Harney County: Stewards of the Land

Ranching today takes more than guts and determination. Many ranching families have found that to succeed nowadays, they have to be good business men and women, as well. Ranchers have become high-tech, educated, long-range planners who care about the land, the animals, the resources, and most of all, the legacy they leave for the generations who follow. Three Harney County ranching families share their dreams, hardships, and successes as they live and pass on their own unique legacies of stewardship.

The Marshall Family of the Broken Circle Company, Goes Back to the Future

Gary and Georgia Marshall raised their family, Colby, Tanner, and Marley, in the tradition of ranching that has always been their way of life. “Our family, on both sides, has been involved in production agriculture going on five generations—almost entirely in Eastern Oregon,” said Gary.

Although their other two children are still involved in one way or another, a year and a half ago Colby decided after many years away, to come back to the ranch, with family in tow, to be involved in the management and everyday workings of the ranch.

Broken Circle Company’s holdings consist of land in Double O Valley, Drewsey, and Princeton. They also run on public lands permitted by the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and Bureau of Land Management. Livestock operations are the main income-producing sources for the ranch. “It’s a mix of cow/calf, stocker operation, and feeders,” Colby said.

Life for the Marshalls and other ranchers in the area was good until the mid-nineties when a seven-year drought reaped havoc on the land.

“The meadows were just bone dry and produced almost nothing—that’s really when the fundamental change started happening in the business,” Gary explained.

This drought caused them to rethink their ranching practices. They knew they needed to rest the land, provide additional ground cover, and find a way to manage the water more efficiently. They also needed a more efficient system to graze their cattle throughout the year, so they would rely less on hay production, which would also reduce the need for so much machinery.

Georgia said, “We’d like to eliminate much fossil fuel and to do more grazing. We have nearly eliminated putting hay up in bales, even.”

Colby agreed, “We try to keep iron and metal out of the business as much as possible. If we can mimic Mother Nature in our business practice, we’re generally going to be a more profitable livestock business.”

To accomplish this would take many steps. One step came from a ranching seminar Gary took to see if he could get some ideas—and ideas he got.

Georgia said, “We started moving our calving dates back in 1993. We wanted to be more in tune with nature, like the cycle of the elk and the deer—it made sense to us.”

Instead of calving in February, they would calve in May. The benefit of this was enormous. Colby explained, “If you are trying to calve an animal out in February, this means you have to increase their body condition and get them up to where they can lactate and take care of that calf, which means you really have to pour the nutrition into them in November, December, and January especially. In this part of the country it’s bitterly, bitterly cold. In January this year we had nearly 30 days or more of below zero.

“By calving in May, all we’re carrying a single cow and maybe older calves through the winter. They coming off the fall feed in good condition going into the winter. Then, through the winter months, they graze on rake bunch and standing vegetation.

Then, come spring we’re putting them back out onto BLM permitted allotments and the green grass is coming and their bodies start catching back up. When May comes, they’re dropping calves and the grass is just about at its peek. The mothers are lactating off that green grass, they’re producing milk, and it’s not 25 degrees below zero when the babies are hitting the ground,” said Colby.

“Calving in May gets them off the feed grounds too, which means we’re not dealing with scours and some of the diseases that happen when you’re calving in a confined area. The animals are taking care of themselves.”

“Because of the shift in the calving date, we don’t feed hardly any baled hay which enables us to not have to put a lot of equipment, and fuel, and time in creating baled hay. Hay costs in a production livestock operation are some of your highest costs of any direct cost that you put into your animal. It takes up a lot of time, a lot of effort, it’s a rush during one part of the year. We have baled hay but it is an insurance policy which we try not to use.”

Changing the calving date led to another change—rake bunch feeding. Colby explained that rake bunch is cutting the grass and then raking it into a small hay stack. Then at the appropriate time the cattle are turned in to the area until the hay stacks are used up. They are then moved to the next place.

“Creating the rake bunch, we’re still putting some machinery out there on the field and it still takes time but much less than baling and ultimately you leave the nutrients in that biomass from the field, there in the field. It all feeds back into the soil which creates better soils, better grass, and humus seed bed. And the cows are fertilizing the field for you.”

This method of feeding not only benefits their own cows, but on their permitted right in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, it also benefits the birds and wildlife.

Gary explained, “The grazing and haying program that takes place on the refuge is designed to create short-grass habitat for shorebirds that are migrating through and/or nesting on the refuge.” Even though changing the calving date and rake-bunching made huge strides toward their goal to be more efficient and nature-friendly, that wasn’t all they did.

They knew they needed to rest large portions of the land in order to always have grazing feed for the cows. In their mind, over-grazing is caused by time not numbers of animals and can devastate grasses and soils.

Colby grinned when he said, “We like to leave the solar panels on the plants—the leaves.” “Resting and using appropriate grazing and the number of animals for the right period of time does great things for the plants, for health of the soil, and the general biomass that’s out there. That is very, very important to us,” Georgia explained.

In order to be as effective as possible, they looked to the ways of the early ranchers, when the herd in its entirety was grazed together—cows, yearlings, and new calves. This was in conflict with the contemporary practice of separate yearlings from the cows, grazing them separately.

By implementing the old practice, they are able to more easily manage and move their cattle from paddock to paddock, freeing up larger sections of land to rest. Timing of resting is as important as timing of water. When it came to managing water, there only seemed one solution and it would be a huge undertaking—a reservoir.

Colby said, “In 1952 a couple of ranch families in the valley went in and built the Moon Reservoir which creates a holding of Silver Creek runoff. This happens to be one of the largest basin drainages anywhere in this part of the country. “The water system out here is kind of a back-to-the-future water system.”

He explained that for the benefit of refuge birds, wildlife, and habitat, agency officials along with conservation groups prefer to go back to a natural flood irrigation system; a system trying to be replicated in other areas.

Even though Moon Reservoir is now owned by Broken Circle Co. and Ketscher Cattle Co., they do not own all the water rights. Each year on March 1 its water pours out over the Malheur Refuge, the largest and oldest water-rights holder. The Marshalls have a great working relationship with the refuge and other agency partners.

The Marshalls have tackled many issues of ranching in Harney County. The Broken Circle Co. motto is, “Keep moving forward.” They found that sometimes to move forward, you must take a step back, or go back to nature, or sometimes even go back to school.

Gary said it best, “There’s all kinds of different ways, and large agriculture is starting to understand that we can take some of these things and do them on our own places and have a much better soil out there, have a much better animal out there, and have a more profitable business.

“You realize that just because that’s the way it’s always been it doesn’t mean that that’s the best thing for your own business going forward. There’s still a lot to learn out there in terms of agricultural production.”

The Singhose Ranch Follows Family Tradition

Travis and Kelly Singhose began farming and ranching as a couple when they married in 1998 in Central Oregon where they both grew up. Travis was raised in a long tradition of farming. Kelly’s family had a huge swine production. They met in college where they both obtained degrees in agriculture from Oregon State University (OSU).

According to Kelly, what they learned at OSU was just background for what they would learn through on-the-job, trial-and-error experience.

Travis said, “I grew up watching my dad farm and use a lot of his techniques that he used. “My dad learned a lot basically on his own, because when he was 16 his dad died and my dad was the youngest out of five kids. So he stayed home on the ranch with his mom and started farming. There wasn’t anybody there to teach my dad.”

For the Travis and Kelly starting out on their own wasn’t easy. Land prices were high in Deschutes County, so they resorted to renting approximately 600 acres of land and eight different landlords, they were spread out in Alfalfa and Powell Butte.

Travis said, “A lot of them were 40 acres here and 80 acres there. That was kind of challenging. We were primarily raising orchard grass for the horse market and dairy alfalfa hay, and we were running yearling calves.

Kelly added with a chuckle, “I can remember trying to take balers to Powell Butte and they stick way out, so you’re going through these back roads in Powell Butte and you’re trying not to take out every other mailbox because it’s so narrow and it’s so busy. It was wild because we drove a lot just to check everything.”

Travis said, “The last year we were over there we started buying cows. We were kind of running our cattle with my parents and my brother. They wanted to run yearling steers and we wanted to do the cow/calf deal.”

Kelly explained, “The steers [market] were always up and down, and we had large operating loans just for the steers. With cows you can decide when you’re going to sell them. You’ve got a lot more leniency. Like with heifers you can decide if you want to keep them for replacement or whether you want to sell them.”

They began looking in earnest for a way to make their dream of a cow/calf operation happen. Land prices in the Burns area really appealed to them, but they took their time to find just the right place. When they did, they sold their share of the family operation in order to buy land in Burns and over the years they purchased more and more.

The current mainstay of their ranch is commercial hay, but they also grow mint, irrigated spring wheat, and maintain a cow/calf operation. Their diverse operation helps them keep a more stable cash flow. Kelly also works as a nurse in Burns four days a week to help the family alleviate some of the financial ups and downs common in ranching and farming businesses.

When it comes to the challenges of their ranching experience, Kelly said, “The mint is somewhat iffy I think. It’s kind of trial and error because it’s never been grown here and because we didn’t know if the climate would even support it. It’s probably been our biggest learning process. Distilling the mint was a whole new process for us, too.”

Their venture into new crops was not the only risk they faced. Travis said, “The bank lending in the last few years has been tough because they have tightened up lending.”

So, the Singhose get creative. Kelly explained, “We’ve been financing ourselves. You save so much in interest and loan fees and all that. It’s been challenging doing it that way, but I think rewarding too. It makes you accountable for your expenses—your budget and everything has to be right on. There’s just no leeway.”

Climate fluctuations and water can also be unpredictable factors, but when times get tough, the Singhose family adapts. Travis said, “The first year we had water and quite a bit of feed, then we went through a little bit of a drought. We hardly had any water, so we sold a couple truckloads of cows. Now, we’re kind of regretting it because now they’re [selling for] higher prices. So now we have a lot of hay and not enough cows. We’d like to get back to 200, 250 heifers.”

When it comes to handling tough times, Travis said, “I don’t dwell on it. All you can do is go forward and keep planning for the next month or the next year.”

Travis said, “’08 was our good year when prices were really high. I told Kelly that what goes up must come down. So, we made a pledge to each other that we would just try to stop spending. We eliminated all projects.”

Travis was right. In 2009 hay prices went down from $240 a ton to $130 a ton. To compound the problem, when it was time to make the first cut, they had rain for two weeks and it all went to bloom—only good for dairy hay.”

This year, things are looking good for them. Their cows are almost paid for and cattle prices looking good. Hay and wheat prices are good and half their wheat is sold already, and their mint oil is under contract. Little by little the Singhoses are making headway in Harney County, but their extended family relationships also play a large role in their success. About four years ago Travis’s brother and family moved to nearby Riley to ranch and farm. His parents also purchased meadow near Travis’s land holdings.

As for Kelley’s family, she said, “My parents are retired, but now they’re working here with us. It’s nice because I have somebody to help with kids, so I can still go to work and go to school. It’s nice to have family.”

For the Singhose family, farming is their life and their livelihood. “Our foundation is farming. That is just number one,” said Kelly. “Now our kids are in 4H doing the same stuff we did.”

Otley Brothers Ranch Embraces the Winds of Change

The Otley Brothers Ranch is a family with a dream—a dream of bettering the land, so it can sustain ranching for generations to come. But they are not just dreamers—they are doers who are ready to put in all it takes to make that dream a reality. Otleys have been ranching in the Diamond area of Harney County for four generations back to 1887 when the first Fred Otley settled near the present ranch location. He set the bar high, improving land, riparian areas and wildlife habitat.

In to 1944, Henry and Mary, the second generation, began ranching in the area. From them came the Otley Brothers, Harold, Howard, and Charley who in 1984 divided the land into three family operations. Harold and his wife, Mary, kept the Otley Brothers Ranch name. Harold and Mary had three children, Harry, Fred, and Sherry. When Harold passed away in February of 2009, Mary and son, Fred, along with his wife, Debbi, took up the reins of the day-to-day operation of the ranch.

Mary Otley, the 89-year-old matriarch of the family, still feeds cattle during the winter, runs a swather, and buys all the bulls for the ranch. “We’ve all worked awful hard, but we’ve survived,” she said. “We did a lot of fencing to control the cattle movement. He [Fred] was the first here to start juniper control on a large scale—cutting and burning the juniper which was taking over our range. He’s turned this outfit over to darn near double the outfit. Fred has a lot of dreams,” Mary said.

It’s not only Fred who dreams. His wife Debbi is right there by his side. His brother, Harry, lives in Corvallis, but is still very involved on the ranch when they need extra help, or when they have decisions to make. His sister, Sherry, comes over to do the haying with her mother. The fifth generation also helps out on the ranch from time to time.

Mary said, “We’ve improved our cattle. We started with straight Herefords, but they weren’t working out like we wanted, so we did some cross breading and struggled at first, trying different ones breeds and systems.”

They finally tried Red Angus and felt they had found a breed that more closely fit their production and marketing goals, proven when the ranch won the award for “Commercial Producer of the year award” in 2007.

Fred said, “Our goal isn’t to maximize our economic return, our goal is to improve the ranch for the future and do it in a way that it’s sustainable. One of the goals is to make enough profit to pay for those investments that we’ve been making in a short period of time, and not have accumulated debt out there.”

Little by little the family improves the land, which in turn improves their cow/calf operation. “With all our improvements, with water availability being the focus, there are pastures that were only fully useful one out of three years, and even then it’d be for only a month and a half. Now, we can graze them, anytime during a seven-month period every year giving us a lot of flexibility to adapt to changing ecological and weather conditions.

“Our ranch is a little unique in that a wet year is more challenging than a drought year. At one time a drought year was the most challenging because we’re long and narrow, the ridges are dry, and we have miles of narrow, steep, rocky canyons. So on a drought year, the cows don’t want to step on the ridges. But we’ve done about 40 water catchments, seven miles of pipeline, and 25 miles of fence, so we have the ridges pretty well watered now. Plus we’ve done a lot of juniper control and prescribed burning, so our whole water regime is changed to the positive,” he further explained. Now extremely wet springs are a much bigger challenge than below average years.

When things go array, the Otley’s have developed an adaptive management program to adapt to weather conditions as well as other conditions that exist. They’ve implemented it and refined it in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for years.

“Like this year when it got too wet, we changed the rotation—changed where and how we’re going to graze the next pastures up. So, that’s one of the strengths of our ranch,” Otley explained.

Even with all their plans and all the improvements they have made to the land, the Otleys face more challenges than just working and managing their business in a sometimes harsh and changing environment.

Otley said, “It’s a very complicated, time-consuming business. The government has been throwing a lot of monkey wrenches at us. I think most ranchers do a pretty good job setting up business management and livestock management to reflect the natural environment.”

In spite of the road blocks from some government agencies, the Otley Brothers Ranch has a very amiable relationship with other agencies such as the BLM and the Agriculture Research Service.

Otley stated, “What’s unique about our ranch is two things. One is our partnership with the Agriculture Research Service on providing land for ecological and watershed research. We’ve been doing that for years, now. So, some of the most progressive, ecological and watershed research in the west is right up here.

“The second thing is the topography and 30 miles of streams and our ranch is very long and narrow. We have very long and narrow, rocky ridges and long and narrow stream-side areas—fairly unique in terms of our size of operation having those topographical attributes.”

Now, the Otleys are embarking on a new, somewhat controversial use of some of their land—wind turbines to generate power. High on the ridges of their ranch, the turbines will not be readily seen or heard by the public, yet a few people in their community are still opposed. The Otleys are pressing ahead, believing the pros out way the cons.

“My philosophy is that a little bit of industrial development in these rural economies, i.e. green energy, whether it is geothermal or wind, is going to make a much stronger community,” Otley said.

The Otleys believe that by having the reliable energy generated by the turbines the local economy will be more able to sustain businesses, have a more stable 12-month job base, and in the long term, benefit the community through a sustainable budget.

“We knew we had good wind on those long, narrow ridges and according to the data, up there is some of the best wind. With a small amount of disturbance in terms of access road and construction, something like a hundred and fifty acre footprint will initiate a two billion dollar project,” Otley explained.

The turbines will not only benefit the community—it will also help the Otleys keep a way of life that has survived four generations.

“In our own case, it’s going to create a little more security that we can transfer our four-generation ranch to the next generation in a more expedient manner. All of them do enjoy the ranch. They spend time up here. They like the cabin that my brother built; they like to fish and hunt. We’re going to sustain all those sorts of things while continuing a successful ranching business,” Otley explained.

“You’re working on a margin. Growth is a challenge in every business,” he said.

The wind farm is a challenge, but that’s nothing new for the Otleys—they have already overcome so many obstacles. It will allow them to take one step closer to achieving their dream of creating a sustainable ranch for the future.

After reading about these three Harney County ranching families, it is easy to see they offer some different methods in their operations. All three families do have some things in common – they all have a dream, plan for their dream and adapt to all changing parts to make their dream a success. Perhaps the greatest thing they have in common is their perseverance.

Story by Faye Taylor