Thank God for Our Farmers and Ranchers
I read the Denver Post every day; The “Voice of The Rocky Mountain Empire.” Best part of the newspaper is the sports section where they cover so many local, state, and national sports.
Recently they ran an in-depth series on Colorado Agriculture that a reporter had compiled over a year dealing with farm workers with seasonal work permits that work in the Mesa County fruit orchards and herd sheep. The sheep industry is mainly in northwest Colorado in Moffat, Rio Blanco, and Routt Counties, grazing on vast lands owned primarily by early day Greek immigrants who came to America in the last century with their skills and talents to raise sheep and sell wool.
My Irish grandfather and wife were both Irish immigrants and were in the cattle business in Moffat County. They started with a homestead filed in the 1880s, signed by President Andrew Jackson. In later years, many of the early day homesteaders abandoned their 160-acre homesteads, realizing that life in the wilderness was too harsh in winter and dry-land farming failed with sparse rainfall. The homesteads were eventually purchased by the survivors who either had access to water, or family money. During the depression the well- known Gossard family purchased thousands of acres for 35 cents an acre. The Gossard family, thru descendent son Bill, and wife Carol, donated some of their inherited wealth to repair the Central City Opera house. Gossard was a state representative from N.W. Colorado and his wife purchased one of the historic sheep wagons to have on their ranch property near Craig as a piece of agriculture history. Their ranches were sold to coal companies.
In the early 1900s Greeks came to Northwest Colorado from Wyoming with bands of sheep. The vast dry desert landscape, known today as Brown’s Park, was excellent summer grazing with sagebrush, wild grass, and shrubs, making excellent forage for sheep.
Growing up in Moffat County on second-generation cattle ranch, my father and his four brothers all had cattle ranches. Our ranch was on a designated sheep trail where large herds of sheep would be trailed from the winter range in Brown’s Park to high mountain pastures in the summer. Many of the sheepmen would stop by our ranch for breakfast. They visited with my parents early in the morning as their bands of sheep would trail down the rural country road past our ranch.
The Denver Post started their in-depth feature with a “sob story” about the Peruvian shepherd’s hardships of tending to the dwindling sheep herds of today with the lack of demand for wool clothing. The story interviewed several of the disgruntled Peru herders about meager rations, lack of food and water, and some mistreatment. They all admitted that they made far more money herding sheep in America than back home in Peru. Usually, they would come to America for a three-year period and return home with a bundle of cash. It is a lonely, challenging occupation, to live in a small sheep wagon with a bunk bed, wood stove, barrel of water, and canned foods. There is always the threat of coyotes, bobcats, mountains lions, and now wolves dining on defenseless sheep and their lambs. Coyotes will attack a herd of sheep and tear them apart for fun, wounding 15 or 20 sheep at a time. I haven’t visited a sheep camp in decades and hope that some of the living conditions have improved.
I grew up in Craig with all the Greek families, Maneotis, Charchalis, Kourlis, Papulous, Theos, Simos, along with Anglo sheepmen Gent, Visintainer, Smith, Urie, and Jenson, just to name a some of the Moffat County based sheep raising families. Some second and third generation families are still in the business, but many selling their mountain pastures to developers for home sites.
The Vail Valley was once a summer grazing site for herds of sheep coming from Western Slope counties. Sheep could trail for miles to the mountains in the summer, grazing along the roads and finding streams of drinking water.( Tending to sheep goes back in the Bible with shepherds seeing the shining star while herding their flocks, the heralding of the birth of Christ.)
These bands of sheep are the lifeblood of these families, and they entrust these herders with thousands of dollars of livestock. Some of the sheepmen herd their own sheep, especially when moving the herds. Otherwise they live in Craig or on their ranch properties.
The herders can feast on lamb chops, root vegetables, cans of food, and I wouldn’t doubt a little deer venison on occasion. They can’t have families, but sheep dogs, and this occupation is 24/7, without TV, maybe a battery radio and cell phone, but without electricity, and bathrooms.
One of my uncles and aunts, John and Lillian Sweeney, had a mountain ranch way out in the wilderness with three boys and two girls. When they all grew up and left the ranch. Their last living son had a successful career with IBM and resides in Boulder. Most of the Anglo ranching children left the ranching industry, including myself. Largely, because of never ending hard physical labor and the rise and fall of market prices. We were always told what our steers were worth in the fall. Later in life John and Lillian went into the sheep business, herding their own flocks living in a sheep wagon. They could have retired and moved to town, but they chose to live and work with their livestock. Most sheepmen today can sell their land and retire comfortably, but there won’t be any more lamb chops at Elway restaurants unless they’re imported from Latin America, New Zealand, or Australia.
There is a ballot Amendment coming Nov. 5 to close the last sheep slaughterhouse in Denver. This amendment should be defeated, and voters should know that there is an immense amount of work to supply that rack of lamb, pork chop and beef steak to your grocery store. The commodity market sets the price, not the ranchers.
The second story in the series blasts the fruit growers in Mesa County, largely in Palisade, relating the working conditions for the seasonal fruit pickers. The story doesn’t mention the trials and tribulations of freezing spring weather destroying the fruit crops. I owned the Palisade Tribune newspaper in that town for 20 years and know the migrant workers were well cared for in Palisade.
Sometimes you shouldn’t write about subjects until you walk in other people’s shoes. City folks just don’t understand rural life challenges and believe that the food just magically appears at the grocery store. Thank God for our farmers, ranchers, and livestock producers.