AoR 60: Ranch Succession and True Grit at Sieben Live Stock Co. with Cooper & Chase Hibbard

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>> Welcome to the Art of Range, a podcast focused on rangelands and the people who manage them. I’m your host, Tip Hudson, range and livestock specialist with Washington State University Extension. The goal of this podcast is education and conservation through conversation. Find us online at artofrange.com. My guest today on the Art of Range are Cooper and Chase Hibbard, managers of the Sieben Livestock Company near Cascade, Montana. Cooper and Chase, welcome.

>> Thank you.

>> Good to be here.

>> I’m interested in the name of the ranch. I’m aware, because I’ve had some German in high school and my grandmother was full German, that Sieben is the German word for seven, and I know Henry Sieben’s name was Sieben, so. But I’m more interested in the name Livestock Company. That seems to be a retention of the older usage of the word livestock, meaning, you know, stock, as in capital or livable property which is alive. You don’t very often see it separated like that anymore. Do you know — is that a rotation of that sense of the term or is it not quite so.

>> It’s been a real battle with every time we write that or say that word, everyone wants to crunch it into one word. And it is Sieben Livestock Company, which is — goes back to the original incorporation back in the early 1900’s. So, that was the name of this place from the beginning. And we’ve held on to that tradition. We haven’t succumbed to the new English, so to speak.

>> Yeah, that old English. I think the original term livestock goes back to about the 1500, 1600s, to refer to stock which is movable. Well, what’s the — I mentioned Henry Sieben, just because I’ve read a couple articles about the ranch, but what is a brief history of the Sieben Livestock Company?

>> Yes. This has to go back to Henry Sieben walking into Montana at age 17, an orphan who came — immigrated from Germany as a small child, and his mother got sick and died on the ocean voyage, and so the father, with seven children and no wife, initially settled in Chicago, and soon thereafter moved down to a German settlement called Dutch Bottom, which is now Geneseo, Illinois on the Rock River in Illinois, southwest of Chicago. And they were there for several years, and those kids were all farmed out to different families, for the most part. And at age 17, Henry Sieben and his older brother Leonard, who was 19, teamed up with two cousins, the Arnette [assumed spelling] brothers and secured a small wagon, and I think an oxen to pull it.

>> One or two. They had something to pull it.

>> I think they had one of whatever it was. I think it was an oxen and headed out — had somehow got to the Oregon Trail from Geneseo, came out on the Oregon Trail and were refused passage at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, due to Indian problems further ahead. And they were lucky enough to secure passage with John Bozeman on one of his two pack trains, wagon trains into Montana through hostile Indian territory at the time. So, came into Montana in 1864, and Henry Sieben, and I think he and his brother split up and went their own ways shortly thereafter, but Henry hunted and trapped for a couple of years, for subsistence and eventually got a job freighting and ultimately freighted to the gold camps from Fort Benton, which was the terminus of the steamships coming up from Missouri and from the railhead at from the railhead at Corinne, Utah. Did that for a number of years, until one fall has saved up enough money to buy some worn out oxen, at the end of freighting season, turned them out into — on the open range, into one of Montana’s open winters, which we have from time to time. They prospered over the winter, and he sold them the next spring at a handsome profit. From that point forward, he decided that there was more future in livestock and livestock speculation than there was in freighting, sold what he accumulated as accumulated as a freight outfit and began speculating in livestock. They would — he and his brother would go down to Bear Valley, Utah, which is — there was a kind of a rest stop there for settlers coming west on the Oregon Trail, and frequently people were dispirited by the time they got that far on the trail. So, they’d purchased livestock there for a very reasonable cost and trailing into Montana. So, that’s how he got his start with livestock. He started — actually, in this area. He started north of Helena and the Chestnut Valley, which is right here on the Missouri River near Cascade, and often would turn cattle out that he accumulated and wintered at — down in the Chestnut Valley. He’d turn them loose, and then the following fall would find them 30 miles away at a place called Hole in the Wall. He said to himself at the time that if he ever had enough beans to buy a ranch, that’s where it would be. And as it turns out, the Cannon Sheep and Cattle Company, which came up to — came up for sale in 1907. He was able to purchase, and it was the Hole in the Wall. So, he was one of those guys that got to fulfill his dream.

>> Yeah.

>> But in the meantime, it was interesting, because he was one of the partakers of the free range and left the Chestnut Valley, thinking it was overgrazed in the 1880’s and moved to central Montana, north central Montana, secured water rights on Flat Willow Creek near Winnett, and ran on the open range there for a number of years, in a huge association with lots of other stockmen. And Charlie Russell, in those days, the famous Western artist, famous Montana Western artist, was a [inaudible] in that association, where Henry Sieben had his cattle. And so, about this time, the cattle drives were picking up from Texas, and the XIT and several of the — these large companies were bringing tens of thousands of cattle in from Texas frequently, and interestingly enough, many of those ventures were foreign money. They were Scottish investors, British investors, and the profits that were made were obscene. They were 15 and 20 percent pay back to investors. So, there was big, big money in range cattle. So, of course, they continued to come in increasing numbers. If you read the book Centennial, it’s a good depiction of of that period of time. But they came in, in huge numbers, and pretty soon we had a tragedy of the commons. More and more cattle, more and more competition for less and less grass. So, Henry Sieben moved again, and he moved out north of Culbertson, where some land opened up and ran steer for a number of years, again, on the open range, secured water rights and ran on the open range. But by then he was seeing the handwriting on the wall. Homesteading was becoming prevalent. A lot of river bottoms were being gobbled up. We had that horrible winter, which is memorialized by Charlie Russell’s Last of the 10,000 painting. That was in 1860s. No, when was that? 1887, 1887. A lot of people went belly up, as a result of that winter. He was very frugal. He was able to buy up a bunch of herds and — but saw the handwriting on the wall and determined that he was going to have to purchase a land base to stay in this business. He was able to purchase first the Mitchell place at the mouth of the Wolf Creek Canyon in the late 1800s, which became the Sieben Ranch company, and in 1907, was able to purchase Sieben Livestock Company at the Hole in the Wall, southeast of Cascade. So, there are two Siebens now, Sieben Ranch, which is owned by one branch of the family, and Sieben Livestock, which is owned by this branch.

>> Yeah, I saw the name of the other Sieben Ranch, I think, in the American sheep industry article from a number of years ago, reaching both of them. Yeah, that is a fascinating history. I have tremendous respect for people whose livelihoods depend on making good decisions and working with nature, and there have been quite a few people, including some environmentalists turned ranching advocates in the last, you know, several decades that have observed that ranching is now really the only livelihood that really represents an interdependence between man and nature. And I think this is something. It’s pretty significant, that feels like it hasn’t really been told all that well, a story that hasn’t been told all that well to the general public. You know, my own motivation as a range extension specialist, somebody who’s supposed to have one foot in academia and one foot in the real world, is that if we can do that well, namely, you know, producing food and fiber in the same space, that we can produce all of these other ecosystem goods and services, that we have some societal obligation to do that well, then, of course, the million dollar question is, what does it look like to do it well, or how do we do that? And I think, you know, maybe more subjectively, that ranching done well is beautiful, which is something that maybe has gotten lost a bit in our age of pragmatism. I think people can see that doing that well is objectively good, in a world where things things seem to be increasingly relative and subjective, as people are less and less connected to real, non-virtual things. So, one of my questions is, you know, what motivates you all to keep ranching? We don’t have profit margins like what they — you know, the rate of return on investment today is not 15 to 20 percent in ranching, and most people that have, you know, a large ranch property and some livestock could very easily, you know, sell that for what it’s worth. Put it on the stock market and make more money than the, you know, the two to five percent rate of return that’s in ranching. Now, what motivates you all to keep ranching?

>> I think Cooper is going to have a very interesting perspective on this. I don’t think, I know that he does. And I would like to kick this off, however, and tell the story about the last generational turnover, which I think addresses several of the questions that you have posed, and that maybe will set the tone for what I presume that you will have to say. But as you know, well, our audience has no way of knowing at this point, but my generation is fourth generation and Cooper is fifth generation, and we’re working real hard on the sixth generation already and, you know, the tallest one’s only about four feet tall right now. So, we’re starting at an early age. But we had a real turning point in our family when my father, Cooper’s grandfather, flew his Piper Cub into a power line on the ranch in 1976 and was killed. I was — at the time, I was — had graduated from college and had about six years into a career in banking on Montgomery Street in San Francisco, and when we heard the news, came home immediately. My two younger brothers, who were twins, three years younger than I were still pursuing academic pursuits, and I was following a professional career at that time. We all came home immediately, and of course, powwowed about, you know, what’s the future of this ranch going to be? And interestingly enough, nearly all of our trusted family advisers, by that I mean our professionals, our family and ranch lawyer who’d been advising us for years, our accountant, professional accountant who had been advising us for years and close friends of the family, almost without exception, advised us to sell the ranch.

>> Really?

>> And that, to a large degree included Scott — my brother, Scott, and my mother. We’d, you know, we’d been in the sheep business and we transitioned to mostly to cattle. We maintained some sheep and, you know, we’d have several years of not great prosperity on the ranch. And I was just starting a career or just got married, married a California girl. My two brothers were still pursuing their academics. I was 20 – 28 at the time, and no one felt that any of us was — none of the professionals felt that any of us were prepared to come in and take this over, particularly with the recent history. And so, my two brothers and I — Scott [inaudible] myself, spent lots of time powwowing and listening to all the advice and, at the end of the day, we came to the conclusion that this ranch was more important to us than anything else we were doing or had aspirations to do, that it was so deeply ingrained within us. To take this ranch away would be akin to losing a limb, losing a leg, losing an arm. We said, I don’t care what the professionals are telling us, we cannot let this ranch go. We are going to do what it takes to make this ranch work, and we’re going to keep this ranch in the family. I quit my job in San Francisco. I came back to the ranch. We powwowed and decided who was going to do this. I was the oldest. I was out in the professional world. Those guys were still in academics. They were younger. So, we decided who’s going to come and do it, what our respective roles would be. We had plenty of examples of too many fingers in the pot and ending up in disaster. So, we decided how we were going to do this and came up with our management structure. And so — and then, you know, not a bit sorry. None of us are. I mean, it’s been a wild ride, but the ranch is in very firm ground right now. We’ve got money in the bank, and we operate without borrowing any money, and we’ve been a successful operation. But it’s just, you know, the whole moral of this story is that it became so clear how important this ranch was to us, that we would sacrifice anything. We would sacrifice anything to keep this ranch going, and we haven’t regretted that decision to this day. So, to set the stage, Cooper, you’re the guy that’s — is devoting your life to this, and and you’re coming to this with some very strong feelings, as well.

>> Just to jump in quickly, that’s an interesting perspective, because there are some people who would look at a place like the Sieben Livestock Company and say, well, if I was that big, it’d be easy. You know, I could — I can exercise good stewardship. I can be profitable, if I had that much land. And I’m hearing that it’s not — that’s not quite the way things work.

>> Big ranch, big problems.

>> Right. Right.

>> Yeah. Yeah it was — yeah, it was — yeah, we was — yeah, the magnitude was –I mean, that’s why we were advised to sell it. I mean, not only our lack of experience, lack of specific knowledge to it, other than growing up, you’re spending every summer of your life from the day we got out of school until the day before we went back. And I think a lot of our love for this place was instilled by the fact that dad turned us over to the ranch foreman, with specific instructions that do not cut these kids any slack. You treat them exactly the way that you treat the other men on the ranch. Just because they’re the owner’s kids, it doesn’t give them any privileges. So, getting a day off is like pulling teeth. I mean, we got — we’re out here the day school ended, and we were here until the day before it started, and we didn’t have much time. I mean, we all had responsibilities, and just because we were Hibbard, we couldn’t take a week off. I couldn’t take three days off. You know, we were — we had a job to do, and we had to do it just like everybody else. And that’s been a life-long lesson. I mean, that’s something that’s really stuck with all of us to this day, and I think we developed such a deep-seated appreciation for — well, for life, for lots of things, and it was a great life’s lesson. But also, I mean, we just dug into this place. We did our jobs. We appreciated the crew. We appreciated learning how this all worked. We worked our way from the bottom up, and this place just got — it got under all of our skins. I mean, we just — yeah, I mean, we just — we absorbed it, and it just — we became one with it.

>> Yeah, because it’s big, if it crashes, great will be the fall of it, and the only way to prevent that is for the people that are running it to know it top to bottom, and the way to do that is to work it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Cooper, go ahead.

>> Well, I think, Uncle Chase, you laid a very good foundation for our family’s values and identity and a relationship to this place. I mean, it comes from a source that’s overwhelming. And personally, for myself, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And more than that, what I had to do, by the time I was 12 and also at that time, that’s kind of a similar experience in that, once family, friends, or outsiders saw that I had the bug, so to speak, and that this is what I was going to be doing, quite a few people tried to dissuade me, because it would be a hard — there’s nothing easy about it. The future for ranching —

>> Isn’t glamorous.

>> — is dismal, or I don’t — I personally don’t find it dismal. But if you were to look at facts and statistics and headlines and trends, it can be doom and gloom, pretty quick. So, a lot of people trying to dissuade me from that path, but there is no dissuading. Like Uncle Chase said, it just gets under your skin, and it was just something that I had to do. And I think the the reason — I mean, you ask the question of why do it, you know. Money only goes so far, but the meaning goes all the way, and purpose goes all the way and I’m of the personal opinion, that meaning and purpose is something that’s fairly absent from Western culture, and a lot of people are — feel that, and I think there’s a lot of different reasons for why that happens, and one reason, I think, is there is a serious disconnect between people and land. Yeah. You’re like we need this connection on an innate biological level, and when people don’t have that, they can create an imbalance in their lives, and maybe that’s what got under my skin, was this connection to something that’s so, so powerful and so much bigger than any one of us, the same realization that Uncle Chase and my dad and my Uncle Whit had when faced with the prospect of everyone telling them that they should sell this place and knowing that that’s not the right thing to do. And so for me, I mean, yeah, it’s not easy, but I feel like I’ve got the best job in the world, you know. And it’s so rewarding. It can — it’s so rewarding when you do it right, and it can absolutely break you when you don’t. And I’ve had — I get to cover both ends of that spectrum. And so, from a personal growth and development standpoint, you can’t ask for a better teacher. The meaning and purpose behind it, for me, is what — why I’m here. Like I don’t think that there’s anything that could even begin to compare, for myself — that could offer anything of that magnitude in depth.

>> Yeah. Earlier today, talking with Ashley [assumed spelling], I mentioned the poem by Robert Frost. I think the title of the poem is The Love That Laid the Swale in Rows, and I read it quoted in a book by Nicholas Carr, about — the book was called The Glass Cage, and it’s about the dangers of automation and how there’s quite a bit of human dignity that’s lost, when we shift all of our work into automated systems, and he describes — Frost describes pretty eloquently, you know, the connection between people and land, you know, mediated through the manual labor that historically has been required to maintain natural places. But he speaks really well to the need to have that sense of place and connection to place, and that it very much is something that we need as 21st century western Americans that are increasingly disconnected from, you know, from any of the natural things that sustain us, including the people who raise the food that we eat? Right.

>> Yeah. Thank you for that. I think I want to come back to succession and ranch succession and see what advice you all might have for others who are kind of in that boat. There’s a lot of ranches that are in that place right now, trying to decide whether to fold up or find some way to transfer it forward. But I think I want to visit a bit about stewardship and then come back to the succession question. You know, stewardship, I think is a buzzword, kind of like sustainability, that has probably lost some of its meaning for those of us that are in the ranching cultural space. [inaudible] said that we shouldn’t use the word sustainable, unless we can identify exactly what we’re concerned to sustain. Otherwise, we’re just saying that whatever is now will continue to be, and that doesn’t probably mean what we are saying, when we think sustainability. So, I’m curious, what does stewardship, good land management, husbandry in the older sense of the term, you know, the term that wasn’t just referring to animal care. What does stewardship mean to you, and I’m asking because you have some, you know, some legal standing, so to speak, to talk about that, as a result of some environmental stewardship awards.

>> Yeah, you pretty much summed it up. Yes. I guess, to me, a discussion of sustainability — ranch sustainability, sustainability of Sieben Livestock Company, includes perpetrating the place into the future, the ownership of it. That’s one element of sustainability, and then another element of sustainability would be economic sufficiency, which without that, none of the — neither — none of the other legs are possible. I mean, we may be viewed as a three legged stool. We’ve got economic sustainability. We’ve got sustainability of our — of the land. And sustainability of the people and the way of life. And they all fit together. You’ve got to have all three of them. And so, we’ve got to have the people. We’ve got to have the commitment of the people. We have to have the deep seated love from the people. We’ve got to have economic sufficiency, or none of it’s possible, and then we have then how you actually do your job on the ranch, to maintain the soils, the natural systems, the livestock. And, you know, you can either mind these places, or you can manage them in such a way that they will maintain themselves, or you can manage them in such a way that they can improve themselves. And I spend much of my time in the area of the economic sustainability, and more and more, and the people sustainability. Not only, you know, with overseeing Cooper in his job but also trying to organize the format for the next generation, other members of Cooper’s generation and the generation that follows. And then Cooper’s done a remarkable job of bringing a real fresh approach to what we mean by sustainability of the dirt and the cropping systems and the livestock. So, it might be a good transition for him to talk a little bit about that. And I’d be happy to go into any of those other legs of that stool as I represent them.

>> Well, first off, what stewardship means to me. I think well, that it’s an incredible responsibility, to step into — once you actually grasp what it is that you’re responsible for, it will either — you either step up to the plate and embrace it, and it could be your own form of liberation, or it can absolutely crush you. And then there’s a lot of people who don’t understand the gravity and the magnitude of what — of the responsibility that they take on, once they step into any type of land management. And there’s so many different layers and dimensions to what we’re stewarding here, like what Uncle Chase was talking about, with the three legs, and there’s a few other legs branching off of those three legs. But all of that we’re responsible for. And as I view it, of what — lately, how I’ve been thinking about it, and if I could sum up what our responsibility is, in one phrase, it’d be creating as much life as possible. That’s what we’re here for, from the soil up and putting as much — the people involved are well off. The animals involved are thriving and healthy and happy and feel safe in the great habitat for wildlife. And just kind of a — there’s a lot of moving parts to pull together and head into the same direction, but the cool thing about it is that everything, when you do pull everything together, they can all head in the same direction. And since we’re working with Mother Nature and she’s the most powerful force on the planet, once you know and can understand how to harness and leverage that power, it’s like just get out of the way, you know. And that’s kind of what we’re doing on the sustainability end for the ranch operations that Uncle Chase had alluded to with our grazing management practices and what we’re currently doing with grazing and with our farming and haying practices and irrigation practices, breeding practices with genetics, it all works in concert, together. And we’ve seen some really, really encouraging results with all of those mostly — the most tremendous results have been with grazing management, and I think that’s probably because the turnaround time was that, at least how we’ve been doing it is the feedback loop is much quicker than the other two.

>> If I could come back at this point in the discussion to talk a little bit about people sustainability, which I kind of glossed over a bit ago, which is critical, and I guess I’m talking about from an owner’s perspective. Not always is — are siblings on the same page about what the future might be, and as the families get bigger, that gets to be a bigger and bigger problem. And I’d just like to share what our experience has been there. I mean, we still have a fairly small, relatively small family group for as long as we’ve all this dirt, but we run a real traditional path that was designed by our advisors years ago, which was designed to give the person or persons who demonstrated the interest the control and, ultimately, the ownership, and we completely did a turnabout about 30 years ago, which is the smartest thing we’ve ever done, because we were — by heading down that concentration path, which is not uncommon in ranching, we’re disenfranchising the rest of the family. And we could see that that was going to lead to discord, and it was not feeling right. And so we got a whole new host of advisers basically, who helped with the concept of — and I mean, the phrase I recall is, is that, you know, as soon as you start concentrating like that, you do disenfranchise others and all of the creativity and energy that they bring. And so, we changed that structure and made everybody in the next generation equal owners of the ranch. We didn’t concentrate at all. I mean, I’ve had primary responsibility for running this ranch for 40 years, and I don’t own one share more than anybody else. So, we embraced the concept of inclusiveness, rather than exclusiveness, and what it’s done is it reinvigorated and energized all the family members that tended to be chopped off? And, you know, they are now interested in this ranch, and they care just as much as Cooper and I care for the future of this ranch, going on for generations. They’re completely on board. I mean, there’s just not one bit of question about it. Had we not gone this route, there’s a very good chance that we’d be getting pressure to sell the ranch. I mean, the family group has no interest in the ranch. They want their money.

>> They want to get what’s coming to them.

>> And this — yeah, and this has been the downfall of many, many operations. So, that’s how we have dealt with that leg of sustainability, and I certainly have no regrets. I think it was the right thing to do.

>> I think what you guys did so well there with that process — and a lot of this came about, too, when we were discussing the conservation easement as a family — of whether or not we should go forward with it. At first, it was a more of discussing it as a tool for estate taxes, basically, when we’re dealing with succession and how to transfer from one generation to the next and not incur an incredible amount of debt taxes. And then it kind of — that conversation, as families, we came together and we really started to talk about what do we value, why are we doing this? And that conversation through years transformed into well, we need to do this primarily because we care about this place so much and secondarily, a side benefit is that it will help with estate taxes. So, it kind of progressed, and it pulled everyone together and created a wonderful way to talk about in a safe way of what we cared about. Each and every one of us [inaudible] to be heard and that kind of started this — but for my generation, that was the catalyst for really creating this emotional attachment to this place, where what you’re talking about, Uncle Chase, of how everyone cares about it, as much as you and I do, you guys did that. That was so well done, and that’s impacted me where — when I’m asked about, well, what’s the most important thing with succession planning for us and how I view it and what I would like to do with the next generation, what I think is of utmost importance, is instilling this emotional attachment in the younger generation, to where it’s just — this place is absolutely sacred and more important than anything else. And there is no — there’s no right way to do that, and there’s no easy way to do that. But that’s — when I’m looking back on on my career, what I judge myself whether or not I was successful in my job is, at the end of my career, if I have something — if there’s — if this place is. viable, exciting, and special, to pass on to the next generation. And so, it’s not only financially, do we have a healthy, robust ranch, but something that is exciting for people to be involved in and to just have this really deep emotional attachment to? Then the groundwork is, you guys did such a good job, I think, in laying the foundation and inviting everyone, as you said, there was a real turnaround. That probably happened when I was in middle school, I think, when we did that. It was a total about-face and in the feeling of us as a family, when we came together, and we’re trying to figure out what’s the best way for it, to navigate towards the next generation. And yeah, as you said, absolutely no regrets.

>> Yep. Your generation has completely bought in, and now members of your generation are working on their own kids.

>> Yep. That’s right.

>> So, it would — if I was speculating have we gone the concentration route and disenfranchised these family groups, there wouldn’t be that synergy that’s developed, and so it’s kind of grown on each other, and I’m amazed at my kids that they’re all in Missoula. They’re on the other side of the divide. It’s a completely different world. And, you know, they’re — you know, they don’t spend that many days a year here, but they’re all in. This place is — you know, this place is sacred.

>> Yeah. That motivation is interesting where we’re prone to think that humans are thinking things, but I’ve read a number of books that have convinced me that we’re probably more lovers than we are thinking things. There’s a famous quote from the book, Little Prince, where the author says, if you want to teach people to build a ship, you don’t assign tasks and show them how to drum up materials. You teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea, and if they have that, then if they’re motivated by a love of the sea, getting them to build a boat is not an obstacle. They will find a way to build a boat, because they want to go to the sea.

>> Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Good — good analogy.

>> Yeah, we’ve run some succession planning courses for — in your land based business. You’ve got farms, ranches, family forests, using the ties to the land curriculum that I think was a partnership between Oregon State University and the Austin School of Business. And it’s really a way to get families to talk about the family business and what’s going to happen when, you know, grandpa and grandma die. And, of course, there’s — as you well know, there are lots of situations where you’ve got an 85-year-old man who’s still calling all of the shots, and none of the potential heirs have any idea what’s going to happen to the place when he’s gone, you know, which is a financial disaster waiting to happen. It’s a family relations disaster waiting to happen. I mean, the list goes on and on. About one of the exercises in that curriculum is to have people line themselves up on a wall, on what they call the heirloom scale. You know, we’re on one end. You have people who feel that the family property, whatever it might be, is priceless and shouldn’t be sold, you know, for any reason, that it makes no difference whether it makes any money. It’s like an heirloom. On the other end of the scale are the, you know, full on pragmatists who say if you can’t turn a profit, then, you know, we should just chase down the highest and best economic use, sell it, split it up. You know, let’s move on. And interestingly, oftentimes, the ranch operators are the ones who are right in the middle, because they recognize it’s not feasible in the real world to just sit on it and do nothing with it, if it doesn’t make any money. At a minimum, somebody’s got to pay taxes, and eventually, you know, there won’t be some rich benefactor who can just keeping the tax on the land. But they also recognize that there’s something more there than just the potential, you know, production of the piece of ground. And the ranch operators are often the ones in the middle, and the possible heirs are out toward the edges, you know, for various reasons. Either they need money or, you know, they have an emotional attachment to that place, even though they’ve never had to work it and don’t depend on it for income. That’s really — I think that’s fascinating.

>> I was going to ask where you would place yourselves on the heirloom scale. But I have some idea, but I think it’s still a good question. You know, you’ve spoken to the absolute necessity of having a strong emotional attachment to the land, because otherwise it’s easy to just give up. At the same time, it’s got to make some money. Yeah. Where would you put yourself on that heirloom scale?

>> Maybe you could go first.

>> Well, if I had my operations manager hat on, it would be right in the middle. And for two reasons, the obvious reason of — that I’m not doing my job, unless this place is turning a profit. But also right in the middle, because instead of more on the profit-driven end of the spectrum, also in the middle, because I’m coming at this with an angle of there’s kind of a new model of ranching that we need to discover here, and we’re fortunate enough at Sieben CNN Livestock to where we’re in good enough footing from Uncle Chase’s management, to where we can experiment for this new route forward, because we have to. In order to get it to that sixth generation, we’ve got to find — and so, there’s some — that being said, there’s some wiggle room or flexibility there for if — and say there’s a year that we don’t turn a profit, it’s not like, oh, geez, we need to turn around and sell the business or revert back to what we’re doing 10 or 15 years ago. It’s like, no, let’s keep moving forward and learn from our mistakes, because we do feel like we’re — there’s the interest and investment into getting these cornerstones put into place and the foundation built for this new model, and I feel like they’re in place now, thankfully. So, that’s the operations manager hat. The family hat would be definitely on — more on the special attachment, sacred end of the spectrum, but at the same time, it can’t be subsidized by any family members. Like it has to hold its own, otherwise that’s when the real world comes in. It’s like you got to start talking about other options.

>> Especially when it’s large.

>> So, there’s —

>> Forty acres.

>> Yeah.

>> You know. Someone with a job in town can pay the taxes, and we’ll just sit on it. But you can’t do that if it’s a 100,000 acres.

>> So, I’d say it’s a pragmatic — on the pragmatic end of the — what was the title that you used for that?

>> The heirloom scale, yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And you [inaudible] great.

>> [inaudible]. Actually, I’m going to say I’m on the — I’m more on the money ends, for self-sufficiency end of that scale, but only because, going back to the story I told you about, when it was fish or cut bait time 44 years ago or whatever it was, it became — I mean, the emotional attachment. All three of us would have chopped off an arm. I mean, so it was there. It was so deep, we didn’t even have to question it. But all of a sudden, bam, the mentor, the lifelong manager, the — our father is gone, like that. Bam. You know, one minute he’s alive. The next minute, he’s not, at age 56. So, okay. So, here we have this thing. We love it. What do we have to do, so that we can continue to love it? What do we have to do, so we can have this ranch? Well, it was so obvious to me and, of course, I was coming from a financial background, that unless we get this place on firmer financial footing, we are not even going to have this luxury of thinking about it.

>> It will blow up, whether you want it to or not.

>> And so, my first 10 years were, well, more than that — 10 years plus, probably the first 15 to 20 years, you know, I took this more for granted. I took the emotional part more for granted. It was there. I mean, believe me, it was there. But my energy went to building the financial side. And now, 40 years later, the financial side is is built strongly. But so I guess my approach was pragmatic, you know, but I couldn’t have done that, left a career and a California bride who was never really at home here, you know. So, that foundation was there, and it was strong, but I had to — day to day in my head, I had to get, you know, every single day was on the financial and business side of it. And now that that it’s there, it’s it’s hard to get over that.

>> Yes, it’s that triangle again. Like I still — if we wouldn’t have been motivated to give up everything to try to make it financially stable, if there was no attachment.

>> So, I think the answer here is, is that yeah, you’ve got to view it like that stool, and all the pieces have to fit. You know, you can’t — if you go too far one way or the other, the thing’s going to fall down.

>> Yeah.

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