National Ag Week | Tippetts Farm LLC: Brad Tippetts is living the legacy

For Brad Tippetts, the farm he and his family operate east of Lovell is more than an occupation, more than even a way of life. For him, it’s a passion.

And that’s why he goes to work each and every day to run Tippetts Farm LLC, often working with his father, Wilford, and/or his son, Zack.

According to family history, the Tippetts family moved into the Big Horn Basin in 1903 and Brad’s great-grandfather, Milford Tippetts, started the Tippetts farm four miles east of town in the 1940s, followed by his son Wilford “Buff” Tippetts, then Wilford, Brad and Zack.

“So I’m the fourth generation on this place,” Brad Tippetts said. “My grandfather Buff – Wilford E. – pretty much established the farm (as it is now). Buff’s dad, Milford, had cattle and other livestock, but I don’t know how much land he had.

“Buff grew it. He was the activator.”

As a kid, Brad recalled, the farm sometimes “came to a screeching halt” on Friday night because the whole crew headed to the Dryhead to run cattle there.

“We were there every weekend,” he said. “We were there as a family as I was growing up. I later discovered that we only rented it (the ranch).

“We also ran cattle on the Big Horns on a Forest Service permit. We had about 20 head of riding horses being hauled between Dryhead and the Big Horns. We’ve probably been running cattle on the mountain for 100 years.”

Brad’s teachers may not have realized it, but he would sometimes sneak away on a school day to be with his grandfather.

“Buff would come by the schoolyard and call me over (to the fence) and say, ‘Your grandmother is on the war path. You want to go to Dryhead?’ I’d just take off,” he said. “If you did that today there’d be hell to pay.”

Zack Tippetts is now the fifth generation working on the farm, and Brad hopes the farm will continue to operate well into the future.

“It’s been my desire that this place keeps going, that the legacy continues,” Brad said. “Someone will ask me when I’m going to sell, and I say never. We would only sell if we had no other choice.”

With wife Colleen at his side, he continued, “I’ve been so passionate about it. I can’t think of doing anything else – and truthfully it about cost me a marriage. I’d leave when it was dark and get home when it was dark. We wouldn’t talk. I’d eat cold food.

“But I’m passionate about her, too. She’s my rock. Sometimes it may seem like she’s number two and the farm is number one. It takes a good woman to stand by you in an operation like this.”

As for Colleen, she’s the office manager at Bentonite Performance Minerals, which helps with insurance and some of the family bills.

The operation

Tippetts Farm LLC runs a well-respected cow-calf operation through a variety of holdings. Brad Tippetts said the company rents land, has BLM leases and now owns 640 acres of land in the Dryhead near the reservation boundary. East of town, the family operation owns around 1,500 acres of farm ground and rents another 1,000 acres or so.

“This place maintains about 450 to 500 mother cows, and we work with more than 1,000 head altogether in the cow-calf operation (at a given time),” Tippetts said.

About the time he graduated from Lovell High School in 1980, the farm operation was run by Buff, Wilford and Wilford’s brother-in-law Rich Williams. So Brad worked for American Colloid, then in the oilfields for NEPECO. Even then, however, he would work on the farm after his regular job’s shift was over.

“I’d work, say, 7 to 3, then come over here and work until 10 o’clock at night,” Tippetts said.

Eventually, uncle Rich Williams decided to go to work for Western Sugar, and that opened up a spot in the farm operation for Brad. He went to work full-time for Tippetts Farm around 1990 and has been there ever since.

 “There’s a saying, if farming and ranching was easy, everybody would do it,” Tippetts said, “but you do have to have the knowledge and desire and passion to do it, and an understanding of animals, too.”

“Brad works on all of the equipment, too,” Colleen noted.

And so, Brad and Colleen said, a farmer must be a mechanic, welder, father to calves (animal husbandry), planter, irrigator, harvester, carpenter, road worker, buyer, businessman, accountant and more.

Besides the busy farm, Brad has served on Shoshone Conservation District and Sunlight Drainage boards, and Colleen is an elected representative on the Northwest Rural Water District Board.

“I’m also a husband, father and grandfather. You have to find time to enjoy the family and enjoy life,” Brad said. “We’ve finally succeeded in getting some time to take the occasional vacation.”

Asked about his typical day, Brad said he and Colleen have emphasized sitting down for quality time at breakfast each morning before going their separate ways for work. This time of year Brad spends mornings with the calves being born each day, tagging ears and recording each birth while taking care of any problems that may arise. Then after feeding it’s back out with the cows again. There are other tasks like getting summer pasture ready and getting the ground ready for crops, still worrying about the cows and how they are doing.

“I try to come home for dinner, and then I might be back out the door with the cows or irrigating,” he said.

Unfortunately, Tippetts said, the Wyoming Highway Patrol dispatch center has his cell number, so he’ll get a call at any time, day or night, saying a cow is out of the fence at a particular mile marker and wondering if he knows whose cow it might be.

If he can, he’ll tell the dispatcher, but he’ll often call whoever he thinks might own the cow, noting, “We take care of each other.”

Of course, he and Colleen actively supported kids Julie and Zack when they were in activities. Colleen was dedicated and would attend even the out-of-town games when Julie was playing sports, and both attended many a rodeo when Zack was competing.

Challenges

Asked about the challenges facing farmers today, Tippetts said the biggest challenge is keeping abreast of the economy. The COVID-19 coronavirus has depressed prices even more than they had already fallen, he noted, adding that cattle prices have been falling for about five years now.

“I just sold 140 steers in January for $1.41 a pound, but right now I doubt if I could even get anybody interested in buying,” he said. “No one is going to restaurants and buying a big steak.”

Trying to figure out prices is difficult, Tippetts said, noting that fuel prices are normally down in January and February, so at that time he bought red fuel for $1.90 per gallon – and now the price is well below that.

“It’s a guessing game. You need a crystal ball,” he said.

Fortunately, the next video cattle sale is in July, giving some time for the market to improve.

In general, the beef market is mostly flat, if not falling, due to a variety of reasons, he said. He said the family tried moving into the organic market a few years ago and sold fully certified cattle two years ago, but the market is extremely difficult due to the myriad of rules and regulations a producer must follow. And so now Tippetts Farm is producing natural beef, without growth hormones or food additives.

As for the market in general, he noted, “We’ve been very lucky because we have return buyers.”

The future

It’s always difficult to predict the future, but Tippetts said he remains optimistic.

“We’re doing well, and I hope we will continue to do well,” he said. “You have to be frugal, but you also have to grow and develop. I’d love my grandfather to see what we’ve done.

“You do have to be frugal. You have to be versatile in everything you do. You have to learn to fix everything you have. When I came back to the farm I started doing all of the welding and repairing and rebuilding. And when cataracts started affecting my eyes, I passed a lot of it on to Zack. That kid loves to build and weld and build things with wood.”

A real key to the survival of the farm is forming the company and passing it down from generation to generation,” Tippetts said, adding, “We’re not making each generation buy us out. It’s handed down generation to generation. To me, that’s the only way the next generation can survive and make it work. It has to be handed down or it will fall apart.”

And so the farm continues, through thick and thin.

“I’m living the legacy, I’m living the dream,” Tippetts said. “My hope is that it goes on forever. I don’t want it sold. It was my grandfather’s dream. I want that dream to keep rolling.”

By David Peck