Ranchers carve niche in leather
OLA, Idaho – Somewhere in Los Angeles, an upscale retailer is wondering why Carol Shultz wouldn’t take his money. Shultz had misgivings when he asked her to make dog leashes out of leather and – gasp – cashmere.
When he said he wanted to “start small” by ordering 1,000 of them, that did it.
“I wouldn’t have had time to do anything else!” she said. “It would have been enough to make a preacher cuss on Sunday.”
Shultz and Bev Martin, who make Western paraphernalia ranging from chaps to conchos at their ranch near Ola, are about as far as it’s possible to get from the Beverly Hills lifestyle.
“Those gals aren’t just leather workers,” observed George Quick, co-owner of the country store in Montour where their products are sold. “They’re as good a cowboys as you’ll ever find.”
As schoolteachers, Shultz and Martin spent summers from 1977 to 1985 riding 8,000-foot West Mountain between Cascade and Council, overseeing grazing operations for the Payette Valley Cattle Association. They lived the life of Old West cowboys – long days in the saddle chasing cows over rugged range they knew like the backs of their saddles.
“We were buckaroos,” Shultz said proudly. “It was hard work – mercy, it was hard work! You have to break your horse, work with the dogs, pack salt, cut trails and get that bloody cow up the mountain. There were people who said two women couldn’t do it. We did it.”
Dave Bivens, a former state legislator and past president of the Idaho Cattlemen’s Association, said Schultz and Martin were the best hands to ride the mountain in the 60 years his family grazed cattle there.
“They’re different than most anybody you’d ever run into,” he said. “They took care of our family’s cattle for years, and I’ve told the world that they did the best job of it of anyone we ever had.”
Both women grew up on ranches in the Caldwell area and went on to become high-school teachers, Martin in Caldwell and Shultz in Adrian, Ore. They met in the 1970s at a field hockey match while coaching their respective teams. Martin spent summers in the early ‘70s working on Shultz’s ranch, and the legend of West Mountain’s women buckaroos was born.
They’ve retired from teaching, and all they do in the way of buckaroo work is run their three ranches comprising 1,600 acres, maintain 30 miles of fencing, bring cattle in from two other ranches for summer grazing, keep their water tanks and spring in working order, haul salt and move cattle as needed.
They won’t tolerate overgrazing. “We used to be buckaroos,” Martin said, laughing. “Now we’re ranchers.”
“With other people’s cows,” Shultz explained with a grin. “That way if they die in the winter, they aren’t ours.”
Even the relative quiet of “retirement” isn’t without thrills and spills. Shultz chuckles about the time she and her horse fell in a river while she was fixing fences “and went south like a flag on a hurricane pole.”
At 68, she says ranch work has become a fair-weather diversion from their primary job. The one-time buckaroos have established a large and growing reputation as master leather workers. They don’t advertise their products and don’t have an Internet site or so much as a sign outside their workshop.
Promotion is the last thing they need. Last year, they made 300 wallets and 186 pairs of chaps. Word of mouth typically keeps them in the shop 60 hours a week, working to fill orders from as far away as New York, Germany, Japan and Australia.
“We’re not an open shop,” Shultz said. “We’re manufacturers, not retailers. We’re six weeks behind as it is.”
“It started out as a hobby and became a job,” Martin added. “Now it’s ‘Hurry up with the ranch work so we can get back to the shop.’ “
Shari Adkins sells their leather work at the food and fuel store she manages in Council.
“Their workmanship is exceptional,” she said.
There seems to be nothing they can’t make out of leather. They make vests, chaps, belts, hats. They make reins and bridles and other small tack, anything to do with horses except saddles.
Their skills were born of necessity. Buckaroos tend to be hard on their gear, and knowing how to repair or replace broken tack was invaluable. Shultz’s mother got her started when she was a child. Later, she took classes in leather work. An uncle taught her and Martin to braid rawhide.
They can braid a whip that, in Shultz’s words, “never sags and always comes back. It has a built-in memory. If I have to swat a cow, I want that turkey to know it’s been swatted.”
Their wares go far beyond turkey swatters, or, for that matter, leather. Shultz welds and has done soldering and taxidermy. Butt ends of animals whose trophy heads she’s stuffed are mounted on the shop walls as a joke.
Martin does artwork, etching and engraving. Together, they can turn out anything from spurs to fancy chaps with delicately engraved conchos to earrings. “I’m the manufacturer; she does the pretty stuff,” Shultz said.
Lest any flatlander get the impression that shop work is making them soft, they still can rope a cow or mend a fence with the best of them.
And if there’s trouble on the mountain, they know just what to do about it.
“We’ve learned to handle about anything that goes with this country,” Shultz said. “You don’t really know the country till you’ve chased cows through it.”