80 Years of Ranching

Story and Photos by Michael Pearce

 A smile spread across the rancher’s face as his cattle cleared an open gate. The herd was so fat they seemed as wide as they were tall. Their hair was as shiny as Texas crude from months of easy living.

 “Been a heck of a good year,†George Donnell said, referring to abundant rains that still had green vegetation cow-belly deep in spots in late July. “Things don’t always look like this. A lot of years this ranch looked like this all over.â€

 He then stubbed the toe of his boot on a cattle trail worn to bare dirt. The wisp of dust quickly disappeared.

 The tanned and deeply creased skin that framed Donnell’s smile shows he’s spent a lot of time in ranch country.

 A lot.

 He turned 87 in April, which means he’s been actively involved in ranching within the Possum Kingdom area for around 80 years.

 “That long? That sounds like a really long time,†Donnell said when asked about it on a hot, July afternoon. “But I guess that’d be true. I can’t remember not doing it.â€

Born to tough times

 Donnell’s ranching roots run as deep as those of any oaks along the Brazos. His great-grandfather, Henry Belding, came from Arkansas to ranch this area’s open range in 1859. The Johnson Ranch, where he now lives and ranches, has been in his late wife’s family since 1898.

 Donnell’s birth in 1934 placed him amid some of Texas’ ranching’s toughest times.

 The Dust Bowl was ongoing and there was a stretch of 11 rainless months when a relative never had enough rain to run a drop of water from his rooftop. Forage was so poor his dad’s skeletal yearling steers weighed half of what they do this year and sold for pennies per pound.

 Money was so tight his mother doubted anyone would loan his father the money to buy 480 acres, at $2 per acre.

 Donnell, long known for a keen memory, has faint memories of the camp of hundreds of federal Works Progress Administration workers who built the dam for Possum Kingdom Lake. Many of the workers toiled for $1 a day, plus food and shelter to stave off starvation.

 “It was tough times but people never thought much about it,†Donnell said. “Nobody had much, everybody was doing the best they could and worked really hard.â€

 Donnell can’t recall his first ranching chores. Thanks to an indelible event he knows he was astride a horse, following cattle, when he was eight years old.

 It was 1942, and a pair of airplanes buzzed low over the herd of cattle being moved to a road. The cattle panicked and scattered like flushed quail. Donnell remembers one cowboy taken on an out-of-control ride by his frightened horse. The boy’s horse repeatedly reared up in fright, but he held on.

 “They were pilots training to go to war and they left us with a heck of a mess. We had cattle all over,†said Donnell. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if those (pilots) made it back from the war. A lot didn’t.â€

“All I’ve really wanted to doâ€

 A stint in the military after college showed Donnell parts of the country he’d never seen. When discharged, he came back to ranching in Texas. A crash in the cattle market in 1973 left Donnell “ruined†and sent him to Oklahoma for a steady paycheck in the oil fields. He was back in Texas after five years.

 “I liked what I was doing, and it was a lot less work,†Donnell said of the oil business, “but I only did it long enough to get back on my feet, and get some bills paid. I came back to ranching. It’s all I’ve really wanted to do.â€

 Looking back, Donnell thought a bit when asked what he’d liked most about ranching through so many years. Much of it, he said, was the freedom that came with working livestock in such vast territory, with seemingly never-ending hours to insure he stayed busy.

 “I guess some of it was I always felt like I was getting something done,†he said. “If I worked in some durn factory, it would have been nothing but repetition day after day. Is that really accomplishing anything? And there’s no way I could work inside that long.â€

 For the last several years his age has confined Donnell to traveling across the Palo Pinto County ranch via pickup. He sometimes misses the years he spent working from horseback.

 Through the decades he worked from some good horses. A quarter-horse named “Brown,†he said, was special. They worked together through most of the 1950s and 1960s.

 “I was pretty young and probably didn’t have too much sense. The horse was probably smarter than me, honestly,†said Donnell. “I put him in a lot of places we shouldn’t have gone. He always went anyway, and somehow, he always took care of me. Wasn’t anything that horse couldn’t or wouldn’t do. I’d love to be able to go back and do all of that again if I was 50 years younger.â€

 Donnell said few, even most of today’s horse owners, understand the bond between a working horse and its rider. Working as a team, both seemingly knowing what the other is thinking and needs.

 He said things get even better when a third member joins the team – a good livestock dog.

 As cattle markets rise and fall, ranchers have often turned to alternative incomes to keep a ranch in the black. For Donnell, that meant running Angora goats as well as cattle, back when mohair fabric was in high demand. Goats can be ultra-challenging, but he never saw anything Chock, a border collie, couldn’t handle.

 “It wasn’t like he almost understood English, he did understand, I swear,†said Donnell. “I just told him what to do and he went out and did it. It was really something to send him out and watch him bring in everything just as he’d been told. He was really smart and a really good dog.â€

Comparing the past to the present 

 As much as he misses the freedom of decades past, Donnell doesn’t always pine for everything from “back in the day.â€

 Donnell covets the old flip phone many consider ancient. When he was younger, he walked many miles if a horse went lame, a pickup became stuck or he needed a particular tool.               

 Larger and better equipment make it easier to move cattle. When things get tough, feed or water can now be brought in or entire herds quickly moved to where they can find both.

 Family lore tells of massive drought in 1886, when the Brazos River was mostly dry, and ranchers lost most of their herds to thirst. Today those animals could be quickly shipped

 “Sometimes I think we forget just how good we’ve got it compared to how it used to be,†he said.

 Donnell is especially thankful for major advancements in veterinary medicine.

 He remembered dealing with screwworms, fly larvae that ate the flesh of living cattle and kept ranchers on the move treating cattle that were suffering horribly. Some cattle died. Yields were down on those that survived.

 Donnell smiled as he described how scientists ended the screwworm problem by flooding the countryside with sterile male flies. Bred females produced no eggs.

 Some of ranching’s biggest challenges haven’t changed much through the decades. Donnell, like nearly all ranchers, is frustrated at the ongoing market system that often has ranchers at the lowest end of profits made from beef.

 “They tell you this is what you’re going to be paid and there’s nothing you can really do about it,†said Donnell.

 Donnell has many memories that evolve around the weather. The drought of the 1950’s was some of the driest times of his ranching career.

 “Most droughts are a year or two and you can handle that,†he said. “The one in the 50s lasted six or seven years. It was really tough.â€

 He believes the past winter may be the coldest he can remember. He can only think of two times when rains have been as abundant as this spring and summer.

 Donnell said many challenges were made easier because his late wife, Helen Sue, was raised in a ranching family. She worked on the ranch when she could and understood challenges that would frustrate an inexperienced spouse. She died four years ago.

Appreciating what’s really important

 Donnell is working towards total retirement soon. Now, he tires easily. A ranch manager, Jason Edens, does much of the work.

 He is pleased with how things went through his years. He and Helen Sue had some good years in a nice house atop a hill with literally a ten-mile view. The ranch is still together and can be passed to another generation. That’s an important accomplishment to most ranchers.

 Donnell likes to look back on the simple things that really matter in life.

 “I got by pretty good until I was about 85. That’s a lot longer than most people do so I can’t complain,†he said. “You know, I had a good woman, a good horse, and a good dog. There aren’t many people who can say they’ve had all of that.â€