Lots of interesting stories!
Where is the 'fine line' between absolute secrecy about 'how many acres, how many cows', even to the point of being offended by the question, and the bragging, often even exaggerating about how many of each???
We heard the best answer from a NE rancher a few years ago: "I have enough cows to eat my grass, and enough grass to feed my cows"!!!
We do often feel he was mighty lucky to have enough grass to feed the cows, given that we have drought years more often than bumper crop years.
Both of us came from long-time ranching families and while I hadn't really thought about ranching as a career, I married a guy who wanted nothing else.......so almost 54 years later, here we till are, working as hard as we can which is only slightly less that when in our prime, and often too much for our 'infirmities' of age. Apparently, it is what we want to do, still.
We started out working with family, with father and each son owning their own cattle, the sons being paid the same wages as hired men and paying pasture to run their cattle. Land was placed into a corporation for a time, later shares were given to sons instead of wages, if recall is correct. Father in law died in 1978 at age 75, far younger than his family history suggested would be his case, and soon after a buying some land. That created some difficulties which lasted quite a number of years, but we survived. The sons split their operations not many years after that. The surviving brothers do still trade work, mostly for branding and working cattle.
Two of our sons have worked with us, after some post high school education. Now, two grandsons and the bride of one are here, too. Some land has been added to our ranch over the years to make room for the additional family members, and we continue to each own our cattle and share costs proportionately. Each seems to have developed their own areas of expertise and it is working pretty well. My biggest fear is from government over-regulation/taxation. From local to national. SD relies too disproportionately on land taxes to fund local and county governments, and we all know the excesses of our federal government.
Another concern is that making room on the ranch for more family members is really like sentencing them to life at hard labor with little, or more accurately, questionnable, rate on return of their investment. Were it not for loving the life and the work, it wouldn't make sense to do it.
mrj
Where is the 'fine line' between absolute secrecy about 'how many acres, how many cows', even to the point of being offended by the question, and the bragging, often even exaggerating about how many of each???
We heard the best answer from a NE rancher a few years ago: "I have enough cows to eat my grass, and enough grass to feed my cows"!!!
We do often feel he was mighty lucky to have enough grass to feed the cows, given that we have drought years more often than bumper crop years.
Both of us came from long-time ranching families and while I hadn't really thought about ranching as a career, I married a guy who wanted nothing else.......so almost 54 years later, here we till are, working as hard as we can which is only slightly less that when in our prime, and often too much for our 'infirmities' of age. Apparently, it is what we want to do, still.
We started out working with family, with father and each son owning their own cattle, the sons being paid the same wages as hired men and paying pasture to run their cattle. Land was placed into a corporation for a time, later shares were given to sons instead of wages, if recall is correct. Father in law died in 1978 at age 75, far younger than his family history suggested would be his case, and soon after a buying some land. That created some difficulties which lasted quite a number of years, but we survived. The sons split their operations not many years after that. The surviving brothers do still trade work, mostly for branding and working cattle.
Two of our sons have worked with us, after some post high school education. Now, two grandsons and the bride of one are here, too. Some land has been added to our ranch over the years to make room for the additional family members, and we continue to each own our cattle and share costs proportionately. Each seems to have developed their own areas of expertise and it is working pretty well. My biggest fear is from government over-regulation/taxation. From local to national. SD relies too disproportionately on land taxes to fund local and county governments, and we all know the excesses of our federal government.
Another concern is that making room on the ranch for more family members is really like sentencing them to life at hard labor with little, or more accurately, questionnable, rate on return of their investment. Were it not for loving the life and the work, it wouldn't make sense to do it.
mrj
I wouldn't have it any other way!