Getting into the sheep business isn't easy or cheap. Staying in the business isn't easy either, according to longtime sheep rancher Jean Brown. She will be the Grand Marshal in tomorrow's Bayfield Heritage Day & Sheep Trailing parade in downtown Bayfield.
The parade will start after the Brown family sheep, about 2,000 of them, come through on the Buck Highway, returning home from summer grazing in the mountains above Lemon reservoir. Sheep trailing spectators should stand on the west side of the road. Please leave dogs at home!
Brown's late husband Casey was from a sheep ranching family. But he actually started out teaching college, she said. He got his masters degree in wool production from the University of Wyomng and then taught sheep and wool production for two years at Cal Poly in the San Dimas unit. They lived in Pomona, Calif. during that time.
They would have stayed longer but returned to this area in the early 1950s when Casey's father, Jake, was facing a serious operation and needed someone to take over his sheep operation. They bought a little house in Silverton, Brown said, because the sheep summer range was above there. But then Jake came up and told them he'd sold the sheep.
"It took us 15 years to get back into the sheep business. That was our goal," she said. It takes a lot of equipment to support summer grazing in the mountains, a string of pack animals to get the stuff there, and the cost of buying the actual sheep.
Their first pack string in the early 1960s was a bunch of broncs, Brown said, horses that hadn't been trained for packing. "Casey always laughed and said wherever the broncs decided to throw off the camp is where we stayed." They switched to pack mules when they could afford it.
"That first year, it was very hard; any kind of business when you are new," Brown said. "(Casey) had experience with packing, but he didn't have the equipment - the horses, tent, pack boxes, panniers." And the sheep are a lot harder to move for the first couple years until they learn where they are going on the way up and then back down. One or a few sheep, referred to as cuts, wander off on their own. Once they learn the route, they may show up at the destination on their own.
One year, two or three ewes showed up in July at Brown's ranch just southwest of Ignacio, returning on their own time from winter grazing in New Mexico. "We saw them come up (Highway) 172," Brown said.
But back to that first year. That summer, Casey, their middle son Dave and his cousin stayed with the sheep in the mountains while J. Paul came down to find another herder after their first one left. "It rained. Their boots got wet. They put them by the camp stove to get dry. The next morning, they tried to put the boots on and they had shrunk. They used bacon grease to get them on. After that, they never took their boots off," Brown said.
"In the fall when we came down, we didn't have a good herder, and we were short sheep. We had around 600 at that time, then we came down short" because of the ones that had wandered off. "Casey and I went back up to try to find them. ...I don't know how we even made our payments that year, but it didn't deter us," Brown said.
"The sheep we started out with weren't the sheep we started our real sheep outfit with," she said. "There was a banker in Rock Springs, Wyo., that was selling part of his sheep. Casey made a deal to buy part of them. We ended up with 750." They were rambouillets, a breed that originated in South Africa.
"And we bought a sheep camp, the orange one that J. Paul uses now. It's 60 years old, but it still works." This is the "rolling camp," the traditional sheep herder wagon used where there are roads. The packed-in camp uses an 8x10 wall tent.
During that time, they lived on a ranch that straddled the state line along the La Plata River. Casey's dad made the down payment for them. They had an interest in a trading post in Waterflow, N.M. and one in Farmington. Also in Farmington, Jean operated a fabric shop for about 15 years and a tailor shop for several years.
They moved to their land near Ignacio in 1978. "We sold our place at La Plata and were in debt over our heads. We didn't get out of debt until after Casey died," Brown said.
Casey died of a heart attack on July 9, 2005. He and Jean were in their truck going through Bayfield on their first day of moving the sheep up for summer grazing. She remembered that the weather was beautiful that day. Casey's funeral had to be delayed until the sheep were up to their grazing allotment. Jean said she stayed with the business for a couple years after that before deciding it was time to retire.
J. Paul has two herds. His son Levi bought Houston and Geri Lasater's herd a few years ago. The Lasaters provided the sheep for Bayfield Heritage Day from its start in 2000 to 2008. Jean Brown said grandson Luke bought her sheep, but he sold them after three years because they weren't making any money. "If I'd been able to, I would have bought them back," she said.
Most old-time ranchers started with sheep and switched to cows, she said. "I think sheep make a better living, but you have to work harder."
It takes four days to get the sheep from southwest of Ignacio up past Lemon Dam, Brown said, and the same coming down. "We're so lucky we can still trail the sheep. In other places they have to truck the sheep. The ewes and lambs get mixed up (when loaded on trucks). When you get there, they have to mother up before you continue."
Unfortunately, when the sheep are trailed on the roads, there are some people who get impatient and think nothing of running over an animal, she said. This is also a violation of Colorado state law, which provides right-of-way to livestock on roads.
J. Paul started this past Sunday bringing the sheep down that will come through Bayfield tomorrow.
