What it takes to put beef on a plate is becoming, more and more an ordeal fewer are willing to endure. But those who are willing, like John R. “Rich” Anderson, work the challenge, ever searching for the next idea that will allow them to hold on to the business they love.
Although Rich Anderson, longtime owner/manager of the Muleshoe Ranch in Borden County, has turned over the tight reigns to his son, John, he will never fully retire from the field.
Anderson and his wife, Barbara, have seen a lot of changes made in the cattle industry. And, although they fear imported beef and astronomical increases in land prices will continue to seriously impact the opportunity for future generations to tread the trail they’ve trudged, they also believe transitioning into more creative usage of the land they love will allow their posterity to hold on to one of the greatest rights afforded Americans – land ownership.
“My son and I, we talk about what we can do to increase our profitability and right now we’re trying to do things that will appeal to the hunters,” Anderson said. “We have an outfitter who..we turned it over to him and for a certain percentage he gets the hunters and makes the deal with them and we don’t fool with that. But then he’s also responsible that they don’t do anything to the ranch; that they take care of it.”
In accepting the prestigious cowman award, Anderson was a tad self deprecating.
“I guess I’ve made the circle,” said Anderson. “From choreboy to horse jingler to cowboy, manager, owner and I’ve completed the circle now because, you know, I used to have…people that had wagons, always had a cook and somebody’d say ‘Who is that feller?’ ‘I don’t know, he’s some old broken down cowboy.’ Well I want you to know that I’m cookin’ for John, and runnin’ chores for John, and I can still jingle horses because they do it from a pickup with a sack of feed now, so I can qualify for that.”
