Every so often, he offers bits of wisdom:
“Ya know, sitting on the back of a horse, you’ve got this view that’s about four or five feet higher than the ground level looking over things. But it gives you a nice view, and when you’re riding a horse, you relax, take it all in, and appreciate it all.”
That’s John Dutton for ya, raised to be a farmer in Stark County, Ohio, but became a sculptor of the Earth instead. Now listen, John is a cattle farmer, as most people in the valley know by now, but before he purchased his very first steer, he saw the land change, and then change again before it was churned and chunked back into a beauty daylight reveals each morning.
John and his wife, Rita, live on a patch of about 1,200 acres in Belmont County where the Dutton Cattle Co. is headquartered and he and his employees also work thousands of acres of leased land, too. They produce Akaushi Wagyu beef products like strips, ribeyes, and ground beef for their online “City Slicker” boxed packages, and they welcome visitors for tours and lodging in one of their three Airbnbs.
“I grew up on a farm up in the little town of Navarre, Ohio – it’s where Nickles Bakey originated,” Dutton explained. “My dad had a passion for land and the animals and everything that went with a farm, and I believe I got that gene. I love being out there. I love what that feels like.
“I have that passion for the whole thing about a cattle farm. Working with the animals, watching the farm grow … it’s the whole thing that I love. But it’s more about the land than anything else. That’s the root of the passion, I believe.”
His story may sound familiar, and the name – John Dutton – likely does, too, because of the hit series “Yellowstone” and the striking similarities between fiction and the realities near Flushing, Ohio. John does have four children – three sons and a daughter, in fact, just as the fake character counterpart does – and preserving the globe’s natural beauty is a primary concern, too.
But that’s where coincidence ends.
“The name does make things fun sometimes,” he said with a grin. “And I’ve met Kevin Costner. He’s a motivated individual, I can tell you that. He’s a good guy, and that’s why I don’t like much the way this new half-season started out. Not at all.”
When a Man Loves a Woman
They were as tall as one hundred – maybe a hundred-fifty – automobiles stacked atop each other, and more than 20 men could have fit within their dig buckets. They were colossal earthmovers, they weighed millions of pounds, and the shovel could grab 100 tons of earth with each of its bites.
There was “The Tiger”, “The Mountaineer”, “The Silver Spade”, and “The Gem of Egypt”, and they chewed surface land for coal between Harrison and Belmont counties through the 1970s. Critics claimed the land to be useless once the black bituminous mineral was removed, but John Dutton has proven them wrong.
He’s reclaimed it. He’s returned the land’s glory.
“But we do have one spot on the farm where there’s still an old high wall left. It’s one of my favorite places on the farm, too, and when I give tours I always take our guests there to show them the high wall with all those layers of stone and everything. I ask those folks if they realize this area was all under water once,” Dutton said. “It’s sedimentary rock that shows on that high wall, and the only way to get it is to be under water.
“Now, that was 300-to-350 million years ago, but that’s when the coal was formed. That’s why I like having that kind of history in the back of the farm. I like showing people what rural life is about.”
John was raised on a livestock farm in that small village nestled along the Tuscarawas River near Canton and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and he loved everything about farming and planned on following his father’s footsteps. His mom, however, demanded a different idea.
“That’s when I did leave the farm and went down to Ohio University because my mother said I was going to college because she and my dad never did. So, I thought I’d better do it the right way, and I thought I was going to become a school teacher and also go back to the farm to work the family business,” Dutton recalled. “That was my game plan, but then someone changed my life forever.
“I met my wife, Rita, at college, but she met my brother first, and my brother was more outgoing than I was, so I didn’t know. But she and I would go out a lot because Athens has always been known for having a lot of bars,” he recalled. “We started a little tradition of going out on Thursday nights so we could start out weekends a little early, and then we started dancing with each other. And, well, here we are today.”
Tears of Satisfaction
Time for more John Dutton wisdom:
“If you think about it, this farm is just a tiny spot on this planet, and that’s why I believe we need to improve it when we have the chance. Mother Nature does a lot to help herself to the land when she can – especially if you don’t keep working against her – and that’s why it’s amazing to me to be involved in it all.”
He didn’t end up back home on that family farm. Instead, John helped mold his own acreage once those giant earthmovers moved on toward the Egypt Valley and the Barnesville areas.
But a process it sure was.
“I never had thought about a career in mining but that’s what Rita’s family did and, when I looked at it, surface mining took place outside and I was around the equipment all day long, so it was OK. And a lot of the property that was mined was old farms that had grown up because the family wasn’t working the land anymore after the (Great) Depression or World War II. But then coal mining took off in the area.
“So, I watched the land get transformed back and forth and then watched the reclamation and regrading take place. We seeded the fields down, and then they turned into something again even though some thought it would be nothing but wasteland,” he explained. “Ever since, when I go out there on the farm, I’m always looking for ways to make more improvements. I go fence line to fence line sometimes and do what I can to make it look better than it did. I just like to make every acre be something.”
Seems this John Dutton has created more than a cattle farm, and that’s because he’s shaped a peaceful place for a family that includes a county commissioner (J.P.), an architect (Greg), a healthcare professional (Nina), and the ranch’s director of branding, sales, and marketing (Chris), as well as their spouses and their nine grandchildren.
“When your grandkids love coming to the farm, you know you’ve done something right. They get to learn an appreciation for that rural life, and I believe that’s important because, little by little, rural land is being claimed and turned into something very different,” Dutton said with welled-up eyes. “It’s been going the other way since the 1930s and ‘40s.
“And we’ve had people from Chicago, Philadelphia, and other big cities come here to stay on the property so they get away from all of that (noise). I remember a mother with two kids that came here to stay, and the younger boy – maybe 7 or 8 – said there was something on him,” he said with a grin. “His mother had to tell him what a bug is, and to expect more since they were out in the country. That was really funny to me.”
Rita owns and operates The Pike 40 Restaurant & Bar in Morristown, an eatery on the corner of U.S. 40 and Belmont/Morristown Road that features food and beverage menus that change with the seasons, and there’s live entertainment that’s a prominent fixture most months of the year thanks to her son, Chris.
The establishment rests just about 10 miles away from the Dutton Ranch.
“I took her out of subdivision and brought her to the country, and keep in mind the country is where you can look out of the truck’s back window and see nothing but raw land out there for a while. But my wife adapted and our kids all were raised here,” John explained. “It’s all about passing it along better than when we got it, and they’ll do the same so more and more people can see what a real rural life is all about.
“So, I guess it’s a legacy that we’re building, and a legacy we’ll leave behind someday.”
