NAF News

A RANCH AND A WOMAN

Rita Stitzel pulled her pickup off to the edge of the dirt road and stopped. It was on a high pass with the mountainous country ahead falling off steeply to the land below. The road plunged down this terrain with numerous sharp switch backs. Some 1,000 feet below, the meadows, hay fields, and shade trees of the Palisade Ranch shown vivid green contrasting with the grey of the surrounding sage and the muted green of the rangeland wild grasses and forbs It was an emerald property.

"I think its beautiful," said Stitzel, who operates the 4,500 acre ranch "and I always get the same feeling when I look down there," It is owned as a family corporation with Rita, her mother and two sons holding shares. The ranch is beautiful but like most ranches a little beastly too. "To me I see it as a real challenge," said Stitzel, "but I intend on keeping it going. I don't want to ever leave this place." Prior to arriving at this pass we had toured the ranch's privately owned range allotements as well as those on the public domain. Stitzel had discussed some of the rough spots encountered in running the ranch. Currently, she was suffering a labor shortage. "Our hired man (and he's just great) has a broken leg," She noted, "he broke it while trying to pull a calf from an onery first calf heifer. His wife, Margaret, and I have been doing most of the work. It's that time of year for discing, drilling seed, irrigating, spraying for weed and insect control and calving. Occasionally we get some help but its pushing us hard."

As we talked dust, far below, arose from one of the ranch fields. Gail Munk, Executive Director/Secretary of the Nevada Agricultural foundation (NAF) was operating a tractor and disc in giving Rita a hand. He had agreed to do it while Rita toured the ranch with me providing information for this story. Munk was using skills gained as a boy growing up in Lovelock I kidded him later about me relaxing in air conditioned luxury seeing a lot of good looking rangeland and listening to an interesting tour guide while he was eating dust discing that field. (It didn't matter that he was in a cabbed tractor with air flowing through the windows and little chance of dust penetrating, I still kidded him.)

Rita started the truck and we proceeded down the steep grade. There were switchbacks I wasn't sure the pickup would make and I commented about it. Rita said this is nothing we've had guys try this grade in 18 wheelers. " They've been in a world of hurt," she said, relating how one driver pulling a big stock trailer dumped a load of cattle on one of the turns. "We helped round up the surviving cattle but he lost quite a few," Rita added. "Another time," Rita continued," when I-80 over Immigrant Pass was closed due to a bomb threat, some truckers thought they could use this as a detour. I went out on the road, stopped them and told them they should wait until the freeway re-opens.. One young guy with a load of pigs assured me he could make it over this road and took off. I told him not to come here looking for help if he had trouble. Well he rolled his rig and there were pigs everywhere some dead and some alive. We relented and turned out to help. Ever try to rope a pig? When we got things cleaned up a bit I said, 'Next time you might listen to an old lady's warning." At the bottom of the grade we passed the old historic town of Palisade, once a thriving railroad community. We also took a bridge across the Humboldt River and crossed the Union Pacific railroad tracks. Rita said, " in the 32 years we've been here we've lost over 500 cattle and seven horses hit by the trains. The railroad has recently been working more conscientiously with us to keep the cattle off the tracks by replacing some of the fences that are over 100 years old. Also, they are making more of an effort to contact the Nevada Department of Agriculture as required by Nevada law. Progress is being made."

Rita and her husband with the help of her parents, who were ranchers, bought the Palisade Ranch in 1972. She and her husband were divorced in 1987. Her Dad had a stroke that same summer so Rita has pretty much managed the ranch since. She has two married sons but neither one wants to ranch. Maybe one of her five grandchildren will. However, there is a sand and a rock quarry on the property managed by the oldest son and Rita smiles, "the quarry is probably making more than the ranch." Most of her life Rita has taught school and her career has helped subsidize the ranch.. She retired in 2001 after 35 years of teaching, 28 of them in Carlin. She has since become a fulltime rancher.

Gail and I were particularly interested in the ranch not only since Rita is a member of the NAF Board of Directors but because this spring she had a 22 year old cow produce a calf, highly unusual at that age. Rita earlier this year, too, was given an award for "Excellence in Range Management" by the Nevada Section Society for Range Management.

The 22 year old cow named Linebarr was born in 1982. Her breeding is 1/2 Charolais and 1/2 Long Horn and she has the horns. It is greeted with considerable amazement when a 13 or 14 year old range cow has a calf but one 22 years old is off the charts. The cow which Rita describes as an old leader or boss cow has a healthy blond calf and when we took pictures of Linebarr and her offspring she was in what Rita calls the "hospital" pasture. She's healthy enough but just there to be on the safe side. The range management honors were given Rita due to her excellant efforts in manging the Pine Creek Riparian area on the ranch. She uses it as a bull pasture, has not over stressed vegetation and the heavy bulls have helped keep creek banks from gullying.

Right now Rita is running about 400 head of cows on the ranch, mostly Charolais or Charolais crosses. She likes that breed of cattle and thinks they stack up well when compared to other breeds. "We have the capability of running 650 head but right now we are settling for the 400," She says. One of her goals is to raise enough hay on the ranch to meet the needs of the cattle. Just recently she had a new well drilled to insure adequate water. "It cost quite a bit more than anticipated,." she explained, "but I believe it will be worth it." Property in the vicinity of the historic town of Palisade was also purchased to protect and buffer the ranch property. While the well and property add to the ranch's financial burden both proffer to be valuable assets. Down the road and hopefully not in the too distant future, Rita wants the ranch to be paying its own way.

One of Rita's innovations that she is proud of is the calving barn. The facility with chutes, pens, calving equipment, and an efficient system of moving cows from one pen to another has made calving problems much easier to handle. Some first calf heifers need calving help and older cattle may also occasionally need it. "It works very smooth," says Rita, " except when you may get an onery cow. Those are the kind you're going to ship. That was the case when our hired hand got hurt." Rita identifies the cattle with color coded ear tags indicating when they were born. The replacement heifer's calves are tagged with the same number as their mothers. Any "teenagers" that aren't good mothers are put on the "bus" to the sale yard. The barn facilitates this tagging process.

We had hardly left the ranch fields on the tour of the grazing allotements when the ground began moving with Morman Crickets. They had been eliminated from the ranch but not the surrounding terrain. Aside from the insect hordes, the country looked beautiful. "This past winter was one of the best we've had in a long time," Rita said, " with good snowpacks and cold weather. We thought it would do two things but it doesn't seem it did either. We thought the more severe winter would depress the cricket reproduction and we thought it would do a lot toward helping our water situation. You can see the crickets and as we continue our drive I'll point out spring fed waterholes or troughs I thought would be full and flowing but are not. It evidently takes more than one good year to replenish watertables lowered from extended drought."

The ranch owns about seven sections. These include about 200 acres of irrigated grass meadows along the Humboldt River and about 180 acres of alfalfa at the headquaters. The rest of the allotements are either on public domain under juridiction of the BLM or on land owned by Nevada Land and Resource Company, a private organization. The latter are former checkerboard lands once owned by the Railroad. The ranch's private range is vegetated with sage and bitterbrush as well as bunch grasses and forbs. The good winter left the land green with the grass and the flowering plants. Much of the BLM and checkerboard lands burned in 1999 which left them pretty much bereft of shrubs but beautiful with grasses and forbs. It is good cow range and the cattle looked good on it. Here and there we spotted herds of ranch cattle, one with Charolais cattle but a black Angus bull. "We use black bulls mostly to breed heifers," Rita said, "since smaller calves are easier in their first birth." Rita pointed out as we traveled, the empty troughs and water holes she thought would be filled. "We would like to see more water development on our range," she said, "and we are willing to invest in such activity but we have to work with BLM. Most of the time it is difficult to gain support and approval for suggested improvements but we know the BLM is in favor of keeping cows from concentrating in particular areas. More water sources will help do this. We would also like to keep our cattle on the BLM lands longer so they will require less hay to winter." As we travelled the dirt road down Safford Canyon, the terrain below including the winding Humboldt River became more picturesque. We spotted the rugged and towering rock outcroppings from which the Palisade country gets its name. And we saw more good looking Charolais cows with a good crop of calves. Rita pointed out the eartags and varying colors which signified the age of the cows. Proceeding up the canyon, the road paralleled a creek. A fence built by BLM ran next to the road on the side opposite the water. "We would have liked to have seen this fence built along the ridge of the canyon wall above," said Rita, "but it would have been more expensive. It does tend to concentrate the cows along the water, however." Soon after we left the canyon and climbed to the high pass overlooking the Palisade Ranch. It had been an informative day and one that offered an insight into the down right hard and sometimes bumpy roads faced in running a Nevada ranch. - 30 -

Rita Stitzel, on a good looking sorrel horse, sorts cattle on the Palisade Ranch near Carlin.

Green fields, far below, mark the site of the Palisade Ranch. The winding road, near left, leads off this high pass to the ranch property.

A lone Angus bull near a watering trough (near left) stands on a Palisade range allotement. Center right is a Charolais heifer. The Angus bull is running with the heifers because such bulls usually father smaller calves for first calf heifers.

Palisade Ranch Charolais cattle and calves on rangelands.

Linebarr and her blond calf are on the right in the photo. She is a 22 year old Charolais and Long Horn cross. A cow living that long, let alone having a calf, is very, very rare.