Page 14 - WCA September Ketch Pen 2020

14
By Bridget Coon
Place & People
The Bar U Ranch is near Benge, south of Ritzville in Adams County. It has been operated by the family since 1946. The chan- neled scablands provide range for our rotational crossbred Gelbvieh-Sim- mental-Angus stock. The herd is split, fall calving in September and late winter calving starting in March. The ranch business is diversified with premium and export market hay grown on irrigated ground closer to Ritzville.
version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, resulting in a complete
corral design overhaul. With a backlog of cow work
during construction, this summer has been full of
opportunities to test and tweak the new layout.
Ranch life in a pan- demic isn’t perfect, but it certainly affords the
space to breath mask-less and buffer from boredom
the rest of the world is
yearning for right about now. Parenting through
these bizarre times can be stressful, but having
children around injects a lot of fun into our day to day. “Bar U Homeskool”
with a Kindergartener and second grader was less than structured, but
enriched by the math and biology lessons embedded in units such as Gopher Trapping
in the Alfalfa 101 and Rattle- snake Dissection and Skinning with Pop.
Today the ranch is run by
Dick Coon Jr., his brother
Fritz, and Dick’s son Paul
with the help of seasonal
hands and family. Family
matriarch Stephanie “Stevie”
Coon, 90 resides at the home
place, tending a prolific flower and vegetable garden. Both Dick and
the late Dick Sr. are past WCA
presidents. Dick is currently the
NCBA Policy Division Region Five Director.
Corrals & COVID
We had extra hopes for 2020 to be uneventful after 2019 got a little weird. That March, a Union Pacific de- railment at the ranch during the late snow conditions set off six months of an omnipresent railroad clean up. We set a tone of cooperation early, with Dick trading a UP contracted truck driver a pull for a pull – getting an assist with a heifer caving, then tugging his stuck truck out of the mud and slush of the stackyard perimeter. Excess crushed rock from the railroad project and
a stockpile of panels begat the ranch improvement
Bridget and Paul Coon, with children Edgar and Elsie
Ketch Pen www.washingtoncattlemen.org
“Stevie” Coon in her flower garden
September 2020