How Did He Get Here

Daddy started out at the farm in 2009. He’d been here a bit before that, but officially started the company in 2009. God had given him a dream. He says he knew he was being called to be a business owner, and to do it God’s way. His dad owned some land, and a few cattle, and God told him to come out here, build on it, and do His work. He was going to improve the land, provide food, and be a good steward of all of God’s creations and gifts.

He listened to his dad, went to a few industry conferences, and dove in head first. If you spend much time around him, you’ll learn that that’s the only way he does things. He’s all in. In some ways, he was behind. He had learned a lot about raising cattle through his life. He knew how to treat them, knew about their health and diet. But one thing stuck out to him in everything he was learning…there simply wasn’t enough grass to increase the herd and the land was continuing to suffer.

The instructors at these conferences had started calling themselves “Grass Farmers”. It’s kind of a crazy concept. You think we are beef producers, and we are, but the beef can’t exist without the grass, right? So where did he start? He caught up learning about grass. He learned how cattle like all kinds of grass, and really need a variety. He learned about when certain grasses become toxic or poisonous, how to get rid of them or manage them through grazing. What he really learned though, was how to manage the grass.

He started implementing rotational grazing, limiting the effect of the grazing to keep the grass from getting too short, and lots about over-seeding. He looked into native grasses, and what would invite more wildlife. It took a really long time. But after about 6 years, he really started to see the effects. Now, 11 years later, we almost can’t remember the bare, dry dirt that’s now covered with grass.

We still feel the effects of every big season change. Going from winter to spring when all the winter grasses are dying but the summer grasses haven’t caught up. Or worse, going from summer to fall when there’s no grass and drought.

In other ways he was ahead of the game. When I first started out here in 2014, he had to teach me all about the beef side of the business. I went to the same conferences, but everything was about the big feed lots and how to prep for that. Daddy was playing a different game altogether. He said “We want to focus on a ‘quality product’ to sell.” So how do you know that someone is buying your meat in the grocery store? Short answer, you don’t. So how can you market a quality product? Again, you don’t.

Here is where Daddy was ahead of the game. In 2010 he had started raising cattle, feeding them out, getting them processed, and selling the meat directly to his customers. This allowed him to tell his customers exactly what that steer experienced from the day it was born. He could ensure that the animals were healthy, and never given antibiotics or extra hormones. He could honestly say that his cattle had 24/7 access to grass. He was hand delivering the meat to the customers’ door.

We did another conference this year called Direct 2020, sponsored by Barn2Door. They had a group of farmers get together and show us how to optimize the process of selling direct to the customer. But can you guess, Daddy had already implemented almost all of the practices they were suggesting. It’s crazy. When covid meant that grocery stores were limiting what meat people could buy, we were already set up to be able to provide. Now we are reading articles about big farms that were feed lot prep, now selling direct to customers and asking small farms, like us, how to do it.

God had shown us some of the fruits of the dream He had given Daddy. He went from a simple dream of working the farm, to being a grass farmer, to providing a product we can be proud of. All from His direction. It’s still a challenge every day. We need rain, is God going to provide it? We need profit, do we keep waiting for God to open a door, or is this idea His door? There’s not enough grass again, do we need to sell some cows, or buy hay? But this is how we got here, a big dream getting bigger, and a lot of faith that God will provide.