Our best soils

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

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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

three grandsons who might want to farm too.”

“When you put 30 years into building a cow herd, you need to be sure that you have ground to put them on,” he said. “It takes good productive ground to raise enough hay to winter these cattle. You just can’t let it go away.”

With real estate prices rapidly on the rise in Ravalli County, the Sutherlin family knows it could have sold out and purchased more land somewhere else.

But they know from experience the Bitterroot Valley has always been a good place to raise crops and cattle because of its dependable irrigation water supply.

“It’s not a bed of roses in other places except there’s more land,” Sutherlin said. “In the Bitterroot, you can have a dry year, but it seems like it always takes care of you and you can always raise a crop. For the 45 years I’ve been raising cattle, I never had a year where we didn’t get a decent crop. Maybe not a bumper one, but a decent crop.”

And that water stored and used for irrigation helps more than those in agriculture.

“You have to have a certain amount of agriculture to maintain the aquifer here,” he said. “If you don’t have some irrigation in all these ditches to put some water back into the ground, the water table would drop to where people don’t have any well water.”

The valley would also quickly turn brown once the weather turned warm.

“Most of the ground is two weeks from a drought if we don’t have the water,” Sutherlin said. “In the summertime, it’s green and beautiful. It’s why people come here.”

Bitter Root Land Trust executive director Gavin Ricklefs said the land preserved by the Sutherlin family is some of the most productive farmland in the state.

“They are on our best soils,” Ricklefs said. “That area between Corvallis and Stevensville on the Eastside Highway is some of the best ground in the state of Montana.”

“At a time like this when land values are so high and the opportunity to convert that to a different use is there for all of our ag families, it makes the decision to do this that much more difficult from a financial standpoint,” he said. “But it also makes it that much more laudable and appreciated. It’s a challenging decision to limit development on your land permanently. There’s not more important ground in the valley for production.”

“We can all recognize the value of what the Sutherlins and their neighbors have done now more than ever with the way the valley is growing and changing,” he said. “It’s really evident how important it is to be able to conserve some of our best ground and really make sure it’s the Bitterroot we all know and love.”

“Who is really going to appreciate and feel it is our kids and grandkids 50 to 100 years from now when there is still agriculture and we can still grow our food here and still drive the Eastside Highway and see that open space,” Ricklefs said.

Fourth-generation Bitterroot Valley rancher Allen Maki serves as chair of the county’s Right to Farm and Ranch Board and has been on the Open Lands Board since its inception.

Conservation easements like the Sutherlins are a demonstration to others in agriculture that the industry will continue in the valley.

“No one wants to be the last guy standing,” Maki said. “You need neighbors who support the industry and there have to be people involved to ensure that it continues.”

Subdivisions are easy to do in the Bitterroot. Much of the land was subdivided into 10-acre orchard lots in the early 1900s.

“People might see an 80-acre place but what they don’t know is that it’s already been divided into eight 10-acre parcels,” Maki said. “We already have pre-subdivided farms here in most places. That’s a problem here in our valley.”

The 2017 agriculture census showed 42% of ag producers in Ravalli County were over 65 years old. About 74% were over 55.

“That gives you an idea how important these conservation easements are in transferring family farms to the next generation,” he said. “Without an easement in place, there’s a temptation to sell it all off in 10-acre parcels.”

Ravalli County has about 370,000 acres of private land. As of 2017, only about 70,000 are directly being used for agriculture.

“That leaves about 275,000 acres already developed or forested,” Maki said. “You hear people say that the open lands program is locking up all the land for housing, but only a quarter of all the private land is still in production.”

“Once that’s gone, it’s gone forever,” Maki said. “There is a lot of infill where houses can be built without having to develop open farmland.”

Maki said the county’s open lands program has provided some hope for those who want to continue to produce crops and livestock in the valley.

“Twenty years ago, that wasn’t the case,” Maki said. “People used to say there was no future in agriculture here, but you don’t hear that anymore. The main reason for that is the open lands program.”

Chad Sutherlin supported his parents’ decision to preserve their family farm.

“I thought it was the right thing to do for down the road,” he said. “It’s tough to keep stuff in agriculture in this valley.”

Laurie Sutherlin said the decision wasn’t an easy one, but the family, in part, took the long view.

“The one thing I said is that I sure wish I could be here 100 years from now to see what the rest of the valley looks like compared to these easements,” she said.

Her husband believes the larger places protected by an easement will gain value in the future.

“Maybe today it’s not worth as much but a big piece of ground will have a really good value in years to come,” he said. “I don’t think we lost anything if you look down the road. It’s nice that there are so many pieces getting put into the land trust. There is a lot of people who want to preserve this ag in the valley.”.AG

Agriculture Magazine, Summer, 2022 - Page 9