Young RanchHER Inspires Others with Passion & Persistence

RanchHER Pilar Martinez is living proof that you don’t have to be born into the ranching industry to make an impact on it from a young age. At only 24, Pilar is already one cool cowgirl, and she’s quickly working her way to becoming a fierce cattlewoman.

Betting on Big Sky Country

Pilar was born to hardworking parents and first-generation Cuban Americans in Camerino, California. She developed a love for animals from a very young age. She started riding horses at age six and showing pigs by age 10.

Participating in livestock shows introduced her to rodeo, and that’s where she found her next passion: team roping. She switched from riding English to Western around the 8th grade–and by high school, she was competing in team roping events.

“Roping is a huge part of cowboying,” Pilar says. “That is, like, the one thing I did when I was growing up that got me prepared for this lifestyle.”

While she wasn’t born into ranching, she knew early on that’s the direction she hoped to take and started working to make it happen. When it was time for college, she left California behind and headed to Big Sky Country to study at Montana State University.

Since college, Pilar has grown into an experienced cowgirl, traveling all over the West to intern with bastions of the industry and make ranching her way of life. Ranches like Four Diamond in Willsaw, Mo.; Grizzly Ranch in Walden, Co., where she got her AI certification; and Meeteese, Wyoming, where she worked with fellow RanchHER Lindsey Anson at the Historic Pitchfork Ranch in Meeteese, Wyoming.

“Trying to get a ranch job when all you have on your resume is that you worked with your dad’s construction company is not—like, you can’t compete—and you just have to get there and start working your butt off,” Pilar explains. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, she’s just a girl, she can’t do that; she’s just a girl.’ I would hate for someone to say that about me. So, I want to try my hardest to keep up and do everything the guys can.”

She then returned to Montana to rope and ride in Cody before settling at her current home, Centennial Livestock, Inc., in Dillon, where co-owners Tom and Deb Tamcke took a chance on an experienced cowgirl with an insatiable work ethic and passion for the job.

“I’m blessed to have amazing women in this industry—whether their horsewomen, RanchHERs, cattlewomen—taught me pretty much everything I know about horsemanship,” Pilar says. “There’s just too many to name because so many [women] in this industry who are amazing.”

Centennial Livestock Company

Pilar had been aiming to work as a ranch hand at Centennial Livestock for quite a few years before she actually got a job there.

“That’s kind of a funny story…so I was visiting my friend’s family, and I just drove by,” she tells Janie. “I saw all their signs, and I saw the country, and thought, ‘I want to work here one day.’”

Once she’d built an impressive list of internships and had an AI certification under her belt, with a stroke of good luck, Pilar landed an open position at Centennial in cattle AI two years after graduating from college. The operation’s commitment to raising animals ethically and sustainably has made it even more of a match for Pilar.

Pilar also found a ranching partner at Centennial Ranch. There, she met Sawyer Squires, her boyfriend and horsemanship mentor, who was immediately impressed by her natural talent for ranching and her unyielding work ethic.

After a morning of fence work, repairing one destroyed by a herd of wild elk, Pilar walks Janie through pulling their horse’s shoes ahead of the harsh Montana winter – a task Sawyer recently showed her, and she’s already mastered.

“She’s a natural, really,” Sawyer tells Janie as they watch Pilar’s handiwork. “She’s super good with her hands, and she also knows what a horse’s foot is supposed to look like. She is humble, and I appreciate that about her because she’s easy to teach. She picks herself up pretty quick, and in return, she helps pick me up, too. Working together on a daily basis is a blessing in that sense because it’s just encouraging each other daily.”

It’s easy to see why so many people love Pilar. She’s fun to work with, tough yet humble, and always ready for her next challenge.

“I still feel like I have so much to learn,” she says. “I learn every day; I still feel like an intern. Once you get more established and build your skill set, you can get out of the internship phase–but if you love it, it’s worth it. It’s very physically demanding—but if you love it, you don’t think about it like that.”

Caring for Calves and Colts

Next, Pilar and Janie saddled up to do a calf check. Raising cattle without hormones and antibiotics requires ranchers like Pilar and Sawyer to be more hands-on with the livestock and rely on innovations in cattle genetics — such as AI (or “artificial insemination”) and natural heat cycles.

They’re on the prowl for recently weaned calves that might be sick, relying on their roping skills to take temperatures and administer fever reducers when necessary—one of the many essential practices employed by Centennial to keep their animals in the Global Animal Partnership (GAP4) Program.

“The health program here is amazing, so we’ve only had to doctor a select few that stand out – this place has got it down, and we don’t have to doctor very much at all,” Pilar explains. “The owners (Tom, Will, Deb, and Patty Jo) run things very tightly, so it’s very interesting learning from such great businessmen and women how they do things here and incorporate their genetics and get a very high-quality product.”

Janie borrows Sawyer’s horse, Ray, for the ride, but Pilar saddles up one of her colts, Tadpole (who she bought from Lindsey Anson) – since taking on outside horses to train is one of Pilar’s other value-adds on the ranch. Helping with their horse program is easily her favorite part of the job.

“On a colt, you have to think ten steps ahead of what’s going to happen because their reaction time is slower,” Pilar tells Janie. “I like to expose them to what a real working job is like. Give them a goal, give them a purpose in life, and train’em to be a little fancier – you know, have some cool buttons, and stuff like that – and float that line of working and having a nice horse.”

Always interested in genetics and the idea of becoming a large-animal veterinarian, specializing in AI was the perfect combination of those careers and cowboying. She’s also interested in marketing, which she learned a lot about from working at Pitchfork, but she will stay in the saddle as long as possible.

“I want to cowboy until I can’t,” Pilar says. “Ag is my life, and I’m going to be in it until the day I die.”

Catch this new episode of RanchHER featuring Pilar Martinez when it premieres next Tuesday, November 12, 2024, at 9:00 PM ET only on RFD-TV. Watch encore airings on Fridays at 9:30 PM ET and Saturdays at 11:30 AM ET.

Binge all episodes and past seasons of FarmHER and RanchHER on-demand at any time with your annual RFD-TV Now subscription. To subscribe, visit https://www.watchrfdtv.com/Account/SignUp.