Montana Land Reliance - Friends of Conservation
Rick & Gayle Berg
If you are driving along the south fork of the Musselshell, and if you are not in too much of a hurry, and if you are not distracted by the Castle Mountains or by a herd of antelope, you might notice the Lennep church. It is a plain but handsome wooden structure, still sturdy nearly a hundred years after it was built by immigrants from Norway. The descendants of those immigrants still worship in the church, their children still attend the school next to it, and they still ranch in the Lennep valley. One of those descendants is Rick Berg, whose great-grandfather came from Norway to homestead here in 1890.
“Our ranch has been the center of our family for generations,” says Rick. “And the only reason it is still intact, and still viable, is because of the generosity of family members.”
Rick’s grandfather had three siblings who sold their share of the ranch to him for less than market value. Rick’s father’s siblings did the same, as did Rick’s sister.
“It was never about money,” says Rick. “The goal has always been to keep the ranch going; to keep it intact. If just one of those siblings had demanded market value, it wouldn’t have been possible.”
For over a century, members of the extended Berg family have congregated here. “In the summer,” says Rick, “we’d always hire three or four kids, relatives of ours from the city, to help with haying. And every one of them would come back years later and say: ‘That was the greatest summer of my life.’ And that continuity within the family is not just important for emotional reasons. Multi-generational ranching is the most efficient from the point of view of stewardship of the land, and of the running of the operation. We know what works out here and what doesn’t because grandpa or great-grandpa already tried it. And that knowledge is priceless.”
In order to ensure that the ranch stays intact, Rick and his wife Gayle have put it under conservation easement with the Montana Land Reliance.
“The sense of place that we have here is hard to describe,” says Gayle. “With all the changes happening in Montana, a valley like this is all the more precious. Not only our place, but nearly all the ranches around Lennep are multi-generational. It’s crucial that this valley stay intact; that our community stay intact. Because it took over a century to develop what we have here. But it would take no time at all to destroy it with subdivision.”
As for the Bergs’ daughters, they are in full agreement with the conservation easement. “We’ve always kept them in the loop,” says Rick. “Some people seem to think a conservation easement is not fair to your children; that you are somehow ruling from the grave. I don’t buy that at all. The way I feel is, there are four generations of blood, sweat and tears on this ground. I don’t think any of us should have the right to subdivide it.”
“You have to take the long view,” says Gayle. “We are only stewards of this place. It is bigger than we are. This hasn’t always been an easy life—we’ve had some really tough years here. But the thing I’m proudest of is that it’s an honest life. And I’m proud to hand that life down to our children.”