抖阴ap

Ranchers Margaret and Dwaine Kinnett thought they were ready for anything.

With two good pieces of ground and high-minded plans, they hoped to develop a natural meat business and use holistic ranching principles to rehabilitate a stretch of land along the southern banks of the Yampa River.

The sharp hooves of their animals would stir up dormant native grass seeds, which would then be nurtured by natural rains.

They thought years of experience running other people’s operations could be parlayed into a comfortable life, and maybe, eventually, retirement.

The numbers had been crunched, and financing was in order.

Then the unexpected happened.

“You don’t plan for a historic drought to hit you year after year,” 43-year-old Margaret Kinnett says. “But I should have planned for it because drought is part of the natural cycle.”

The Kinnetts have listed the North Place, 67 miles northeast of Maybell, for sale. Even if they get the $750,000 asking price, they’ll still be strapped with more debt than their in-town ranch can handle.

“If we sell one place, we still owe more money than the other place can produce,” Margaret Kinnett says. “We need to be taking another risk, jumping on the boat, getting another ranch going. But we just can’t afford to take risks anymore.”

Hardly a ranch in Colorado has come through the drought without a deeply wounded balance sheet or at least a broken heart.

“The drought has had a huge impact financially and emotionally,” says Norm Dalsted, a Colorado State University farm and ranch management economist.

Even in years when the rain does fall, ranching requires the nerve of a gambler.

Photo 1: Dwaine and Margaret Kinnett’s best-laid plans for an environmentally sensitive ranching operation in Moffat County were derailed by drought. Though they face losing all they have, the ranch work continues, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Photo 2: Three summers ago the Kinnetts sold 225 Suffolk sheep but kept their Dorsets, which are smaller and do well on their Moffat County ranches. “Those Suffolks just do not respect fences,” Margaret says. Photo 3: Dwaine and Margaret Kinnett’s budget is as tight in their home as it is on the ranch. “We don’t mind keeping the thermostat at 58 degrees or heating with the woodstove,” Margaret says. Photo 4: Dwaine looks out over the sheep flock. “I think he’d be just as happy running someone else’s 600-cow place,” Margaret says. Photo 5: Salers cows feed on hay near where the Yampa River curves through the Kinnetts’ 344-acre ranch in Maybell. They selected Salers because they are good mothers and have a heavy milk supply for their calves. Photo 6: Dwaine loads bales of grass/alfalfa hay that will be used to feed the family’s herds. Photo 7: Margaret examines paperwork at the table that belonged to her great-grandmother. It’s where she ate Sunday breakfast with her family until she was 17. Photo 8: Dwaine Kinnett walks through the yard at his Maybell ranch. Bankers have told him and Margaret that they are trying too hard to make a go of their operation. Photo 9: Dwaine moves sheep through a chute. The animals are marked with paint, using the heart-quarter circle brand owned by his grandfather. The Kinnetts had hoped to market goat and lamb under the Happy Heart name. Photo 10: “Boots” a two year old Blue Heeler sings to the radio while accompanying Dwaine in the tractor on cattle feeding chores. Photo 11: A bewildered sheep looks out over the pen as the herd is inventoried at the Kinnett Ranch. Photo 12: Dwaine uses a hay hook to loads bales of hay to his trailer, which will feed the animals for about three days. Photo 13: Dwaine pushes the feathers of one of the three emus that the Kinnett’s rescued. The couple rescued a pair that did not have a home. Photo 14: Dwaine Kinnett looks to the exhaust pipe on this tractor as he tries to start it on a cold December day. After many squirts of starter fluid the tractor kicked into action. Photo 15: Dwaine Kinnett pushes the gate shut as an emu walks past. Photo 16: One of two steers who are Watusi/Salers crosses in the field. Photo 17: One of the Boer goats tries to nibble on the glove of Margaret Kinnett as she visits with them.

Fuel prices rise, meat markets cycle, and development pressures drive up the cost of land, even in remote reaches of the state.

Specialty producers, like the Kinnetts, who sell natural or organic products, or meats not common in the American recipe box, must find their own route into the butcher case. “Not that it can’t be done, but it takes a lot of time and energy, and a lot of money,” Dalsted says. “It wears people out.”

The deck is especially stacked against first-time owners who have signed huge mortgages and don’t have enough reserves to play the hard hands Mother Nature deals.

“People really want to get back into ranching, but it is extremely hard to buy the land, buy the cattle, then the machinery and auxiliary equipment to run the ranch,” Dalsted says.

In Colorado, some of the ranches that performed best through the drought are owned by rich absentee landlords or operators made wealthy by selling off parts of their land for development.

Well-financed operations could afford to ship cattle to good pasture, sometimes in a neighboring state, and did not have to liquidate or cut herds the past few years, says Jim Miller, policy director for the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

Ranchers that did cut herds are rebuilding this year, which means for those with cattle to sell, there will be money to be made for the next two or three years, Dalsted says. And interest rates – although farms and ranches pay commercial rates – have been relatively low.

Still, even a small amount of interest is too much to pay if your operation isn’t making money, Miller says.

“Better people than us have handed land back to the bank,” Margaret Kinnett says sadly.

SHARE YOUR STORIES

Do you believe the economy is improving, or do you still feel the weight of the downward trend? Are you living paycheck to paycheck? Share your experiences. to log on and participate. You will need to click on the link that says ‘Register Your Free Account’ to create an account in order to post messages, but you can read all the messages without registering.

On and off for 20 years, 50-year-old Dwaine Kinnett worked the Eagle Ranch for its owners, until progress spilling west on Interstate 70 from Vail made the 1,575 acres of gorgeous mountain pasture too valuable for agriculture.

The Kinnetts knew it wouldn’t be long before the land, sold to developers, sprouted 1,100 homes, a golf course and retail strips.

Kinnett was reared ranching in the Eagle Valley. The changes he saw “broke his heart,” his wife says.

It was time for them to find a place of their own. They dreamed of building an environmentally sensitive operation they could eventually hand off to another like-minded couple.

They searched for land in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Nevada. Finally, in Colorado, they drove north of Craig late in 1996 to a place where dry, sage-brush-covered hills gave way to a rolling, 500-acre parcel with solid water rights and stunning views.

Best of all, the owner wanted annual payments instead of a lump sum.

To make the down payment and get their operation going, the Kinnetts sold the Eagle townhome Margaret had owned for 10 years and cashed in the retirement savings she had amassed while working as an Eagle County sheriff’s deputy and dispatcher.

As work wound down at the Eagle Ranch, the Kinnetts commuted between there and the North Place, a few miles south of the Wyoming border, and began converting their new property from cropland to ranchland: reseeding and repairing a gravity-fed irrigation system, tending to miles of ditches, and constructing a shop building and summer cabin.

Kinnett still worked the Eagle Ranch, too, drawing a salary from the developers. “Basically, they hired my husband back to provide atmosphere,” Margaret Kinnett says.

It was the last time the Kinnetts were really paid for work that goes on from dawn to dusk every day of the year.

In spring of 1999, the season the drought set in hard, the couple found a 344-acre place in Maybell that had a house, a barn, corrals and a few other outbuildings.

The in-town place needed some work, but it was priced right and the extra land would allow the Kinnetts to grow their operation large enough to make a living.

“The North Place would not have held everything that we had,” Margaret explains. “By just keeping the North Place, and cutting back to the number of animals it could support, we couldn’t support ourselves long term.”

They refinanced the North Place to pay for the deal, and continued to build their goat, sheep and cattle herds, selecting genetic traits for animals resilient enough to survive the harsh winters and hot summers. Their livestock numbers eventually reached about 900.

Margaret Kinnett made plans to market the goats and lambs under the Happy Heart name – word play on the lean, low-cholesterol meats she had to offer and the heart-quarter-circle brand that belonged to Kinnett’s grandfather.

They partnered with Laura Lou Colby in Golden Hooves Grazing, a company that rents goats to municipalities looking for environmentally friendly weed control on public land.

DISAPPEARING LAND

The farming facts Agricultural land represents more than 85 percent of private, undeveloped Colorado land, but total acreage is shrinking. Between 1987 and 1997, 1.4 million acres were taken out of production. That is equivalent to a swath 20 miles wide stretching from Denver to Pueblo. The rate at which ag land is disappearing is slowing slightly, dropping from about 270,000 acres a year between 1992 and 1997, to 251,300 acres between 1997 and 2002. From 1997 to 2002, about 1.3 million acres were lost. Nationally, about 2 acres of farmland per minute have been lost since 1970. Sources: Colorado Department of Agriculture, The American Farmland Trust

But the drought did not ease.

At the North Place, the senior rights holder sucked away the water. Three years in a row, the Kinnetts’ paid for and spread seed to convert wheat fields to grass, but their work was burned up by hot sun and too little rain. “There hasn’t been enough water here the last five years to wash a stick down stream,” Kinnett says.

By 2002, after three years without rain, pasture conditions had gotten so bad the Kinnetts faced feeding their herds purchased hay when they should have been grazing on sweet summer grass.

They tried to lease pasture, but monthly prices had doubled and tripled. Statewide, hay shortages caused prices to skyrocket from $65 to $150 a ton. The Kinnetts eventually found suppliers in Utah and Idaho, and paid an average of $105-$110 a ton.

They tried to sell their goats and lambs directly to customers, and were unsuccessful in cracking the natural-meat market. So their animals almost always end up in the sale barns at Centennial Auction in Fort Collins, alongside conventionally raised animals.

Like every other ranch in the state, they were faced with the heartbreaking decision to liquidate the herd. They sold 225 sheep, and cut the cattle by half, selling off cows Dwaine Kinnett had owned for 15 years.

They refinanced again, this time with less favorable terms.

“We thought we would be able to keep pushing through the drought, but every cent had to go to feed and land payments,” Margaret Kinnett says.

The drought lifted some last summer, and so did the Kinnetts’ financial situation.

Hay prices are down, the weed grazing business is expanding and the beef market is strong. Money was less tight than last year, about $24,000 for the household. “That’s for both of us working 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” Margaret Kinnett says.

But there is a loan payment of more than $60,000 due in February. The Kinnetts would like to refinance again, but fear their balance sheets won’t allow terms they can manage.

“If we were three years into selling meat to Vitamin Cottage or whomever, yes, we could probably show we could make it. Or, if we had another year under our belts with the goat-grazing business. But how do you do it?” Margaret laments.

Each hour she spends trying to figure out how to market their meat, or manage the business end of the grazing operation, or writing to wealthy investors asking if they have money they’d like to park in a ranch, is an hour taken away from outdoor work that must be done.

“This is a three-person job and we’re doing it with two,” Dwaine Kinnett says. “But even with three people, we would not get it all done.”

The couple is reluctant to hire a ranch hand for fear they could not pay him.

“I could walk into any bank and ask for a $1 million loan and not think twice,” Margaret Kinnett says. “But I feel bad about asking someone to work for ranch wages.”

Banks hold the paper on everything the Kinnetts have – high-mileage vehicles, aging ranch equipment, land, the house and all the animals except their dogs, three emus and a gray barn cat.

They do not have health insurance.

The Kinnetts never eat out unless it’s at a drive-through restaurant when they’re on the road. They celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary earlier this month with hot fudge sundaes at the Sonic Drive-In in Rifle.

Their pantry is stocked with groceries bought only on sale; the beer and a few diet Pepsis in the refrigerator were left behind in October by Dwaine Kinnett’s hunting buddies.

Through the drought and the penny pinching, and through the haze of stress that has begun to give Margaret Kinnett migraines, the couple say they love their ranch life. They are encouraged by the way their holistic management has reclaimed land that was once knotted with greasewood. They get a little excited when they see new kinds of birds nesting on their property, or an early kid in the goat flock. They revel in the power of a heavy thunderstorm.

“I must like it,” Kinnett says, sticking hay hooks – made for him by an old cowboy who died with nothing to his name but a saddle – deep into a bale. “I’ve been paying to ranch my whole life.”