CONNELL, Wash. — Toni Pierson Meacham is a fifth-generation rancher. She and her sister, Kellie, ranch with their parents near Connell, Wash.

Their parents, Pam and Don Pierson, got married in 1973 and worked for their grandparents, Toni Meacham said.

“My mom’s siblings were also there on the ranch,” she said. “My dad was from St. John, Washington, grew up on horseback and did rodeos.”

He then worked on the VA Quarter Horse ranch in Pasco and learned more about breeding horses.

“My parents were set up on a blind date, got married and dad came to work on the family ranch,” Toni said. “My great-grandpa had registered polled Shorthorns, and our grandparents had mostly registered Herefords.”

In 1995, the family split the ranch.

“My parents kept the ranch we are on. I was 15 and my sister was 14. We only had 25 registered cows at that time,” she said.

The breakup of the ranch was hard, she said, “but my mom still worked for her parents and we stayed very close with our cousins. Even though the ranch was breaking up, the family was not.

“Our parents asked us girls what we wanted to do,” she said. “Kellie and I both wanted to breed some horses.”

They expanded the cattle and horse herd.

“My mom is computer-savvy and this gave us a leg up. She’d been building websites for my grandparents and the home ranch, and that helped us with the horse business,” Toni said.

They bought a Docs Dee Bar bred stallion, Docs Sizzle Bar.

“He was old and skinny and didn’t look great, but we bred our old mares and bought some more mares, focusing on those bloodlines,” Toni said.

“When the ranch split, my grandpa had to hire someone to run part of the portion where we live. Ben Geddes came from Idaho and worked here, met my sister, and they got married,” she said.

“I met my husband in college. Now we have 120 horses, more cows, and our kids are traveling around showing cattle and enjoying ranch life,” she said.

“We’ve been involved in the (American Quarter Horse Association) youth program and the Ranching Heritage Breeder Program and feel strongly that you don’t have much of an industry if you don’t have youth involved, Toni said. “We’ve also become involved with the (Northern International Livsestock Exposition) Merit Heifer program in Billings, Mont. We go to a lot of junior shows and a lot of cattle shows.”

“We want our horses — the ones we are breeding and selling — to remain true to what we believe. We feel that a good, working ranch horse is irreplaceable,” she said.

“We’ve been slowly replacing the broodmares with daughters of mares or stallions that are point and money earners for mares we’ve raised and ridden here on our ranch,” Toni said.

Even though the horses they breed are primarily performance horses and ranch horses, they are versatile.

“We sold one that went to the race track and won some money but we don’t raise racehorses!” she said. “We don’t raise jumpers, either, but we’ve had some that were used in hunter-jumper classes at shows.”

They are all-around horses that have willingness, a good mind and stay sound, she said.

“They do whatever they are asked to do. We prefer mares over geldings to ride. They seem to have more heart and grit, and if something goes wrong they can be a broodmare,” Toni said.

“If a mare is ridden before she becomes a broodmare, you know what she can do and what her qualities are, to hopefully pass to her offspring,” she said.

“We like to ride our own horses and prefer to ride the ones we raise, and our customers love them, too,” she said. “Repeat customers are the mainstay of our business, along with word of mouth, for the horses and the cattle we sell,” Toni said.

“We’ve been blessed to be able to do what we love, and allow our children to grow up the same way,” she said.