Double J Ranch

Sometimes you can go home again.
When I left the family’s ranch in Texas to go away to college
I didn’t think I would ever come back.
When I finished college and was offered a job in California
I was off and running on a different path.
But before I started that job,
I went back to the Double J Ranch to visit my family. I never left, I guess I’ll always be here.

There are a lot of people who spend their lives at the bench,
at the desk or at the office so they can run away on the weekend,
to get a little bit of what we have here all the time.
So we learn to deal with the economic stresses,
and appreciate every moment of living out on this land.

My father and mother purchased the property after the First World War,
from the original homesteaders.
My parents lived here for many years and I have been here most of my life.
Times were tough when they started. Some days were just flat out impossible;
if the wind was blowing and it was freezing outside,
and you were trying to keep the pipes in the house from freezing,
and feed and water the cattle, it was an exhausting experience.
Still, it was home. Once you grow up here, nothing else is really comfortable,
and that is why I am here now.

My parents had run a cattle and horse operation.
They had been gone from the ranch for some time when I took it over.
I recall, the place was kind of run down.
It had been run by non-owners, which is often hard on an operation.
There was a lot of rehabilitation to do, especially in terms of soil conservation.

Since my takeover, the cattle operation has evolved into a grass finished yearling operation.
We are working on developing local and distant markets for grass fed cattle.
We feel very strongly about the nutritional and sustainable values,
of raising animals in this way.
They are free-ranging on native grass,
and when they are sacrificed it is done in a very respectful manner.

Over 60 miles of fencing and cross-fencing means that I can rotate cattle,
over the ground, never grazing heavily in one spot.
I’ve added pasture ground so that we can avoid the trap,
that many other landowners fall into during a dry year,
when the grass resource suffers from overstocking.

I am also interested in sustaining the native grass species,
that have thrived in this particular climate over generations.
Native grasses are really important.
They are so well adapted to this arid semi-desert ecosystem.
My father chose this location because it was one,
of the last areas of native grass in Texas.
Because he was very careful not to overgraze,
the stands have been maintained.
The great value of native grass is stability,
and ability to cover the ground reliably even during dry periods.
When you take out the native grass, you get invasive species.
I think those native grass stands are beyond valuable,
so I take great care of them. Even in a drought year,
I’ll only use it lightly, and if necessary, I’ll cut down my herd size to fit the season.

The 8000-acre ranch is almost evenly divided between pasture and cultivated ground.
The main change we have implemented in sustaining,
the native grass species operation is minimizing the amount of summer fallow,
because summer fallow is when the land is most susceptible to erosion.

This was almost always summer fallow country,
but having half of the land exposed to wind and water erosion,
was unacceptable to me, so I added two crops,
of alfalfa-brome-timothy mixture while sustaining,
the native grass species into that rotation.
It gives me three crops in four years instead of two.
It also keeps the land covered in stubble an additional year,
so it is fallow only one year out of four instead of two.
Cross slope farming and water control structures are also employed to conserve the soil.

Wildlife also has a place at Double J Ranch.
We’ve got things that fly, things that crawl,
and things that run, and we enjoy them all.
There are a lot of hawks and eagles here that do a lot of work for us,
and we appreciate that. Rodents can be a big problem,
when you have a mixed operation of pasture and field,
so from a pragmatic standpoint, predators of rodents work in our favor.
Double J Ranch has 360 acres that have been kept as wildlife preserves,
for 30 years and these areas provide habitat,
for bear, deer, game birds, and many other species.

There are better things in life than money,
and leaving the resource better than you found it, is one thing we all should strive to do.