Columnists - The Durango Herald

Alternative sweetners healthier than refined sugar

Did you give up sugar to improve your health in 2019? We are four weeks into the new year. Maybe you’ve had some success or maybe you’ve thrown in the towel. Either way, I want t...

DATE: Jan 23, 2019 | CATEGORY: Healing Nutrition

Kiss puts marriage on shakier ground

DEAR ABBY: I may be having a midlife crisis. I’m not happy in my marriage and haven’t been for quite some time. I pray every night that my husband will find someone else so he will leave...

DATE: Jan 22, 2019 | CATEGORY: Dear Abby

This is how we destroy lives now on social media

Within living memory, political polarization had at least something to do with issues, but in the age of social media, it’s almost entirely about social type. It’s about finding a...

DATE: Jan 22, 2019 | CATEGORY: David Brooks

Onset of Trump and Brexit show the West adrift

In August 1990, George H.W. Bush met Margaret Thatcher in Aspen right after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The pair resolved not to allow Iraq’s “naked aggression” to stand,...

DATE: Jan 21, 2019 | CATEGORY: Guest Columns

Western Colorado can thrive by adding ... wolves!

My visit to the Durango Wolf Symposium last November brought me hope – hope that a new restorative relationship with our natural world is in our future. Hope is not wishful think...

DATE: Jan 21, 2019 | CATEGORY: Guest Columns

Wolves just do not belong in a settled landscape

I attended the November Durango Wolf Symposium and was disappointed by the orchestrated message that sanitizes the role of the wolf and misconstrues and deliberately omits information regard...

DATE: Jan 21, 2019 | CATEGORY: Guest Columns

Code office is a ‘fine’ way to report city to itself

On the heels of the column reminding residents and business owners to remove snow from their sidewalks, who fines the city when the city neglects to do the same with city properties? – Sandy...

DATE: Jan 21, 2019 | CATEGORY: Action Line

Son mired in grief after dad’s death

DEAR ABBY: It has been a little over two years since I lost my father to leukemia. The progression of his illness and death was rapid and unforeseen. It has been a tremendous emotional s...

DATE: Jan 21, 2019 | CATEGORY: Dear Abby

It’s news vs. the president

Editors and reporters must learn to resist name-calling, shiny objects

DATE: Jan 20, 2019 | CATEGORY: Frank Bruni

When alcohol fuels trouble at 36,000 feet

On a recent Delta Air Lines flight from Newark to Minneapolis, a passenger seated near Stephanie Wolkin downed five mini-bottles of vodka in rapid succession. By the time the plane landed, t...

DATE: Jan 20, 2019 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

New Mexico grapples with air pollutants

We who live in these parts sometimes call it the Four Corners, other times the San Juan Basin or even the Colorado Plateau. It’s reflective of the geographic flexibility of our home region, ...

DATE: Jan 19, 2019 | CATEGORY: Thinking Green

Rest of state must see our region’s needs

One of the first things I learned when joining the Legislature in 2017 was that the two committees I was most passionate to join, Education and Agriculture, met at the same time. ...

DATE: Jan 19, 2019 | CATEGORY: From the State House

Photos: Durango High School boys golf competes at stateDemons finished 14th after two rounds at Fox Hill Club in Longmont

Demons finished 14th after two rounds at Fox Hill Club in Longmont

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