Certified Angus Beef ® Brand Update 2021

RECLAIMING A WASTELAND
Minnie Lou Bradley is not sure what
surprised her more: there were roots,
or that they were alive. Nothing above
ground promised life either. She didn’t know until later
that no one had owned this land for more than 10 years
without going broke.
Sixty years later, grasses are hip-high, water is no
farther than a half-mile away from any direction and
the Bradley 3 Ranch (B3R) herd is double the size. The
changes are a result of investments over time, making
the land better through cattle. The Certified Angus Beef
2021 Sustainability Award winners earned recognition
through continued improvements over many years.
Minnie Lou’s daughter Mary Lou Bradley-Henderson
and son-in-law James Henderson mapped out a
20-year plan in the early 2000s, picking up work
Minnie Lou started.
The ranch lives in the rolling Texas plains with only an
average of 18 inches of rainfall a year. The plan: build
more opportunities for water, gouge out the scourge of
water-guzzling brush one by one, and bring back the
grass while managing a quality-forward seedstock
business.
So they built ponds, began implementing Aqua balls
(palm-sized polyethylene spheres that prevent water
evaporation), invested in solar-powered wells with
overflow ponds and removed water-sucking brush,
which has brought back wildlife now able to drink from
springs that have emerged.
To Mary Lou and James, sustainability is as much about
the efficiency and quality of the animal as it is about
land and water.
“For us, if you don’t have the bottom line, we’re not
here,” Mary Lou says. “We’ve got to make it work. Truly,
we are sustainable or we’re not.”
Nothing is a one-year thought process to them. Just like
building a fence, Mary Lou asks herself whether their
decisions will last the next 50 years.
James knows what was hard-won can easily be lost.
“Without us being the caretakers of this land, it would
just pretty much be a wasteland.”
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