Ranchers Quotes

The top 10 percent of grazing-permit holders on federal lands own 50 percent of all livestock on those lands; the bottom 50 percent own just 5 percent. ~ Christopher Ketcham

On the road leading from his ranch to Samantha's, Wyat t drove his surrey up a small hill and caught his breath as the beauty of the large crescent moon dangling just out of reach over the crest A full moon would have been plump with luminescence, yet the pearly surface of the sickle still cast enough light to shadow his surroundings and seemed close enough that once he drove to the top of the hill, he'd be able to touch the bottom horn or at least toss a rope around it. He slackened the reins, slowing the horse, knowing that the higher he climbed, the sooner the illusion of closeness would disappear and he wanted to preserve for a moment the fantasy that the moon was within his grasp.
The stars, by contrast, were distant pricks of diamond light farther out than a man could dream. He sighed. Life as a rancher or as a rancher's wife was not moon and stars easy or romantic. What would put stars in Samantha's eyes? ~ Debra Holland

Everybody I hang with - the ranchers, the farmers, the cops, the teachers, the plumbers, everybody I hang with - they've got an alarm clock. They get up, they put their heart and their soul into being the very best that they can be. They want to be an asset to their families and their neighborhood. They want to be productive members of society. ~ Ted Nugent

Old-time ranchers planted cheatgrass because it would green up fast in the spring and provide early forage for grazing cattle," Oyster says, nodding his head at the world outside.

This first patch of cheatgrass was in southern British Columbia, Canada, in 1889. But fire spreads it. Every year, it dries to gunpowder, and now land that used to burn every ten years, it burns every year. And the cheatgrass recovers fast. Cheatgrass loves fire. But the native plants, the sagebrush and desert phlox, they don't. And every year it burns, there's more cheatgrass and less anything else. And the deer and antelope that depended on those other plants are gone now. So are the rabbits. So are the hawks and owls that ate the rabbits. The mice starve, so the snakes that ate the mice starve.

Today, cheatgrass dominates the inland deserts from Canada to Nevada, covering an area over twice the size of the state of Nebraska and spreading by thousands of acres per year.

The big irony is, even cattle hate cheatgrass, Oyster says. So the cows, they eat the rare native bunch grasses. What's left of them...

"When you think about it from a native plant perspective," Oyster says, "Johnny Appleseed was a fucking biological terrorist."

Johnny Appleseed, he says, might as well be handing out smallpox. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

A rancher is a farmer who farms the public lands with a herd of four-legged lawn mowers. ~ Edward Abbey

Business leaders, social justice groups, farmers and ranchers, doctors and nurses and people from all walks of life are concerned about the climate threat. ~ Frances Beinecke

The Time It Never Rained was inspired by actual events, when the longest and most severe drought in living memory pressed ranchers and farmers to the outer limits of courage and endurance. ~ Elmer Kelton

What people don't understand about Sarah Palin is that she is a rancher's wife. From Alberta down to Texas I've known women like that: good common sense, bright and vilified by city people. ~ Robert Duvall

I watched with incredulity as businessmen ran to the government in every crisis, whining for handouts or protection from the very competition that has made this system so productive. I saw Texas ranchers, hit by drought, demanding government-guaranteed loans; giant milk cooperatives lobbying for higher price supports; major airlines fighting deregulation to preserve their monopoly status; giant companies like Lockheed seeking federal assistance to rescue them from sheer inefficiency; bankers, like David Rockefeller, demanding government bailouts to protect them from their ill-conceived investments; network executives, like William Paley of CBS, fighting to preserve regulatory restrictions and to block the emergence of competitive cable and pay TV. And always, such gentlemen proclaimed their devotion to free enterprise and their opposition to the arbitrary intervention into our economic life by the state. Except, of course, for their own case, which was always unique and which was justified by their immense concern for the public interest. ~ William E. Simon

Unable to farm the area where they now lived, many turned to logging and working in small sawmills. Some men raised cattle and became ranchers. ~ Ora Jay Eash

On this National Agriculture Day, when we all should be taking time to thank and pay tribute to America's farmers, ranchers and their families who produce the food for our tables, we are finding those same people in dire need of our help and support. ~ Michael McCaul

In my land, they tell legends of range-wars between the ranchers and the sheep-farmers," he said. "Because, it was told, the sheep ate the grass too close. Took even the roots, you ken, so it wouldn't grow back again." "That's plain silly, beg your pardon," Overholser said. "Sheep do crop grass close, aye, but then we send the cows over it to water. The manure they drop is full of seed." "Ah," Eddie said. He couldn't think of anything else. Put that way, the whole idea of range-wars seemed exquisitely stupid. ~ Stephen King

When I go into a restaurant, the waitress who brings me my meal, the cook in the back who prepared it, the delivery men, the wholesalers, the workers in the food-processing factories, the butchers, the farmers, the ranchers, and everyone else in the economic food chain are all being used by God to "give me this day my daily bread." ~ Gene Veith

Joanna pivoted and bit back a groan of despair.Crockett Archer was even more handsome than she'd remembered. Somehow his rancher's clothing made him seem more approachable, more ... within her reach. And if that wasn't the most ridiculous notion, she didn't know what was. A man with his looks and kind heart could have any woman he chose. He'd never settle for a shy, freckled redhead with an ex-outlaw for a father. She was everything the ideal preacher's wife was not. ~ Karen Witemeyer

Wherever you were born and whatever you did, pool hustler, showgirl, tonight, you were a rancher's woman and just like you, when you do somethin', you're the best there is. ~ Kristen Ashley

Ranchers need clean water for their stock, farmers need it for their crops, every employer needs it to stay in business, and every living thing needs it for life ... The law needs to be clear to protect water quality and the rights of landowners. ~ Mark Udall

Can't you see me as king of the Hereford ranchers, Lucy?"
"Oh, I can see you, all right ... I can see you riding out on your beautiful palomino checking the herd ... There you sit, silhouetted against the evening sky ... Sucking your thumb and holding that stupid blanket! ~ Charles M. Schulz

I can't believe this crap. Jolly ranchers? Gummy worms?" Katy rifled through the pile of candy she'd dumped onto Steph's floor. "Where's the chocolate? Where's the candy corn?"
"I like Jolly Rangers," Steph said, helping herself to Katy's rejects, her boobs in danger of breaking loose from her Renaissance dress.
Gil watched, fascinated. "Remind me who you are again?"
"Um, Juliet? From Romeo and Juliet?" She popped a candy into her mouth. "Shakespeare?"
"Did they really dress like that back then?" Gil asked. "It seems kind of like something that might get you burned at the stake."
"I'm pre-Puritan, baby."
Ethan unwrapped a peanut butter cup from his own candy pile. "You've obviously never been to a Renaissance fair, dude. I went to one in New York with my cousin. Boobs galore."
"We gotta get one of those in Utah," Gil said. ~ Sara Zarr

Montana's ranchers raise the best cattle in the world. If Taco Bell needs to beef up, they can give their customers the highest quality meat around by using Montana beef, and in the process, supporting agriculture jobs in Montana. ~ Jon Tester

There are tons of people in the West who love fiddles, banjos and mandolins. If you got to any cowboy poetry and music gathering those are the instruments they use. It's acoustic music. We don't do that much modern country that has electric guitars and a lot of volume. It's a gentler form of music. It's from the land and comes from the ranchers and farmers. ~ Michael Martin Murphey

He dug wells for a living and his customers were cattle ranchers and wheat farmers, which meant they were always about to go broke, except when they were rich. ~ T.C. Boyle

A descendent of Basque ranchers, the mayor came from the small circle of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European immigrants who had been his father's oldest customers and friends. Perhaps Malburg told Jim the story of how Vernon got its start in 1905, when John Baptiste Leonis, a French Basque hog rancher, persuaded the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads to extend tracks to his city to attract new factories, their preferred freight-hauling customers. ~ Victor Valle

This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can't eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn't feed what you eat."
"It IS holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated. ~ Daniel Quinn

And you know, it's not just illegal immigration. Terrorists can come across. They're devastating our ranchers down in southern Arizona - drop houses, kidnapping, automobile accidents, extortion, drugs, the spill-over with the drug cartels. We're facing all of it. ~ Jan Brewer

Polo, racing and horse shows all are doing great work to help the farmer and rancher to raise better horses. ~ Will Rogers

He found it puzzling that so many rural people were hostile to, even terrified of, the place where they lived. It wasn't just that hard-working country folk had no time for the precious concerns of the effete urban environmentalists, what amazed Rice was how you could spend your whole life physically immersed in a particular ecological system and yet remain blinded to it by superstition, tradition, prejudice. Out west, it was ranchers' holy war on predators and their veneration of Indo-European domestic animals they husbanded on land too dry to support them. Here in the Appalachians, you saw rugged country men who refused to walk in the woods all summer because they were scared of snakes. ~ James A. McLaughlin

We need to make sure the Department of Agriculture is promoting farmers and ranchers. ~ Jerry Moran

The thing that bothers me the most is the recklessness and greed of the local ranchers, who run too many cattle back here, choking with waste the creek that runs through my property. There's certain times of day that the cowboys like to send them turds down the river. Them f**kers piss me off. if you gotta mess up the ecology of the world in order to raise a bunch of cows, well eat somethin else. I'm not a fan of the cowboys. ~ Merle Haggard

You talk to the farmers, the ranchers, our small community bankers, and boy, one of the No. 1 issues is the regulations coming out of Washington. ~ Steve Daines

Raw ingredients trump recipes every time; farmers and ranchers who coax the best from the earth can make any of us appear to be a great cook. ~ Judy Rodgers

ranchers in the whole county already had ~ Mike Markel

The other day Aks and I went up to your ranch for a day's fishing. I cannot remember any day when we have had more fun on a stream. We had along with us three newspaper men and a few secret service people, many of whom had never seen a trout stream, so we did the thing up right by borrowing frying pans, bacon and corn meal from the wife of your rancher - and we cooked an outdoor meal for the crowd. It was really quite a day. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

After enduring humankind's unrelenting persecution, the wolf had become something nature had never intended, "the curse of a generation of ranchers and the symbol of destruction across a wide and fertile land." It wasn't the wolf who was the villain, claimed Caras, but man, "eternally guilty of crimes beyond counting --man the killer, the slayer, the luster-for-blood --[who] had sought to expurgate himself of his sin and guilt by condemning the predatory animals. ~ Bruce Hampton

I always assumed the Department of Agriculture was the farmer and rancher's friend. ~ Jerry Moran

Where I live in Oklahoma, it's all ranchers. My friends are all cowboys and pretty rough guys. If I had a hot tub back there, I may as well have Richard Simmons come over and live with me. ~ Blake Shelton

If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream. ~ Edward Abbey