Gardiner Modern Matriarchs

By Paige Nelson

Matriarch isn’t a word we use much anymore, but its definition “a woman who is powerful within a family or organization” perfectly describes both Debbie and Eva Gardiner’s roles at Gardiner Angus Ranch (GAR). Though very different, both women have used their unique gifts and skill sets to fill niche positions within the generational family business.

Becoming a Gardiner

Originally from Hutchinson, Kan., Debbie moved to Ashland in 1983. She worked as a lab technician at the hospital. Eventually she met Greg, and they were married in 1988. She continued her technician career until becoming pregnant with their first child, Grant. After that she became a full-time homemaker and mother. Daughters, Brittany and Sierra, would soon join the family.

As a self-proclaimed city girl, Debbie remembers feeling nervous about living so far from what she knew.

“I grew up in the city, and when I moved out to Ashland it was a big culture shock because it was a small, itty bity town.”

Not only was there a culture shock, but a big adjustment lay in-store for Debbie. She was used to people in and out of the house, abiding by regular schedules, having regular meal times, etc. But, as any ranch wife can attest, regularity doesn’t exist in agriculture.

During the summertime especially, Greg wouldn’t get home until 9 or 10 p.m. She had little kids to feed and care for earlier in the evening just to turn around and do it all over again when he walked in the door.

Thirty-four years later, Debbie can’t imagine anything else, “I’m so used to this now. I love being out here. I don’t know that I would change anything. It’s like God put me here,” she says.

Eva and Mark met at K-State, thanks to matchmaker professor Dr. Calvin Drake. She had already graduated from K-State with her bachelor’s degree in animal science and gone on to complete veterinary school. During her undergrad, Eva worked in the purebred beef barns and came to know Dr. Drake and many in the Angus family well. Now she was back at K-State studying a master’s degree in veterinary pathology. Mark and his family were attending

Cattlemen’s Day on campus to receive an award. Dr. Drake made sure they met.

Eva was born in France. Her father was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. But both of her parents’ roots were in Kansas, and Eva spent every summer she could on her grandparents’ farm. They raised quarter horses, and Eva’s passion was born. She even kept a horse with her as her family traveled the world with the military.

Marrying Mark in 1990 was a natural fit for her.

“When I first drove down here, I felt like I was coming home,” says Eva.

She began her career in Ashland working full-time at the Ashland Veterinary Clinic. When she became pregnant with twin boys, Ransom and Cole, she stopped working at the clinic and focused on the things she could do on the ranch. A third son, Quanah soon entered the scene. Eva was a busy, young mother. She still carved out time to gather and move cows and help Mark while Nan watched the boys.

“I just love being outside, so I wanted to be really active. It’s just where I want to be,” says Eva.

Now that Ransom, Cole and Quanah are grown, working cattle as a family is time Eva cherishes. She feels it is a blessing in her life to be with her husband and sons doing something they all enjoy.

Finding her place

In the 1980s, Nan Gardiner, Henry’s wife, would cook lunch for ranch employees every day, says Debbie. Back then, there were only around six full-time employees. But still, every day was a big commitment. Added to it was Henry’s friendly habit of bringing spur-of-the-minute extras to lunch.

“He would always be calling, ‘I’m bring this person in for lunch,’ and she’d cook for who knows who. She would feed them with a smile because she always had food. Now my house is like that too. My fridge is full. My freezers are full. My pantry is full because you never know what’s going to happen and how many people,” laughs Debbie.

Nan retired from feeding the ranch hands around 1987 but continued to feed the clipping crew until 2013. By 1989, still a newlywed, Debbie started small with the embryo transfer team (ET) and has branched out from there.

“Cooking is something that my grandmother and my mother taught me, and it’s just kind of stuck. It comes from the heart, I guess. You either like it or you don’t,” Debbie says.

Eva has been an integral part of the ranch from the beginning. Some 30 years ago, Eva recalls working with Mark to put together the sale catalogue by hand. As Eva and Mark’s boys grew and became more independent, Eva found herself with a little more time and decided to pursue an additional credential on her veterinarian résumé. She considers herself a life-long learner and was ready for something new. She attended a five-month course at Colorado State University to study veterinarian acupuncture. She recognizes the sacrifice her husband and sons made for her while she spent five days a month away from home. However, a few months after her program’s completion, Dr. Spare at the Ashland Veterinary Clinic invited her over to work on a dog.

The therapy worked, and Eva landed herself a parttime specialty practice at the clinic. She uses her acupuncture mostly on performance horses and dogs but has worked on other species too, as well as her own ranch horses.

“I love seeing the results, especially when it’s something good that you weren’t expecting,” she says.

Spokes in the Gardiner wheel

Debbie fixes Wednesday lunch every week for the regular Gardiner crew including the eight full-time employees and various interns — somewhere around 10-12 people. She makes the food in her kitchen at home and then transports it to the kitchen in the AI barn.

As the Gardiner program grew, so did Debbie’s cooking responsibilities. Nowadays, the ranch hires an ET team, a clipping crew and an ultrasound technician. Visits from each group happen periodically throughout the year, often a week or two before sale day. When the ET team, clipping crew or ultrasound tech are working on the ranch, Debbie is cooking lunch every day. With two breeding seasons per year and three sales, she gets plenty of opportunities to cook for 15-20 people. It’s not an easy meal like pizza or sandwiches either.

She makes sure there is an entrée, a vegetable/potato, a salad and a dessert.

“They eat well when they eat here!” she says. “Lunch is important, especially when they work hard hours like they do, it makes a difference.”

Since 2001, the four-person ET team has been staying in Debbie and Greg’s basement. They are so easy to have and are comfortable here, explains Debbie.

“We have ET week usually the whole week before Thanksgiving. They come on Sunday night and work Monday through Saturday.”

Playing host and chef is a big job, and Debbie earns her oats during the week, but she says there are worse things she could be asked to do.

“I’m cooking the meals, but then, I’m also making cookies or doing a cake for the next day. I’m usually cooking all the time. There’s worse things. I could have to be out working cattle. I don’t ride a horse, and I don’t work the cattle. But that’s ok. They need a cook. This my little spoke in the Gardiner wheel,” she smiles.

It doesn’t end at lunch or hosting either. Debbie makes all the cookies for each production cattle sale — January, April, May, and September as well as the November Profit Proven customer sale. She bakes 8-10 dozen of several kinds of cookies, so attendees have plenty of choices.

Spoiler alert: lemon bars are on the menu for May!

“I bake cookies all the time,” she says. “When I was growing up…we always kept cookies in the cookie jar.

“I think it’s my calling. It’s my mission,” she states.

In addition to her on-call specialty vet practice, Eva finds time to take care of all the using horses on the ranch. She also helps Mark manage the cutting-bred mares and colts that are part of the Gardiner horse breeding program. Recently Mark and Eva have started showing some of their trained cutting horses.

“It’s a different phase of our lives getting to this point, and actually we’re spending more time together than we really ever have before in our marriage, and it’s been fun,” says Eva.

Eva handles the herd health checks on all the bulls Gardiners manage. This includes home-raised bulls and those coming in from cooperator herds. It basically amounts to a daily walk-through of all the bull pens, carefully checking each bull’s health status. Eva is detail-oriented when it comes to her bulls. She goes the extra mile to notice the small details like breathing status before she makes a call on a bull’s health.

Leaving her mark

New interns join the GAR team every semester. They consider Debbie’s lunches a real treat. Interns Lindsey Grimes Hall and Elaine Martin even requested to spend a day with Debbie, learning her tricks of the trade.

Since then, Debbie has made sure every Gardiner intern left with their very own cookbook. She’s personalized each recipe with helpful hints, like how to make an entrée feed a few more or how to make a ¾ batch of monster cookies.

The Gardiner’s mission is to help interns learn and get their start in the industry, Debbie’s personal goal is to help them learn to cook and bring smiles to those around them with food.

It only makes sense that Eva’s first love — horses — would be the thing she most carefully instills a love for in her interns.

“We often get interns that haven’t ridden very much,” explains Eva.

Eva takes time to give each intern a one-on-one horse-riding lesson. She says her first priority is always safety. The horses she picks for each intern are tried and true and do a good job of taking care of their riders.

“If they are a little nervous about it, I tell them, ‘In a couple months, this will hopefully be becoming second nature to you, and you’ll be very comfortable to get on the horse.’”

Ultimately, Eva says the best is when she gets to see the smile on their face as they get to be more accomplished riding.

“When they are able ride the horse and enjoy it and enjoy some of the things the horse can do. That’s fun!” she says.

Thanks to some encouragement from Mark, Eva has recently revived her talent for artwork. When Gardiners host speakers at events throughout the year, Eva shows her gratitude by offering them a custom portrait. Sometimes, it’s of the speaker. Other times she’s worked with the speaker’s family to immortalize a beloved family dog or pet. As a nod to her own family’s legacy, she always tries to put some black cattle in the background.

Sure, matron isn’t a common term anymore and neither is the hard work, effort and dedication that Debbie and Eva put in to making sure life flows smoothly at GAR.

Debbie’s Chicken Enchiladas (Greg’s favorite)

•5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

• 4 chicken bouillon cubes

Filling

• 8 oz sour cream

• ½ cup chicken broth

• 2 cups shredded cheese

• 8-10 flour tortillas

Sauce

• 8 oz sour cream

• 1 large can mild Las Palmas enchilada sauce

• 1 can cream of chicken soup

• 1, 4 oz can chopped green chiles

• 2, 10 oz cans of chicken broth

• 2 cups shredded cheese

Instructions:

Boil chicken and bouillon cubes in water until done, let cool. Shred chicken. Reserve broth. Add sour cream, cheese and broth to shredded chicken to make filling. For the sauce, combine enchilada sauce, sour cream, cream of chicken soup, chiles and two cans of reserved chicken broth. Pour enough sauce to cover the bottom of a 9x13 in. baking pan. Fill 8-10 tortillas with chicken filling and place in baking pan. Pour remaining sauce over the top of filled tortillas. Spread remaining cheese on top. Cover pan with Reynolds Non-stick foil, so the cheese doesn’t stick. Cook for 35-40 minutes at 375° F. At 35 minutes take foil off to let the top get bubbly and slightly browned. Enchiladas are done when top is browned and bubbly. Serve with Nan’s homemade salsa. Feeds 7-8 people.

Nan’s Homemade Salsa

• 1, 28 oz can whole peeled tomatoes

• 1, 12 oz jar of sliced jalapenos, drained

• 1, 12 oz can spicy hot V8 juice

• 2 tbs. lime juice

• 2 tbs. dried cilantro

• 2 tbs. dried minced onion

• 1 tbs. chili powder

• 1 tsp. garlic powder

Pulse in blender until finely chopped. Store in 2 qt. container in fridge. Use masking tape to label the date it’s made. Keep for 2-3 weeks in fridge. It gets hotter as it sits. (Close to the end of its fridge life this salsa will make Greg’s head sweat because it gets so hot!)

Salt and pepper to taste