By Kathi Izatt, Montpelier News Examiner
Jan 29, 2021
“He’s a Weston – I can tell!” You may hear an old-timer say that when identifying Sim Weston, one of the almost innumerable grandchildren of Benjamin and Pearl Weston of Laketown. Ben and Pearl were legendary for their heavily laden kitchen table holding vittles for their 12 children (including their twins, one of whom died in infancy), an array of ranch hands, plus drop-in neighbors, all of whom worked the Weston Ranch which housed 600-700 cattle and 1,000 sheep. Grandpa Ben became the county sheriff, too, and he held the post for decades.
Following the pattern of his grandparents and faithfully carried through by his own parents, Norman and Nathelle Weston, Sim is a family man, rancher and public servant. He holds a seat on Rich County’s Planning Commission as part of his County Commissioner duties these last two years. He particularly enjoys his Bear Lake Regional Commission board membership where he sees Bear Lake’s Commissioner Brad Jensen, Mayor Jared Sharp from Montpelier and others while overseeing the valley’s progress. Bear Lake and Rich counties had an interlocal law enforcement compact that allowed emergency services to cross the state line. An unfortunate $3M lawsuit against Rich County due to an accident following a high-speed chase across the state line caused that county-state cooperation to end abruptly. Despite attempts to revisit the compact, liability remains the chief deterrent to a renewed relationship, a problem Sim has worked to remedy.
Previous political posts include membership on the Laketown City Council for 12 years then almost 10 years as Laketown’s Mayor. While Mayor, Sim knew everyone in town, but he works now with the residents of the entire county plus state and national officials. He attended the National Association of Counties conference in Washington, DC, where he met an even more diverse range of people, but still made solid connections. Sim alerted one of his DC acquaintances that he may be calling for help if his rig broke down while taking livestock to market. “It’s always good to have a friend to lend a hand,” he said.
Public life doesn’t end with elected or appointed positions for Sim. Instead, he is currently Elders Quorum president and has been a member of two bishoprics. He has been an EMT-Advanced in Rich County’s Ambulance Service for 17 years, having been enticed to first drive the rig then become certified. Now, Sim would rather work on a patient than drive because it tests his skills.
Keeping abreast of events, Sim said Raspberry Days Rodeo and the Rich County Rodeo have engaged stock contractors and will proceed in 2021 with plenty of masks and hand sanitizer. The next big thing in Rich County is Winterfest in Garden City on January 22-24, he said. There was a time when Sim volunteered to be on ambulance standby “to watch them jump into that ice cold water. That’s my favorite part,” he grinned.
There is a certain star quality to Sim, too, and someone at the Dodge dealership where he buys his trucks noticed. Several years ago, he received a call “out of the blue,” asking if a camera crew could follow Sim around the ranch for a day or two. They wanted a guy with Dodge vehicles in a commercial! That didn’t sound too bad and Sim agreed. “The camera crew ended up being a professional deal,” Sim recalled. “They started setting up umbrellas to reflect the light for better shots at seven in the morning and watched me doing chores. All of a sudden, there I was, being interviewed for two hours” Sim said as he shook his head in disbelief. “They followed with a drone when I brought a tractor back using my Dodge Ram truck. My son’s truck has a hydralift to pick up round bales and then feed from it. They filmed that with a drone too. It took all day.” The crowning touch was the cattle drive. It took three tries pushing the herd by the camera before the film crew was satisfied. The first time the cattle were too far away they said, the second wasn’t quite right but the third trip when Sim and his crew ran the cattle straight at the camera then let them scatter must have been enough. Sim is most proud of the location he chose for the cattle drive because, he said with a sparkle in his eye, Bear Lake can be seen in the background.
There has been a Simeon in the family since his great grandfather’s time and, following that tradition, he and wife JoJean’s own son is Simeon James Weston. The youngest Sim in the family (well-known for his horse training talent) is part of his dad’s operation. Simeon James runs his mother’s family ranch which Sim bought and added to his Lazy S Ranch, more than doubling the acreage under his ownership. He said, “My five daughters can run any of the equipment and ride any horse in the corral. They’re great hands and they’ve helped run the ranch many a time.” Sim paused when asked how many horses and cattle he owns, but he is pretty sure there are 20 horses and about 1,000 head of beef. Sim no longer breaks the horses himself but son Simeon James does and, so far, young Sim doesn’t mind the broken bones too much.
Among many positives in his life, Sim shared that he and his cousins and his children with their cousins have remained best friends. That family loyalty and cooperation is best exhibited in the accumulation of a large herd of younger and, thus, smaller cattle that aren’t ready for a feed lot. The Westons’ aggregated herd is taken to a “grass calf sale” in Greeley, Colorado, where buyers from Kansas and Nebraska pay premium prices for 150 or more cattle at once instead of piecing together a herd at two to three calves per buy. Back home in Rich County, the Weston owners split the proceeds per head, sparing themselves the same hassle of multiple sales at fluctuating prices.
In the waning afternoon, Sim drew his black, 10-gallon hat low, pulled on his spurred boots and meandered over to the Lambourne homestead which he leases. There, his horse, Milk Dud, waited patiently for the next round-up to herd cattle onto a transport. Several bulls needed to move from Randolph back to Laketown before day’s end. Sim’s dad, Norman, raised him with some sage advice, “The only time you raise your voice is when the house is on fire.” Oh, and don’t forget the spurs. “They keep the horses in line because they’re just like people,” Sim concluded. “You have to prod them to get busy every once in a while.”
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