Artisanal beef the grass fed way

Grass fed beef may appear hip today, given all the current publicawareness and media attention on the livestock industry, heightened by Mad Cow disease scares.But garner an understanding of Glenn nand Caryl Elzinga’s lifestyle and approach to ranching at Alderspring Ranch and one realizes this isn’t a business based on a short-lived fad. “With care, livestock, wildlife and botanical diversity are compatible,” explains Caryl.

From featured menu items at high-end restaurants to reports on radio and media nationwide, grass fed beef is increasingly top of mind. Why? Beef fattened in commercial feedlots on corn and soybeans may also be accompanied with an unexpected mix of cheap roughage that may include recycled telephone books, gum and gum wrappers. Grass fed converts argue their meat is safer, healthier, leaner – thereby tastier due to the added nutritional value of grass. According to Mercola, most commercial beef has high fat context, ranging from 35 to 75 percent, most of it unsaturated. Grass-fed beef has less than 10 percent of its fat as saturated and have more of the health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin E and beta carotene. At Alderspring Ranch, the cattle enjoy a healthy lifestyle of free movement, ranging in open pasture and aren’t on a drug regime of antibiotics or added growth hormones.

Located outside Salmon, Idaho, a town of 3,000, on the east-central side of Idaho close to the Montana border, Alderspring Ranch practices intense rotational grazing, moving the herd around every day. “It is kind of like mowing a lawn,” laughs Glenn, who affectionately calls his cows “critters.” “By constantly moving our critters aroundeveryday, this maintains the tender regrowth of young grass and a diversity of greens; which are fresh and high in nutrients. It’s like a healthy salad bar for cows and definitely affects the quality and taste of the meat,” adds Glenn.

Alderspring Ranch’s acreage is small by western standards, at 145 acres with the Elzinga’s leasing additional land to bring the total to about 2,000 acres.The ranch houses a herd of about 200 pairs of mother cows and calves, with 150 to 200 yearlings born the previous year that are not finishing on grass. Cattle are predominately Angus and Angus-cross breeds. Most of the calves are born March through June and typically nurse for about six to eight months. After a calf weans and can process grass on its own, the young calves are herded to the newer and softer grass, which enables them to quickly gain about 2 to 3 pounds a day. “The moms are great recyclers as they follow behind the young cattle and eat the remaining tough and rougher grass,” explains Glennn. Usually, a calf is then butchered at anywhere from 14 to 19 months, depending on size. “We aim to keep a natural genetic diversity of our calves by letting them grow and develop at their own speed,” Glenn comments. “This natural process works very efficiently from a business perspective, as we have calves becoming ready to transport for off-site processing at different times which enables us to keep up with demands and supply meat throughout the year,” adds Glenn.

The Elzinga’s irrigate their land by diverting ditchfuls of water and spreading it over the land through natural flood irrigation in various, often primitive ways, such as a basic canvas dam. Despite both Glenn and Caryl’s background in science, they readily admit that flood irrigation is more art than science, a learned craft requiring practice.“Flood irrigation is more beneficial for the land, helping create natural habitat such as dense patches of willow and cottonwood, which then brings songbird and a range of other critters,” Glenn comments. “We do nothing for fly control because it isn’t a problem for us. This diversity of habitat, combined with constantly moving the animals, has proven with time to break the fly cycle as flies lay eggs on the ground. By the time they hatch, the cows are long gone to their next spot,” adds Glennn. Flies are typically a problem with livestock as the flies will bite and irritate the cows to the point that they are constantly uncomfortable and running to get rid of the flies.

Alderspring Ranch’s meat achieves its distinct, intense flavor through careful attention to high quality grassbased forage and a 21 day dry-aging process. Once the meat is processed at a USDA-inspected facility near Boise, the whole side of beef is pushed into an extra-cold cooler to bring the meat temperature quickly down to 33 degrees, which takes between two to three days. The carcass is then moved to a second cooler, also at 33 degrees, for three weeks in a fairly dry environment. The reason for two separate coolers is to not contaminate the aging process as new carcasses are brought in with higher body temperatures. “Dry aging concentrates the meat flavor. By loosing moisture, the consumer ends up getting more per pound. Additionally, the process tenderizes the meat even further through natural enzyme actions that break down the muscle fiber,” explains Glennn. “Understandably, while dry-aging meat has been a tried and true practice for years, it is not an efficient way to process large amounts of meat, so it has evolved to a more artisan, hand-crafted technique today,” Glennn adds. After the dry-aging process is finished, a trucking company is contracted to deliver the fresh meat directly to the retailer.

About 95 percent of Alderspring Ranch’s business is sold fresh, selling wholesale to retailers in urban, upscale markets including Boise, Missoula, and Bozeman. When the Elzinga’s first started in grass fed beef ten years ago, it was a challenge to sell all parts of the cow. “There is high-end demand for the premium meat cuts such as the tenderloins and New York strip steaks, but that is just 15 percent of the critter,” explains Glennn, realizing that they would need to also sell the remaining meat to be profitable, particularly the 52 percent of the animal that became ground beef. “The key for us was having customers taste the ground beef and other presumed less desirable cuts. Because our meat comes from only one yearling, the taste blew people away. Often, regular commercial ground beef from large-scale processors will have anywhere between 50 to 1600 cows, many of them old cull cows, going into a pound of ground beef. Our meat clearly is different,” explains Glennn. This education process took time; early on Glenn did in-store demonstrations every two weeks to build a loyal customer base and today does the demos every couple of months to maintin existing customer relationships. Self-taught, Caryl runs the business’s extensive educational website. The Elzingas invite meat department managers from their retail accounts to come for a day on the ranch. “This gives folks a real feel for how things work here and they understand that what we do is very holistic. They see the bigger picture than just producing meat, we care for the land and our family,” adds Glennn.

Family remains an important part of the Elzinga’s lives, integrating their five homeschooled daughters ranging in age from 15 months to 10 years into the ranching lifestyle. “I had a good job as a district forester with the Bureau of Land Management but once I had kids, I realized how much time I was spending away from them. We were starting to get into cattle at the time and I thought there has to be a way to make this work, to do only ranching and raising a family,” Glennn comments. Glennn quit his forestry position five years ago and Caryl, who has a PhD in plant ecology, took on consulting projects to help with income during those early years of the ranching full time. “About three years ago we were able to understand the business well enough to really start producing a consistently high-quality product, and I could start feeling passionate about not only my business, but how my whole life and family fit together,” adds Glenn.