Join Our Journey: Better Farming, Better Flavor

Dear Folks,

Last week in Pasture Posts #297, we shared a look at the historic 75-year low in the national cattle inventory and how selective our calf buyer, Chuck, has to be as we build our herd toward our winter goal of 125 head.

Whenever we talk about sourcing weaned feeder calves from across the region, it naturally raises a great question from folks who are newer to following our farm: “Why don’t you just keep a herd of mama cows and raise all of your own calves from birth?”

We actually touched on this briefly a little over a year ago in Pasture Posts #236, and it goes back to a major turning point for our farm in 2016—the year we decided to sell off our mama cow herd and exit the cow-calf business altogether.

Doing a Few Things Well Rather Than Many Things Mediocre

If you have ever been around a cow-calf operation, you know that managing a herd of brood cows year-round is a full-time discipline in itself. Between managing breeding seasons and bulls, checking heifers and cows through calving season, and carrying mature mama cows through the dead of winter on hay and stockpiled grass just so she can wean one calf a year, it demands an enormous amount of time, labor, and land.

As we began leaning further into direct-to-consumer pasture-raised meats—alongside managing pastured pigs, moving broiler chickens daily, and running packing and fulfillment—we came to a realization that has guided our farm ever since: we would much rather do a few things really well than do many things mediocre.

Why We Focus 100% on Grass-Finishing

When you step back and look at the whole chain of producing 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef, two realities stand out:

• Finishing More Cattle on Our Home Farm: A mature mama cow requires a full year of pasture and winter forage just to produce a single weaned calf. By dedicating every acre of our home farm exclusively to growing and finishing weaned calves—rather than maintaining brood cows—we are able to finish significantly more cattle right here on our own pastures. That also allows us to rely less on our wonderful partner producers while still keeping up with your family’s demand for grass-fed beef.
• Grass-Finishing is Much Harder to Outsource: Across the Southeast, there are still a good many dedicated cow-calf producers (even if fewer than there used to be) who do a phenomenal job raising healthy calves on pasture up to weaning weight. True 100% grass-finishing, on the other hand, is a much rarer and harder skill to outsource. Keeping cattle gaining steadily on high-energy, rotationally grazed forages all the way to finish—so that the resulting steaks and roasts are well-marbled, tender, and mild—takes relentless focus on soil health, no-till forage mixes, and daily paddock moves.

Letting skilled cow-calf producers handle the first stage of a calf’s life frees us up to pour 100% of our energy, land, and pasture management into being the very best grass-finishers we can possibly be.

Dear Folks,

If you have been keeping an eye on agricultural news this year, you might have seen a pretty staggering statistic roll out from the USDA: the total U.S. cattle inventory has contracted to 86.2 million head.

A 75-Year Historic Contraction: At 86.2 million head, the national beef herd is at its smallest level since 1951. Furthermore, the calf crop dropped to around 32.9 million head—the tightest supply of new calves born across the nation since 1941.

Back in Pasture Posts #287, we reflected on how conventional livestock farming used to run on our farm: we would raise calves until weaning, load them onto a trailer, take them to the local auction, and send them straight into the commodity feedlot pipeline. Back then, calf supplies across the country were deep and predictable. But today, the story is completely different. Multi-year droughts across the West, soaring input costs, and nationwide herd liquidation have created a massive squeeze. Big commercial packers are leaning heavily on imported foreign beef to fill grocery store shelves, while prices at the supermarket meat counter stay volatile.

For a farm like ours, that national reality translates directly into our day-to-day operations: finding the right calves for our 100% grass-fed and grass-finished program is harder today than it has ever been.