps me out by handling that side of the house for me.”

And as an added bonus, she especially likes that their video player automatically shows helpful clips within her recipes. “Raptive’s video player actually plays recipe videos in the post,” she says. “That’s the kind of ad that adds to the experience, pun intended.”

“Ad revenue made all the difference. It meant that I could pay for my gear, better tools, and eventually quit my day job too!”

A garden in bloom

“I wanted to do everything right from the beginning,” Jeri remembers. “And once I saw the potential, I gave it my all.”

So Jeri did just that.

She invested in better photography equipment, took food styling courses, even upgraded her website’s hosting.

And her favorite part about this whole journey? It’s seeing her recipes make their way onto the tables of other families. “I love getting comments from readers who say, ‘this is now in our weekly rotation,’ or, ‘my picky eater loved this.’ That’s what it’s all about for me.”

These days, her top hits include such deliciousness as air fryer chicken thighs, smoked salmon on a pellet grill, and who could forget those fall-off-the-bone smoked ribs. It’s the kind of comfort food that can fit snugly into anybody’s busy weeknight.

What’s next for Jeri and Winding Creek Ranch? Well, she’s hoping to grow her YouTube content, keep fine tuning her recipes, maybe bring on a few more team members. But the mission stays the same.

“Winding Creek Ranch is about making good food with real ingredients, and bringing families together around the table,” she says.

About the Publisher

Jeri Walker is the founder of Winding Creek Ranch, a popular recipe website known for its collection of recipes for making simple, comfort meals using everyday ingredients. Based on a former cattle ranch in rural Alberta, Jeri draws inspiration from her family’s own cooking traditions as well as her own homesteading lifestyle.