Columnists - The Durango Herald

Back-to-School: District helps families support students’ mental health

Back-to-school week is here! Aug. 20 marks the first day of school for Durango School District families. It’s an exciting time, filled with anticipation and questions for students like: Who ...

DATE: Aug 16, 2024 | CATEGORY: Community

All Colorado households deserve to have help with affordable housing

Throughout Colorado, the cost of living, particularly housing, has exploded, and this is true across the income spectrum for low, to moderate, to high incomes, and touches every corner of th...

DATE: Aug 15, 2024 | CATEGORY: Guest Columns

Endings and beginnings

ENDINGS: Among the many delights of the 38th Music in the Mountains summer festival memorable solo performances top the list. Dazzling the audience on July 26, the Russian-American pianist O...

DATE: Aug 14, 2024 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Amelia White and Carter Sampson hit Durango

It all started for Amelia White with a Martin guitar. The now Nashville, Tennessee-based musician was reared on instruments typical of your grade school band, but once a guitar fell into her...

DATE: Aug 14, 2024 | CATEGORY: Downtown Lowdown

Church leader lies about infidelity

DEAR ABBY: My husband, “Silas,” and I have been married for 30 years. He is the deacon and Sunday school teacher at our church. (His brother is the pastor.) Silas had a two-year affair with ...

DATE: Aug 14, 2024 | CATEGORY: Dear Abby

How will our sun end?

Greetings stargazers. Happy monsoons. Even if I haven’t seen many stars in the past week, at least the plants in the garden have been happy. In about five billion years or so, our sun will ...

DATE: Aug 12, 2024 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Boosting brain power through nutrition

We’ve all experienced it, that moment when you can’t think of the word, and you just sort of babble as you try and get your thoughts straight. This mental “clouding” has been labeled brain f...

DATE: Aug 12, 2024 | CATEGORY: Healing Nutrition

Don’t panic and pitch: Hazardous waste day is coming!

Dear Action Line: We recently moved to Durango and are having trouble finding a place to dispose of pesticides that the previous owners left. Any advice is appreciated. – Ruth Dear Ruth...

DATE: Aug 12, 2024 | CATEGORY: Action Line

Off the beaten path: The story on social trails

Here are a few reasons to stay on the beaten path

DATE: Aug 11, 2024 | CATEGORY: Sports

‘Current weather worse than prior times’

In reponse to a guest column in The Colorado Sun on July 19, Trish Zornio said: “Fifteen years ago not having an AC in this part of Colorado was probably fine. Now it’s not thanks to climate...

DATE: Aug 11, 2024 | CATEGORY: Opinion

Young dog has become a nuisance and a danger

DEAR ABBY: I am a retiree with diabetes and heart trouble. My husband is disabled. I’m his sole caregiver when I have the energy to do it. Our adult daughter lives with us and works full tim...

DATE: Aug 10, 2024 | CATEGORY: Dear Abby

There is still a scandal around president Joe Biden

One of the Biden White House’s greatest achievements, from the perspective of its staff members, if not necessarily the country, has been to deny the press the kind of juicy leaks that were ...

DATE: Aug 10, 2024 | 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