Jean Pierre Etcheverry arrived in New York City in 1929 at the age of 16 from the French Basque town of Bidarray. He immediately made his way to Nevada sheep country to work as a herder for $40 a month. Later, with his new wife Louise Savala, Jean moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where she ran a Basque boarding house and he bought 1,200 ewes to begin his own sheep operation. Two children later, the family moved to Rupert, Idaho, where the sheep operation is still headquartered.

Jean and Louise’s son, Henry, continues to run the sheep outfit today—six bands of ewes and a band of yearlings. The ewes lamb in the family’s lambing sheds north of Rupert from January through March. The ewes and lambs are trucked off of the Minidoka desert to southeastern Idaho in mid-May to spend the summer grazing in the high country of the Caribou National Forest, near Lava Hot Springs and Soda Springs, Idaho. In August and early September, the lambs are shipped to Colorado. Come September, the newly-bred ewes reverse their route, returning to the lower elevations around Rupert for winter.

Jean passed away in 2003, and Louise in 2009. Generations of hard work and dedication seamlessly blend, as Henry and his wife Kathy continue working, often with help from their two grown daughters—Nicole and Dominique.