Lyndon and Janice Wahrmund

Lyndon and Janice Wahrmund farm and ranch in Gillespie County and Western Kerr County.  They farm 150 acres where they raise corn, milo, wheat and hay.  They run approximately 130 Brangus cows in Gillespie and Kerr Counties and about 50 head of Dorper sheep in Gillespie County.  Besides the land they own, they lease three places in Gillespie County and two in Kerr County. 

Lyndon started farming and ranching as well as doing conservation bulldozing as a partner in Wahrmund Brothers & Sons for about 40 years and been on his own for nearly 25 years.  The place where Lyndon grew up has been in his family for 137 years. Lyndon served on the hog committee at the Gillespie County Stock Show for 25 years.  He was in the Army Reserves for 6 years.  He has done conservation work for 60 plus years for himself and the public.

Janice grew up in Western Kerr County on The Divide where she learned to ranch from her father and Klein uncles.  She was definitely an outside girl.  Her grandfather Klein homesteaded on The Divide in 1896. Janice was an elementary school teacher for 34 years.  She has served as a director on the Gillespie County Farm Bureau Board for many years.  She was also a FSA committee member for 9 years.  She was voted Teacher of the Year at Fredericksburg Elementary School in 1999.  She was an active member of the Hill Country Cattle Women for many years.

Lyndon and Janice are members of St. Paul Lutheran Church at Cave Creek.  They are also members of Texas and Southwestern Cattleraisers and the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers’ Association.  In 2019 they received the Farm and Ranch Award presented by KNAF Radio Fredericksburg.

Lyndon and Janice have done most of the work on the farm and ranch themselves.  However, Janice has been unable to be much help in the last couple of years due to health problems. Lyndon is still up and working every day.  Their good neighbor Rudy Schaefer helps work the cattle and sheep and assists Lyndon with other tasks.  Jason, Jennifer, Jacob and James Jenschke help with equipment, spraying, and whatever other jobs come along. Other nephews including Justin Jenschke, Brian and Brad Roeder and their families help in other ways.  One of Janice’s nephews has done a lot of work with cedar eradication, clearing land, building fence, and other projects on one of the Kerr County ranches.

In 2005, they sold farmland owned near Kyle and did a 1031 land exchange for the Rittimann Place on Ranch Road 1631 which joined land Lyndon already owned.  He enrolled in the Pedernales Program enabling him to push and cut cedar, which was very thick.  He drilled two water wells and built cross fences, enabling him to do rotational grazing.

In 2017 he did another 1031 land exchange with a ranch near Stonewall for a 385 acres place on the Willow City Loop.  He asked Wayne Seipp, a soil conservation technician, to look at some grass that had been planted by the previous owner.  Wayne encouraged Lyndon to sign up for the EQIP program.  He drilled three new water wells for livestock with 2 solar pumps, put in 6 new water troughs with lines from the wells.  Patrick Kunz built 3 new fences for the rotational grazing.  Having a very heavy growth of cedar, he dozed and sawed cedar and piled it with a dozer and a skid steer with the help of Floyd Nielsen and Dave Smith.  He planted 40 acres of Klein Grass and seeded 40 more acres with mixed grasses after the cedar was removed.  He completed the EQIP work in two years.

The Wahrmund’s are against over grazing and try to maintain a good grass cover on all their ranches.  The have worked hard over the years to be good stewards of the land.

The Gillespie County Soil and Water Conservation District would like to thank the Wahrmund’s for the conservation they have done in Gillespie County and are honored to present the Conservation Rancher Award.