By Linda Luddington

(This is the second part of a two-part article.)

In 1929, Lon and Garnet started their own ranch. They moved south up the valley towards Prescott. Their Stringfield Ranch was tucked into Bottleneck Wash, in the cedar, oak, and pinon-covered Granite Mountain foothills. To their original homesteads were added a number of small deeded parcels and the Burnt Ranch forest permit.

From the earliest days of their cow-calf operation, the Stringfields have run their ranch as a family business. The women have contributed their labor to its success, on the range as well as in the house. Garnet rode with Lon. They branded their Herefords with the L F and the Open Fifty-Six, brands that Ralph and daughter Irene use today. Garnet wrote that once she had helped Lon drive over a thousand steers to the Del Rio shipping pens. "The men had to load the cattle into the boxcars. In those days the only way we could sell our cattle was to drive them to the railroad." 

By the 1940s, most area ranchers sold their stock to buyers who came to the ranch, weighed the cattle on ranch scales, and trucked them to feedlots, often out of state. Now, most Prescott area ranchers truck their cattle to Prescott or Phoenix sale barns. But however it is done, one fact has not changed: only when a rancher sells his cattle does he receive his wages. 

Garnet recalled buying groceries monthly, in large quantities, to supplement her large vegetable garden, fruit orchard, and her own butchered beef. Merchants granted ranchers credit until the cattle were sold in the fall. "We usually ran our bill for the year. When we sold our calves, we would pay our bill and start all over again." The merchants were secure in the cattlemen's integrity. In those days a man's handshake and his word were as good as legal tender. 

Ralph laments today's scarcity of experienced and skilled old-time cowboys to teach the younger generations. "Just wearing a pair of boots doesn't make a fellow a cowboy.'' He gives credit to such fine cattlemen as Albert and Lon Stringfield, Bob Perkins, Austin Nunn, Mike Stuart, and Tom Koontz for his own ranching knowledge. Lon could ride roundup from Skull Valley to Big Chino and Perkinsville and bring in over 2,000 head, much to his son's admiration. Lon also spent winter days teaching Ralph to braid rawhide ropes and hackamores. 

In the cattle business, Ralph insists, there's no substitute for experience. He has learned the value of working cattle in a gentle way, seldom needing to get his horse off a trot. He credits the "Man Upstairs" and lots of luck for few range accidents. He explains the advantages of "thinking out a situation" before starting a job. Ralph especially values Mike Stuart's advice, "Your horse will get you home, so always take good care of it." In brush country, particularly, Ralph knows that such a practice is sound. 

Recalling the many pleasant experiences he has enjoyed ranching, he tells of discovering numerous Indian artifacts on his range, of hunting lions with George Goswick, and of watching his prized cowdog, Buck, work cattle-"better than five cowboys all together." He remembers times when friends and he performed in crowd-pleasing "Wild Cow-milking" contests held here in Prescott and at other northern Arizona rodeos. Mike Stuart, Clarence Belcomb, and Joey Matli were frequently his partners in the events. One cowboy roped the cow while the other, usually Ralph, tried to milk her. He was required to fill a coke bottle with enough for the judge to pour. Ralph enjoyed success in this hilarious event until, in the Parker Rodeo, he was kicked in the back by an irate 1,400-pound cow. That ended his rodeo career! 

When Ralph contracted tuberculosis in both lungs, he was forced to give up his hope of attending college on a football scholarship. The disease kept him away from World War II, as well. Instead, he took over the ranch. In 1946, he married Genevieve Sipes. Because his parents had separated, Ralph and Genevieve made their home with grandmother Garnet until she died forty-five years later. 

Ralph's bride had the blood in her veins of South Dakota and Texas cowboys. She always loved to ride, and had hoped to marry a rancher; but as she readily admits today, she knew nothing about cattle when she was first married. Ralph had soon taught her to help him gather cattle on their brush-covered land. Genevieve learned to rely on their cowdogs and saddlehorses to help her hold the stock in a box canyon while Ralph gathered still more cattle. She once joked to her mother that she had become the "world's best holdup man." 

Genevieve discovered that she loved cowboying, much preferring it to doing house chores. Of course, there were times when range work wasn't at all fun: the time she drove cattle into the stiff, icy wind of a blinding snowstorm; the time in 1967, when the ranch was snowbound for eleven days; the spring a bear killed thirteen calves; the 1983 flood that destroyed miles of fence. Genevieve labored alongside Ralph for months restringing that barbed wire. 

Readily apparent when talking with Genevieve is her propensity to find humor in all situations. Being able to laugh at herself has helped her cope with the labor-intensive life. Though she has become an accomplished cattlewoman in her own right, she speaks with self-deprecating admiration about Ralph's and Irene's skills. "They just know each animal in the herd, remember how best to work it, and in what part of a pasture it likes to graze. 

Irene Stringfield, a Spanish teacher at Prescott High School, spends her weekends and vacations on the ranch. Neither of her parents can ride horseback any longer. The forest permit has been sold. Irene now manages their smaller herd of Herefords on the Stringfield deeded land. She does the branding as well. Her parents' calves are branded with the L F, and hers get the Open Fifty-Six. 

Ralph, Genevieve, and Irene Stringfield exemplify the true spirit of the small, independent rancher. They have met life's struggles with inner strength, self-sufficiency, courage, and lots of hard work. Ronnie Farley, in her book, Cowgirls, writes, "Life on the land may be a struggle, but unlike the desperate man-made struggles of urban living, it is a struggle that fulfills and exhilarates rather than embitters and degrades." The Stringfields love their ranch, their family heritage, and their way of life in the shadow of Granite Mountain. All those hearty pioneer ancestors would be justifiably proud of them, too! 

(Linda Luddington is a volunteer with the annual Cowboy Poets Gathering at the Sharlot Hall Museum.) 



Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (Stringfield collection). Reuse only by permission.