We all live in storied landscapes. The land we live on and work with has a long history. It is a place where humans, animals, and plants have been in relation for 1000s of years. Their stories are in the soil, the wind, and the trees.
We also live in a world where the stories of men are the ones we tend to hear the most. This is true of agriculture, especially in ranching, a stereotypically male-centered, masculine enterprise. But what if we told the stories of our ranches from the perspectives of the women who lived on these lands? What would we learn if we centered their stories, not to displace menâs stories but to add perspectives and new depth and knowledge to our understanding of ranching and what it means to live in a place?
I live on the Off Family Ranch along the Rio Grande River in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. The Rio Grande watershed is part of the ancestral homelands of the Ute tribe, specifically the Muache and Capote bands and the Jicarilla Apache tribe. This ranch, like many today, came into existence in 1872 out of a violent history of settler colonialism. And, like most long-standing ranching families, it was passed down each generation to Off sons and is now in its 150th year.
A beautiful sign crafted by my father-in-law, Gordon Off, marks the entrance to the ranch. The sign reads: âSettled by John Off in 1872.â Missing from it is any mention of Marie Off, Johnâs wife, who, like him, emigrated here from Germany and joined him in the endeavor of building a ranch and a family. Marie birthed 11 children on the ranch, seven boys and five girls.
Marie and John lived in a time when the Eurocentric ideology of âseparate spheresâ for women and men was strong. âThe ranchâ was the menâs domain. Women were expected to care for the home and the family. By all accounts, Marie played a so-called âsupportingâ role. She nursed and raised babies; she cooked; cleaned; built gardens and orchards; tended chickens; and fed countless people.
Marieâs contributions to this family ranch are no less admirable than Johnâs, yet stories about her life here are hard to come by. She was ranching, too, doing the vital work that keeps people alive and healthy, that keeps people in relation to one another, that connects the home to communities, and that laid the foundation for the next generation to endure. She was not merely a tenant at her husbandâs place of work. Her story matters.
How would the story of this place change or be told in another way if we started with Marie Off? What would we learn about this place that we did not know before? How would her story deepen our understanding and respect for the complex ways people in agriculture build lives in relation to land, animals, and their communities?
Centering Marieâs story helps me see how womenâs contributions are often taken for granted. Womenâs work is invisible work. Undervalued work. Unpaid labor. Yet their physical and emotional labor has long been vital to the success of the family ranch. Itâs time we bring them out of the shadows and into the light.
In the Off family, women were dissuaded from working alongside men. It wasnât until the 1980s, over 100 years after its inception, that women, specifically my good-natured mother-in-law, Suzie Off, worked in tandem with the men of this place. She built a pathway for me to imagine myself outside the container of âranch wifeâ and to step into the family as a woman who wanted to contribute to multiple aspects of ranch life.
Even as the antiquated ideas of keeping men and women in separate spheres fall out of fashion, we are still stuck with binary titles â âranch wifeâ and ârancherâ â tied to the larger ideology of the gender binary that positions men and women as opposites, rather than two beings that overlap far more than they differ. These binary titles also exclude the stories of many LGBTQIA+ folks who have not historically fit neatly into the pre-ordained social (and political) categories but whose experiences have long been an integral part of our landscapes.
Where we begin âthe storyâ of our ranches and who they begin with matters. In my family, they begin with grandfathers, fathers, and sons. But I want our son to understand that without listening to the stories of the women of this place, without knowing that this landscape was home to Indigenous peoples for hundreds of years before they were forcibly removed, his knowledge of this place will be incomplete.
Learning about Marie and the whole communities who were here before the Off family helps me take my seat at the table, knowing that my story is now woven with the people, plants, and animals of this place. Most important, remembering lost stories teaches me about my responsibility to craft a life in agriculture that seeks to restore connections and nurture relations that create health for all beings.
March is Womenâs History Month in the US, and March 8th is International Womenâs Day, honoring womenâs contributions to the world. This day celebrates womenâs achievements, raises awareness about discrimination, and the fight for gender equity. Interestingly, John Deere is the 2023 leading global sponsor of International Womenâs Day! Without question, women are vital to agriculture throughout the world.
Failing to tell womenâs stories devalues their lives and perpetuates the male-centric industry of agriculture. Amplifying their stories elevates womenâs work to the same status as that of men. Just as our soils need a diversity of organisms for optimum health and endurance, so too do we need a diversity of stories to make sense of who we are and open ourselves to more equitable relations in agriculture.
As I celebrate International Womenâs Day, I feel fortunate to be part of Women in Ranching, an organization dedicated to giving a platform to diverse voices of women who are committed to living in good relation to land, animals, and water. The wisdom from their stories â our stories â creates more fertile soil for the health of generations to come.
