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A Family Farm

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A Family Farm ALUMNI Amory, Francis, Sandi, and Alex Blake pause briefly for a family portrait, while their herd of Red Angus cattle grazes (below) with the Crazy Mountains as a distant backdrop. northern entrance to Yellow- stone National Park. On a clear day, there’s a 50-mile panoramic view from the Blakes’ yard across prairie- and rangelands, from the ultra-craggy “Crazies” to the Ab- saroka and Beartooth Mountains. “It was a patch of dirt when we arrived,” Francis recalls. “An unbe- lievable mess.” A few cottonwoods and willows lent scant shade; the surrounding grounds and ripar- ian zones on Otter Creek, about 75 yards from the house, had been denuded by grazing cattle. Rust- ing wrecked cars lay about, al- ALUMNI though several had been put to use support- ing a bridge over the creek and fortifying its banks against flooding. “I had absolutely no idea what we were A Family Farm getting into,” Sandi allows, while walking a visitor toward the tree and shrub nursery Working a cattle ranch and tree nursery in Big Sky country that the couple started in 1977 for essential income to buffer the cyclicality of cattle by nell porter brown ranching. “And I don’t think he did, either.” The winters are brutal. Snow and ice coat the landscape; temperatures easily dip to 20 hree weeks before calving half the 110 cows. “Rain’s coming in,” Fran- below. The winds can whip up to 50 miles season at Keewaydin Ranch, cis says. “Hope it doesn’t come while we’re per hour across the prairie, and typically two ranch hands yell and swat trying to get this done.” hold steady at 35 mph through January. Not at the cows—“Hey! C’mon. Git. The livestock’s health, and the weather, a place “for the feeble of mind or body,” she TGit in there!”—ushering them out of a corral are constant worries at the 5,000-acre ranch, continues—“and you’d better find some- and into a squeeze shoot. The metal com- where Francis has been handling cows since thing you love to do inside. Here, it’s really partment holds the 1,200-pound creatures he and his wife, Sandi, moved out from Boston about being self-sufficient and happy within still enough for Alex Blake ’96 and his father, in 1973. Alex was a month old and his brother your own being. People who don’t have those Francis Blake ’61, to inject a vaccination and Peter ’93 a toddler when the family settled inner resources will probably spend a lot of mineral supplement. on a dilapidated “They just don’t naturally like going into ranching home- confined spaces, even though they’ve all been stead, seeking through here before,” says Alex, as one red what Francis calls Angus mother-to-be moos and grunts and a life “connected to kicks the bars, making a clanging racket. the land.” “But,” adds Francis, refilling the syringes, Their spread “it’s never very pleasant.” is six miles from Alex pats the cow’s auburn coat and pulls Big Timber, Mon- the lever to set her free. She trots past the tana, a town of wooden fence toward the pasture on the far 1,700 residents. It side of the barn, where lush grass grows. lies in the valley The work is slow. Already, the men have between Billings been out for hours under darkening clouds and Bozeman, moving east from the snow-capped Crazy within a 90-min- Mountains, and have injected only about ute drive from the Photographs by Lynn Donaldson Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI Sandi and Amory Blake focus primarily on the family’s nursery business, which includes retail sales (left) and an orchard (below) along Otter Creek. ial enterprise, yet Alex and Amory never felt pressured to return home, and are ea- ger to apply their “next gen- live in an off-the-grid house he eration” knowledge to stewarding the land. built bordering the nursery’s The businesses are profitable enough for the tree-growing zone. She is a family to live comfortably, but far from lav- state wildlife biologist and wolf ishly. “You want to survive, but the business time watching TV, and wishing they were specialist; during the spring denning season is far from only about making money,” Francis somewhere else.” she tracked them, sneaking into the trees. “I says, speaking for everyone. “Today it seems Big Timber was strictly a ranching com- howl, and if they howl back, that’s usually it’s so important to people to make a large munity in the 1970s, and that is still a way confirmation they’re there with their pups.” amount of money, yet, how much satisfac- of life for many, including other Harvardians Alex shares that closeness to animals, and tion do you really get out of that? I think we in the area, such as Horatio Burns ’53 (father to “the natural beauty of the place I get to all get satisfaction out of working with liv- of Olympic rower Lindsay Burns Barbier ’87) call home.” He, Peter, and Amory ’98 grew up ing things, animals and trees, and how you and Jason Smith ’15, who manages his family’s working on the ranch and landscape crews, can see wonderful results through your own Twin Forks Ranch. The town is still thriving as well as playing ice hockey on the frozen, physical, hard work.” by rural Montana standards, but today the lo- spring-fed slough, and tubing on the creek, At 78, Francis doesn’t sit still for long. He’s cal economy is also tied to a platinum mine before heading to New England boarding racked up more than 13,000 miles on indoor and recreational tourism. Bozeman, a 75-min- schools and then Harvard. Peter, who spent 20 rowing machines, like the one in his study ute drive, has become a booming tech hub: the years in the Marine Corps as a Harrier jet pi- (where his Harvard diploma and an etching downtown is packed with restaurants and lot, then as a squadron commander, retired as of rowers on the Charles River hang: he rowed boutiques, the airport has expanded, and real- a lieutenant colonel and now directs training varsity lightweight); he also founded the Har- estate development contributes to sprawl. and support at Aeryon Defense USA, in Den- vard Club of Montana and in 2005 received “The wind keeps us from becoming an- ver. But Amory also returned to Montana and, the College admissions office’s Hiram Hunn other Bozeman,” Alex sounds relieved to with a degree in horticulture from Montana Award for his decades of schools and schol- report while talking over tea at his parents’ State University, works closely with Sandi at arships committee work across the state. A ranch house. Big Timber itself offers Lucky Blake Nursery. In addition to landscape build- seasoned runner, he’s registered, with Amory, Lil’s Casino, bars, a bakery, a movie theater, and-design services, the nursery specializes in for the Devil’s Backbone, a 50-mile relay race and the restored Grand Hotel, along with hardy specimens, from native birch and alders in the Gallatin Mountain Range in July. taxidermists and tackle shops. “Many peo- to drought- and deer-resistant grasses and pe- Over tea, talk turns to the agricultural ple think we’re isolated, but we’re not,” adds rennials, and plants that provide windscreens industry’s chronic lack of reliable laborers. Alex. “We’re as connected as we want to be.” and shade on hot prairies—and attract “but- The Blakes feel lucky to employ a Mexican After Harvard, where he studied econom- terflies, birds, bees, and other critters we de- and two Peruvians—one, now an Ameri- ics and rowed varsity heavyweight crew (and pend on for a healthy captained senior year), Alex worked on family earth,” says Sandi. farms in Kenya, served four years in the U.S. “There’s deep satis- Marines, seeing combat as an artillery officer faction derived from in Iraq, and then earned an agricultural eco- contributing to the nomics degree at Texas A&M. He returned well-being of the en- to Montana in 2006 to manage operations at vironment, including a natural-beef company before rejoining his the fact we’re helping family’s ventures and working for Western Montana continue to Sustainability Exchange, a nonprofit conser- look like Montana— vation organization focused on improving instead of Anywhere, farming and ranching production practices. U.S.A.” His time abroad and on the East Coast Skillsets aside, all offered “cultural diversity, broader global four Blakes do what’s perspectives, and a better appreciation for required for both the my family’s roots,” he says, but they also re- ranch and nursery. inforced his desire to return to rural, small- Knotty dynamics town life. He and his wife, Abby Nelson, arise, as in any famil- 72 July - August 2018 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI can citizen, has worked at Keewaydin for 16 years—and five Montanans for the nursery Centennial Medalists season. Alex cites a local irrigation company that offers high pay, yet can’t lure applicants, The graduate school of Arts and Sciences’ Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 even though there are able-bodied people on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors alumni who have made around in need of jobs. “But they don’t want contributions to society that emerged from their graduate studies.
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