“Like I was telling you,” said Henry Kempfer as he climbs into his pick-up truck, “my Mom's family is in the ranching business as well. So we'd get our work done here and then we'd always go spend time with Mom's family.”

For 120 years, the Kempfer Family Ranch of Deer Park, Florida, has been keeping a cattle ranching tradition alive and thriving. And the tradition renews itself, every generation.

“At three or four years old, as soon as we are old enough, we got on a horse” says Henry Kempfer, speaking for his twin brother George and brother Bear. “It’s all we ever knew and it’s all we ever wanted to do.”

The Kempfers raise cattle on around 25,000 acres of the same prairie country at the headwaters of the St. John’s River their ancestors first put together back in the late 1880s. Getting the next generation involved and committed is part of what has kept the ranch together for more than a century.

“We didn’t get paid as kids growing up” Henry explains, “but at the end of every summer you worked you got to pick out a calf. That was better than getting money. You had the beginning of your own herd.” Today, half of the operation’s cows carry brands representing different members of the family, not the company brand.

To keep it all going, Henry says the number one skill is communication. “That’s critical” he says. “To keep a family business together you can’t have secrets. You have to communicate with each other. You’re not always going to be on the same page on everything. Sometimes you have to agree to disagree.”

“We’re very conscious about raising a product that’s even more acceptable to our consumers” says Henry. “But there’s more to it than that. It’s got to be profitable for us. We are always looking at how we can be more efficient, what can save us money or make us money, and still have the right beef quality at the same time.”

Over the decades, the Kempfers have seen ranchers who were at the top of their game go out of business because they didn’t want to address changing business conditions with new management systems and technology. For the Kempfers, embracing change is built into their way of doing business. “Don’t be afraid to change” says Henry. “You’ve got to adopt new ways of doing things if you want to stay profitable.”

“When I got out of college 30 years ago I would have never dreamed of the technologies we work with today” says George. “All of our cows have ear tags with computer chips. We don’t have to do it, but we think it should be required all over the country. So many markets today want to know exactly where their beef is coming from.”

The Kempfers met the challenge of rising labor costs by building more fencing. They found they could manage the grass for grazing better with more fences and they didn’t have to employ the large crews they did a few years ago.

And while the cattle ranch in Florida remains the primary business, the Kempfers run a smaller cattle operation in Mississippi where they also sell palm trees, which grow abundantly on their land in Florida. They also run a turf farm to supply the front yards of homes in the booming Florida housing market. They are also in the timber business; the family sawmill operation has been going 40 years.

“That’s the business part of it” says Henry. “Sitting down in the office, hashing out the numbers and running our break-even every year. We’re a diversified operation and we’ve got to crunch those numbers to make sure we hold this place together” says Henry. “Because the bottom line is, even though we love this so much, if it gets to the point in time when we are not making money, we’ve got to change.”

 They are required to keep a sharper eye on environmental regulations today, too. “It’s not like we weren’t doing it before” says Henry. “But we are scrutinized by far more people now.” That means meeting every year with legislators and policy makers, both in the state capitol in Tallahassee and in Washington, DC and advocating for their rights.