Trust in love, family - and sheep (book review)

The Ranching Heritage: A Collection of Stories, Illustrations and Images by By Martin Torres, Nighthawk Press (2020, 120 pp.)

In this memoir of a bygone ranching life, Martin Torres (born in 1929) writes of his family's once flourishing business of sheep raising. "In the 1500s, my Spanish ancestors forever changed the landscape of the Americas, formerly known as part of the 'New World,' with the introduction of ideologies that often centered on crops and livestock," begins Torres in this family venture. His visionary, enterprising father, Onesimo Valentin Torres, became by the 1950s one of the most prosperous ranchers and businessmen in Northern New Mexico. Born in 1891 and raised in Arroyo Seco, Onesimo branched off from his stepfather's sheep ranching business by purchasing thousands of acres in Tierra Amarilla and Tres Piedras from the 1920s through the 1940s for the grazing, lambing and shearing of his approximately 5,000 head of sheep. Married to Ana née Martinez of Arroyo Seco, who was 16 when they wed, the couple had 11 surviving children to help run these ambitious ranching and farming enterprises, which required enormous labor - the sons, including Martin, one of the youngest, were pressed to aid the breeding and lambing, sheepherding, shearing and harvesting, each component carefully planned and organized at its time of the year. While his two oldest brothers were drafted into the United States armed services after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Martin was too young for World War II but was active in the New Mexico State University ROTC, before he enlisted in the Army just after the Korean War, serving from 1955 to 1956 in the Second Infantry Division, then joined the National Guard Battery for three years. With an eye to the future like his father, Martin undertook a business move that would complement his day job, namely sheep ranching, and opened a movie theater in Ranchos de Taos, El Cortez, in 1957. It showed mostly Spanish-language movies that were a big hit with the locals. Torres also opened the Torres Bowling Lanes in 1959 (where El Taoseño restaurant is now), and he and his brother Luis courted and married the Tafoya sisters, Elma and Bernice, respectively. Ultimately, overgrazing and government quotas forced the Torreses and other sheep and cattle ranchers to diversify and sell off their land, and Martin and his son now run the Laguna Elk Ranch in Tres Piedras - elk being "much easier to care for and more exotic" than sheep and cattle. The memoir captures the relentless cycle of ranch life, where everything had its season and nothing was wasted - there are even some crude, charming (undated) illustrations by Martin, such as a 500-gallon water tank being pulled by a team of horses to deliver to the ewes on the range...MORE