Editors Note: This article was originally published in the Nov. 22 2023 issue of the Chronicle Progress. Some information may be outdated.
Neuel Chlarson wears a lot of hats—cowboy, husband, father, mentor, rancher, conservationist, even poet, though not too many people know about that last one.
He’s also Millard Conservation District’s 2023 Farmer of the Year—the word “Rancher” was included on the plaque handed to the cattleman by the group’s chairman last Tuesday at a special dinner in Fillmore commemorating the honor and feting its recipient.
Neuel was joined by his family, including wife of 33 years, Tina Chlarson. The couple were high school sweethearts, both having grown up in St. Johns, Ariz., near that state’s border with New Mexico.
Neuel grew up in agriculture, raised since birth—one of 10 children—on his father’s small family farm. His bishop at church introduced him to cattle ranching, and a love affair with the trade grew from there, Neuel says.
Tina was not from a farm family and admittedly struggled with the challenges that come from being a rancher’s wife.
“It’s been an adventure,” she said. “We’ve had good times, bad times, hard times. It was hard for me at first because I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn’t realize how much time away from home it took…and we had to learn together.”
The couple raised five children; two sons work full time for their father on the giant, half-millionacre Ensign Ranches of Utah, where Neuel has 4,000 head of beef cattle under management. He’s worked the land under three different owners since moving to Kanosh with Tina in 1993, following another ranching clan there from Arizona for work.
Neuel also runs 200 head of his own cows, mostly “in the dark,” as he tells it, referring to the long hours he spends managing Ensign’s herd.
Asked what it was about cattle ranching that so captivated him, Neuel says he’s not sure, humorously offering that maybe, “Sometimes you just get a little cow s*** in your blood and it never comes out.”
Asked what his long-term goals were, if any, he said he just wanted to keep doing what he’s doing until he can’t do it anymore.
“I love what I do and that’s it,” he summed up in a short acceptance speech upon receiving his plaque.
Chlarson goes in for a celebratory smooch after receiving his Farmer of the Year plaque from the Millard Conservation District.
Another thing he told the dinner audience probably gets closer to Neuel’s true feelings about his chosen profession.
“It’s important to me when you see something with potential, no matter what it is, whether it’s land or people or an old stubborn horse or something, to try to improve that and make the best of it,” he said.
And it is with a poet’s heart that Neuel has labored, not just for his employers, but for his family, for young men in his community, for the welfare of the animals under his care, for the land itself.
“You can learn everything on the ranch. Everything. From sex ed to how to plant a potato,” he said. “There’s nothing that you can’t learn. You learn patience. You learn how to treat people. You learn how to be honest. You learn about everything. And you learn how to make do with what you got.”
Countless kids in the community, his own kids too for that matter, have learned those lessons from the myriad daily challenges that come with cattle ranching. And Neuel says one of the greatest personal achievements is to witness how the work changes them in positive ways.
“That’s why they can go out into the world and do hard things. Or scary things…they learn stuff like that. Confidence,” he said. “Things have to be done. There’s no…they have to be done. So you do the best you can. It is a life and death situation. You can’t lay in bed and say I’ll do that tomorrow.”
Neuel’s work today, he hopes, will also benefit future generations, mostly through the numerous conservation efforts he’s directly helped organize.
Kendall Bagley, a habitat restoration biologist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, noted as much in a letter regarding Neuel’s award. The biologist wrote it was his pleasure to watch Neuel over the past 17 years work passionately to improve grazing rangeland and wildlife habitat through multiple efforts.
Some of these include reseeding 10,000 acres of “critical habitat,” installing 11 miles of pipeline, improving livestock water sources on public and private land, and contributing to several wildfire rehabilitation projects.
“Neuel brings a great wealth of knowledge and expertise as it pertains to restoring and enhancing Rangeland Communities and Watersheds,” Bagley wrote. “The opportunity to work with Neuel Chlarson has been invaluable for the UDWR and myself, over the years the continued partnership will pay dividends in the future for both livestock grazing and wildlife habitat in Millard County.”
As for the poetry, Tina says not many people are aware he writes it. But Neuel even put all his poetry into a book once, a memento for his children and immediate family, who can look back fondly when memories of those long days working the ranch start to blanch and fade, the cowboy gone, his heart still on the range.
“The reason I do what I do is for the next generation,” the rancher says. “Hopefully, they’ll take it and go and even make it better.”
