Columnists - The Durango Herald

‘Do you feel safer today?’

“Do you feel safer today than you did four years ago?” That’s the question everyone has to answer this November when casting a ballot in the attorney general’s race. Our current attorney gen...

DATE: Oct 8, 2022 | CATEGORY: Opinion

Holidays far from happy for family

DEAR ABBY: With the holidays approaching, I am starting to become anxious. I have a family member who ruins every holiday she doesn’t have control over. (She excludes some family members.) M...

DATE: Oct 7, 2022 | CATEGORY: Dear Abby

Calabacitas: Fall vegetables make a favorite family meal

Even if you don’t love cooking, I bet you have at least one family recipe you make periodically. You make it because it’s delicious, or because it reminds you of something or someone special...

DATE: Oct 7, 2022 | CATEGORY: From the Extension Office

Andromeda visible in northeastern sky

Greetings stargazers. Andromeda is one of the 88 modern constellations that was likely known and named long before it appeared on Ptolemy’s list in the second century CE. But my experience ...

DATE: Oct 7, 2022 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Forest Ambassadors end second successful season

In Durango, the shift from summer to autumn brings warmer layers out of the closet, plans for desert season and a rush to behold the aspens before their leaves fall. At the San Juan Mountain...

DATE: Oct 7, 2022 | CATEGORY: Stewards of the Land

Skerryvore brings combo of rock, Celtic music

Skerryvore is band with a great identity crisis. Call them a rock band with a Celtic-music habit, or a Celtic band with a rock-music habit, the Scotland-based group walks a fine-line between...

DATE: Oct 6, 2022 | CATEGORY: Downtown Lowdown

Miscarriage brings emotional fallout

DEAR ABBY: My partner and I have just suffered a miscarriage. It was our first pregnancy, and even though it wasn’t planned, it was very much wanted. Now that I have recovered from the misca...

DATE: Oct 6, 2022 | CATEGORY: Dear Abby

Farmington Makers Market winds up with major turnout

Southwest Apple and Chile Fest closes arts and crafts season

DATE: Oct 5, 2022 | CATEGORY: Local First

Niece keeps secret life from mom

DEAR ABBY: My niece, “Amanda,” is 19 and fairly close with my daughter “Hayley,” who is 18. Since graduating from high school and through her first year away at college, Amanda has been goin...

DATE: Oct 5, 2022 | CATEGORY: Dear Abby

Keep the faith, river trail and Oktoberfest fans

Dear Action Line: What is the status of the Animas River Trail project behind the high school? The signs say mid-June through late August, and it’s almost October. Construction is still ...

DATE: Oct 3, 2022 | CATEGORY: Action Line

Can we change the doom and gloom upon us?

When in our long lives so far, have we ever felt so much dread at the state we are in? Sometimes, I feel we are at apocalypse’s door, the final and total destruction of the world. This is me...

DATE: Oct 1, 2022 | CATEGORY: Authentic Aging

What it feels like to find out you have Alzheimer’s

I had been noticing something was different about me when I, a lifelong reader, started avoiding reading instructions - recipes, manuals, long emails. I figured I was getting kind of lazy. I...

DATE: Oct 1, 2022 | CATEGORY: Opinion

Photos: Cowboy Gathering Social and Parade

Photos: High County Cattle Auction

High Country Cattle Auction brings top-notch stock and country charm to Southwest ColoradoFamily run, generational business dates back to 1940s

BREEN – The family-owned and operated High Country Cattle Auction is “in the bones” of the Cugnini family, said third-generation owner Chris Cugnini. The business was founded by Chris’ grandfather, Pat Cugnini, in the 1940s. Pat then passed the business down to his son, Duane Cugnini, who then turned the business over to daughters, Becky Hawkins and Chris Cugnini, whose daughters plan to take over the family business one day. The auction, which takes place once or twice a month from April to January at 13062 La Plata Highway (Colorado Highway 140) near Breen, attracts ranchers, farmers and those in the cattle industry from far and wide.

Former Durango resident Steve Greenburg has been attending the High Country Cattle auction for more than 40 years, and continues to travel to Breen all the way from Arizona, where he now lives. He attended the September auction last week, where around 1,200 animals were up for sale. Greenburg said effective bidding takes concentration and a practiced hand. “You want to make sure you don’t pay too much,” he said. “And if you do, you want to buy the business.” Amber Belvin, employee of 15 years and Chris’ operations “sidekick,” said bidders are most often looking for signs of good health in an animal, like a plump, filled-out body. If bidding on a herd, a look of uniformity among the animals is key to a good purchase, she said.

Despite Greenburg already having a handful of filled out bidding cards marking the cattle he had won within an hour of the Sept. 23 auction, he said the day was young. One sale day last year culminated in Greenburg taking home 22 semi-trucks worth of cattle, he said. Chris said Greenburg is one of the auction’s longest-term and most generous supporters. “(Greenburg) pays top-dollar,” Chris said. “And (that) makes me feel good, because we’re giving back to (the sellers). I know these people around here, and they’re the hardest working people on the planet. If I can get them 10 or 20 cents more per pound, then that makes us happy.”

Cattle auction prices have gone up in recent years, both at High Country and nationally, Chris said. This year, animals are going for $2,500 to $3,000 a head – double and triple the average prices from last year. The increase, Chris said, is in part because of a screw worm making the rounds in cattle in Mexico, which has lowered the number of cattle coming in from the south, along with people subdividing and selling cattle branches, and local cattle herd numbers diminishing, which has increased demand.

Chris called the price increase “good and bad.” “It’s great if you’re a seller, because there’s prices that you’ve never seen before,” she said. “Older men come in, (and they) can’t believe the prices. Some of them do this for a living, and they count on that, so they’re so happy.” Belvin said some smaller farmers opt to buy less cattle during price surges like this, but echoed Chris’ sentiment about sellers being ecstatic about the unprecedented profit.

Local cattle farmer Lawrence Martinez entered 59 steers and 95 heifers in the auction Tuesday. Martinez has been involved in the High Country Cattle Auction “pretty much forever,” but recent years have been especially fruitful for sales, he said. “These last few years, we’ve been coming here to sell, because this is the place to go,” he said. “I wouldn’t sell anywhere else. (The market here has) been so good.”The auction’s community roots and generational touch doesn’t stop at the Cugnini family: Shane Hatch, the auctioneer, took over the job after his father’s death, Belvin said.

The auction serves as an opportunity for community members to get together and bond, Belvin said. “When we do have an auction, it’s a great place where local farmers and ranchers can get together and talk,” she said. “They come to the cafe, and they talk about the hay, and the drought situation, and I think it’s a good connecting point.” Chris and Belvin both expressed feeling glad the auction can supply so much generational value to the local farming and ranching community. “I mean, what other business can you think of around here that’s the same, right?” Belvin said. “We’re fair, and we’re very meticulous at our jobs. We take it very seriously, because this is (some peoples’) livelihood.”

For the Cugninis – and long-term employees like Belvin, who have become an honorary part of the close-knit High Country Cattle Auction family – the heart of the business aligns with the heart of the local farming and ranching community. “We’re just good, hard working people – Americans – that want to make a good living, and live off this great land,” Belvin said. epond@durangoherald.com

Family run, generational business dates back to 1940s