For the Johnsons and Clays, tradition trickles from generation to generation through their work, their land and their bloodlines.
On Aug. 2, both families were honored at the Albany County Fair for having four living generations involved with 4-H, ranching and agriculture.
The four generations of Clays were Perry, Bill, Brandon and Colby. The honored Johnson family members were Victor Johnson, Orville Johnson, Samantha Johnson-Starks and Aurora Wand-Starks.
Members of both families said Albany County 4-H has changed over the years, but the values it instills are apparent in the customs passed down from great-grandfathers to great-grandchildren.
The Johnsons
Every summer, the Johnsons take to the hayfields on their ranch west of Laramie.
About 13 family members live and work on the ranch, and several of them recently piled into a pickup truck to work the hay.
On that trip, Orville Johnson said his daughter, Samantha, made an interesting observation.
“We were driving out to the hayfield, and Sammy said, ‘Well look at this. There’s four generations going to work here in this pickup,’” Orville said.
Sticking together is a Johnson family trait, Samantha said.
“What’s cool is all four of us — four living generations — are all still on the ranch, which just doesn’t happen very often,” she said.
The Johnsons keep up several family traditions. Each year, the family participates in Albany County Fair. They play in a family band called The Ranchers, which started when great-grandfather Victor and his son Orville would casually pluck guitars and banjos at family holidays. When it comes time to work, family members young and old throw in and get their hands dirty.
Orville said the importance of family tradition comes out in that work.
“We mow hay, bale hay, stack bales,” he said. “Then we have cow-calf operations, so we calve cows in the spring, feed cattle all winter. We’ve been doing that for generations.”
Many of the work methods have evolved over the years, Samantha said.
“With haying, when my grandpa was my age or maybe a little bit younger, they still did it with horses, with horse-drawn mowers and rakes,” she said. “Then they transferred into the smaller tractors, and now our tractors are huge. So, it’s still the same tradition: We’re still out there, same time of year, putting up hay, but it’s just progressed.”
It’s hard to explain why the Johnsons stick to the land, the work and the family traditions, Samantha said.
“I guess it’s something that’s kind of bred into you,” she said. “It’s not something you can just learn to love. You just grow up loving it, and that’s all you ever really know. And this 4-H community is amazing. They’re so supportive of the 4-H kids.”
Orville agrees that 4-H teaches good values.
“They’re ag-oriented people, so they’re the backbone of the country, salt-of-the-earth type people,” he said.
Aurora showed a dairy goat, dairy cow, market goat and market swine in this year’s fair.
She said her family’s traditions boil down to one simple truth.
“I think it’s because we just love ranching,” the 8-year-old said.
The Clays
Perry Clay said he became involved with 4-H about 70 years ago.
“I’ve been involved in 4-H almost all my life,” Perry said. “I was a member beginning when I was 10 years old.”
4-H has changed since he was a kid, Perry said, but his 13-year-old great-grandson, Colby, still learns many of the same values he did when he showed animals in the 1900s.
During the early years, Perry said rural families would come to the fair show their stock and socialize.
“Women would come for the fashion show and to show their foods,” he said. “It was mostly rural people at that time. It was a lot of the social involvement, and the youngsters got involved at that time socially, too.”
More urban families are involved in 4-H nowadays, and the yearly fair has expanded, Perry said.
“They have a lot more different projects now than they had at the very beginning,” he said.
Colby has been exhibiting animals for several years, Perry said.
“It feels great to me that Colby’s doing that,” Perry said. “We’ve been able to keep involved with 4-H through our children and grandchildren, and almost all of our grandchildren were in 4-H club work.”
Brandon Clay, Colby’s father, said 4-H teaches values of work ethic and responsibility, which go hand-in-hand with ranch work.
“Ranching has always been a way of life for us, not really for the money, but because it’s what you love to do,” he said.
The family has been calving and haying for generations on their ranch, T-K, west of Sheep Mountain, as well as other ranches in the area, Brandon said.
“Perry still gets out there and helps,” Brandon said. “He’s getting to the age where he sticks to the house more, but he still comes out and rakes hay and helps where he can, but the real labor-intensive parts he leaves up to my Uncle Jim. It’s kind of my Uncle Jim’s ranch now.”
Working on the ranch, Brandon said his grandfather taught him how to mend fence, fix trucks and tractors, stop leaking faucets and keep cattle alive during the long, often cold nights of calving season.
“You’re really a jack of all trades,” he said. “You’re fixing a water-line in the house, ‘mechanicing’ on a vehicle, you’re on horseback moving cows — you name it, you’ve learned it on a ranch.”
He said those skills have taught him the importance of self-reliance, a principle he hopes to pass on to his son.
“There’s a lot of self-gratification in what you do, and what you get done every day,” he said. “I want my son to learn that. You teach your son everything you know, and then you hope that he can learn more.”
At the fair this year, Brandon said Colby learned a tough but important lesson.
“Colby had a rough year,” he said. “We had an ornery steer. He didn’t like to eat, and he didn’t like us. No matter how much we worked with that booger, we just couldn’t get him to eat … So Colby didn’t do too well, but it was a character-building year.”
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