Legislator and Rancher: A split identity, with each part contributing to the whole

Over the past thirty four years, Express Employment Professionals has put millions of people to work in meaningful and fulfilling jobs and careers. If you're looking for work or want to grow your workforce, go to express prose dot com. Now here's Meredith Turk with the story of Kimmy Lewis. Driving south on Highway one O nine in Colorado is a surreal experience. They call this God's Country, and I begin to see why. There's expansive horizons, beautiful grasses, and

stark canyons. Just before Las Animous County, we dip into a canyon that took my breath away. I could smell in moist desert pines scattered with yucca blossoms. Well, it looks more like West Texas or northern New Mexico than it does, Uh Colorado. Everybody thinks Colorado's mountains or plains. We're part of the short grass prairie, but we're part of the purgatory canyon lands. And so there's it's beautiful green right now this spring because of all the good

moisture we've received. What a blessing that has been. But um, we live in the canyons where there's maces and rocks and trees and cactus and rattlesnakes and cattle across more than seventeen acres. In the high desert of southeast Colorado, we visit a cow calfe operation with three hundred heifers. I'm Kimmy Clark Lewis, and I grew up here where at Muddy Valley Ranch that lies halfway between Lahnta, Colorado

and kim Colorado in Las Angiemos in Bent County. This part of the country just got moisture, as they call it. It came in the form of a blizzard. But they're not complaining. In the high desert, they pray for rain Louis took over this ranch from her father in and raised her kids here, all six of them. Well, I grew up here at Muddy Valley Ranch. I was the youngest of four daughters. And they moved here in nineteen

fifty eight and I was a year old. And I lived here until I married, and then we had our children, and then came back and bought the ranch back from my dad in n and I've been here every since. So actually I've been here longer than my dad was here. Lewis says it was hard to build a ranch. She talks about a particularly hard time when they were scraping the bottom of the bear all to keep the ranch running. There was a lot, a lot of work, and we

had to watch every penny. I can remember one time when we had bought a brand new pickup, and that was unusual for us to buy a brand new one. We always just would buy use because we didn't think we could afford a brand new one. When the land payment came along, we were a little bit short, so we had to sell that brand new pick up to

UH make the difference. And you know what, we made our payment and UH kept right ongoing, so you know, when you're growing that many children in a household, you just get by the best you can and the good Lord takes care of you. But you're just so busy with fun of life and and I guess as a mom of six kids, I did a lot of cooking and cleaning and a lot of hungry. When you work where you live, Louis says that everything merges together, but you have more time for each other, more time for

the family. At the time, the banker didn't want to do both loans. He said, you know, you can't hardly pay that off. And then he says, and I'm really confused, Mrs Lewis, how are you going to do that? And with six children? But the children were, you know, getting older than we had six children in nine years and um, but they were very good helpers. And in fact, um the banker said, well, I need you to call three people and have three people call me and let me

know why you should get this loan. Because I was a female, and I, of course my husband was We were applying together, but he knew I was going to be the one to do it because my husband ran a truck and company and was gone all the time. When I went back to see the banker that I had the veterinarian, another lady rancher, and another good friend of mine that was an older man called the banker and uh he said, Oh my gosh, we should run

you for governor. He said, I can see now that it's with those six children, that's how you're going to get all this none this weekend, almost the whole family is here to work. Louis lost her husband a few years ago, but she's been keeping the ranch up with her children, and today's Mother's Day, but it's also time to brand several hundred calves with their brand, one of the oldest in Colorado. Louis tells me it's going to be pretty wild out there, cowboys rounding up cattle, roping

them and branding them on the ground. We start early. The cowboys and girls started down. I thought it was early, but apparently there's an even earlier. I've been up since three because I had to put the beans on and make a big two big cobblers for lunch today. So besides that, I had chores to do. I had the two nurse cows and bed the horses, and then put on a little breakfast for us. And and they all got gone before we did so anyway, but I had dishes to do because yesterday it was kind of a

big day too. So neighbors are what make this ranching work possible. They call it neighboring, where neighbors team up to do big workloads like branding, and they rotate until everyone is finished. Some of the people that will be here today helping us, we'll be neighbors. They'll just stuff from neighboring ranches, and uh, we try to help them whenever they need some help. And then when we call them and say, hey, we need a couple of guys, and and it's so nice to have have them here

because you know what, that's what you gotta do. You have to neighbor with your because it's it's so important. And then of course some of us have been here a long time, so we've been neighbors a really long time, so it's kind of like you get kind of get to be old friends. We finally get to the location of the branding, there at least a dozen neighbors helping. There's a crescendo of mooing as calves await their turn

for branding and castration and the mothers look on. There's also a growing heat as the sun rises high with nothing to protect us only cowboy hats. Everyone is in jeans, button up shirts, boots and hats, the classic ranch uniform. So we don't kind of hormones or anything like that. These are just calf hood vaccinations. So that's one is a seven boy who absolutely away uh which helps them like with overreads, disease and things. And it has things in it that they can get if you don't doctor

them for them, they can get that later on. And then this shot is just for pink eye. And the way the year has started with a lot of rain, we could have a lot of sunflowers. Sunflowers bring pink eye and flies. Flies bring pinkik. They hate the branding irons over a fire and prepare tags and injections. Louis tells me. They try not to work the cattle too much, only touching them when they have to. When they're not being worked like this, the cows are roaming in expansive

pastures for grazing. Louis has joined by most of her children today, some who live on the ranch and others who traveled home for the occasion. My partners are my chill. I don't want partners that I don't know anything about. I know these children and they know me, and when the day comes, which won't be too long down the road, um that I need to kind of step aside and let them worry about making land payments in because they're

all the right age. They're all in their young thirties, the twins or twenty nine, and they all need to come together and probably need to do this as a family. Most of the people and her family are women, but they saddle up with the men and rounded the cattle just the same. Luis is used to proving herself as

a woman on the ranch. I was one of four girls growing up, and my dad used always brag about the girls, and finally, when I was aged thirty, I realized he didn't have anything else than girls, so no wonder who's going to brag about him. He always said that the girls had a better handle on a horse because they didn't, they wouldn't lose their temper as bad as a as a guy. This branding is a little

later than normal. They always consult the Farmer's Almanac to make sure they're using the correct moon cycle to Randon castreet. There was a weather that postponed the branding, but also Louis has a side job, and a pretty big one. Lewis just completed her first year as state representative in Colorado. We'll hear more after the break, so stay with us. You're listening to On the Job From Hired to Retired.

Meredith Turk is our guest producer today. I'm your host, Steve Mencher, and here's a word from our sponsor, Express Employment Professionals. If you are searching for a job, Express Employment Professionals can help access free video training on what skills are in demand in today's job market, resume writing, interview tips, and more. Visit Express pros dot com slash job Genius. You can become a job genius today Express

pros dot com slash job Genius. Express is on a mission to put a million people to work each year. Let us help you get informed with a job market forecast, part of the free job Genius video series from Express Employment Professionals. Watch it now at Express pros dot com slash job Genius. Welcome back to On the Job From Hired to Retired. Kimmy Lewis has plenty to do at her Muddy Valley ranch, but she decided that helping her neighbors by being their voice in Denver was something else

she just had to do. Once again, here's Meredith turk Lewis ran for office to protect the things that are most important to her on the ranch. She went to the Colorado House of Representatives to be a voice for all the other ranchers in her region. I never intended to run. I never did. I enjoy just being here. My whole intent on the whole thing is to show these people, helps show them that they too can do this.

So I intend to not be in there forever. I expect some of these other people that worked right alongside with me to step up for some type of uh. Run for something, whether it's city council, whether it's a county commissioner race, or congress or whatever they want to do. Show them, hey, I'm a rural person, but you can get elected. She's been fighting for property rights against the

government conservation organizations. She also wants to educate the public about beef production and explain that rangers in southeast Colorado produced most of it. We've always been a little bit of a political family. My sister Sparky was the state director for U S. Senator Hank Ground for fifteen years and actually was working for him when they took the first big group of land in Opinion Canyon in ninete. So,

so I knew the battles that they had fought. And then UM watched Dad and people always respected Dad, and always they would call here they'd have an issue, you know. And so basically, I after I got elected, I made a statement, well, at least now I'm elected to the position that I've been doing for quite a while. So Lewis said, next year she'll be smarter at the legislature. She knows she doesn't have to run everywhere and do

everything like she did this year. Tackling a city job in a country job means when you come home, you're coming home to work too. Just the night she got home, her ranch was in the middle of a blizzard. I came in from Denver the night that the blizzard started two weeks ago, the big blizzard that killed the most of the cattle over east here, and I got my

pickup unloaded. I have some water running out here in the trees the wind break, and move that because I thought, what this storm is going to get like they're saying, I've very do all these things, did everything. I was putting my pickup in the barn and I thought, well, I better go check that last half her. Well, she was calving and it was starting to snow and rain, and I'm out there and this is like ten thirty at night, and I've been working since, says, I left

Denver trying to get all this done. Brought in groceries, and I got her in the rock barn, and that last half her caved in there. Even though she works where she lives, Louis says, there's nothing like coming home. Well, the first thing I always noticed is the smell that I just smell the fresh air, the fresh air, the air the wind usually blows out the south southwest here off of these maces, and the maces are full of pinion pine and cedar trees, and it just smells so good.

And this spring, of course, this last month, we've had a lot of good moisture. So then you just smell that and it's just, um, I think that we take a lot of that stuff for granted, and it's just it just really fell. It smells clean and fresh and and I really enjoy that more than the other. What have you learned about yourself through this career? Well, this career change, I've learned that there are a lot of

things that you can do that you never thought you could. Uh. The funniest thing about someone like me going to Denver is it didn't scare me to be in the House of Representatives at all. And it doesn't scare me to stand up there and talk agriculture and be on a completely different wavelength than everybody else. That doesn't scare me at all because I'm always just trying to be myself. What would you be doing if you weren't doing this?

You know, I don't know what I would be doing. Uh, I guess ever since I was a small girl, I figured somebody would need to take on the ranch, and uh, all my sisters were either teachers or worked in public relations or something, and I just I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know what I'd do. Louis hopes to retire student on a patch of her land and watch her kids run the ranch, but she'll probably always be involved somehow. I've been talking with Kimmy Lewis, owner of the Muddy

Valley Ranch south of the hunta call Wado. She's also a legislator who represents her neighbors in Colorado House District six. I'm producer Meredith Turk in Denver. That's all for this edition of On the Job from Hired to Retired, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express Prose dot com. Music for this episode by Steve Mencher and Ghost from Creative Common Sight CC mixed. This podcast is produced by Steve Mencher for Men's Media, Red

Seat Ventures and I Heart Radio. Find us on I Heart Radio and iTunes, where we hope you will leave a nice review that helps other folks find us too, And of course you can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time on the Job.