For a Hardee County rancher’s son, playing Zech MacIvey is not make-believe. It is family memory, Florida history and the open country still worth saving.

By R. Michael Brown
Photography courtesy of Corey Castellano, Jaime Green, Tamarind Free Jones and Carlton Ward Jr.

The surprise about Colby Harrison is that, when the cameras stop rolling, his job playing the part of a Florida cow hunter doesn’t.

He goes back to feed the cattle on his family’s ranch.

Before our interview, the 12-year-old actor had already finished his morning ranch work and started his school day. A rodeo competitor and student of roping, he now plays Zechariah “Zech” MacIvey in the upcoming television adaptation of Patrick D. Smith’s “A Land Remembered,” the sweeping Florida novel that spans three generations from 1858 to 1968.

That made the casting feel different in Polk, Hardee, Highlands, Okeechobee, DeSoto, Glades and Hendry counties, where the early part of the novel takes place. Colby did not have to learn the heat, the mosquitoes, the horses or the rhythm of a cattle operation for the camera. He grew up with them.

“I’ve been rodeoing since I was three or four,” Colby said. “I started competitively roping when I was maybe like seven.”

He competes in tie-down roping, breakaway, ribbon roping and goat tying. His family runs a cow-calf beef operation in Fort Green, and Colby is sixth generation.

“On both sides of my family, we’re orange grove farmers and cattle ranchers,” he said.

A friend at church gave him Smith’s novel. Colby read it, finished it and immediately searched online for a film version.

“It said, ‘No, there is not a Land Remembered movie,’” he recalled. “I was like, ‘Well, dang, there has to be something like this.’”

Then came the casting call.

Read the full article [Heartland Living Magazine]

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