(music)
[Toby Schenk] The scenery, it's almost breathtaking.
(music)
[Jeff Bonner] Very pleasing to the eye.
(music)
[Greg Mitchell] We think this ranch is special, it's got rolling
plains, it's got some deep canyons, it's got some great water, which is every rancher's
dream.
(water flowing)
[Jeff Mitchell] We're north of Amarillo in the Canadian River
breaks.
Our east boundary is Lake Meredith.
(music)
[Jeff Mitchell] I'm Jeff Mitchell, Manager of the Indian Springs
Cattle Company.
(4 wheeler)
[Jeff Mitchell] It's all about a balance.
It s not just having a cow ranch, it's having a diverse ranch.
(music)
(turkey gobble)
(red-winged blackbird)
(music)
(cows moo)
[Jeff Mitchell] We're in a
terrible drought.
I think we're close to 200 days without having any measurable moisture.
And so one of the big things we're always trying to do is how do we stock the ranch
properly?
The good years make everybody look smart.
The bad years are the ones that see how good of a rancher you really are.
We're very much into the science of our operation.
We do our stocking rates based off of our enclosures.
[Jeff Bonner] You put a cage around it so they can't eat it.
So we can come at the end of the year, clip it and weigh it, and we know how much grass
this soil type in this pasture makes.
(music)
[Jeff Bonner] With the conservative stocking rates that
they use here and the drought plan that they have in place, they always have enough standing
grass that when it rains, it catches more of that water, and more of that water gets
soaked into the soil.
The water is sweet, cool, and it's just bubbling out of the ground.
[Greg Mitchell] It's called Indian Springs, and it's very
fitting.
We didn t even realize when we bought this ranch the historical value, especially for
the Indians that passed through here.
[Jeff Bonner] I don t know when the end of the last Ice
Age was, do you?
When was the Pleistocene?
[Greg Mitchell] They made arrowheads and tools and this ranch
is just loaded with all those artifacts.
[Jeff Bonner] The Alibates National Monument is just across
the river there as you know, and so all these little holes are where Native Americans dug
out Alibates flint.
We know that we find points of it made back during the Paleo period.
[Jeff Mitchell] The history does go way back, thousands and
thousands of years ago, up until the late 1800s.
[Jeff Bonner] We looked at the flint quarries and it s just
amazing to me to see the remains of the different cultures that have lived here and how long
they ve done it.
(water)
[Toby Schenk] There is so much history here on this particular
ranch.
There's so much to see.
It's amazing.
[Miles Mitchell] It just goes up like that.
[Greg Mitchell] Yeah.
[Jeff Mitchell] In the grand scheme of things, we're here
for a very short period of time.
And so we're constantly trying to better the ranch.
(skid steer)
[Greg Mitchell] Toby has just been a lifeblood of this ranch.
[Jeff Mitchell] Toby Schenk handles our day-to-day operation,
and we do a lot of cholla-pulling, a lot of individual plant treatment.
(wind)
[Jeff Bonner] If it was just a cattle place you would take
down every mesquite, every cholla, anything that wasn't growing grass or that would compete
with grass.
Well they don't want to do that.
[Jeff Mitchell] We try to do a lot of landscaping for the
wildlife.
Let the brush come in in places, the poorer soils, so we can have the wildlife.
(music)
[Greg Mitchell] I grew up hunting and fishing.
We are absolutely blessed with the wildlife that this ranch provides.
And we're stewards of that.
We do not want that to go away.
And I hope that goes down to my grandkids and my great grandkids.
(cows mooing)
(music)
[Jeff Mitchell] Everybody always says the old cliche, I want
to leave it better for the next generation, and there's no doubt, I mean that's the biggest
part of it.
They're not making any more of it.
(music)
[Jeff Mitchell] It's our goal and our mission to leave a legacy
for those that follow us.
[Toby Schenk] Very blessed to get to work for the Mitchells
and with the Mitchells, in God's country.
(music)