103 Years Old and Still Writing the Checks
In Sweetwater, Oklahoma located in the southwest corner of Roger Mills County, Monte Tucker gets up every morning and goes to work alongside his 103-year-old grandmother.
She doesn't feed cattle anymore. Her eyes and ears are going. But she still lives in her own house on the ranch, she still writes the checks that keeps the operation running, and she still “gripes” at Monte for spending too much on fuel, feed, and fertilizer.
"She kind of bosses us around a little bit," he says with a laugh.
The original land was settled by Monte’s great-granddad, Smith Thomas Tucker along the bank of Buffalo Creek. Smith Thomas Tucker’s son went off to World War II, came home, bought the farm from his father, and married Monte’s grandmother. That makes Monte he fourth generation to work this southwest Oklahoma land. This spring he moved his son Mason home from college, making the operation five generations strong.
Between his grandmother, his dad, and himself, and soon, his son, the Tuckers run about 750 cows under two names: Tucker Cattle Company and Tucker Family Beef. Commercial Black Angus, which Tucker says they own the whole way from conception to the rail.
Out where they ranch in the western Oklahoma, that's harder than it sounds.
There's no irrigation. It's all dry-land pasture, and they live and die by rain. A good year brings 17 or 18 inches.
"It rains 20 inches a year here," his granddad used to say, "and you better be there on that day."
Right now they're in a D3 drought. In May of this year when there should be green grass and full water tanks, Monte ran feed routes like it was the dead of winter. That meant dumping out dollars in hay that should have come free from the ground. To put this into perspective, because of the difference in climate, where a rancher in the eastern part of the state might run two cows on a single acre, Monte needs 20 to 25 acres for one.
He's clear-eyed about what the country asks of his corner of land in Sweetwater. He can't grow celery or lettuce or carrots. Western Oklahoma grows grass.
"The only way we can convert the ecosystem into something consumable for humans on this land," he says, "is through a protein system called a cow."
About fifteen years ago, almost by accident, the Tuckers shifted to raising all-natural, non-hormone-treated cattle. They started doing so, because the beef brought a premium price. Price aside, the part Monte keeps circling back to is the care the animal must be certified to receive. This care is audited by third-party to confirm the animals are raised the way the Tuckers were already raising them before their all-natural beef brought a bigger pay day.
When he tried selling beef retail during COVID, it taught him fast how much has to line up to keep what a customer wants in stock, at the price they want, on the day they want it. Forty ribeye steaks, he points out, means one whole steer and a freezer full of everything else that animal becomes. That gap that he discovered between the grocery shelf and the land a thing comes from is one of the things that bothers him the most.
He wishes more kids could grow a single tomato, or a watermelon, and watch a bug or a missed watering wipe it out.
"They just need to see the complexity," he says, "of what it takes to get something from topsoil, rain, and sunshine to a grocery shelf."
His biggest worry for the next generation though, isn't weather or the grocery store market. It's whether a young person can afford to get in at all. His son Mason has a leg up, meaning he'll ease in to the farming and ranching world, alongside family, likely taking over part of his great-grandmother's side. Monte points out a kid starting cold in the business, without a family connection, runs straight into land prices and capital that likely puts the whole idea out of reach.
Monte describes Oklahoma food in only a few words and, like his Sweetwater roots, doesn't reach for anything fancy. Oklahoma food, he says, is full of pride, is genuine and tasty. That's Tucker beef, raised by four generations, soon to be five, on the same Buffalo Creek land, watched over by a 103-year-old woman who still wants to know why the fuel bill is so high.