Ag Mag Summer 2022

Perry Backus Photo

Bob and Laurie Sutherlin stand in front of some of the registered Red Angus cattle they’ve raised on the farm they built over the years. The Sutherlins recently preserved 378 acres of their farm holding under conservation easement to ensure it can raise crops and livestock for generations to come.

‘Our best soils’: Longtime Bitterroot ranch family preserves farmland forever Perry Backus Ravalli Republic

This article orignally appeared in the Ravalli Republic on Jan. 23, 2022.

It’s not every man who gets to live out his childhood dream.

But every day that Bob Sutherlin gets to crank up his tractor or care for his cattle on the family ranch between Corvallis and Stevensville, he does exactly that.

“I grew up in Stevensville,” Sutherlin said. “Ever since I was little, I wanted to be on a tractor or doing something that had to do with agriculture.”

When he was little, he was thrilled when the neighbor let him drive a tractor. He was a sophomore in high school when he first started buying cows. For

years, he and his wife, Laurie, rented ground to run his cattle and farm until they could afford to buy their own place.

Over the years, they built a herd of registered Red Angus that now has seed stock scattered all over the world. As they could, they increased the size of their landholdings.

“We were fortunate that we could piece it all together,” Sutherlin said.

“When you grow up not having ground and have to put it together yourself, you take a different look at that land. It’s something you worked for your whole life and wanted.”

And it was that connection — with the knowledge that their son, Chad, wanted to follow in his folks’ footsteps — that helped the couple decide to

recently put almost 378 acres of some of the richest farm ground in Ravalli County into a conservation easement that will ensure it remains agricultural ground forever.

“We wanted to keep it in ag,” Sutherlin said. “It’s all we have ever wanted to do with the ground and don’t want to see anything else done with it.”

The funds that will offset the value the family gave up by placing an easement on the property will go toward adding additional land in the Bitterroot to raise crops and cattle.

“We’re going to add to the farm with what we got from the land trust,” Sutherlin said. “We’re not going out and buying a new Cadillac. We’re going to add land to it. We want to farm. He (their son) wants to farm and I have