Nebraska rancher Homer Buell doesn’t have an exact answer for how the soil beneath his boots originally became less soil and more sand.
“I’ve read different things,” he says. “Maybe during one of the last Ice Ages, when it pulled away it left the sand deposit, or I think they even talk about rivers that ran through the Sandhills. In dry periods, I think it blew up in the hills.”
It doesn’t seem to matter to Buell why his ecosystem is what it is – more that it is his family’s land and he intends to keep it that way for future generations of Buells.
It’s the same attitude that originally landed the family in the Nebraska Sandhills near Bassett back in 1883 when Benjamin and Harriett Buell first homesteaded there. Benjamin had originally passed through on a trek from Michigan to Washington.
“He saw something in the Sandhills that he loved, so he came back and settled here,” Buell says.
“They were good managers and did a lot of good things on the ranch in their own right, including creating the Shovel Dot brand we still use today.”
Continuing the Legacy
In July, Shovel Dot Ranch opened its ranch gates, welcoming neighboring ranchers, researchers and agribusiness officials for the Trust In Beef Sustainable Ranchers Tour. When welcoming the large crowd for the event, Buell began in the most natural of places – with the family. Introductions were comprehensive, including first he and wife, Darla’s, children. Chad joins his father as next-generation leadership in the ranch. Daughter Tara lives a few hours away. And there are grandchildren scattered in various schools and universities across the Midwest. Brother Larry still manages part of the Shovel Dot that was broken up in the sibling’s succession plan.
Then Buell outlined the family’s lineage dating all the way back to the 1800s, complete with vintage photos to illustrate.
The Buell Family legacy and connection to this land is as rolling as the topography formed by the sands.
Buell says they’ve seen a lot of ups and downs on the land. They have rivers and streams diverted by his grandfather for hunting, fishing and family recreation. Family cabins and homes are scattered on the 15,000 acres of Shovel Dot Ranch.
Preserving the Legacy
But the land that the Buell Family loves is a fickle mistress. The Nebraska Sandhills are the most intact temperate grassland left in the entire world. Its fragile ecosystem is tough to preserve and under constant threat.
Buell knows the key, though.
“If you treat it right, it can be very productive and produce grass,” he says. “That’s really the only use for the Sandhills – just native grasses grazed by some type of livestock.”
And grazing he does. It’s what the family has always done.
“I’ve always been a cow-calf guy,” he says. “We ran yearling cattle and then took them to grass and would sell steers, but Chad wanted to sell the cows last winter and now we buy calves and will background them through the winter, taking to grass in the summer and then sell them off there.”
“This year, we’ve got about 1,600 yearlings and we weren’t quite full, so we took in a few cows from a neighbor.”
It’s far from enough, though, that Shovel Dot’s cattle are grazing the land. In order to keep the grassland intact, foster native grasses and provide enough forage for his herd, Buell employs a fairly simple principle that he learned over time.
“When I was out in the pasture, I was often looking up at the cattle,” he says. “But, I realized that it’s more important that I look down and see what’s on the ground. You learn a lot by looking down, so that’s really changed the way I manage the ranch.”
Looking down now, Buell can see varieties of native grasses that help to keep the sandy soil in place. He says there are eight to 10 primary varieties of grasses, but his ranch has an innumerable number of species present in its soil, including a mixture of cool season and warm season grasses that keep his forage thriving year-round.
It’s incumbent upon his stewardship to keep those grasses there. Buell was an early adopter of farm management systems, which he uses now to collect data on his grazing patterns.
“We create a grazing plan so we know where the cattle are going to be pretty much all year and then we adjust based on rainfall,” he says. “We use the program to track how we are affecting the land over time.”
Finely honed rotational grazing strategies for Shovel Dot include moving cattle early in the summer and keeping them on the move throughout, not letting cattle stay on a particular pasture for more than five days in the early summer. Pasture rest is integral.
“We never take everything,” he says. “We have rest built into our system to give those plants, even in the dry times, time to regenerate.”
“That’s extremely important to the health of the grass.”
A Legacy Under Threat
“Over time, we’ve seen a woody encroachment problem spread from the Southern Great Plains here into Nebraska and up to South Dakota,” says Dirac Twidwell, professor of range and forage sciences at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “It introduces a new challenge with woody invasions coming into grassland.”
Woody trees like the Eastern Red Cedar were often introduced by ranchers looking for windbreak barriers, but Twidwell says they are are damaging the productivity and profitability of the Sandhills ecosystem and leading to water resource issues, insect-based disease vectors and other issues.
“All these parts of our ecosystem are becoming increasingly threatened due to the Eastern Red Cedar spreading into bigger, native and intact ecosystems,” he says.
When faced with a threat to his family’s land, Buell took action. He sought counsel from UNL and from the Sandhills Task Force on how to rid his land of the invasive species.
From the Sandhills Task Force, Buell learned how the cedar spreads and got to work removing a cedar windbreak and conducting prescribed burns to prevent seed spread.
“Homer was an early adopter of both of those practices in his area, which have helped him and his family keep future cedar infestations at bay,” Executive Director Shelly Kelly says.
His continued work in the Task Force means that he is now advocating for neighboring ranchers to control their cedar infestations.
“His leadership has helped shape the programs and outreach efforts that positively impact land stewardship throughout the Nebraska Sandhills,” Kelly adds.
A Holistic Legacy
Buell’s mark on Shovel Dot Ranch’s sprawling Sandhills legacy may very well be summed up by words from famed conservationist Aldo Leopold, who proposed expanding the definition of community to include not only humans, but all parts of the earth together with soils, water, plants, animals and land.
Awarded for their work in enhancing their “community”, Shovel Dot Ranch was a Leopold Conservation Award recipient in 2012. The sign celebrating the honor still hangs proudly on the ranch gate, greeting all who come.
It’s this perspective that Buell is fighting to stamp as his mark on the Shovel Dot legacy. The foundation of past generations firmly roots it, but he’s already planning on being a mid-point in that legacy.
“I’m fourth generation on the ranch,” he says. “My son’s back now with the fifth and sixth. Hopefully it keeps going on.”
Read more coverage from the 2024 Sustainable Ranchers Tour:
Measuring Sustainable Success On This Generational Oklahoma Ranch
Managing the Financial Risks of Conservation
Avoiding the Pitfalls of Selling Sustainable Beef
Playing the Long Game: What Works at G Bar C Ranch
You can learn more about the Tour by visiting www.trustinbeef.com.
