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Article Launched: 07/17/2005 01:00:00 AM
Try doing anything but ranching with a ranch
By Sureva Towler
I'm looking at a map of the New West, and your spread ain't on it. There's no money in firing up the tractor. You can't make it selling cows.
Last year Harry cleared $23,000 running cows on an $8 million spread. The views are spectacular, but his kid's still going to college on loans, and he's not taking his old lady on a Club Med cruise anytime soon. Harry says ranchers have to sell out, sell real estate or come into money. You better be content to live poor and die rich, because soaring land values are great for securing loans that are impossible to repay.
Once upon a time you could save the ranch by getting an extension at the bank, working twice as hard, growing your own feed, leasing more land or having more children. Today, even if you own your spread, you can expect only a 2 to 4 percent return on your investment - less than you can get on a CD with no work and no investment.
Up at Dry Lake, the talking heads at chambers, banks and extension, small-business and economic-development offices are saying that anyone who thinks what-worked-for-Grandpa-will-work-for-
me, has his shorts over his head. Where we once mined gold, coal, livestock and recreation, they're now hawking agri-tourism, heritage-tourism, adventure-tourism, wilderness-tourism, gourmet-tourism, athletic-tourism and ecotourism with the zeal of medicine men. Diversification and value added are the new mantra.
Put a hot tub in the bunkhouse and call it a B&B. Run dudes. Let the kids manage a U-Pick-Em, and put the Old Lady to work making service berry jellies, soaps, bath salts and candles. Sell emu oil. Grow stuff that isn't traded on the commodities market. Raise medicinal plants like osha, which sells for 10 times the price of hay. Harvest endangered species like Thurber fescue under contract to the Forest Service. Sell spruces, lodgepoles and chokecherries with landscape value.
Don't cut the crabgrass then call the back 40 a preserve for hunters or photographers. On the Web there's a lady peddling "decorator" tumbleweed, a man shredding Aspen bark to use as packing material, and a granny selling toy straw bales that cost more than a real one.
Sell access to Orvis for fly-fishing, to American Sportsmen for game hunting, and to the Boy Scouts for field trips. Open a petting zoo, putting green, shooting range. Host tours for bird-watchers and historians or executive retreats. Raise llamas, alpaca, yak and other exotics. Sell saddles on cattle drives and trail rides. Build a pole barn big enough for 900
picnickers to chow down on steaks at reunions and weddings. Dig a 9-foot barbecue pit and throw luaus and nut frys for Kiwanis, Lions and Rotarians.
Fact of the matter is, ranchers and farmers do not play well with others. They are independent SOBs and have every intention of staying that way. They claim they're too dumb to do different. Harry says he's packing it in because the cost of money is too high, govmint regulations are stifling, he's tired of working so hard, and his granddaddy would come back to haunt him if he began selling conservation easements, fenced hunting leases or yee-haw adventures.
Makes you wonder how many pumpkin patches, corn mazes and hayrides the nation can support? How many times will a person pay to pet a goat? To what extent does the sale of landscapes painted on saw blades affect the GNP?
More important, do you really want your kids to grow up in a roadside stand selling jerky, stick horses and barbecue sauce? Can you surrender your privacy, hayfields and front porch to rubbernecking yahoos, whining children and ill-mannered dogs, every one of whom needs a restroom? Do you really want to smile eight hours a day and spend the evening around the campfire with a bunch of turkeys?
A continuing Department of Agriculture National Survey on Recreation and the Environment, launched in 1960, advises that every year 62 million grown-ups and 20 million school children, about a third of the entire U.S. population, travel an average of 80 miles to find a farm or ranch experience. Travel agents throughout America, who trace their migration routes, say they all lust for Colorado.
So instead of pulling cows, bus in youth groups so they can ride tractors, milk cows, run the horses ragged, and jump up and down on grapes.
If Disney can do it, so can you. You can always use a cattle prod for crowd control. Meanwhile, take a rancher out to lunch, because he may not be around for long.