Sage Signals
Voice of the Nevada Livestock Industry
September 2012
Volume XXXV, #11
INSIDE
Published monthly for its membership
Across the Kitchen
ABLE
✧ Across the Kitchen Table: Bell Ranch pages 1 – 3 ✧ Calendar page 2 ✧
SPECIAL Focus on the Drought Crisis
Woodie and Lilla with their grandchildren.
Governor’s Proclamation
Bell Ranch
page 7
Resources and
By Desiree Seal, Executive Director
Assistance
Thank you to all our supportive members. Nevada Cattlemen’s Association has greatly grown since 1935 and we couldn’t have done it without you. I hope you enjoyed reading our summer series of ranching families and members of NCA as much as I enjoyed getting to visit their places and learning about their operations.
pages 8-13 ✧ Market Reports pages 14-15 ✧ Beef Council Checkoff page 16 ✧ US Forest Service Planning Rule Violates Law page 17 ✧
M
y new favorite saying comes from the article “Fighting Hell With a Bucket” in Range Magazine featuring Miss Becky Terry. She lived her life by the words, Be interested. Be well informed. Believe in what you’re doing. And above all love agriculture. I think it’s safe to say, some of the best advocates for the industry live by this same saying without even knowing it. Representing the industry has become their life, their passion and tradition passed from generation to generation. The Bell Family is just one of the many such families in Nevada. Born and raised in the Santa Rosas to a mining family, Woodie wasted no time finding his passion, being a horseback and learning to cowboy. From the time he was a little boy in grade school until he was a young man entering college, Woodie rode with many of the most respected names in horsemanship. “I just wanted to ride,” Woodie tells me. And ride he did alongside his lifelong friends from buckaroo country of Nevada and the true horsemen of natural horsemanship methods in California. After many years of riding solo, Woodie met the love of his life, Miss Lilla Hunter at the Cow Palace
and would be married March of 1960. Lilla Hunter grew up just outside of Hollister, California on her family ranch, La Cienega del Gabilan. Producing commercial cattle with her family had taught Lilla very much about the cattle industry. But Lilla always had an instinct for something different and began raising purebred polled Herefords. “I had nobody to show me. I just loved it and did it on my own,” Lilla says with a soft laugh. “It was something I was interested in. You know, like a border collie, you got this instinct for something.” The young couples drive for “cowboying” and purebreds turned into a way of life. After the two were married, they would be blessed with three boys; Dean, John and Dan. Following their time in California and western Nevada as a young family, Woodie and Lilla eventually returned to Paradise Valley to purchased the Pasquale Ranch and make northern Nevada their home for good, raising commercial cattle and Lilla’s purebred herd. When visiting with families, it seems the rode CONTINUED ON PAGE 2