WARRENTON, VA – The pasture is crisscrossed with fencing and dotted with waterers. The grass is green and luscious. It’s a perfect set-up for a cattle operation, but where are the animals?

“Over there was our bull pen,” said Dennis Pearson, who, with his father Harvey, has run Soldiers’ Hill Angus Farm since 1990. “This was where we fed cattle in the winter. And this was our equipment shed.”

Next to the shed a medium-sized pile of wet-wrapped hay is stacked, this upcoming winter’s feed for the remaining numbers of Pearson’s herd.

Last year, Pearson decided to liquidate his herd and most of his farm equipment. He placed a couple of ads which ran in late December, and the phone calls started on Jan. 1.

“I sold my John Deere 6125R tractor within four hours of listing it online,” he said.

Pearson considered dispersing his entire operation at once through an auction, but decided to handle it himself, piecemeal, over time. He’s not leaving the cattle business because he urgently has to – he’s just anticipating that before too long, as his body ages, he won’t be able to accomplish what’s necessary to manage the operation.

Pearson is a first-generation farmer. When he was 9, he convinced his parents to let him get a show steer. From there it was on to show heifers and animal judging. He went to Virginia Tech, and in 1980 was part of the team which, under the guidance of Dr. Gary Minish, placed first in beef cattle judging and was Reserve Grand Champion overall at the intercollegiate national contest (just a few points behind Michigan State).

In the 1980s Pearson began a career at the Department of Agriculture as a contracting officer for red meat and poultry. He also kept a small herd of cattle, raising mainly club calves.

In 1990 he decided to start a registered Angus operation and bought six bred heifers from both Dwight Houff and Mike McDowell.

“That was key to our success,” Pearson recounted. “We started out with a good foundation.”

From there he kept building the herd, using AI to bring the top bulls of the breed into his herd.

Within a few years, one of Soldiers’ Hill’s bulls was the high selling bull at the Virginia BCIA Culpeper Bull sale. Over time, Pearson and his operation garnered additional acclaim, such as the 2005 Virginia BCIA Outstanding Seedstock Producer of the Year Award. In 2022 the Virginia Cattlemen’s Association also awarded him with their Seedstock Producer of the Year Award. He has sold cattle into six states and Canada.

Pearson wraps up more than 50 years of raising cattle

Dennis Pearson began dispersing his registered Angus herd this year. He only has a handful of SimAngus cattle remaining, which he intends to take through the winter. Photo by Karl H. Kazaks

This all while never having a particularly large operation. Pearson’s father was the main help on the farm for many years, and today at age 99 Harvey can still be found on the farm from time to time.

In 2016, when Pearson retired from public work and was able to devote himself full-time to cattle, a dispersal wasn’t anywhere on his mind. In fact, he was rebuilding his herd. He had just sold off a number of cow/calf pairs, thanks to a zealous buyer and his own calculation that high cattle prices at the time made it a good decision.

He was rebuilding his herd by flushing the cow who mothered some of his recent top bulls and using ET and recip cows. He didn’t miss a calving season.

At first Pearson’s herd calved only in autumn, but over time he added a small spring calving herd to improve his ability to provide performance genetics to the commercial cattle industry year-round. In addition to selling at the test station sales, he sold plenty of animals private treaty and also developed a freezer beef operation.

At its peak, Soldiers’ Hill was farming 500 owned and leased acres. Pearson has given up a number of his leases this year, and for the first time in 35 years isn’t making hay.

The farm’s name comes from Civil War history. It was the site of intense skirmishing leading up to the Second Battle of Bull Run, which took place about 20 miles northeast of the farm. Relics of the Civil War era continue to be found on the farm.

Today, the area is an increasingly attractive bedroom community of the Washington, D.C., area. “There used to be more farms and there were larger farms,” Pearson said. “Today there’s a lot more traffic when you take a tractor out on the road.”

In 2018 Pearson added SimAngus to his herd, to provide his clients additional genetic options. “Simmental adds good milk production and udder quality,” he said, “and muscling and the fertility. They also have fewer feet problems.”

In July, Pearson took his last animals to the Culpeper test station, leaving him just a small herd of SimAngus on the farm. Some of them will go to the Wytheville test station later in the year.

“During COVID,” he said, “I thought I would never get out of the cattle business.”

What changed? He started to feel aches and pains which weren’t as severe before – particularly in his back. Then the cattle market strengthened, and he decided to get out, when he could, on his own terms, at today’s prices.

Some of the buyers who bought from Soldiers’ Hill’s herd have called Pearson, asking to buy more animals – even though there are not many left. That’s what happens when your herd has been produced by seven or more generations of dams selected from the top-ranking bulls in the breed.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it,” he said. “What I’m going to miss most is calving, seeing the fruits of our labor.

“It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be really hard.”

by Karl H. Kazaks