Meet the CattleWomen

November 1998 CattleWoman
Louise Grothe

Greetings from Flying Heart Ranch here in the beautiful Goose Lake Valley west of Lakeview in Lake County, Oregon. The valley is embraced to the east by the Warner Mountains and to the west by the Fremont National Forest. We are at 4800 feet elevation and the snow can be very deep most winters; spring is an unusual happening; summers are usually quite warm and extremely busy; we usually have Indian Summer in the autumn and Canada geese, Ross geese and other water fowl fly over the ranch on their way to their wintering grounds in the south.

Our ranch has been home to our family since 1965 when a population explosion in our native state caused us to go in search of greener pastures--yes, we are transplants from California. When we found this ranch, we knew we had finally "come home."

Our ranch is a family partnership consisting of my husband Wein, more familiarly known as Bud, our younger daughter Debra Grothe-Vernon and myself. We run a cow/calf operation all under our own fence; we do not use any public lands. Calving occurs mid-March through May; weaning is done in late October when calves are placed in our small feedlot and backgrounded until mid-January when they are sold via a video auction market.

My husband’s roots in the beef industry run deep. His family has documented proof than one of his maternal ancestors, patriot Daniel Maupin Sr. of Virginia, sold beef to George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. From 1874 until 1979 the Grothe family owned Bell Springs Ranch, a 10,000 acre cattle and sheep ranch in Mendocino/Humboldt counties in California.

My American agriculture roots began in Salinas, California, known as John Steinbeck country. I was reared on a dairy and row crop farm purchased by my father in 1921. In 1911 he had emigrated as a youth of sixteen years from northern Italy where his family had been landowners and stockmen since 1629, so my love of the land, its animals and its people comes naturally to me.

In addition to the folks who call the Flying Heart their home, the ranch is also home to blacktail deer, antelope, red-tail hawk, golden and bald eagles, abundant covies of quail, coyotes, great honed owls and snow shoe rabbits. Although we irrigate about 900 acres of pasture and hay lands, the balance of the ranch’s environment is friendly habitat for wildlife and cattle grazing. We manage the land for this multiple use balance. Three years agao I was instrumental in initiating the WESt program in our Cottonwood Creek watershed. Neighbors on the creek meet periodically to discuss and plan good stewardship of the creek’s riparian zone. The creek runs about two miles through our eastern boundary. (Right: Our 1st WESt program on Cottonwood Creek. Bud, Debra and Dr. John Buckhouse, OSU)

I have been active in industry organizations since 1965, having served at both local and State levels. I had the pleasure of being Oregon CattleWomen’s state president in 1992. In 1993 I was approinted as one of the producer representatives on the Oregon Beef Council, the education, promotion and research arm of the industry. I am now serving the last year of my second three-year term. I have served a two-year term as District Vice- President for the Oregon Cattlemen and will retire this position at the Annual Convention this month.

During this time of service to the industry that is our livelihood, I have met many wonderful people from throughout the United States and I’ve had some pretty exciting experiences. One in particular I like to call an Awesome Adventure: my trip to the Russian Far East in July of 1995 as a member of a trade mission for Oregon beef and other Oregon Agriculture products. Visit our site soon to learn more about this AWESOME ADVENTURE!