RANGE ROVERS FAMILY DEVOTED TO RANCHING LIFESTYLE.Byline: Andrea Cavanaugh Staff Writer SIMI VALLEY Simi Valley (sē`mē, sĭm`ē), city (1990 pop. 100,217), Ventura co., SW Calif. in an oil, fruit, and farm region; laid out 1887, inc. 1969. - Just over the hill from the growing suburbs of Simi Valley, Ralph Kelley seems to have stepped back in time. Kelley, 54, saddles up his horse every afternoon to tend to 100 head of cattle and nearly two dozen horses that graze against a backdrop of ocher ocher (ō`kər), mixture of varying proportions of iron oxide and clay, used as a pigment. It occurs naturally as yellow ocher (yellow or yellow-brown in color), the iron oxide being limonite, or as red ocher, the iron oxide being hematite. cliffs on a sprawling 2,800-acre ranch just north of the Ronald Reagan Freeway. Kelley, who grew up on a ranch in Newbury Park, has watched Ventura County's population explode around him, but said the life of the cattleman is the only one he's ever known or wanted. An anachronism a·nach·ro·nism n. 1. The representation of someone as existing or something as happening in other than chronological, proper, or historical order. 2. in Western hat and boots, Kelley even belongs to a posse. ``I should have been born 200 years ago,'' he said. ``I don't care
"Don't Care" is a 1994 (see 1994 in music) single by American death metal band Obituary. if I ever get to town.'' He doesn't have to go far to get there. Just a couple of hundred yards from the ranch's southern border, cars hum past on the freeway, garbage trucks rumble to the nearby landfill, and bulldozers are leveling the site of Simi SIMI Sea Ice Mechanics Initiative SIMI Search for Intelligent Monkeys on the Internet SIMI Students Islamic Movement in India SIMI Society of Irish Motor Industry SIMI Smallholder Irrigation Markets Initiative Valley's first mall. But there's no sign of that activity on the ranch, where the only sounds are the lowing of the cattle as the feed truck draws near. ``It's so nice and peaceful and quiet here,'' said Kelley's wife, Barbara. ``Then the city's just a stone's throw stone's throw n. A short distance. stone's throw Noun a short distance Noun 1. away.'' Riding atop a stack of hay bales in the bed of a moving pickup truck, Kelley tossed bricks of feed into the slanting afternoon sunlight and looked around at the golden hills. ``This is a different world here,'' he said. ``When you come here, it's like going back to when we were kids again.'' Kelley and his family have been leasing the ranch from the Unocal Land and Development Co. for the past two years. Unocal plans to build a business park and hundreds of homes on the property, but Kelley hopes there will still be room for his ranching operation on the portion of the property that would remain open space if the project moves forward. His wife of 33 years, Barbara Runkle Kelley, 52, grew up on a cattle ranch in Runkle Canyon - a 1,600-acre property in southeast Simi Valley that the family sold several years ago and that is now slated for a 461-home housing development. Before moving to the Unocal property, the Kelleys raised cattle for more than two decades on Wood Ranch, another Simi Valley grazing spot that gave way to hundreds of upscale homes. But the Kelleys said they aren't bitter about the conversion of thousands of acres of ranch land to residential development. ``That's progress,'' Ralph Kelley said. ``There's nothing you can do about it. Everybody's got to have a place to live.'' The Kelleys' ranching operation is one of the last remnants of Simi Valley's agricultural roots, said Pat Havens, director of the Strathern Historical Park and Museum. The city once was surrounded by vast tracts of grazing land, including the 15,000-acre Strathern Ranch. ``We had big, big cattle ranches all around the edges of town,'' Havens said. ``There's almost no one left. Ralph is probably the only one raising cattle.'' A lack of rainfall for the past two years and last October's wildfire have taken a toll on the ranch. The blaze blackened black·en v. black·ened, black·en·ing, black·ens v.tr. 1. To make black. 2. To sully or defame: a scandal that blackened the mayor's name. 3. nearly every acre of the property, scorching scorch v. scorched, scorch·ing, scorch·es v.tr. 1. To burn superficially so as to discolor or damage the texture of. See Synonyms at burn1. 2. the meager mea·ger also mea·gre adj. 1. Deficient in quantity, fullness, or extent; scanty. 2. Deficient in richness, fertility, or vigor; feeble: the meager soil of an eroded plain. 3. grasses. The loss of pasture forced the Kelleys to feed their cattle hay, driving up their costs. The Kelleys' ranching operation is a family affair - Ralph Kelley's 90- year-old uncle, Ralph Hayes, is his longtime partner, and the couple's two daughters, their son-in-law, and their daughter's fiance all pitch in. Barbara Kelley's cousin, Dewey Runkle, lives on the property. ``Everybody helps out,'' Barbara Kelley said. ``This is a family business. We love this life and we've always lived it.'' For Ralph Kelley, a farrier farrier a person skilled in the techniques of making, fitting and remodeling horseshoes, including hot and cold fitting, orthopedic shoeing. by day who travels around the county shoeing horses, spending afternoons on the ranch is all he could ask for. ``There's no better life than this,'' Ralph Kelley said. ``I'm not going to get rich, but this is what I like.'' Andrea Cavanaugh, (805) 583-7602 andrea.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): 6 photos Photo: (1 -- color) Ralph Kelley drops hay off the back of a feed truck on the leased property in Simi Valley. (2 -- color -- ran in Simi edition only) At the back of the haytruck, Ralph Kelley rides with his wife, Barbara, and their granddaughter, Jessie Fontes. (3 -- color -- ran in Simi edition only) A cattle skull and a sign warn trespassers to stay off the Simi Valley property leased by the Kelleys. (4 -- ran in Simi edition only) - Ralph Kelley (5 -- ran in Simi edition only) Rancher Kelley, 54, of Simi Valley heaves heaves, chronic pulmonary emphysema in horses. Heaves is characterized by the disruption of normal lung tissue with resultant loss of the lung's elastic recoil. A forced expiratory effort is needed to empty the lungs of air. a bale of hay onto a truck to bring to his horses and cows. (6 -- ran in Simi edition only) Kelley adjusts the stirrups stirrups The footholds in a lithotomy table on Freckles freckles Ephilides Brown macules, often exacerbated on sun-exposed zones of the skin surface, which disappear during the winter, and most commonly affecting the fair-skinned, especially of Celtic stock. See Macule. Cf Nevus. as granddaughter Jessie sits atop the horse. Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion