No Bull: Rancher Gives Kids Lesson in Food
Published Apr 25, 2008
Cattle wander the fields at Cross J Ranch in Winona.
Too many youngsters don’t know where their food comes from, says Rosemary Brizendine, a longtime cattle rancher along with her husband near the small town of Winona. “Children now think that hamburger comes from a wrapper at McDonald’s and milk comes from a plastic jug,” Brizendine says.
As a former president of the Texas CattleWomen’s Association and most recent past president of the Texas Beef Council, Brizendine takes great pride in being a woman leader in the industry and its efforts to better educate kids about where their food comes from.
At Cross J Ranch, Brinzendine and her husband, Jim, run about 100 to 120 head of beef cattle, a good-sized operation even by Texas standards, where 84 percent of ranches have fewer than 100 heads of cattle, according to the National Agriculture Statistics Service.
That means Brizendine is very hands-on, doing whatever needs to be done. From worming the animals to castrating them, hopping on the tractor to put out hay to bottle-feeding a newborn calf, “both of us do it,” she says.
“We see our animals every day,” she says, “At bigger places, it might be every six months.”
She’s also watched the industry change, tackling concerns about product safety, developing new offerings and finding ways to promote them – and seeing more women put on their cowboy hats to tackle the business of ranching.
Texas remains the nation’s largest beef producer, with 14 million heads worth some $8 billion in 2007.
At the Texas Beef Council, executive director Richard Wortham has weathered the changes, too. In the 1970s, federal dietary guidelines recommended less beef and more fish and poultry, creating a 20-year “freefall” in beef demand, he says. The industry responded by creating a self-help program that set aside $1 from every head sold for promotion and education.
U.S. beef demand stabilized in 1998 and has climbed 17 percent since then. Wortham says.
To meet changing consumer tastes, Texas producers have been developing new products, such as pre-cooked roasts and beef tips that are simply heated in the oven or microwave. Both have been hits with the public.
In leadership positions, Brizendine has been a player in some of those big decisions for more than six years.
“She brings a lot of enthusiasm to whatever she does. She is committed to the beef industry,” Wortham says. “She understands how important it is for us to get information out to a wide range of audiences.”
It is a passion Brizendine picked up at an early age. She was raised in the White Mountain area of Arizona, in timber and cattle country. Her father was in the timber business; most of the kids at the one-room schoolhouse she attended were children of ranchers.
“It was not unusual for us in the middle of the summer to get out in the morning to get on a horse and be gone all day,” says Brizendine, who has helped out with more than a few neighborly cattle roundups.
As a rancher, the days are long but gratifying.
She’s up at 6 a.m. The animals eat first. Later, it’s fence mending, paperwork and getting the crew out to cut or bail hay.
“It is very satisfying to come in at 8 or 9 at night, and every cow on the place goes to bed with you,” she says.
But no two days are alike, and one sticks out in Brizendine’s memory.
She was in charge of bottle-feeding a young calf that had been rejected by its mother. Fatigued, Brizendine sat down in front of the hungry baby to get him started but soon realized she was atop a mound of red fire ants.
“I took the bottle, the calf started wailing, and I ran for the nearest water trough and got in.”
Her husband heard the calf and came running, asking, “Where’s the bottle?”
Brizendine, soaking in the trough, held it up for him to continue with the feeding.
“I saved the bottle,” she says. “You just have instincts.”
Story by Pamela Coyle
Photo by Jeff Adkins
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