Montana DNRC Oral History Project

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1.  Interviewee: Wendy Bengochea Becker

2.  Interviewer: Julie Goss

3.  Date of Interview: July 28, 2017

4.  Location: USDA Farm Service Agency Building, Sidney, Montana.

Interview

[00:00:00] Julie Goss: This is Julie Goss. I'm the administrator of the Richland County Conservation District here in Sidney, Montana, and I'm here today on July 28, 2017 with Wendy Bengochea Becker at the USDA Farm Service Agency in Sidney, Montana. This history is being recorded on behalf of the oral history project From the Ground Up: Montana Women and Agriculture that is sponsored by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Do you want to give us your full name and date of birth?

[00:00:43] Wendy Bengochea Becker: My name is Wendy Bengochea Becker and I was born on September 8, 1977 in Sidney, Montana, Richland County.

[00:00:56] Julie Goss: Do you have a name for your ranch?

[00:00:58] Wendy Bengochea Becker: We don't. I was thinking we should probably get one.

[00:01:05] Julie Goss: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

[00:01:09] Wendy Bengochea Becker: We farm and ranch in North Richland County. It's where I've been pretty much my whole life. I went off to school to get a degree in animal science. I have a master's in that as well. I came back to farm and I'm also an extension agent for Montana State University.

[00:01:33] Julie Goss: You are married and you have...

[00:01:34] Wendy Bengochea Becker: Three little boys, stinkers!

[00:01:42] Julie Goss: What about your ethnic background?

[00:01:44] Wendy Bengochea Becker: I am Basque on my dad's side. He came from the Basque Country and my mom is German, Irish, French.

[00:01:54] Julie Goss: Your dad came...?

[00:01:56] Wendy Bengochea Becker: He came here in 1959 as a sheep herder from the Basque Country on the French side, I guess. He raised sheep for my great uncle for five years. He lived in a sheep wagon for five years then moved out here. He was in the Nashua area. Then he moved over here and worked for a couple of years as a ranch hand for Jr. Miller in northern Richland County and then had the opportunity to work for another neighbor, Jean Bidegaray when he was working for Jean Bidegaray the neighboring place decided that, his name was Orrin Patch, he decided he wanted to retire from farming and he offered for my dad to rent his place and the place he was running which was Pete Ruffatto. So, dad ran that and eventually bought it and then he also bought the Al Schmitz place, most of it, they kept a few acres of it. That's where we are at today.

[00:03:11] Julie Goss: Your mom and dad, I guess you've told us a little bit about them, but do have a little more you want to say?

[00:03:20] Wendy Bengochea Becker: Sure. My dad was born in St. Michel France, which is in the southern province in the Basque Country in the Pyrenes Mountains. His family did have farmland over there for grazing sheep. They don't have a lot of farmland in the mountains there. My grandpa Pelixe raised rabbits for meat and figs and worked in coal mines. It was my Aitaxi. My Aitaxi was from the Spanish side. During the beginning of WWI the Francesco Spanish Wars were happening at the time in Spain. He was forced to work in the military and he came over to the French side to do some logging. It's just a mountain peak that goes between them, so he was forced there to do logging and he met my grandma. They hid him underneath the barn instead of him going back. He stayed there and they got married and stayed on the French side. It was a big deal, you don't go from the French side to the Spanish side, or visa versa.

He stayed there and never went back to Spain even though it was less than a half a mile away. Dad worked anything he could work at in the area. It's a very poor area. He would work a lot in the vineyards as the best money making job. He gave all his money to his mom. Eventually they had this program where a lot of Basque people would come over here. Some people came as sheep herders, some people came working in dairies, just whatever was needed. He was needed to be a sheepherder. I did have a great uncle here that lived in Nashua. You had to have a sponsor and he sponsored him to come work for him. He came over here and worked and eventually came over to Richland County.

My mom was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky, which is just outside of Louisville. Her dad's place there was...they were tobacco and dairy farmers. My grandpa, his dad let him go to be...he said, "I'll let you off the farm, go get a job." He joined the army and was discharged at the end of the war. Him and my grandma were married and they lived in Kentucky. My grandpa worked for the ASCS office and that was his entire career then. He was in the state offices and he moved from state to state instead of county to county. My mom and their family moved probably every other year their whole life. He had the chance to move from Pennsylvania at the time, he was mostly up and down the east coast, they were in Pennsylvania for five years and they had the chance to go to Wyoming. What is that town? Custer County High School, what is that? I can't think right now. Natrona County, Casper, Wyoming. He was in Casper at that office for a while and then he got to choose to where he wanted to retire and he chose Bozeman. Out of all the state offices in the United States he chose Bozeman. He was up in the Bozeman office some twenty years before he retired from the ASCS office, which is now the NRCS office, I think. It changed names a lot.

[00:07:41] Julie Goss: What was the family name for your mom?

[00:07:43] Wendy Bengochea Becker: Calvin. My grandpa was Frank Calvin. My mom graduated high school from Casper, went to college there, and when they moved up to Bozeman she transferred up to Bozeman and became a teacher. The people out in our area came to Bozeman to interview teachers and that was Harry Foss. They came to interview mom and she came out there to be a country school teacher in the Ruffatto School. The Ruffatto School is a quarter mile from where my dad was working and a quarter mile from where my farm is. Didn't get very far. That's where my mom and dad met. Right when they got married is when they were offered to farm and that's where they stayed the whole time.

[00:08:38] Julie Goss: They have been on that place...

[00:08:42] Wendy Bengochea Becker: They started at the Pete Ruffatto place because there was a house there. It's only about a half mile up the road. That's where I lived until I was probably about five, six years old, and then that place...he then gave it to his nephew Tom Ruffatto to run and then my mom and dad moved down to the Patch place which they bought, they were just renting the other place. They moved their house there and that's where we are today. That was Stacy Patch’s place.

[00:09:28] Julie Goss: In your family, you have brothers and sisters?

[00:09:31] Wendy Bengochea Becker: I have three brothers and I am the second in that. I am the only girl. I have an older brother, it's me, and I have two younger brothers.

[00:09:44] Julie Goss: Do you want to describe your siblings?

[00:09:47] Wendy Bengochea Becker: Let's see, my older brother has a large family and they foster children. He did try to farm my parent's place but it was not something that really fit their lifestyle. My brother is a great worker, but not a great self-worker, and that's what you need in farming. They worked for different places and now he does work in the oil fields in Williston so he didn't get too far away. My next brother, just a year and a half younger than me, is an opera singer and a piano player and piano tuner. He was never going to be a farmer. He is very talented and a lot of people know him. He is very good at communicating with people. He loves to go into genealogy and find out people's families. He loves to visit, he loves to talk. He lives in Modesto, California, but he comes back.

[00:10:58] Julie Goss: He still likes this area?

[00:11:03] Wendy Bengochea Becker: He really loves this area, but whenever he comes back he is always on the phone. He was never going to be the farmer. He loves to know what's going on. They always wanted their little piece of Montana. That's where they are at right now is in Modesto, California. His wife, they both are musicians, she also teaches, she was an opera singer too, but she teaches music in college, so that's where they are at right now. I have a younger brother, he was seven and a half years younger than my brother Chris. He works in the oil field as well. He was never one, he worked for people, but farming wasn’t' for him.

[00:11:45] Julie Goss: That's how you and your husband ended up with the farm?

[00:11:49] Wendy Bengochea Becker: Yes, I always told my mom and dad I wanted to farm. Always. But, I was the girl, and I wasn't the oldest, and I wasn't a boy, so it was something...I constantly told them ever since I was a little kid. I even told them I was going live up here on the hill. We lived at the bottom of the hill and I said, "I'm going to live at the top of this hill when I'm older.” Of course, they didn't believe me. I went to school to be in agriculture animal science and I wanted to have something to fall back on because I always said I wanted to farm but, I knew it was a constant struggle of someone believing a female could do it. I mean, I don't do it all, but I sure could have. It's sure nice to have a husband who understands and is in the Ag world too. I went to college.

[00:12:55] Julie Goss: Where did you go to college?

[00:12:56] Wendy Bengochea Becker: I first went to Powell, Wyoming, Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming, and got my A.S. degree there. I was on the show team so I had to stay for another semester there to finish out my show team obligations because they had just started it and it was a new thing. That next semester I didn’t' want to start at MSU right away because the way the course load is, so I spent a semester in France at my uncle's place, and down in the Basque Country. My uncle lives up in Poitiers which is not as far as Paris north, but between there and the Basque Country. I worked there and down in the Basque Country with a veterinarian because I was thinking about going into the veterinarian field if the farm thing wasn't going to happen. I did that first semester and came back and started MSU and was there to get by B.S. degree. I worked lots of jobs there because I thought I needed a well-rounded education to make sure of what I wanted to do. I worked at the American Simmental Association to get the business aspect. I worked at the State Vet Lab so I could get the veterinarian, lab work done. I also worked at the Animal Nutrition Center which did a lot of research on anything. At the time, we were working on a big barley project that Montana had on feeding some cattle sheep different varieties of forage barleys. It was really cool and applicable to me. I really liked the applicable stuff. I also helped teach the Ag reproductive technologies class, the AI-ing and the pregnancy testing and we did a little embryo work. I ended up teaching that a couple years because by then I had been there a few years and I was still trying to finish up an internship and all that stuff. I decided I wanted to go to grad school. This whole time my brother was trying to farm and it wasn't happening. He was trying to start a family and it was harder. He had that opportunity when a neighbor who had a large amount of land died and their place went to the church, but it was split off several different ways and people would rent that land and he got a portion of that land. He was trying to run it but it wasn't working very well. My dad had his own place and they were running them together. I kept watching my dad throw away his farm, my farm, and I said, “I can't watch you do this.” I would come back and work every summer for free. I said, "I can't watch you throw this away.” If you are going to keep doing this, if you are going to keep supporting him and still trying to raise my other brothers which are still in school I have to leave." He finally realized I was serious about it. He said, "Okay." He made that decision, he'll let me run it. I was in the day to day operations of everything.

[00:16:24] Julie Goss: That was before you were married?

[00:16:27] Wendy Bengochea Becker: It was before I finished school. I came and fed animals, we seeded crops, we bailed crops. I was part of everything. I knew how to do everything. I did all his bookwork. I did it all. I knew what to do, I still wasn't a boy.

[00:16:49] Julie Goss: Or the first born, either.

[00:16:51] Wendy Bengochea Becker: He got over it. That's what they do in France. Maybe it didn't happen as much here, but it did there. So, I decided to get a master's degree, because if anything else I can always fall back. I said, "let me get a master's degree right away, and I'll have it done and then if anything I need to do on the farm, I can always fall back and have that.” So, I got my master’s at North Dakota State University, which is interesting because the project I worked with at North Dakota State, they had just opened up there animal science research facility to do sixteen head at once instead of the four by fours that would take four months so I could do my research in like three weeks and then analyze of course all the months after that. The project they were working on was feeding barley and corn and different degrees of processing which was part of the barley project I was working on at Montana State. So, it was a collaboration. It was my final "Yes!" I'm going to do this. I did that, finished my degree in two years, and then immediately got a job as an extension agent in Carrington, North Dakota which is where I eventually met my husband and said, "I'm going home."