IT LOOKS AS if Amelia Hermann’s long hours in the saddle are paying off for her in a big way.
She recently won the Northwest Junior Rodeo Association’s high-point title of All Around Junior Cowgirl, along with a saddle and silver belt buckles for wins in team roping, barrel racing and breakaway roping.
Riding under her grandpa Bill Hermann’s Three Hermann Brothers’ brand, the Sequim Middle School student first joined the local Peninsula Junior Rodeo Association and then the larger NJRA while she was just knee high to a grasshopper.
At just 12 years old, she’s become a top contender in both junior rodeo and the National High School Rodeo Association’s (NHSRA) Junior High Division.
Recently, I stopped by to chat with Amelia at the Hermann family homestead off Blue Mountain Road.
There, I spoke with her great-grandfather Ted Hermann, her grandpa and grandma Bill and Kay Hermann, and her parents, Mike and Rashell Hermann. Her older sister, Saydee Hermann, is taking a temporary break from horse competitions.
Amelia’s mom said she started plunking Amelia behind her saddle on her mule and taking Amelia on trail rides as soon as she could “sit up by herself and hold on.”
From the start, her toddler was hooked on horses.
When she was 3, a family friend gave Amelia a mini horse that her mother said, “she rode everywhere and took care of herself.”
At 6, her parents gave her a “real horse,” and her mom started leading her into the arena where little Amelia took to barrel racing competitions like bees to honey.
And her mother couldn’t be happier to share a love of horses, barrel racing and team roping with her daughter.
When Amelia won first place with her partner in team roping at the NWJR finals, her mom said, “there were a lot of 18-year-old boys in that competition who didn’t like that one bit.”
Mom says Amelia’s a “goal-driven kid” who rises each day on her own by 6 a.m. to go to the barn and feed the family’s horses.
When she gets home from school, she goes right to work at the barn to clean the stalls and then start riding horses.
She feeds the horses, then goes back to her house for a 6 p.m. dinner and, whenever she can, heads right back out to ride.
Most weekends, she keeps busy with rodeo competitions or clinics. It seems she’s living her dream life.
Hermann Brothers
I’ve heard the Hermann Brothers name for years and was aware their family’s roots grew long and deep here, so when I heard about Amelia winning the title, I emailed her grandmother Kay Hermann to ask if I could take a photo of her with the entire family and learn more about the family’s history.
We arranged to meet at the family’s barn.
Well, I had no idea the barn was actually a nice new barn with an attached indoor riding arena.
When Kay came out to greet me, I could only hope she didn’t see the drool of envy flowing over my slack jaw.
Are there any equestrians who wouldn’t want an indoor riding arena for themselves?
As I got to talking with Bill and his dad, Ted, I became more impressed with the family history there on Blue Mountain Road rather than the arena. Actually, truth be told, I was drawn to both.
Back in the day, Bill said, “it was a different town and community, with lots of mom-and-pop grocery stores.”
His father moved here in 1937 fresh off his family’s 800-acre wheat farm in North Dakota “where they owned up to 40 working horses they used to plow the fields.”
Ted started his own logging and farming business.
He enjoyed lending his hand to the owner of a nearby farm, Glen Corning, soon marrying his daughter.
Bill said the family farm started raising chickens prior to 1905 under the ownership of his mom’s dad.
“My grandfather never worked anyplace else except here,” Bill said.
The two married and had three sons: Bill, Fred and Steve. As the boys grew, so did the farm.
Now 94, Ted Hermann was a farmer who grew, raised or sold everything he could.
He grew vegetables, fruit trees and berry bushes. He farmed hay and raised cows, horses and chickens — lots of chickens.
From 1,100 to 7,500 chickens at any given time.
Ted, who retired in 1975, said farmers don’t know a day off, nor do their kids.
“We never sit still,” he said. “We just gotta keep moving.”
Ted Hermann estimated they collected between 1,500 and 1,600 eggs a day. The boys would pack them up and go about delivering them twice a week.
“That’s how we learned to count,” said Bill.
In 1958, from middle school through high school, the brothers started logging, cutting and selling firewood off the property.
Hermann said he felled trees because he was the only one who could start the 30-pound, four-horsepower 430 McCullough saw. Fred ran the tractor and Steve marked the firewood.
When they were old enough, Bill and Fred joined the Navy while Steve went off to college.
Upon returning from the service, the two brothers had saved enough money to buy a skidder and, shortly after then, another skidder.
Incorporated company
In 1968, they incorporated Hermann Brothers Logging and Construction. Just as their father slowly expanded his farming business, so did the brothers — one contract and employee at a time.
Today, Hermann Brothers has more than 125 employees and a fleet of logging trucks, trailers and equipment.
Through the years, the company has diversified and branched out and, according to Bill, run a variety of businesses that do “a lot of different things,” including harvesting and selling biomass products (hog fuel, mulch and sawdust).
Under the name Evergreen Fiber Co., they supply a variety of hardwood chips to several local and regional paper mills. They also own Sunset Wire Rope and Do it Best Hardware store in Port Angeles.
After brother Steve retired, Bill’s son Mike bought into the business.
“And we still grow and sell hay,” said Bill.
“We probably yield 10,000 to 12,000 bales of hay a year. We keep half for our own livestock and sell the rest.”
It’s like his father said: A farmer never rests.
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Karen Griffiths’ column, Peninsula Horseplay, appears every other Sunday.
If you have a horse event, clinic or seminar you would like listed, please email Griffiths at kbg@olympus.net at least two weeks in advance. You can also write Griffiths at PDN, P.O. Box 1330, Port Angeles, WA 98362.