by Freeman House
May 10, 2001

In March, Freeman House interviewed Cindy and Sterling McWhorter about their livelihood in the Mattole. This is an edited transcript of their interview.

It’s a lot harder to make a living in the beef cattle business than it used to be. Partly because there is so much beef being produced in Canada and Mexico and shipped into this country at lower prices. Then there are expenses on the ranch, fencing materials, equipment, and labor. You have to do a lot of your own labor. Having to pay workman’s comp or payroll taxes has a lot to do with it. When you’re trying to get the land in shape, working over fences, and so on, it’s frustrating when you can’t just pay somebody and be able to write that off without claiming him as an employee. That’s a drawback.

People ask why – instead of working our hands to the bone, with the land taxes so high – why don’t we just sell the land and be a lot more comfortable. But then when that land is bought, it’s sold at a high price based on real estate prices. Cattle won’t pay for that, so the land gets out of the hands of the agricultural sector.

Cindy and I are just getting into the cattle business ourselves; my grandfather and mother have been involved in it. Grandpa subsidized the ranching with logging or other interests and my mother did the same thing with the business she had. [Sterling’s mother, Billie McWhorter, owned and operated Sequoia Gas Company for many years. Sterling now works for the business three days a week.] And a lot of people that have the grazing land, have timber also, and they do subsidize ranching with income from that, so it’s kind of a package. Right now we are expecting fifty cents [per pound] for calves. The cows are weaning anywhere between 400-550 pounds, and then you have ten or so cull cows weighing in around 1100 pounds… you get about $300.00 for those. So you have to be a manager and a businessman also. And if you don’t have something else to subsidize the cattle business with, you can hardly raise a family. We have 180 cows and we couldn’t survive just on that.

Cindy and I have been to Ranching for Profit school, with Stan Parsons, and we’ve gone to nutrition schools. Cindy has worked on ranches through college where she studied animal husbandry. Animal husbandry is definitely the difficult part of managing the cattle with the land. You need to know your stocking rates and water development and stuff like that.

We don’t feed hay on [the Peak] ranch, so our stocking rate is critical. You can tell by the condition of the cows and if they are breeding back [producing a calf every year]. If they’re not breeding back, they are probably not getting enough feed and you are probably overstocked. Then you look at the land and what the land is capable of doing. You know you want some residual grasses; you don’t want to knock it down to nothing. Grandpa ran 180 cows, now we only have about 167 up there plus 9 bulls, and a few horses. There is 3200 acres up on the Peak Ranch. It’s a fairly productive ranch. We couldn’t run the stocking rate here on Shenanigan Ridge as high as [we can] over there. The land isn’t as good, the feed isn’t as good and the water is not as good. Water is another factor determining stocking rate. We have a lot of natural springs on that ranch and we are very fortunate that way. It’s a very good cattle ranch and we still cannot rely on it independently for income.

A rancher’s year

Let’s start in December and January, that’s when our calves hit the ground. December, January, and February. When we have a chance, we go up either on horseback or a four-wheeler and ride around and check if things are looking good. Our cows are pretty much on their own, which is nice because Mother Nature determines your survivors. You get a strong herd that way as opposed to going out every day and pulling calves or whatever. The herd that we’ve created is based on survival and they tend to throw that genetically so it’s an important thing. The calves hit the ground and the bulls get turned out. The first of March or April, we mark our calves which entails getting all the animals in, sorting the calves from the cows, giving them the vaccination and worming that they need, and they are turned out again.

We have quite a crew at that time. It’s not for payment, just for a barbecue etc. Everybody gets together and helps each other out, and that’s a neat part about ranching. We still have some of those old traditions. Then when the weather starts getting better we have roads to maintain and check on.

From day to day, we’ve got replacement heifers and bulls to feed, and in the wintertime we do feed some hay [here on Shenanigan]. We make our own hay. We don’t feed any hay up at the other ranch, and we do keep the stocking rate down because it is so expensive labor-wise to go up there and feed. Once you start it, you have to keep doing it, you can’t just go up there every once in a while and feed.

After we get the calves marked, we get ready to start making hay. That means getting all the barns cleaned out, or barn repair, going over all the haying equipment, making sure the tractor’s in tip-top shape. Because when it’s time to make hay, it’s time to make hay. You don’t want to be slowed down, you never know what the weather is going to do. If you have a window of four or five days and your grass is ready, it’s like the old saying “you have to make hay while the sun is shining.”

That takes up a good three weeks to a month, depending if Sterling is asked to make hay for someone else. That is a very labor-intensive time. You not only have the hay to get on the ground, you have a hay crew to feed and manage. When you get a bunch of guys together, it’s a full time job just trying to manage them. That takes up May and a lot of June. In June, I may have time to work on fences and stuff like that.

In August we gather all the cows again and ship the calves, and that is pretty much dependent upon what the feed is doing. There will be a time when the feed will turn from a green to a yellowish color and the natural seed part of the grains hardens up and becomes grain. You want the calves to eat that. The calves are gobby fat until they eat that grain and then the meat hardens up and it adds weight to them. That’s when you want to sell them.

All the cows go through the chute pretty much one at a time and they again get the vaccines they need and they get wormed at that time. We only give two vaccines, “eight-way” for any diseases that they would pick up in the air and the water, Then you have the venereal disease vaccine that you need to give also. There are a few vaccines that are vital, just like vaccines for your kids, it is something that you just need to do. We are lucky we don’t have to vaccinate for too many things.

[When we need to increase the herd], we prefer to go to someone we know. When you take them from one environment to another, that’s extremely stressful for cattle and its a vulnerable time for them. It takes about two years for cattle to acclimate and get in cycle with the other cattle as far as calving, so all the calves are the same size for shipping when it’s time to go. Nature is amazing, we don’t have cross-fences on our ranch, which we would like to someday, but I think Mother Nature does an excellent job of dividing cattle up and moving them around the ranch.

September and October is a slower time as far as the day-to-day stuff, and we’ll work on projects like roadwork. Definitely it’s time to get firewood and that kind of stuff. Building maintenance is constant, keeping roofs on the barn and nailed down for winter, trying to get the rot taken care of on the barn, it goes from project to project.

The last several years we’ve been working on the river project at the Peak. On the East Branch of the North Fork back in 1992 and 1993 those high waters did a lot of damage up there. The channel widened and it cut into the bank and came within 10 feet of taking out one side of the corral and the main barn. There is a rock quarry that sits up there. I learned a lot -- I didn’t know much about digging rock or running an excavator or really how the river worked, so over the years we built up little wing dams and pushed the river away from the bank and let it build its own channel, while keeping it away from what we wanted to protect. Grandpa bought that ranch in the 80’s and they have always had that problem. They wanted to put in a dike and keep the river turned at 90-degrees and push in to the other bank. The Clarks did it, the Miners probably did it, Grandpa had done it and I tried to do it. In 1992, the river took the dike out.

I talked to Jim Adams and Bill Branstetter, I talked to Rex, several people who had experienced this type of thing. We had the rocks and instead of doing the same kind of thing, I wanted to release the pressure of the 90-degree turn and let it come around in a gentle sweep. We have built several wing-dams and it touches off those wing-dams and just kind of stays out of the way, so it is working.

New ways of earning a living

Last year we had a horse camp for kids which I think was very successful. The campers had a very good time, and we were able to raise enough money to make improvements on the horse facility. I think once we get set up it’s going to take off even more. I am hoping to do probably three camps this summer. It’s a neat way to make money and educate kids and get them to do something that I feel is very healthy and worthwhile -- to teach them responsibility and care for something other than themselves.

The kids had fun just being together for that long. Having horses on top of that was a big bonus to them. But they were responsible for cleaning up after meals, they had different shifts feeding and watering the animals. I told them from the start we are not going to have any bickering or fighting around here, we don’t have any time for that, so we are all going to pitch in and help each other and be sensitive to each other and this is going to be fun and we did not have one quarrel.

They get the challenge too. Some of the kids ride in the arenas and in town, but they don’t get out on the trail and cross creeks and really see what a horse can do. It takes them out of their comfort zone, and as time goes on they become much more confident as a rider, they become elated when they can make this huge animal do something that they couldn’t do before but now they can. It’s a bonding between the animals and the kids, it’s pretty exciting.

Also, I have probably 15 kids in the Mattole area that take riding lessons from me. I [Cindy] have some adults, and many people ask me if they can take lessons. We have 2 kids now and so my time is a little bit limited, but as they get older it will free me up a little bit. I’ll have more time to take on more horses and more people. We have ideas of doing some pack trips, perhaps on the ranch, which would be a lot of fun. We really need to get our facilities set up so we can handle this.

Selling directly to consumers

Our beef is range-fed and not full of antibiotics, so there ought to be a niche market for it, but there are a lot of problems associated with that. Consumers want a specific product and they want a specific quality. When you buy a quarter beef, a half beef or a whole beef, you get that whole animal, you get a New York steak, hamburger, you’ll get a chuck roast, tri-tip roast. I think people get used to cooking one piece of meat like hamburger or steak, the easier things. And to sell an animal to another person they have to be able to accept the whole piece, cause you can’t just sell the New York steak, what would you do with the rest of the meat? So from what I understand that’s the hardest part, people will do it for a while then they eat all the steak and they have a freezer full of hamburger and less quality cuts, and they’re not willing to spend the extra time preparing that meat.

On a larger scale, the problem is getting beef to sale in San Francisco where they need quantity and they need it weekly. Nick up at the Arcata Co-op approached us just the other day about providing two animals per week. Our calves all grow up at the same time, they are ready at a certain age. It’s a lot more labor intensive to go out and gather 2 animals a week and haul them to town. If you had a customer base locally that wanted to do that, to buy their yearly supply of meat [all at once], then we could do it.

In March, Freeman House interviewed Cindy and Sterling McWhorter about their livelihood in the Mattole. This is an edited transcript of their interview.

It’s a lot harder to make a living in the beef cattle business than it used to be. Partly because there is so much beef being produced in Canada and Mexico and shipped into this country at lower prices. Then there are expenses on the ranch, fencing materials, equipment, and labor. You have to do a lot of your own labor. Having to pay workman’s comp or payroll taxes has a lot to do with it. When you’re trying to get the land in shape, working over fences, and so on, it’s frustrating when you can’t just pay somebody and be able to write that off without claiming him as an employee. That’s a drawback.

People ask why – instead of working our hands to the bone, with the land taxes so high – why don’t we just sell the land and be a lot more comfortable. But then when that land is bought, it’s sold at a high price based on real estate prices. Cattle won’t pay for that, so the land gets out of the hands of the agricultural sector.

Cindy and I are just getting into the cattle business ourselves; my grandfather and mother have been involved in it. Grandpa subsidized the ranching with logging or other interests and my mother did the same thing with the business she had. [Sterling’s mother, Billie McWhorter, owned and operated Sequoia Gas Company for many years. Sterling now works for the business three days a week.] And a lot of people that have the grazing land, have timber also, and they do subsidize ranching with income from that, so it’s kind of a package. Right now we are expecting fifty cents [per pound] for calves. The cows are weaning anywhere between 400-550 pounds, and then you have ten or so cull cows weighing in around 1100 pounds… you get about $300.00 for those. So you have to be a manager and a businessman also. And if you don’t have something else to subsidize the cattle business with, you can hardly raise a family. We have 180 cows and we couldn’t survive just on that.

Cindy and I have been to Ranching for Profit school, with Stan Parsons, and we’ve gone to nutrition schools. Cindy has worked on ranches through college where she studied animal husbandry. Animal husbandry is definitely the difficult part of managing the cattle with the land. You need to know your stocking rates and water development and stuff like that.

We don’t feed hay on [the Peak] ranch, so our stocking rate is critical. You can tell by the condition of the cows and if they are breeding back [producing a calf every year]. If they’re not breeding back, they are probably not getting enough feed and you are probably overstocked. Then you look at the land and what the land is capable of doing. You know you want some residual grasses; you don’t want to knock it down to nothing. Grandpa ran 180 cows, now we only have about 167 up there plus 9 bulls, and a few horses. There is 3200 acres up on the Peak Ranch. It’s a fairly productive ranch. We couldn’t run the stocking rate here on Shenanigan Ridge as high as [we can] over there. The land isn’t as good, the feed isn’t as good and the water is not as good. Water is another factor determining stocking rate. We have a lot of natural springs on that ranch and we are very fortunate that way. It’s a very good cattle ranch and we still cannot rely on it independently for income.

A rancher’s year

Let’s start in December and January, that’s when our calves hit the ground. December, January, and February. When we have a chance, we go up either on horseback or a four-wheeler and ride around and check if things are looking good. Our cows are pretty much on their own, which is nice because Mother Nature determines your survivors. You get a strong herd that way as opposed to going out every day and pulling calves or whatever. The herd that we’ve created is based on survival and they tend to throw that genetically so it’s an important thing. The calves hit the ground and the bulls get turned out. The first of March or April, we mark our calves which entails getting all the animals in, sorting the calves from the cows, giving them the vaccination and worming that they need, and they are turned out again.

We have quite a crew at that time. It’s not for payment, just for a barbecue etc. Everybody gets together and helps each other out, and that’s a neat part about ranching. We still have some of those old traditions. Then when the weather starts getting better we have roads to maintain and check on.

From day to day, we’ve got replacement heifers and bulls to feed, and in the wintertime we do feed some hay [here on Shenanigan]. We make our own hay. We don’t feed any hay up at the other ranch, and we do keep the stocking rate down because it is so expensive labor-wise to go up there and feed. Once you start it, you have to keep doing it, you can’t just go up there every once in a while and feed.

After we get the calves marked, we get ready to start making hay. That means getting all the barns cleaned out, or barn repair, going over all the haying equipment, making sure the tractor’s in tip-top shape. Because when it’s time to make hay, it’s time to make hay. You don’t want to be slowed down, you never know what the weather is going to do. If you have a window of four or five days and your grass is ready, it’s like the old saying “you have to make hay while the sun is shining.”

That takes up a good three weeks to a month, depending if Sterling is asked to make hay for someone else. That is a very labor-intensive time. You not only have the hay to get on the ground, you have a hay crew to feed and manage. When you get a bunch of guys together, it’s a full time job just trying to manage them. That takes up May and a lot of June. In June, I may have time to work on fences and stuff like that.

In August we gather all the cows again and ship the calves, and that is pretty much dependent upon what the feed is doing. There will be a time when the feed will turn from a green to a yellowish color and the natural seed part of the grains hardens up and becomes grain. You want the calves to eat that. The calves are gobby fat until they eat that grain and then the meat hardens up and it adds weight to them. That’s when you want to sell them.

All the cows go through the chute pretty much one at a time and they again get the vaccines they need and they get wormed at that time. We only give two vaccines, “eight-way” for any diseases that they would pick up in the air and the water, Then you have the venereal disease vaccine that you need to give also. There are a few vaccines that are vital, just like vaccines for your kids, it is something that you just need to do. We are lucky we don’t have to vaccinate for too many things.

[When we need to increase the herd], we prefer to go to someone we know. When you take them from one environment to another, that’s extremely stressful for cattle and its a vulnerable time for them. It takes about two years for cattle to acclimate and get in cycle with the other cattle as far as calving, so all the calves are the same size for shipping when it’s time to go. Nature is amazing, we don’t have cross-fences on our ranch, which we would like to someday, but I think Mother Nature does an excellent job of dividing cattle up and moving them around the ranch.

September and October is a slower time as far as the day-to-day stuff, and we’ll work on projects like roadwork. Definitely it’s time to get firewood and that kind of stuff. Building maintenance is constant, keeping roofs on the barn and nailed down for winter, trying to get the rot taken care of on the barn, it goes from project to project.

The last several years we’ve been working on the river project at the Peak. On the East Branch of the North Fork back in 1992 and 1993 those high waters did a lot of damage up there. The channel widened and it cut into the bank and came within 10 feet of taking out one side of the corral and the main barn. There is a rock quarry that sits up there. I learned a lot -- I didn’t know much about digging rock or running an excavator or really how the river worked, so over the years we built up little wing dams and pushed the river away from the bank and let it build its own channel, while keeping it away from what we wanted to protect. Grandpa bought that ranch in the 80’s and they have always had that problem. They wanted to put in a dike and keep the river turned at 90-degrees and push in to the other bank. The Clarks did it, the Miners probably did it, Grandpa had done it and I tried to do it. In 1992, the river took the dike out.

I talked to Jim Adams and Bill Branstetter, I talked to Rex, several people who had experienced this type of thing. We had the rocks and instead of doing the same kind of thing, I wanted to release the pressure of the 90-degree turn and let it come around in a gentle sweep. We have built several wing-dams and it touches off those wing-dams and just kind of stays out of the way, so it is working.

New ways of earning a living

Last year we had a horse camp for kids which I think was very successful. The campers had a very good time, and we were able to raise enough money to make improvements on the horse facility. I think once we get set up it’s going to take off even more. I am hoping to do probably three camps this summer. It’s a neat way to make money and educate kids and get them to do something that I feel is very healthy and worthwhile -- to teach them responsibility and care for something other than themselves.

The kids had fun just being together for that long. Having horses on top of that was a big bonus to them. But they were responsible for cleaning up after meals, they had different shifts feeding and watering the animals. I told them from the start we are not going to have any bickering or fighting around here, we don’t have any time for that, so we are all going to pitch in and help each other and be sensitive to each other and this is going to be fun and we did not have one quarrel.

They get the challenge too. Some of the kids ride in the arenas and in town, but they don’t get out on the trail and cross creeks and really see what a horse can do. It takes them out of their comfort zone, and as time goes on they become much more confident as a rider, they become elated when they can make this huge animal do something that they couldn’t do before but now they can. It’s a bonding between the animals and the kids, it’s pretty exciting.

Also, I have probably 15 kids in the Mattole area that take riding lessons from me. I [Cindy] have some adults, and many people ask me if they can take lessons. We have 2 kids now and so my time is a little bit limited, but as they get older it will free me up a little bit. I’ll have more time to take on more horses and more people. We have ideas of doing some pack trips, perhaps on the ranch, which would be a lot of fun. We really need to get our facilities set up so we can handle this.

Selling directly to consumers

Our beef is range-fed and not full of antibiotics, so there ought to be a niche market for it, but there are a lot of problems associated with that. Consumers want a specific product and they want a specific quality. When you buy a quarter beef, a half beef or a whole beef, you get that whole animal, you get a New York steak, hamburger, you’ll get a chuck roast, tri-tip roast. I think people get used to cooking one piece of meat like hamburger or steak, the easier things. And to sell an animal to another person they have to be able to accept the whole piece, cause you can’t just sell the New York steak, what would you do with the rest of the meat? So from what I understand that’s the hardest part, people will do it for a while then they eat all the steak and they have a freezer full of hamburger and less quality cuts, and they’re not willing to spend the extra time preparing that meat.

On a larger scale, the problem is getting beef to sale in San Francisco where they need quantity and they need it weekly. Nick up at the Arcata Co-op approached us just the other day about providing two animals per week. Our calves all grow up at the same time, they are ready at a certain age. It’s a lot more labor intensive to go out and gather 2 animals a week and haul them to town. If you had a customer base locally that wanted to do that, to buy their yearly supply of meat [all at once], then we could do it.


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Table of Contents for Mattole Restoration Newsletter, Issue 16 - Spring/Sumer 2001