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Last Updated on Monday, 06 April 2009 09:25

Written by Steve Miller

UW recognizes rancher Don Meike
Kaycee – The baby boy who spent his first summer in a sheep wagon on the Wyoming Range later drew a straight course back to the ranch after serving as a navigator in the U.S. Air Force.
    “Nearly five years as a navigator convinced me the sooner I got back to the ranch the better,” quips Don Meike, who manages Meike Ranch Inc. with his brother, Pete, in Johnson County near Sussex.
    A 1951 graduate of the University of Wyoming with honors, manager of the ranch for more than 50 years, and with a list of ag industry and community involvement items that could cause envy, Meike is a College of Agriculture Outstanding Alumnus Award recipient
    “Don and his brother have operated a successful sheep and cattle ranching enterprise through some of the most difficult times faced by our industries,” says Jim Magagna, a producer and also executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. He says Meike has been a mentor, a colleague and friend nearly 40 years. “Don was always able to seamlessly move from the lambing barn to the highest of political circles,” Magagna says. “He firmly believed that service to his university, his industry, and his state were a responsibility and a privilege.”
    The nomination letters for Meike are filled with references to selflessness in sharing expertise, time, and involvement in commodity associations and politics.
    Gerald Fink of Buffalo has worked with Meike in various ways for more than 40 years. “I have found Don to be an exceptional leader in his community, county, state and industry,” he says.
The Meike Ranch is one of the most progressive commercial ranching operations in the state and possibly region, he adds. “Don’s leadership and management style is to thoroughly evaluate new agricultural practices and quickly implement those that have positive application to the ranch. The positive and cooperative attitude demonstrated by Don has served as an inspiration to others in the sheep and cattle industries both locally and regionally.”
    Meike’s grandfather, Emil, was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States as a baby. He came to Sussex in 1901 looking for a new start in the cattle business. Meike’s father, Peter, was born in 1901 in Colorado. “Granddad, along with H.W. Davis and others, saw the future of irrigation in the Powder River valley and started the Sussex Irrigation Company,” says Meike. “Meikes have been the major stockholder and prime mover ever since. Granddad did as many ranchers of that era and expanded his holdings whenever possible.”
    Meike was born to Peter and Naomi, whom he calls his mentors. His dad was the sheep person in the family, so Meike spent his first summer in the sheep wagon. He attended Sussex grade school, often being the only student in his grade. He attended Johnson County High School in Buffalo, where he lived with an aunt. He received his bachelor’s degree in general agriculture in 1951 and was a member of the livestock judging team and the Sigma Nu fraternity.
    He was selected as an International Farm Youth Exchange delegate to Denmark for six months his senior year, was drafted shortly after his UW graduation, and enlisted in the Air Force Cadet program. He flew combat missions, including Korea, served five years, and returned home.
    “After graduating with honors from the University of Wyoming’s College of Agriculture in 1951, Don has exhibited outstanding leadership throughout the entire ag industry as well as being a pillar in his community,” writes J.W. Nuckolls of Hulett.
    Meike says during his first meeting with the Johnson County Wool Growers he was put on the board as treasurer, common for any new prospect, he says.
    “From there on, I just kept getting involved and worked my way to the top as national president,” he says. “I had always been interested in politics, but actually working on the state and national level was very rewarding. I first met Dick Cheney when he was President Ford’s executive director and worked with him a lot after that. I also had a meeting with President Reagan, along with six other national ag officers.”
    His selflessness in helping has made him a mover on the local stage, too. “This has been the standard for the Meike Ranch – always there to help whenever they could,” writes Ginger Curuchet of Kaycee. “If Don knew of anyone or any organization in need, he would make it a point to get involved, and everyone knew they could count on him. Young people in agriculture seek Don out for advice, and he always has time for them.”
    She adds, “Don is a pillar in this community, giving advice, but never pushing his knowledge and experiences unless asked.”
    Frank Moore of the Spearhead Ranch near Douglas says Meike has distinguished himself as a rancher, sheep man, and Wyoming businessman. “His positive attitude, willingness to help, and mentoring abilities have served our state well,” he states. “There are many leaders within the ag community Don has mentored, prodded, and supported. I have looked for Don for guidance on a number of occasions and credit him with pushing me to step outside my comfort zone and follow his footsteps through the state and national sheep associations.”
    Meike is always knowledgeable about new practices, “and his willingness to try new ideas is amazing especially when knowing the potential risks,” says rancher Bob Innes of Gillette. “There are so many who reach this stage in their operation who would stay within their comfort zone and not participate in new challenges and opportunities, but Don is at the forefront of progress.”His leadership style has influenced countless others in positive ways, he adds. “I, along with so many others, am truly a better person and a better agriculture operator because of Don Meike, and I thank him for those gifts to all of us.”
    Meike and his brother are currently involved in a project to establish a senior housing facility in Kaycee to be dedicated to their grandparents and parents.
    As for the future of agriculture, Meike says, “Agriculture will survive and will probably still be a tough life, but if you like it, what more could you want?”
    Steven L. Miller is Senior Editor for the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture.

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Last Updated on Monday, 06 April 2009 09:02

Written by Christy Hemken

Harshbargers continue CCAA work
Weston County — Although Bob Harshbarger didn’t join his wife Jean on her family’s outfit until 1987, where she’s lived for 70 years, he’s wasted no time joining in on new projects since his arrival.
    Some of the couple’s biggest projects in the last two decades have been a variety of water developments throughout their ranch and a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA), which has been ongoing for 10 years and is reaching completion, pending a take permit from the Denver, Colo. office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).
    Jean’s grandfather bought their ranch in 1924, but never lived there himself. He also owned two ranches in Colorado, and Jean’s parents moved to Wyoming in the 1930s when she was a toddler. “I think this place is one of the nicer ranches in this part of the country, because it’s on the Cheyenne River,” says Jean of their location. “There are big ravines for the cattle in bad weather, so it’s a good winter ranch, and it’s just a really neat place.”
    “Bob came from Illinois, and how we met is one of those funny things,” says Jean of Bob’s hunting trips to Wyoming. “We met in 1968 and one year when he came out we decided he should stay.”
    “He’s a real quick study,” says Jean of Bob’s adjustment to life in the West. “He says he didn’t know the front end of the cow when he came out. I always say he didn’t yet know the rules of the West.”
    “Ever since Bob’s been here we’ve been doing a lot of water development because it’s such an important thing is this country,” says Jean. “We’ve put in a lot of wells, and many of them have been solar units and we really like them. They’re cost-effective now, and they’re no more expensive than a propane generator pump or a windmill.”
    “We have a lot of wells, and it takes a lot of hard work to keep them going,” she says of the ranch’s main water supply. Although the Cheyenne River runs through their ranch, it’s ephemeral and for the last several years has only run a few days out of the year.
    One of Jean’s daughters now lives down the road from the home ranch, while the other works as a lawyer in Arizona. Jean says the one nearby used to help out on the ranch, but hasn’t had to as much since the return of a grandson and his family to the ranching operation.
    “When he was a kid he’d come out for the summers, and he and his wife came back to the ranch after he served nine years in the Service,” says Jean, joking, “He does the heavy work now and we sit here and watch him.”
    The Harshbarger family runs a Red Angus cow-calf operation and half their cowherd is bred to Charolais bulls. “We just returned from Illinois, and I jumped up and down when we came back because I was so sick of seeing black cows,” jests Jeans. “We like Red Angus. Cows at 1,100 pounds are big enough for us, and the smaller cattle are more thrifty and we can run more of them.”
    The ranch supports hay ground and millet for hay on good water years. “With all the years of drought our crops have been very poor, and most of the alfalfa, which used to be really good, has pretty well died out,” says Jean. “We’re hoping for a few good years to get another stand established.”
    She says one of the hard things about their country is the Forest Service grasslands they use to run their cows. “They can do a little dictating if the drought starts to look bad. Sometimes they have regulations that don’t make a lot of common sense and when I’ve been on this ranch for over 70 years I know there are a lot of things that aren’t perfect, but we have to work around them and they don’t understand that.”
    Jean was the first woman to graduate from the University of Wyoming with a range management degree. “The first thing I learned after graduation is that practical sense has a lot more to do with things than book learning,” she says.
     “The CCAA is 99 percent complete,” says Jean of their efforts to protect their ranch’s way of operating should the prairie dog become listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. “It’s been published in the Federal Register, and we were pleasantly surprised that it didn’t receive a whole lot of comments like we were expecting.”
    Bob says they continue to wait for the take permit to be issued from the Denver FWS office. “If the species is ever listed as threatened or endangered we’ll need the take permit to continue our population control on the species listed in our CCAA to maintain the population level we agreed upon,” he says.
    The Harshbargers have made an agreement with the FWS to maintain 3,000 acres of prairie dog habitat on their lands and to allow the prairie dog at certain populations. The Harshbargers’ biologist will monitor the 19 management areas on the ranch. “When the prairie dogs reach about three per acre we’ll start population control,” says Bob, adding they hope to maintain the population between three and five prairie dogs per acre. “When that population is met we’ll attempt to keep them in check.”
    The CCAA, in addition to prairie dogs, will cover mountain plover, burrowing owls and ferruginous hawks. “Sage grouse require a completely different habitat than prairie dogs, so they couldn’t be in the same CCAA, but we hope we can add them on later if they are going to be listed,” says Jean.
    “I’ve been ready to throw up my hands on the whole thing many times,” says Jean of the CCAA’s decade-long duration. “I have great hopes that when we finally get this one through other people will be able to start something similar, and not have it take 10 years.”
    She says staff with the Wyoming Department of Agriculture and the Cheyenne FWS office have been good to work with and have done a lot of work on the project.
    “This is the last hoop we’ve got to jump through, and then it’s ready for signing,” says Bob of the take permit. “We’re just hanging in there right now. Everybody’s asking us about the CCAA’s progress, but Denver is dragging their feet over the take permit.”
    Christy Hemken is assistant editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

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Last Updated on Friday, 08 July 2011 13:19

Written by Tressa Lawrence

“Mother of the Year” isn’t a title that can be won overnight, and Bette Lu Lerwick, mother of four from Albin, has earned her nomination time after time.
Lerwick is known throughout her community as a woman of many titles: farm wife, community cook, EMT volunteer, farm manager, friend to the elderly, house keeper, community activist, care giver, and she even delivers the post on Saturdays. If Bette Lu doesn’t have time management down, then nobody does.
It’s that time management and work ethic that earned her the title of Monsanto’s national Farmers Mom of the Year in late May, after she found out in mid-May that she was a regional finalist.
“There is no such thing as a daily routine. There is a routine, but it’s changing all the time. Around the farm I am responsible for the yards, the house, the upkeep around the buildings and those sorts of things. Of course, I also pitch in out in the field with the guys – I drive the tractor and run for parts,” says Lerwick of life on her family’s southeast Wyoming farm.
Lerwick takes pride in keeping everything going, and ensuring that not only the farm, but also her household, run smoothly.
“It is a full time job just keeping things functioning around the home, especially when we have extra help around. Keeping everyone fed, keeping clothes washed, things running smoothly and everything under control can be a chore. The house really is the main hub for everything – everyone meets here and all business is directed out of the home. I know I can’t function if the home isn’t in order and I think that it helps them, too,” notes Lerwick.
All of the work and pressures associated with being a devoted hard-working farm wife could be considered tiresome, but not to Lerwick.  
“But I enjoy it!” she says. “It is a lot of work, but I truly enjoy it.”
However experienced she is now, Lerwick did not grow up on a farm – it was when she got married that her life took a turn in a new direction.
“One of the things I remember most after we got married is adjusting to the flat land farms of the prairie. I grew up in the mountains, and moving to an area that was completely flat was a whole new experience,” she jokes.
Although it’s different from where she grew up, Lerwick has adapted well to her environment. She raised four children on the family farm in southeast Wyoming, keeping active with them and all of their own activities throughout school. Her children are grown now and are having children of their own, but they still remember and appreciate their mother for everything that she has done for them.
“I didn’t even know that my daughter had nominated me until I won the regional title! They contacted me on Friday the 13th and I said that was the luckiest Friday the 13th ever,” Lerwick says, smiling, of her entry into the contest by Kosha Olson of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.
Lerwick says she appreciates the support provided by Wyoming, which pulled together to get her the votes needed to win the title of Monsanto’s Farmers Mom of the Year.
“People in Wyoming really pull together and want Wyoming to be promoted well,” Lerwick notes.
Monsanto representative Dan Marostica attended the Wyoming Cattle Industry 2011 Convention and Trade Show in early June to present Lerwick with her award and a $7,500 check.
“She is the backbone of her family, a valuable contributor to the community and a leader within the agriculture community,” said Marostica of Lerwick during the ceremony.
He said that Monsanto takes the time to recognize incredible moms such as Lerwick as a small way of thanking all women in agriculture.
“Women play a critical role in agriculture, and the Mom of the Year contest was created to recognize the numerous, diverse contributions they make daily to their families, farms, communities and the agricultural industry. No matter where they’re from or what they do, farm moms seem to share a passion for agriculture, a love for the family farm lifestyle and a dedication to preserving the land for the next generation,” said Marostica.
Tressa Lawrence is editorial intern for the Wyoming Livestock Roundup and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

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Last Updated on Thursday, 15 October 2009 05:04

Written by University of Wyoming

Wheatland — Laramie Peak hasn’t changed locales from where it has for millennia dominated the skyline and watched the business of life in southeast Wyoming.
    Not so for the guy in the corner office – the president’s office – of Platte Valley Bank not far off Interstate 25 in Wheatland. Laramie Peak saw Keith Geis uprooted to Laramie as a high school junior from the dairy he grew up on southwest of town. He was sidetracked to Alabama and Iowa before returning to the mountain’s landscape.
    Crisscrossing the country, raising a family, and returning to his hometown haven’t seemed to alter the ideals Geis was taught when young.
    “I’m an advocate of being the very best you should be and giving back to the world around you,” says Geis about what he would say to University of Wyoming freshmen. “Pay your dues forward. Do something for someone else, and don’t expect anything in return. If you do, you will be successful no matter what you do.”
    A cowboy creed hangs on his office wall. Spurs rest in a cubbyhole not far from his desk.
    “Anyone who knows Keith knows he loves Wyoming and the University of Wyoming,” writes Billie Addleman of the Hirst Applegate law firm in Cheyenne. “He wears that passion on his sleeve, and I cannot think of a better ambassador of our state and university than Keith Geis.”
    Dennis Sun, publisher of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup in Casper, has served with Geis on several non-profit organizations. “The values and passion he has in helping others is unequaled in Wyoming,” notes Sun.
    Not bad for someone who had worked as a laborer at the UW Stock Farm and huddled with his wife, Marie, in the bachelor’s huts while attending UW. His parents, Zane and Gladys, and the rest of the family moved to Laramie in 1969 when his father went to work for the university’s micro veterinary laboratory.
    A graduate of Laramie High School, he attended Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa. He married Marie when a sophomore and moved back to Laramie. “My wife is from Mobile, Ala. and she can share some interesting stories,” says Geis. “She had never experienced winters like Laramie can periodically provide.” He earned his bachelor’s in agriculture economics from UW in 1975.
    Why economics? “It was intriguing to me in finding ways one might increase efficiency or be better at allocating resources to increase profitability to the bottom line,” he says. He interned with the then-Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) in Basin and worked in Torrington after graduation. He then took a political appointment with FmHA in Geneva, Ala. After a year and a half, his wife encouraged their family to move back to Wyoming.
    “Even though she was from Mobile, she did not realize a place existed in rural Alabama like Geneva,” he relates. “It was evident after administrations changed I was a Yankee. I was told I would move to Winston County, Ala.”
    Winston County is known for its independent thinking. Deep in the South, it gained notoriety for its opposition to secession during the Civil War, which was so strong it was sometimes referred to as the Republic of Winston.
    Geis never went to Winston County; he went to work for the Federal Land Bank in DeWitt, Iowa, then for Farm Credit Services in 1982. He was vice president of marketing. The organization began consolidating offices in 2002, but Geis had been through that process in the 1980s. “It had left a void in customer services,” he says.
    Then came a phone call from Platte Valley Bank while he was driving one day. Would he be interested in moving to Wheatland to manage a bank?
    “It was interesting and challenging,” he says. “I said, ‘Let’s go see what we can get done.’ It’s been a very rewarding endeavor, taking something from ground zero and creating and developing not only the bank building but the furniture, artwork, and portfolio and the relations that come with Platte Valley Financial Service Companies, Inc. Our footprint covers the eastern side of Wyoming and western Nebraska.”
    There are offices in Wheatland, Casper, Torrington and Cheyenne in Wyoming, and in Scottsbluff, Minatare, Morrill and Bridgeport in Nebraska.
    “Their philosophy of customer service and giving back to the community really fit well with my personal philosophy,” Geis notes. “You leave the world a better place than how you found it.”
    There was a professional carrot, too. Geis had always been in the top five out of 500 lenders with Farm Credit Services but could never change how it operated. “In a $5 billion organization, unless you are the leader, you don’t have the ability to change the way it sails,” he says. “I could see at Platte Valley Bank I could have the latitude to paint my own picture. It’s been very rewarding.”
    He and Marie have a grown son and daughter and four granddaughters.
    Article courtesy of the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture.