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From the hearts of Idaho's Buckaroos
J.D. Wulfhorst, who teaches rural sociology at the UI, was moved by stories he heard from fourth-generation Owyhee County ranchers during a 2002 assignment. Realizing the uniqueness of the research setting, he didn't want to present his findings just as statistics. Wulfhorst and UI Range Economist Neil Rimbey worked with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to investigate potential impacts of grazing on public lands. Now, back in the classroom, dressed in cowboy hat and boots, Wulfhorst shares stories he heard on the range. The result is a one-man show worthy of the theater, as he challenges his audience to consider dilemmas of policy changes for one rural community and culture. Here are brief excerpts. -Editor
What is sense of place? You're askin' me? You're the one with the college up there-shouldn't you know? I've always thought it was like branding calves. You've got to know whose are whose.
It's about taking care of your community and seein' that the young ones have good opportunities. I've got a neighbor up the road, and he says sense of place isn't about place at all. It's about hard work and long days you put in buildin' fence. Or, if another one of those ATVers left a gate open again, sense of place can be finding those animals you helped raise. It's about making a living on the land, not off the land. We don't always have time for much else.
Yeah, grass. Hell, it's a renewable resource. There're times you hafta get off
the range. We know that. That's what we do. We knew what would work and what wouldn't with all those fences because we've been learning about this
for GENERATIONS.
Some people think we're out here just ruinin' the land. We've had our cows out here for over a hundred years.and I don't understand, if the cows are the problem, how come they're trying to turn it into wilderness now? This is my business. This is where I work.
Not sure how much more of this we can handle. How're we supposed to fix this? Just get off the land? Its getting harder and harder just to find decent help.C'mon, you know we can't explain this to the kids. It already hurts them bad enough having seen us arguing and ripping our hair out the entire time they were growing up. All we did was fight with the agency.
But this isn't really about dollars and cents anymore, or rational business practice, or knowin' when to quit. Our cause and reason to be here is much greater than the profit of our operation. I have an obligation to my children and grandkids to leave them something good, to leave them the land in better shape, so that I can pass it on. It seems odd that I know now I'll go broke doing this because I've worked hard all my life out here, trying to make an honest living. But that doesn't upset me-it's about exposing my kids to a set of values that go beyond their needs and wants.
Wulfhorst is a faculty member in Moscow with CALS Department of Agricultural Economics & Rural Sociology,
Contact him at jd@uidaho.edu.
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