In 2003, after several successful careers with her family’s telecom and construction companies, Deborah Clark was looking for a fresh start. While she admittedly didn’t know much about cattle at the time, she was excited to join her husband, Emry Birdwell, in a new ranching venture.
Today, the couple runs an 8,000-head stocker operation in Henrietta, that Clark says, is managed in a holistic context. She explains while they continue to run cattle, their focus has shifted from cattle to soil health.
“We still have the cattle, and they have to be productive, but now they’ve become a tool for us,” she says. “It’s a reciprocal situation where the cattle have to be here to help improve rangeland conditions and soil health. And the more we improve those things, the more cattle we can run.”
With her passion for the land and wildlife, Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association’s wildlife committee was a perfect fit for Clark to come up through the organization. She was later elected to the organization’s board of directors in 2015, and her husband is an honorary director.
