CALIFORNIA CATTLEMEN’S ASSOCIATION Since 1917
1221 H Street Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 444-0485
4 California Cattleman April 2021
Why in the world would you do that? by CCA Second Vice President Rick Roberti
It is a privilege to be writing this month’s officer column for the CCA magazine. It’s not something I ever dreamed of doing, but here I go. Many of you involved with CCA know my daughter, Katie, as she is part of the outstanding staff we have working for CCA. Along with my wife Carolyn, our son Weston, Katie, my mom and my two brothers and their families, we raise cattle and hay in eastern Plumas County, 30 miles north of Truckee. My great grandfather came to California for the Gold Rush from Switzerland. When that didn’t work out, he ended up in Sierra Valley in the 1870s. It wasn’t long before there was a good market for dairy products and lumber. In the early 1900s, there were over a hundred dairies and dozens of sawmills in the valley. Times were challenging but also good. Sierra Valley became one of the largest settlements for Swiss immigrants in the state. Over the years, my grandparents faced many of the same challenges we do today. 1924 was a dry, drought-like year, and I recall my grandmother saying it barely turned green. A neighbor of hers, probably a relative, had some steers to sell, but the market was terrible. He was offered $12 a head. Not wanting to give the steers away at that price, he decided to drive them over to Reno for summer pasture. That fall, he sold them for $8 a head. He and I must be related; it makes a $1 a pound sound good. By the 1940s, the dairies in the valley were slowly turning to produce beef. The lumber industry was strong, but the smaller mills had to get bigger or quit. There were not cattlemen’s association or Farm Bureau meetings in Sierra Valley then. The Grange was the place to be twice a month for a meeting, dinner and dance. That lasted into the ‘60s when televisions came into rural communities, and the TV show Bonanza was on the same night as Grange meetings. According to my aunt, that hurt the Grange meetings more than anything else. She despised the Cartwrights until her final days. By the mid-1960s, all the dairies were gone and two sawmills were left. Today there are none in the valley—times change. The cover of last month’s magazine was another reminder. Things we think will last forever may not. The closing of Shasta Livestock is like the passing of a longtime friend. I will always be grateful for the commitment the Peek family has had for our industry and the great memories of being at the auction. Times don’t just
change, but things do too. In the early 1950s, my dad and family purchased a load of registered black Angus cows, some of the first in the valley. The cows were, let’s say, moderate in size – okay, very moderately framed. My dad worked hard and years later our cows were a little taller. In the ‘70s, our industry changed to more pounds of meat, and by the mid-‘70s, long, tall cattle were in style. So, I helped my dad out, and I purchased a half-blood Chianina bull with a little Holstein to help with milk production. He kind of looked like a white horse standing out in the field surrounded by small black cows. It wasn’t all that bad; my brother won grand champion steer at the county fair twice. Those steers were big, long, narrow and probably not that tasty. When it comes to producing a quality product, we have come a long way since then. Even on our ranch, we’re doing things now that I didn’t think we would ever do at one point. Keeping records of shots, vaccinating in the neck, tagging every calf we sell with an individual identification tag, to name a few things that we do now to make a better product. Ranching and farming have never been easy, and each generation faces new changes. If you haven’t noticed, some people don’t like what we do, and after the last two elections, they don’t like us much either. The last few years have taken a toll on us all. It seems our great nation has been beaten down like never before. America has seen many hard times: we’ve been through wars, droughts, the depression, the sixties and for the most part, we came out stronger. But what we’re going through now seems different, and there is such division, anger and pessimism. It seems to be the new norm on both sides, and we can’t trust much of anything we hear or read. Understandably, I guess. But as of today, with all of our nation’s faults, America is still the best place there is, and people in agriculture are the cream of the crop. The cattle business has been very good to me, and it has given me the best friends and neighbors a man can have. I was recently asked, “Why in the world would you want to serve as a CCA officer?” My response was easy. Others, who were probably as busy as I am, have served in this position for me for over 100 years so that I could do what I’ve loved to do for 40 years. I guess it’s my turn. Hope to see you soon.
