Tracing My Farming Roots: A Long Line of Sheep
Bair Family Ranch. Located in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Photograph courtesy of John Fielder.
I find it very fitting that the first post on this blog is one addressing my personal affiliation with farming. I come from a very long line of ranchers and my immediate family still practices it today. Although my family has operated out of Colorado from a long time, we actually originated in Utah. A man by the name of Joseph Elmer Bair, my great-great Grandfather, had a ranch in Alpine Utah where he met and married his sweetheart by the name of Eliza Rushton Moss. The Moss family had ties in Deseret Livestock. Eliza's parents were unhappy about her union to Joseph, thinking she married far below her, and shunned her from the family. Because of this, they decided to leave Utah and never look back.
Joseph and Eliza Bair. Photograph in personal possession.
Joseph decided to take up land in Colorado and persuaded two of his closest friends to pool in their money as well. They brought their sheep from Alpine and all build homesteads around their recently purchased land. From the very beginning they encountered many difficulty. They were the first people to ever bring sheep into that part of the country and they suffered greatly because of it. The only livestock in the area was cattle. These cattle ranchers were quite unsettled by the idea of sheep sharing their land. Many of the early herds suffered great losses because cattle men sabotaged their efforts, which includes killing their stock, setting fire to their homes and going as far as attempting to take their very lives. Another challenge that threatened them Mother Nature herself. In the beginning, they tried to run the sheep in Colorado year round, but quickly learned that the winters were too harsh. They then acquired winter permits in Eastern Utah near Moab in a town called Thompson. This allowed them to summer the sheep at the ranch and winter the sheep during lambing season where the weather was much less of a burden. They would load all of the sheep onto a train and ship them from Glenwood Springs Colorado to Thompson Utah. The men would ride the train along with the livestock, work animals and all of their living equipment. When they were in need of supplies, they would ride their horses 37 miles from Thompson to Moab. In May, they would return to Colorado. In the beginning, there were many obstacles that almost ran the ranch to the ground, but through constant rebuilding and the loving hand of our Father in Heaven, the ranch prevailed.
In his middle age, Joseph purchased all of the shares of the ranch from his friends and became the sole owner of the land. Once Joseph became too old to efficiently run the ranch, he passed it down to his son, my great-great Uncle Elmer. Then it was passed to my great Grandfather, then my Grandfather and his brother. My Grandfather eventually sold his share to his brother under the specific terms that it be put into a conservational unit so that it could never be bought and turned into a subdivision.
My immediate family now operates out of Meeker, Colorado. We have a much smaller ranch, only a little over 100 acres, where we run sheep as well as cattle. Our cattle efforts are more of a hobby than anything considering the idea that we only have twenty head.
My personal horse named Sunny after a hard day's work. Photograph in personal possession.
It is hard to pinpoint specific historical events that directly effected my family because I believe that probably all of them did, in one way or another. I would imagine that the one that has had the most effect is the advances in equipment. This has allowed us to be more efficient and for the work load to lessen slightly.
Although the income has never made us rich people, I feel my life has been as wealthy is any man's. I have had life experiences that some people can only dream of and for this I am eternally grateful.
Benefits for Landowners. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.landtrustalliance.org/what-you-can-do/conserve-your-land/benefits-landowners
