Race King is the hard-working ranch manager at the La Cense Ranch.  When I talked to him today, he had just come in from getting more straw bales out to the cows for shelter from the wind.  He said that it had been below zero last weekend, getting down to 30 below at night, and they were preparing the best windbreaks and strawbale shelter for the cows and calves in the lowlands.   In this interview, Race talks about the La Cense Ranch, the value of rotational grazing, how grass-fed practices preserve the heritage of ranching, and the quality of character found in the ranching community.

What makes the La Cense Ranch unique?

I think it’s a combination of many things that make us unique.  It’s the landscape, the size of our operation, the managed intensive grazing, the high quality forages found in our area, the low-stress animal handling, the natural resources available for the wildlife that provide a natural well-balanced system, the Angus genetics, the time honored ranching practices we utilize.  One of the big things we have is the strong commitment from the people here at the ranch, from the management to the people out doing the every day things.  We have an operation where we can raise the animals, and package them and send them on, and that’s very unique.

How is grazing necessary to maintaining a healthy ecosystem on the La Cense Ranch?

Well first of all, we’ve been able to use managed rotational grazing to increase plant health and plant density while increasing grass production on the ranch and additionally have a positive impact on the creeks and streams.  It’s just not realistic to not rotational graze.  It’s totally necessary.  Otherwise we’d have rampant wildfires.  Grazing needs to be managed and we do that by allowing rest periods between grazing.  We believe grazing is important for the overall health of the landscape.  If we can ensure a good quality pasture to where it stays healthy, we will also help the wildlife as they pass though.  They’ll have good quality forage, with our warm and cools season grasses.  With the managed grazing, we’re also able to put more pressure on noxious weeds.

How did you know you wanted to go into the ranching profession?  Did you grow-up on a ranch?

I did.  I grew up on a family farm and ranch operation.  From a very early age I knew that my passion lied in ranching.  I liked working with livestock.  I admire the strong moral character and work ethic of ranching.  I enjoy it, and it allows me to raise my family in the midst of that, and it’s something they can share as well.

What barriers may prevent other Montana ranchers from being able to produce or sell grass-fed beef?

I think the biggest thing is the marketing side of it.  I think many of the ranchers in the state could produce the product.  The costs are a little higher, but we could get more out of it.  As the market grows I think there will be more who could step up and produce it.

When we talked recently, you said the La Cense Ranch is “preserving the heritage of ranching.”   What wealth lies in the heritage of ranching?

Well it’s part of our lifestyle.  My family has been involved in agriculture as have a lot of us in this country.  When you step back and look at how to do things in a more sustainable manner, and then you do research on the history, you’ll find out you’re doing it a lot like they did fifty, or a hundred years ago.  We’re focusing more on the range and the pasture.  We really have become grass-farmers, if you will.  If you look back, they had a little bit of hay put up for feed in the winter and that was all.  I think this is how we’ll be able to preserve the heritage.  It’s allowed us to come back to the roots of ranching.

There have been technological developments that have allowed us to blend old and new and come up with a sustainable concept.  And with that, we’re able to lower costs, we have less inputs, and we can increase animal health and performance.  There have been some good technologies to build on the roots of our heritage.  I think the bottom line is that ranchers and farmers in this country are good people; we care about our animals and the quality of our products.  As we produce more of these sustainably raised products, people will be board and more family farmers will be able to switch over to sustainable production.   People will have to pay a little more to get this, but for now we’re satisfied to reach a few folks who share our philosophy.

What do ranchers bring to a community?

Well first of all, ethics, values, they’re just strong people.  If you live in a small town it’s nice to have the scenery, but it’s the people around us who affect who we are.  It really takes a whole community to raise a child and the kids who come out of these communities do a great job wherever they go.  There’s a strong work ethic they come out with. 

 The number one industry in Dillon and Montana is still agriculture.  Not only is it the heart of the economy, but it's also socially who we are.  I guess you’d say it’s the backbone.  I don’t want to see us getting to the point where all our food is imported.  I know the people who are making our food and I think that it’s important to keep that industry here in America.

La Cense Ranch cowboys and kids at the recent Ranch Christmas Party, photo by Armelle Buvron 

This recipe is courtesy of the Butte Heritage Cookbook, I have made a few alterations. Butte, Montana was a big mining town and the Butte Pasty became a working man's staple. It is filled with steak, potatoes and onion! It is extremely delicious and if you have a working man or woman in your life why not make it for them?

Mining towns in the Rocky Mountains were responsible for establishing beef ranches to feed all the influx of workers. Beef ranches arose to feed the all the new residents and back then the beef was all grass-fed! Many of the miners in Butte, came from Ireland where they brought a tradition of meat pies much like the Irish Dingle pie. I used the La Cense flank steak, here is how pretty the filling looked:

Ingredients:
1 La Cense Grass-fed Flank Steak, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 large tablespoon butter, melted
salt and pepper
1 cup diced rutabagas (if desired)
1 medium sized potato, diced

For Pasty Dough:
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 to 1/2 cup butter or lard
1/4 cup cold water

Preparation: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sift flour, salt, and baking powder together; then cut room-temperature butter into the dough, kneed as you would pie dough. (This recipe makes 2 pasties) For one pasty, take 1/2 the dough and roll into shape and size of pie plate. Mix the filling together and season with salt and fresh cracked pepper. Pile half the filling mixture on only half the round of pie dough. Sprinkle with hot butter. Fold the dough over the filling, pressing edges together well.

Cut slit in top of each into which a teaspoon of hot water should be poured occasionally to keep from drying out. Bake 45 minutes in hot (400) or until will browned. Then reduce to 350 for 15 minutes. Enjoy!

Cows grazing in the Pioneer Mountains (Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest) Photo courtesy one of our Grass-fed Party members: Roundup.

Preserving traditional ranching in the West is something that the Grass-fed Party is whole-heartedly committed to. We really feel that grass-fed farming can not only help to keep family-run and independent ranches profitable and alive, it can also help to preserve rural communities.   In the West, rising land prices have threatened to end  family-run ranching, and this is something that is bigger than grass-fed farming vs. feedlots; it is really about the rural character of the West and our country.

Franny shared with me a fabulous Paul Starr quote that speaks to the importance of protecting family ranchers: "If we cannot make the ranch work in the 21st century, then I would say we will have proved we cannot have a rural future in the urban West."  Without ranches, the backbone of rural communities are gone, also gone are the businesses that cater to ranchers.   This has already happened in the high plains where communities have been abandoned because family’s have stopped farming their land: when the farmer’s leave there is nothing to sustain small towns, and they fail.

One large impediment to the family ranching tradition is the estate tax; ranching is a land rich enterprise, most if not all the monetary wealth of a ranching family is in their land. Land prices have gone up so dramatically in the past decades that many farmers find themselves millionaires but it is the classic case of land rich but cash poor. This becomes an issue when the next generation inherits the ranch because they have to pay a pretty sizable percentage of the worth of the land in taxes.  This becomes a painful decision for all ranching families: they cannot afford to keep the land they have grew up on because it is worth so much and they must sell. Franny interviewed Bill Donald a few months back, who is a lifelong, 3rd generation Montana rancher and he spoke about the challenge the estate tax represents to ranchers:  “Successful multigenerational ranch families utilize every possible tool to accomplish the generational transfer; trusts, wills, gifting, insurance, and purchase by the incoming generation. First and foremost it requires effective communication, coupled with a solid plan formulated with the advice of accountants and lawyers. The inheritance tax is a hurdle that many ranch families cannot clear. In many instances paying that tax requires the sale of some or the entire ranch, ending the ranch legacy.”  What would be a solution? As a farmer’s daughter I would hope to see some sort of exemption set up for farmers, so that families can stay ranching, but I would imagine that this would create a big loophole that could be abused by investors.  It is a pretty complex issue but the fact it is hurting the western ranching legacy can not be ignored.

Rising land prices can also threaten family-run ranches because selling land becomes so enticing, especially now that ranching has become so financially difficult.   Many ranchers are barely hanging on, and need to sell part of their ranch just to get by.  Sadly, we learned at our Montana Cowcus how difficult it has become for ranchers to keep going. Many ranchers have sold their land to developers, leading to less open land, and a decrease in working ranches which has pretty severe repercussions on local communities. One of our members named Roundup wrote an excellent blog entry about a movement in Montana that wants to preserve open working land, in fact, public dollars are being used to buy development rights from ranchers so that they can benefit from the value of their land and continue to ranch it. I really recommend that you take a look at the blog entry.

With rising land prices and decreased profits it becomes more and more attractive for ranchers to sell, especially for younger generations, who do not want to enter into a lifestyle that cannot sustain them. This is why grass-fed farming practices represent a solution because they can help to make ranching more profitable which in turn, makes the pressures of rising land prices not as acute.

Cattle in Beaverhead County, Montana, 1942, photo by Lee Russell

In a land where rainfall is seasonal, great bison buffalo herds maintained the prairie grasses by eating the tips of the grasses, and pounding the seeds pack into the soil, fertilizing and keeping the cycles of growth and regrowth in a semi-arid environment.  The prairie grasses of the high plains continue into the valleys and foothills of the Rocky Mountains, before the forests begin at the higher elevations.  These great herds of buffalo formed one irreplaceable part of the North American Prairie ecosystem, which had evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.  Estimated to be at a population of at least 35 million at the time horses were introduced to North America, they were reduced to as few as 500 at the turn of the 20th century. By the late 19th century, their place on the prairie had been taken up by a smaller, more docile grazing animal, the cow. They were small enough to put on trains, docile enough to be herded in large numbers by a few cowboys, and tough enough to be taken on long journeys westward with families looking to realize Manifest Destiny.   The Plains tribes lost their food source in the loss of the buffalo, and they were pushed westward, eventually onto reservations, as demand grew for homesteads and good grazing land for the cattle and cattle barons.  On the reservations, they were often given cattle for subsistence and economy, but by the early 20th century their herds were nearly diminished as more land and cows were sold for cash around the time of the First World War, when beef was in high demand for soldiers overseas. 

In the 1860’s, there were some cattle herded through the forests of the lower rocky mountains in Nevada and Utah, but the big rush to raise cattle in the rocky mountains was brought by the gold, silver, and copper ore strikes in Montana, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada.   A booming town needed a ready supply of food.  Cattle were herded from California, Oregon, and Texas to populate some of the first herds, and provide food for the hungry miners and the eventual settlements that grew up to support them.  Before the railroad lines were laid in the 1880’s, few foods could be imported.  The growing season was short, and so cattle provided an ample supply of food in these areas, turning the prairie grasses into meat.    If you go to Southwest Montana, this pattern of industry settlement is quite evident.  Original mining towns such as Butte, Virginia City, and Bannack are surrounded by some of the oldest in ranches in the state, including the ranch that is now the La Cense Ranch, and the historic Grant-Kohrs Ranch near Deer Lodge.  

European Aristocracy would arrive by train in scenic cattle towns like Sheridan Wyoming, and establish large cattle holdings.  The dichotomy of big cattle baron and small family rancher was present from the beginning.  Towns like Sheridan, Dillon, and others held train depots for the shipping of cattle to Chicago.  These towns grew up around the cowboy economy.  Stop in any western town and you’ll find a “Stockman’s” bar. 

The larger herds of cattle brought up from Texas to Montana and Wyoming were decimated in the harsh winter of 1886-87, ending the great free-roaming era.  The land had already been overgrazed, and if the cattle didn’t freeze to death, they starved to death.  Scarce grazing land following this catastrophe fueled a desire among cattlemen to actually own and fence good grazing lands, and to encourage management and distribution of grazing lands on federal land.  This amounted to the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, which established grazing districts, fees, and limited the number of cattle that could graze within a district.

Much of the land in the West remained the property of the Federal Government.  Writers such as John Muir set the stage for the conservation movement, making public opinion of the destiny of these pubic lands.  Muir’s arguments for preservation of the forests in the west led to the creation of 15 forest preserves in 1897, and the eventual creation of the Forest Service.  The BLM, the other public land management agency, was established in 1954, serving to oversee grazing fees and lands management that were not considered National Forest domain.  Stockgrowers associations were formed in each state and they grew over the years into an influential alliance of cattleman who helped to manage grazing districts and lobby for stockgrowers rights.