Cover Story — Despite acres of vineyards and clusters of houses, the Santa Ynez Valley still bears telltale signs of cattle country. Hay-spattered pickup trucks dominate the byways, “Beef” bumper stickers abound and conversations often run to breeding, branding and the price of feed.
Nancy Williams and her son Jerry are third and fourth generation cattle ranchers living on a picture-perfect spread just west of Buellton. Together, they run Williams Livestock Company, grazing roughly 700 head on 25,000 acres of land—much of it leased—in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.
In a low-slung house that Nancy and her husband built 30 years ago from pine and white cedar, the pair offers a glimpse of a life both perilous and rewarding.
“Most people do this for a hobby,” said Jerry, 45, taking a break after a morning spent shipping cattle to feed lots in Colorado. “We’re some of the few producers around who make our sole living off livestock.”
Nancy, wearing jeans, a red polo shirt and a Williams Livestock Company ball cap, added, “We only have one employee, and my kids work with us on weekends.”
A petite blonde with a strong handshake, Nancy has two other sons, Rodney, 47, who owns a local construction company, and JP, 37, who works with him. The brothers live nearby and lend a hand, especially at branding time.
The Williamses produce natural beef by forgoing the use of hormones and antibiotics, and vaccinate their calves three times to keep them healthy. They raise AngusSource cattle (meaning the genetics are at least 50% Angus), run nearly 40 bulls each year and do all their own breeding.
“We try to do everything in-house,” explained Jerry, settling into a sofa set amid a profusion of western-flavored artifacts, including vintage saddles, Indian baskets and a hatrack blooming with Stetsons. “The only thing we need help with is when it’s time to [pregnancy]-check the animals.
“We inventory them then, too,” he continued, his worn jeans and plaid shirt belying the morning’s work. “They’re individually numbered, so we can look on a piece of paper and see how old she is, her description, what’s happened to her in the past.”
With help from Jerry’s wife, Sandy—who’s also adept at giving vaccines—the Williamses have computerized the herd records, which are required to satisfy age- and source-verification requirements.
“We’re among the few who identify each animal by a number,” Jerry said. “If they’re natural, and they’re all age- and source-verified, they can go to international markets.” Jerry breeds Border Collies to help work the cattle, and recently he and his six dogs were featured on the National Geographic Channel’s special “And Man Created Dog.” In it, he described the pleasures of working every day with “our best friends.”
For brush control, the Williamses rely on goats, and to protect them, Jerry pairs the ever-hungry animals with Great Pyrenees, large dogs that bond seamlessly with the herd. “We had six-hundred goats and eleven Great Pyrenees,” he laughed. “Now we’re down to one dog and probably seventy goats, but then there’ll be a lot more, and we’ll add more dogs. “I’ve been putting together packages of goats and Great Pyrenees,” he continued, “and selling them to other ranchers [for brush clearing]. Instead of slaughtering the goats, we’re re-homing them.”
Jerry, whose affection for animals goes well beyond common critters, once cared for 80 breeding pairs of different species of birds. He has kept buffalo and African Watusi cattle, and once adopted a calf, Mistake Missy, who had five legs and a second udder on her back. Recently, his wife gave him a camel.
Nancy explained that after Jerry graduated from high school, he toured Europe and Egypt with her mother, Rosalie, and a camel ride in Cairo stirred his passion for exotic fauna. After running cattle on Michael Jackson’s ranch in the late 1980s, the Williamses adopted several of Jackson’s animals, including zebras, zonkeys (half zebra, half donkey) and a golden yak named Yoyo.
“She was really special,” Jerry said. “She’d go trick-or-treating with us and the kids would put their baskets on her horns. She’d walk right up on the porch with them! We had her for ten years and finally found a good breeder who took her.”
Jerry’s association with animals, especially cattle, runs deep in the family line, beginning with Nancy’s paternal grandfather, Glen Cornelius.
“He was a cattle buyer and would take a train to Texas and buy a horse,” said Nancy, who has served twice as president of the Cattlewoman’s Association. “He’d ride to every little farm and buy five head here, five head there. Then he’d drive them to the stockyards in Kansas and sell them.”
Also a cattleman, Nancy’s father, Raymond, ran as many as 80,000 head on California ranches so far flung that he learned to pilot his own plane for easy access to them. “He rented Rancho San Fernando Rey and into Happy Canyon,” revealed Nancy, who practically grew up on horseback. “We had all that. He used to rope the wild pigs and sell them to the stockyards in L.A.”
His success allowed the family to acquire some prime land, including Rancho del Cielo, later known as Ronald Reagan’s Western White House.
“That was our summer home,” Nancy said, “and it was like being on top of the world. You can see the ocean, the Valley, Lake Cachuma. We had a lake where we could swim, and we could ride our horses from Refugio, down the ridge, and come out at Gaviota tunnel. We used to drive the cattle out there.”
After Ronald Reagan took over the property in 1976, Jerry helped care for the future president’s cattle and horses.
“He was the nicest man,” Jerry smiled. “He asked my grandfather about running for president, and my grandfather said to him that no man should ever have that kind of responsibility.
“I have a belt with longhorns carved into the leather that Reagan had made for my grandfather,” he added. “We have a lot history with him.”
Nancy’s parents met in the Santa Ynez Valley, where her mother was born and raised, the daughter of Danish immigrants who met at Solvang’s Atterdag College. Nancy remembers keeping her horses in what is now Hans Christian Anderson Park, which belonged to her grandfather before it became a park.
Jerry Williams, Sr., Nancy’s husband, was a member of Santa Maria’s Wineman family, sheepmen who became cattle ranchers and farmers. For 30 years, his brother, Bob, owned a 6000-head capacity feed lot in Santa Maria, though he now handles stocker cattle exclusively.
Nancy met Jerry Sr. as a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he played football and was among the survivors of the team’s deadly plane crash in 1960. After college, Jerry went to work for Nancy’s father, established his own cow herd, and when Jerry Jr. graduated from Cal Poly, started a herd with his son.
“My grandfather had the Buellton Livestock Market,” Jerry remembered. “After I got out of college there was a chance for me to take it over. My mom, dad and I had our own livestock market and we also had our cattle business.”
In 2001, a routine ranch chore went terribly wrong, shaking the very foundation of Williams Livestock Company.
“My husband was killed in an accident with a bull,” Nancy said softly, quiet pain etching her pretty face. “He roped the bull and the horse went down and he broke his neck. That’s when I took over the cattle business with Jerry.”
His pale blue eyes offering a steady if slightly weary gaze, Jerry said, “We were able to keep moving on because of what he taught me. I grew up with four generations and we all worked together. My great-grandfather was alive until I was eighteen, and he and grandpa taught me a lot, too.
“I broke my back several years ago when an ATV tipped over,” he continued with a wry laugh. “And broke my face, again on an ATV a few months back. I’ve had horse accidents, concussions. Things happen, but you just get up and keep going.”
Jerry and Nancy admit that, despite the dangers, challenges and never-ending labor of cattle ranching, the benefits make it worthwhile.
“You get to work with family everyday,” Jerry said. “The animals, being outdoors, being independent. And we have good friends that help us a lot, Audrey Griffin and Rick Layman are among those friends.
“The grandkids, nephews and nieces want to be here, too,” he continued. “Instead of going to a party, they’re coming here to help us. They all have divergent interests, but they come back to the ranch life that is the core.”
The flying V brand of the Williams Livestock Company has been in Nancy’s family for 50 years. With luck—and the commitment of succeeding generations—it will continue to mark livestock roaming the open spaces of Santa Ynez Valley cattle country. for many years to come.
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