The shepherding of sheep is among the most ancient of all farming practices. And certainly nothing in the modern world has yet been devised to take the place of the shepherd in those vast and rugged regions where fences could never be built and where only sheep can seek out forage on which to thrive.

Shepherding on the Nevada ranch owned by Buster and Linda Dufurrena, near Denio, is a tradition that has been part of their Basque culture for as long as anyone knows. Only the cell phones carried by the herders reveal their connection to a modern world.

The Basque people are long-time sheep herders from the Pyrenees Mountain region of Spain and France. Their origin remains unknown and their language bears no similarity to anything else spoken throughout Europe.

Nearly 100 years ago, Alex Dufurrena immigrated from his Basque homeland and found similar country in the rugged terrain of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert region, near the Quinn River Valley. He herded sheep for local ranchers on the shrub-lined mountain slopes.

By 1915 Alex had earned enough money to buy a small ranch of his own. He also purchased some land in partnership with his five brothers. He married, started a family, and bought out his share of the land from his brothers. But when poor health brought on hard times in 1944, the land had to be sold.

Though the family ranch was gone, Alex Dufurrena’s sons were determined to continue ranching. Like their father, they too worked for other ranchers until they could begin buying their own spreads. Today Alex Dufurrena’s love for sweeping mountain ranges and the animals that graze their rugged slopes lives on once again in a family ranching legacy built by his youngest son, Buster, now 71, and his wife, Linda.

In December each year, after lambs have been weaned and ewes rebred, sheep and herders begin an overland journey to winter grazing ground, a 600-square mile mountainous area 70 miles south of the home ranch. With one herder leading the flock, others follow with pack mules.

“Once the sheep leave for the winter country, they are gone. Each day the trail takes them further south, one, two, three long valleys away, down gravel, and then not even gravel roads. Someone drives down every few days to move the herder’s camp, in winter a little white metal house on wheels; take him a pair of boots, some oil, and more batteries. It is vast country, even by our standards....The band moves like a slow cloud across the desert landscape, southward before the winter wind....”

Those words are from a book produced by Linda Dufurrena and her daughter-in-law, Carolyn (Fifty Miles From Home, Riding the Long Circle on a Nevada Family Ranch, University of Nevada Press). An accomplished photographer, Linda provided photographs for the book (and this article). Carolyn wrote heart-felt descriptions of the family’s ranch life in this desolate and beautiful land.

The trail followed by the sheep crosses public land leased to other ranchers. Permission is needed to cross these lands, and the Dufurrenas secure a “trail permit” from the Bureau of Land Management. Originally issued to ranchers following the same trail in the late 1800s, the specific permit the Dufurrenas purchase is more than 100 years old.

The first group of ewes to lamb are put into one band, numbering 800 to 1,000 head plus lambs. All others make up a second band. A herder takes charge of each flock, and both graze separately all summer. In mid-May the earliest-lambing flock of ewes is gathered for the marking of the lambs, the second flock a few weeks later. In the book, Carolyn describes how the ewes are “gathered” inside an old sagebrush corral:

“The ring of sagebrush where we will mark the lambs is perhaps four feet tall, its walls as thick as they are wide. Living sagebrush grows in the walls, the man-made fence and the living desert woven together almost seamlessly. It is an oval ring high on a sloping ridge, built tilted into the rising sun, sheltering the animals inside it from the wind, warming them with the dawn. No one knows who built it, or how long ago. We use it once or twice a year. The rest of the time it is an artifact, a structure so subtle you might not even notice it when you drive by, in a place you would never drive by. It is the last of its kind, although there were once many like it in this country.

Handling as many as 1,000 lambs in one day requires the help of the entire Dufurrena family including children, the herders, and two additional employees as well as friends and neighbors. Early in the morning the lambs are separated from the ewes. One by one, they are caught, the males castrated, and each lamb vaccinated and its tail docked. A brand of red liquid paint is placed on each lamb’s back. The first group of lambs to be marked might be branded with a circle brand; the second group an A. The brands help the herders keep lambs from getting mixed in with the wrong flock of ewes.

Ewes and lambs are counted at the time the lambs are worked. Because sheep commonly give birth to twins, the number of lambs averages 120 percent of the number of ewes in the flock.

The flock is then turned out to summer range near the home ranch. Lambs are separated from the ewes and turned into fields of alfalfa regrowth during the first week of September. The lambs average 100 pounds when they are sold in mid-November to a packing company.

To encourage the ewes to come into heat and rebreed easily in the fall, they are fed a higher-protein diet. They are brought off of summer range in mid-October and turned into fields of alfalfa regrowth. Breeding is completed by early December when ewes and herders retrace the 70-mile trail to winter range.

The Dufurrenas’ present herders are from Mexico. Juan Hernandez, 45, has worked for the family for 13 years. Bonifacio Bracamontez, 22, has been with them for seven years.

“The relationship with the land has less to do with ownership than with covenant, as does the relationship between the generations,” Caroline writes in the book. “For these Basque People, a Stone Age people transplanted from ancient roots, the covenant with the new landscape is, in a sense, a continuation of the covenant with the old. The tenacious love of life and land, work and family, that they bring with them has responded to this empty place. And so the land owns us, not the other way around. We are part and parcel of the ridges and the soggy meadows, the dusty alkali and the storms that cross the emptiness. The circle of family continues, part of the landscape. The landscape feeds our circle, permits it to remain.”