A Sixth Generation in Isabella, Oklahoma

Ryan Sproul lives in Isabella, Oklahoma, a town of about 70 people in Major County, where roughly half the residents share his last name. His family arrived here on September 16, 1893, during the Cherokee Outlet land run, and they have been here ever since.

He is the sixth generation to work this land. His daughters, Annie Kay (7) and Gentry (4), are the seventh.

"It just gets in your blood," Ryan says. "There's a lot easier ways to make a living. But I don't know what else I would do."

Ryan runs a Red Angus cow-calf operation outside Isabella with his wife Kristi, a Montana ranch girl he met through showing cattle. The Sprouls focus mostly on the commercial side, but they keep a smaller herd of registered Red Angus cows that they breed through artificial insemination, a tool that lets a ranch in Major County reach for genetics that would otherwise be out of reach.

"For twenty or thirty dollars, you can buy a chance at a really good bull that would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to own," Ryan explains. The payoff, over time, is a better replacement heifer, a stronger female to anchor the next generation of the herd.

A typical day starts with coffee and a window that Ryan likes to look out at in the morning and decide where to go first. Calving season runs them ragged. Feeding season runs long. Summer, when the calves are on the ground and the grass is hopefully green, is the closest thing to a breather they get.

"Our saying around this place is, the day you don't check stuff is the day you have problems," he says. "I've got my four-year-old saying it now."

Major County has been dry this spring. The wheat harvest started earlier than anyone here can remember. The ranch got three tenths of rain recently, but he was hoping for more. In the cattle business, the weather is the boss.

He also knows the business itself is getting harder to enter. Cattle prices are at record highs, which helps. Diesel is near five dollars a gallon, and his one-ton feed truck takes almost $200 to fill. Land in Major County is expensive, and capital is the real barrier for younger producers.

"I don't want to discourage anyone," he says. "I'd just say be realistic and be prepared." He points to Farm Credit of Western Oklahoma, FSA's beginning farmer programs, and the sale barn in Fairview, where monthly special sales help producers like him capture a little more value for what they raise. He sells most of his replacement heifers right off the ranch.

"In livestock, a lot of times you're a price taker, not a price maker," he says. "We're trying to be a price maker."

Ryan sits on his county Farm Bureau board. Kristi serves on the Cattlemen's board. He talks easily about policy, about the cost of inputs, about the gap between what people read online and what actually happens on a ranch. He bristles, gently, at the idea that producers like him aren't caring for the land.

"If we hadn't been taking care of our land, we'd be out of business," he says. "It's pretty simple. You take care of your land and your livestock, and it takes care of you."

Ask him what Oklahoma food means in three words and he doesn't hesitate: safe, reliable, affordable.

"Everything we're producing out here is what I'm feeding my family. That's what my neighbors growing wheat are putting in their bread. I'm not afraid of it, because I know what it is."

The herd will keep growing. His girls will keep tagging along because they each have a couple of cows of their own now, and they always want to check theirs first. The land, held together and added to piece by piece across six generations, will, if Ryan has anything to say about it, be in better shape when he hands it off than when he got it.

"One day," he says, "they'll be talking about the seventh and eighth and ninth generation."

That is what Oklahoma food looks like up close. Real people, on land they've earned, raising what they themselves are willing to feed their kids. Oklahoma All for Food exists to make sure the rest of us can see them, and recognize their work the next time we set the table.