MCNEAL — Starlene Moore was not at all pleased that she would be fighting a 30 mph wind.
 Starlene Moore finds ranching a challenge as she tries to raise cattle and trees on 240 acres of Cinstar Ranch in McNeal (Ed Honda•Wick News Service). |
The 240-acre spread that she, her partner Cindy Whitehead and Whitehead’s two teenagers have been working for the past eight years is coming along. The three Bermuda grass and alfalfa fields are good producers and provide a bit of income from sales. One field of 80 acres is ready to mow, rake and bale. She wants to start on it, but the wind will be a hassle and cost her some of the harvest as it wafts her bread and butter to the Chiricauhua Mountains.
She likes her new John Deere tractor with its air conditioning, heater and satellite radio.
“When we put in a new field, we end up putting in a 10-hour day. You want to have something to listen to. I don’t do mundane tasks very well,” Moore said with a smile. “We have music and books on tape, anything to help keep the mind occupied.”
Alfalfa must be cut at a specific time — just when it starts to blossom.
“Alfalfa is high in protein, very potent when it’s immature. You don’t want to be feeding your cattle or horses too much protein. So, you have to wait until the bloom and then the protein is around 10 percent. That’s when it’s good,” she said.
Sometimes she feels like she could write a book, a sort of “Ranching for Dummies.”
“There are times I feel really stupid, but then I hear the stories of other ranchers and farmers and I think, ‘I’m not so bad after all.’ There’s so much to keep up with, so much to learn,” she added. “We’ve failed miserably in some things and have had great success in others.”
When the women bought the place in 2000, they really did not intend to farm or raise cattle. They figured they’d just kick back and enjoy the open country with its beautiful vistas of the Mule, Dragoon and Swisshelm mountains.
But the draw of the ranch and its potential drew them in and soon they were beefing up the old ranch at the end of Duke Road in McNeal.
They do maintain a small business that matches up independent truck drivers with hauls. Most of that book work gets done at night. It makes for long days that start around 7 a.m. and last way past sundown.
“I’m more of a night person,” Moore said. “I like to bale at night when the dew is just right.”
Several horses meander about in the corrals. Some are roping horses used by Whitehead’s 19-year-old son, Frank, and her 17-year-old daughter, Ellen. Both rope professionally. Out in the arena, a drum steer stands for practice. In another corral “Rusty” the drum horse waits for someone to come saddle him up and practice roping techniques.
In a special pen, a half dozen head of cattle butt heads with each other. They are used for roping practice. Some have long horns, some short, some none. But they all have a slightly wild-eyed look about them. Not exactly your petting stock.
Right now, the Cin-Star Ranch herd is relatively small with 32 head. Moore is slowly building up some breeding stock. The cattle meander around a pasture that in a few months will be a new field of green. A solar-powered pump provides water that is piped to the troughs. The little calves are taking it easy, sunning themselves. They are cross-bred Herefords and longhorns. The moms don’t seem to mind there are strangers in the pasture around their babies.
A steer wanders up for a little head-scratching and then strolls to the new truck and drinks in the new car smell. The bull stands in a corner. He keeps an eye on things.
Then there’s Elmer, a gorgeous Jersey that was bottle-fed and is as tame as any dog.
“He follows us all over the place. We named him Elmer because he sticks to you like glue,” Moore said with a laugh.
Elmer is not going to end up on any dinner table.
“He really helps with the other cows. They see him come up to us and then they aren’t afraid of us,” she says.
The three calves are now up on their feet and moving around with their moms and watch what’s going on, but they don’t approach.
Another of the heifers, a young cow that has not given birth yet, is bulging and due soon. She’ll join the breeding stock after the calf is born.
Moore explained that gathering the stock at harvest time is not difficult. There is no roundup, no whooping and hollering. They just walk into the pens and then onto the truck to be taken to the butcher in Pearce/Sunsites.
The herd is not fed grain. They fatten naturally off the fields and with the home-grown hay, which is also naturally grown. No pesticides or herbicides are used.
“We do weeding the old-fashioned way — by hand,” she said.
With all the cattle, horses and goats (also known as the clean-up crew since they like weeds), you might surmise there’d be a whole lot of fertilizer. And there is. It is recycled, dumped load after load into the new field to break down and enrich the desert soil.
Getting scrubby mesquite fields ready for planting is not an easy task, Moore said.
First, a bulldozer or backhoe yanks up the mesquite. Then all that brush is picked up by hand and removed.
Once cleared, the area is ripped — long teeth-like prongs dig deep into the ground. That can take as long as 10 days in an 80-acre field.
Next the disc contraption goes on the tractor and the soil is tilled and mixed with the manure over and over. Normally, it’s best to plant seed in the fall, after the monsoon and before any frost, she said.
“The seedlings have a chance to come up and get established before winter comes. And it just takes off then in the spring,” Moore added.
This year the women have added a new dimension to their ranch — tree farming. Arranged around the quaint country home are numerous huge pots. In each one is a tree of some sort. They have velvet mesquite, blue spruce, pines, plums, choke cherries, cherries, oaks, Arizona cypress, desert willows and even some aspens.
Most don’t take a lot of water, she said. But drip irrigation and frequent watering help them grow faster.
In the house, 300 more tree seedlings await transplanting. “That’s all I’ve been doing this winter — taking care of these seedlings,” Moore said.
The sun has done its job awakening the tall grass, and now it’s ready to cut.
“It’s best to cut hay around 9:30 or 10 in the morning. That’s when the sap is up in the stalks and that provides more nutrient,” she said.
Moore and Whitehead take their trees to both the Sierra Vista Farmers Market and the Bisbee Farmers Market for sale. They would like to take their beef, but just don’t have the equipment or a battery-powered freezer. Maybe one day, she murmurs.
For now, she faces hours of cutting the hay. It has to lie in the sun for a day or two and then it gets raked and baled. Then it either goes into the hay barn, into a customers’ pickup or ends up on the dinner table of the stock.
“I like feeding my own hay to my stock. I know what’s in it and where it comes from.”
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