A Family Affair At Wyman Creek Cattle Company
SUMMERSVILLE, MO. – When Carolyn Carson and her family decided to move their Wyman Creek Cattle Company from northern California to the Ozarks ten years ago, they kept the namesake of the creek from the nearby foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Today, their 850 acres outside of Summersville, Mo., in rural Texas County is home to Carolyn, her sister, Denise and her husband, Larry Roenspie, their parents, Bob and Kathy Belden, Carolyn’s daughter, Anne and her husband, Elijah Howell, and their four year old daughter, Josephine, who Carolyn calls her ‘ranching buddy’. Bob and Kathy are retired but still brush hog and help out with other tractor work, keeping their hand in the ranch work. All the rest help out on the farm in one way or another.
“Denise and I work pretty closely together on most everything. My brother-in-law keeps our equipment running and Larry and Denise’s three grown sons, Adam, Nick and Neal all live in Summersville and also work on the farm.”
Together, the family raises registered Brangus and keeps 140 cow-calf pairs as well as bulls and replacement heifers, a few Angus and commercial cows, making a herd of approximately 200 head.
“We started in 1990 in California about 60 miles north of Sacramento,” Carolyn explained, “but when we got a really good offer for our farm there, we decided to take it. California had just gotten to be such a difficult place for farmers in recent years. We began looking for some place where we could afford new acreage. We raise our own hay here as we did in California, 1000 bales a year there and some custom haying. Here, we had somebody else doing the hay for the first couple of years but now we have the equipment and do it ourselves, 600 big bales a year. We also cut hay for four of our neighbors. In California, we did six cuttings of alfalfa a year but here, we just cut and bale pasture hay.”
She continued. “We’d always done a few commercial cows but we were at a dispersal sale with a childhood family friend and we bought two open Brangus heifers and that’s how we got started with the registered Brangus. I still have a granddaughter, who is a direct descendant of one of those heifers.
“We really like the carcass quality of the Brangus. The quality and yield can compete with the Angus and with that 3/8 Brahman bloodline they tolerate the heat in this part of the country as well as the cold in the winter. They are also really pest, as in bug-tolerant, too. They don’t get pinkeye or foot rot as bad as Angus do. In the summer heat, you’ll find the Angus standing in the ponds but the Brangus will be bedded down in the shade somewhere in the pasture.”
Carolyn went on to share that most of the Brangus are black like their Angus cousins, but there are a few reds as well. They are active with the International Brangus Breeders Association out of College Station, Texas. She says the group has worked hard to improve the breed’s quality and the public’s knowledge of the breed. Today, she feels the Brangus beef is comparable to that of the more well-known Angus.
Wyman Creek Cattle Company sells about 20 bulls off the farm each year through private treaty as well as approximately the same number of replacement heifers. They sell a few show heifers via the Internet and sell a number of feeder calves through the Wright County livestock sale barn in Mountain Grove.
Carolyn works part-time on another near-by farm, helping with their cattle, including feeding. Denise is a retired elementary school teacher and Larry works for Mo Department of Transportation. Carolyn’s son-in-law, Elijah is a welder and often travels. He and her daughter, Anne also have their own herd of Highland Cattle on the ranch. Carolyn’s nephews all also have additional jobs off the ranch.
“We have just found Missouri to be a much more farmer-friendly area than California. California had just become a much more difficult place to raise cattle or buy additional pastureland, which had gotten so expensive.”
Meanwhile, Carolyn particularly enjoys working with her granddaughter, Josephine. “She loves the cows,” Carolyn concluded. “She enjoys everything about life on the farm. When we go out to check on the livestock, we have to look at the frogs in the pond, the flowers in the pasture, all of it. She may be four right now, but she’s going to be ready to run this place by the time she’s eight!”
