Sara Jury takes a breather at Jury Ranch in Baker City, Ore. The 1,500-acre ranch in Eastern Oregon is home to 160 cow-calf pairs that are a mixture of beef and Corriente cows.

BAKER CITY, Ore. — Work on a cattle ranch slows for no one, as Sara Jury can attest.

“When it’s windy, cold and nasty, I’m sick and the only one on the ranch, the cows still need to move,” the operator of Jury Ranch said. “Situations like this make it well worth the time I’ve taken to teach them to come when I holler.”

It’s been about six years since Jury came back to the family ranch full-time. Her parents, Walter and Kitty Jury, retired soon after. Brother Tom is a U.S. Army Reservist and works on the ranch part-time.

The siblings’ lives took a dramatic turn when the Jurys adopted them at 9 and 10 years old and brought them to their ranch in Eastern Oregon.

“It was a huge, huge change because we were from the Portland area,” Jury said. “I’m sure we’d seen cows at some point in our lives, but we’d never been up close to cows or horses or out in the middle of nowhere where there weren’t buildings and concrete and people everywhere.”

Jury joined the U.S. Marine Corps out of high school. She spent five years with the military police, including one deployment to Iraq. Upon her return in 2010, Jury spent the next few years on the Baker City Police Department and as a reserve officer with the Baker County Sheriff’s Office.

“I was a cop for about seven years and then I decided I’d had enough of people and would rather deal with animals,” she said. “I started working at the ranch, did a couple other jobs and got my degree. It was already paid for through the military so I figured I might as well do it.”

The 1,500-acre ranch is home to 160 cow-calf pairs that are an unregistered mixture of beef and Corriente cows.

“Corriente cows are traditionally roping cattle, but I decided to cross with them because they’re smaller in stature, hardier and tougher and I can run 30 more head of cattle because they take less feed and their calves are still comparable to a full-blooded beef cow,” Jury said. “If you have a 1,500-pound cow still raising a 400-pound calf at weaning time that cow takes a lot more feed and resources than a Corriente mother weighing about 800 pounds.”

Jury does most of the doctoring herself and teaches the herd to cooperate by spending as much time around them as she can.

“If the only time they see me is when I’m basically harassing them, then every time they see me, they’re going to run and make things more difficult for everybody,” she said. “If I’m out checking the borders I’ll drive through and look at them to make sure everybody is fat and happy, and when I feed them or take them their salt, I always call them, just like teaching your dog to come when you want him to.”

Aside from replacement heifers and about 10 head they finish for family and friends, the ranch sells its weaned calves, usually 140-150 head.

Jury would sell more finished beef if not for the scarcity of butchers in the area.

Even with a certified butcher at her disposal, current law requires customers to pick up their meat straight from the butcher instead of at the ranch.

“It’s not like Montana, where you can just pull beef out of your fridge or freezer and sell it,” Jury said. “They’re talking about starting up a USDA-certified facility close by and, in that case, we could sell it that way.

“Someone only wants two steaks — there you go.”