I live on a family ranch. I recently had an exchange of comments here about family farms and ranches, factory farms, treatment of animals, effect of factory farms on the environment, etc. I've realized that some here have a "nostalgia" for rural life - even though they may have no concept of how tough the reality is. Others seem to view us as a barbaric remnant of a less civilized past. My head has been filled with those discussions - and all the family stories of our ranch which have been brought to the surface recently because of the financial crisis and the upcoming election which is so important in determining the future direction of the country.
This diary may seem "off topic" from the current financial crisis and the current elections. But, our continued existence as family ranches is tied up with issues of economics, environmentalism - and, inevitably, politics.
I don't know if I can express this well enough to make sense to anyone else because it is so close to my heart. But I want to try.
Our way of life - MY way of life - is disappearing from the U.S. Family ranches and farms are no longer viable. They are being replaced by the "factory farms". I live on a family ranch which has been in our family for over 150 years. We have been told by a historic architect that it qualifies for the National Registry of Historic Sites with its old original smokehouse, barn, and other buildings and fences.
But, we probably won't be able to preserve it past my parents' lives - or maybe mine. That is very painful to me personally. But, I believe that the loss of family farms is a loss for everyone.
My great-great grandfather settled in this county after the Mexican-American war, buying a land grant from a veteran of the Texas war for independence from Mexico. My great-great grandfather was the first in our family to own the land where I built my house.
In the life of my great-great grandfather, my great grandfather, and my grandfather, ranching was a viable way to make a living - at least until the Great Depression. We nearly lost the land during the Depression. That "family memory" has been burned into me by my father. It is one reason I am so concerned about the current financial crisis.
My grandfather mortgaged his original home ranch (where I live) to buy more land. It seemed like a good business investment at the time - just as so many investments have seemed like good ones in recent years. It would have worked if the market had not crashed, but the market did crash. My grandfather didn't have money in stocks. He wasn't some kind of banker or speculator. He just bought additional land near his existing ranch so that he could run more livestock.
When the Depression hit, our family was better off than most because we could raise food. But, my grandfather almost lost the land he loved where he could raise that food because of the mortgage. When the entire economy goes into that kind of Depression, the effects are felt way beyond Wall Street. Others here have explained that far better than I can, but I know that the Depression devastated even our ranch family. I know that the seemingly far away events on Wall Street can come home to families at the local level if the economy continues to spiral out of control. I don't want to "bail out" greedy, foolish financial institutions - but I don't want the ripple effect pushing us off the land this time.
My grandfather was a major rancher in the area when the Depression hit. He was active in local politics. He was a county commissioner (a Democrat, of course!) During the Depression, he was desperate to save his own ranch. But, he also remembered the others in the community. My father remembers his father taking cattle and produce into town and giving them away, because the folks in town were going hungry. He was Main Street, not Wall Street, and he had compassion for others. I think of his example in the current time when so many need help.
Our family paid off the mortgage, and kept the ranch, only because of the benefits the Navy paid after my father's older brother died during World War II. It was a terrible way to preserve the ranch, but it kept it in the family for another few generations.
By the time my now 80-year-old father was getting out of high school, family ranching was no longer profitable. Even though we owned a large ranch at the time, it wasn't large enough. The economics of scale were already pushing things toward the monstrously large King Ranch scale, or, the next step, the factory farms.
My father left to go to college, to be an engineer. But, in his first semester, his father died. He gave up his dreams to come home to raise his younger brother and run the family ranch. He'd promised his older brother who died in the war that he'd look after their mother. He'd promised that he would take care of his brother's horse. And, I believe he returned because he loved the land.
My father has never left. My brothers and I grew up here. My nieces grew up here. But, we can't afford to be ranchers. My father had to take a job in a local rock quarry when I was about 3 years old so we could have enough cash to make it. He ran the ranch with only the help of my mother, my brothers, and me, and he worked at the quarry full-time. After 35 years, he "retired" from the quarry to concentrate on ranching, slowed down by the chronic silicosis acquired from all those years of rock dust. He couldn't afford to quit the other job until he could get Social Security. All he has is Social Security and what he managed to put in a small personal retirement account - which is in mutual funds.
Watching my father glued to the TV news of the financial crisis, afraid that the little bit he put away over all those years of work will disappear, reminds me that the stock market is far more than the province of the rich these days. Like so many here, our retirement funds are in the market. My husband thought he was "safe" with teacher retirement. His state retirement fund had millions in one of the failed banks.
My brothers and I went to college. None of us can afford to be ranchers, not on the family ranch scale. You have to become wealthy enough not to have to work before you can devote yourself to the work of ranching - unless you hire out on a corporate ranch as one of my brothers did for a time. I've reached the point in my life that I could afford to come back to the ranch. I still have to work, but I can do it from home and be here to help with the ranch work.
I love ranching. I love being outdoors dealing with the animals. I love knowing exactly who is who among the stock. My mother doesn't really share our love of the animals and laughs at my father and me when we sit down and start talking. "Know that little curly horned goat?" "Sure do." "That big brindle cow had another calf" "I had to kill that old red nanny; she got down and I couldn't save her." "One of the light-headed twins had a kid today." "The black-headed nanny is looking bad. Think it may be time to drench 'em again."
I love being with the new kid goats, watching them play and run.
I love watching the calves stick their tails straight up in the air and go running across the field together.
Not that it's easy or clean all the time. A couple of years ago we were bottle-raising about 7 orphan kids. It had been a bad kidding season and we lost nannies. Then, something hit the kids. We had vaccinated them for everything we could think of. We doctored them. We babied them. And, they got sicker and sicker. When they went into convulsions, my dad was gone and I was tending them alone. I had to kill them to put them out of their misery.
When we raised sheep, they could get wool worms. So, we had to shear their rear ends to keep them clean. And bag that nasty wool. I remember as a kid in the hot Texas summer stomping down that smelly wool in a big sack, six or seven feet tall and held up by a rack.
The cows need vaccinations. Ear tags keep insects off them. But, the cows don't appreciate the attention. We use a squeeze chute, but an unexpected movement can still break an arm. We gave up on the bull because he got big enough to come over the top of the chute.
This spring a small heifer got into trouble having her first calf. There's no such thing as taking a cow to the emergency room. We tried to reach the vet, but couldn't. We tried to "pull" the calf by brute strength. My father had surgery the week before and ended up back at the doctor for his efforts. We ended up having to "pull" the calf using a pickup attached to the cow and another to the calf. We saved the cow.
Still, I love it. Where else can I do this? Where else could I be this involved with the animals and the land? What other work allows me this?
So, the ranch matters to me. But, why should it matter to anyone else?
If a ranch like ours dies, what replaces it? If we can't hold it, someone buys it and makes a fortune turning it into the latest "Big Oak Estates" or some such. We have preserved a big patch of Texas Hill Country environment in near its original state. We qualify for a wildlife preservation exemption from taxes if we didn't take the agricultural exemption.
My father refuses to overgraze - partly his fear of being overstocked from memories of the Depression, but also because he loves the way the land looks when it is not overgrazed. The native plants are still here - grasses, cactus, succulents, trees, bushes, etc. We get a real laugh out of going to a nursery and seeing all the native plants we preserve here going for such a steep price so someone can put one in a rock bed in their subdivision. I'm glad that they do plant them. But, I think that a larger native area like ours does more for the environment.
We have the habitat for the native wildlife and it is still here. The owls have nested in the hollow oaks on the property since at least my grandfather's childhood. Wild turkeys. Fox. Lizards. Amphibians. Birds. We have a friend who teaches zoology at a California university. He visits and spends his time tramping around to identify the birds and wildlife. Another friend is an expert on plants and spends his time here checking out the native plants.
The Nature Conservancy, the other environmental groups - they don't have the resources to preserve everything. Family ranchers can play a vital role in filling in the gap by preserving our lands. The subdivision that would replace us would just destroy this area of native habitat. I know that not all ranchers or farmers care for the land. I have serious doubts about ANY of those factory farms. But, my experience is that the family ranchers do care. The nearest city annexed part of our ranch a few years ago, planning to put roads across us. But since then the legislature - even our Republican legislature here in Texas - passed a law protecting family ranches from involuntary annexation which is often the first step to forcing the family to sell. Now the cities have to offer a development agreement and promise not to annex as long as the ranch is not subdivided in any way and continues as a ranch. Not only was it a victory for ranchers, I think it was a victory for the environment by preserving green space through private means.
And, what will replace us as the source of the food we grow and sell when our ranch and other family ranches are forced out of business? The corporate farms and factory farms. We grow and sell cows and goats. We have raised sheep and poultry in the past, and picked up some cash selling vegetables. This is not a factory farm with the animals crowded into bare pens, shot full of hormones and fed to fatten quickly, producing rivers of waste to pollute the ground water and surrounding area. Our animals are treated with love and care as long as we have them. We LIVE here - we don't want to pollute it. I realize that vegetarians would prefer that we were replaced by vegetarian-based food production. Perhaps that will happen some day. But not today.
Even if we are talking just about vegetation, not animal production, our family production is less polluting, less chemical-based - healthier - than the monster farms. I applaud that the organic movement has allowed some small farms to survive. It is a step in the right direction.
In some way which I am unable to articulate adequately, I think our family ranch history is relevant to the present. We have faced the prospect of foreclosure and losing the ranch that was "everything" to us. And now it is happening again to others, and maybe us. Somehow, things haven't changed. We have weathered the Great Depression, and now the politicians tell us that the current financial crisis is the worst since then. Didn't the country learn lessons before? We have lost a much-loved family member to war as so many are now losing their family members in war. And the wars continue. "Progress" has brought us new problems, such as the pollution and other environmental problems, and the fading viability of family ranches, but it seems to have left us with the old problems unsolved.
Maybe I am - my family is - just a novel relic from an earlier time and the inevitable "progress" should make us and other family ranches extinct. But, I still think that we represent something more than just a quaint reminder of the past and that we are worth preserving.