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| Features |
Range Rovers
Constance Gustke
05/03/2004
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Greg Kent only manages to visit his 15,000-acre ranch, nestled in the
rolling rangeland of California’s Diablo mountains, about twice a month. Running
his company, California Custom Carpets, and managing the 400 other real estate
investments he has scattered throughout the Western United States takes up most
of his time.
| Active ranches qualify for tax breaks. E. Greg Kent can use the losses on his
ranch to offset ordinary income. “Ranchers are a sacred cow,” he says. “If it’s
a working ranch, there are a lot of tax advantages.” Owners must prove that
their ranch functions as a business. Its gross income must exceed deductions for
at least three of five consecutive years. |
When he does steal away to his modest home on the range—13
miles from the nearest paved road, with no telephone or electricity (“I wanted
it simple”)—Kent indulges in what he loves most, the arduous but satisfying
tasks necessary to running a real cattle ranch: mending fences, putting out salt
licks for his 2,000 head of English cross, and planting trees.
The road to
the ranch follows the gentle curve of a dry riverbed, and visitors pass herds of
wild boar along the way. Kent purchased the property from Sunkist Growers, the
citrus farmers’ cooperative, in 1993. Having run cattle on other properties
since the late 1970s, Kent quickly turned the scrubby land, filled with juniper
trees, digger pines and 20 different kinds of oak (not to mention the bobcats,
Tulle elk and rattlesnakes), into a working ranch, and hired a family of
third-generation ranchers to manage it.
Kent says he views acquiring and
running his ranch like buying a Rolex—“I’m always finding ways to justify it.”
He has thrown himself into improving the property, and has uncovered scores of
springs for his cattle, laid a hundred miles of roads, and posted 500 handmade
signs to mark off the vast territory. “There are parts of my ranch I haven’t
even gotten to yet,” he admits. The cost of running the ranch and making the
improvements is significant: Kent has spent about $40,000 a month since he
first bought it. That overwhelms the small profit he makes selling the cattle—a
few hundred dollars a head—each year. He is sanguine about the trade-off: His
ranch is a literal labor of love. “I’m an outdoors kind of guy,” he
says.
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