Beth Robinette of Lazy R Ranch: Building Community and Ranch Resilience

You'Re listening to the Farm Walks Podcast. I'm your host Nicole Witham, AKA Farmer Nicole. The Farm Walks Podcast is brought to you by Tilt alliance and Washington State University Food Systems Program. If you want to learn more about all the topics and episodes, head on over to our website farmwalks.org to look through episodes and find us wherever you enjoy your favorite podcasts and be sure to keep a lookout for in person or on Farm Farm Walks throughout Washington State. In this episode of the Farm Walks Podcast, I'm talking with Beth Robinette of Lazy R Ranch located in Cheney, Washington. Beth is a fourth generation rancher carrying on holistic management practices that center the symbiotic relationship between grasslands and grazing ruminants. Beth is also adapting the family ranch's relationships to customers and markets, its history and indigenous communities, marginalized communities seeking education and land access, and of course climate change and fire safety. I'm pretty psyched to be checking in with Beth as I am admittedly a major fangirl of Lazy R and Beth's work.

Later in the episode we're connecting with Sarah Lemon, the WSDA Regional Markets Program Local Meat Marketing Specialist. Hear what sort of resources and offerings the wsda, WSU and WA meetup have coming your way.

Hello, my name is Beth Robinette and I am the owner operator of Lazy R Ranch. We grow grass fed beef on 800 acres in Spencer Spokane, Washington. You can find our products on our website lazyrbeef.com and you can follow us on social media. He new Cowgirl camp.

I have with me today Beth Robinette from Lazy R Ranch and you're out there in the Cheney Spokane area in the Inland Empire.

That's right, yeah.

So tell us more about the ranch and yourself.

I'm the fourth generation of my family here on the Lazy R. We're a grass fed beef operation. We do cow calf through finish and we direct market all of our beef as custom locker beef. So we work with a custom on farm butcher that is also a multi generation family business that we've worked with for a long time which is a really cool relationship to have. The ranch is about is a little over 800 acres. We're just west of Spokane, about 16 miles west of Spokane, about halfway between Cheney and Medical Lake. So if you're familiar with with that part of Eastern Washington, hopefully that helps put us on the map a little bit. But if you've driven through that part of the world on the interstate, you've actually been through the Lazy R before.

My my family came there in 1937 and it ran the place as a dairy and then it sort of transitioned to a conventional beef operation. And then my dad in the mid-90s, really transformed his grazing management. He got introduced to, to the work of Alan Savory and the concept of holistic management. And he had the opportunity to train with Alan, to study with Alan for two years through this project, through WSU actually. And he ended up going on to be a holistic management educator. And all of that was kind of happening right around the time I was old enough to pick up an electric fence reel. So I really got a ground level view. So I consider myself like a second generation holistic manager.

Yeah.

Which is kind of a cool place to enter the work from.

Yeah, there was a lot of like paths and work that happened before you, and now you get to step into that and continue to build upon it. So you currently are marketing your beef primarily through direct market avenues. Tell us a little bit more about that.

So every generation has kind of added their own iteration onto the business. The piece that I brought was the direct marketing program. When I went away to college and decided that I wanted to come back to the ranch because I didn't really have clarity on that until I moved away. I knew that somebody needed to kind of understand how to run the business because my grandpa had always done the financial business management stuff. And then when he died, that was just not my dad's domain and there hadn't been a lot of intentional handoff of that. So it was like, oh, speaking like this is a, this is a niche that really needs filled. Someone needs to figure out how to do the business management end of things. So I wasn't like particularly passionate about business or entrepreneurship, but that's kind of the track that my education ended up taking just out of necessity.

But it turns out I actually am kind of like, I do find those things interesting. I just had had a, maybe kind of an unconventional entree into all of that. So I, I knew that we were making this awesome product and we were doing all. I mean it wasn't really called regenerative agriculture. Like that wasn't a buzzword yet, but.

But your animals were managed well and you were quality product.

Right. We were doing this really like top notch grazing management. And I went to school in Bellingham, which had more of a foodie culture and was a little more like ahead of the curve. What consumer palette was like. And so grass fed beef was like a, a hot thing. And Spokane that had not. That was still like really Really a small niche. So I just saw this huge opportunity.

This was all. This was like 2010, just to put this in time. So not that long ago, but also like, yeah, I guess at the time I was doing all this stuff. This was like. This was very cool. And the fact that I was able to build a website because I was in my early 20s instead of in my 50s or 60s, like other people that were maybe trying to market their grasshop beef on Craigslist or whatever, you were cutting edge. Yeah, I mean, I kind of had a little bit of an opportunity in the specific regional market that I was in. And we had always had this relationship with Quadriquet, who's our custom butcher, because even when I was a kid, we always held back a few steers that we finished for ourselves and for, you know, a handful of friends and family.

So that was always like, kind of a thing that was happening in the background, but it wasn't like a business for us. It was just more of like, yeah, we knew a handful of people that wanted a side of beef, but I saw that there was an opportunity. So I made this transition to direct marketing, which we did over two years. And that was definitely a little painful and a little scary because we had to, you know, hold a year of calves back because we were, you know, grass finishing at 24 to 27 months instead of marketing them as yearlings. But because I basically had a website and a web presence and was able to take credit card payment at a time that those things were really, like, big conveniences, I was able to build that custom business. And that's kind of just been the backbone of what we've done. And because we've had a great relationship with this processor, and we've kind of been able to grow or business with them until really recently. We'll get to that in a second.

We'll get to that a little later.

Yeah, it's just worked out really well. And, I mean, from a humane treatment of animals standpoint, I just love being able to process on farm like my animals are. From the day they're born to their last day. They're in the same environment that is familiar, that I'm able to control the stress and the handling of and work with someone that I know is really conscientious and accurate. And, yeah, the whole process is just. We built something that was really smooth and worked. And our ranch is not. It's 800 acres, but we're 800 acres in Eastern Washington.

So there are some incredibly productive parts of the ranch. We're in the channel scablands. So we have these incredibly lush sub irrigated meadows. That's about a third of the ranch and then about 2/3 of it is basalt rock and ponderous pine trees which I can't have my pregnant cows in for most of the year because ponderosa pine needles cause abortions. So anyways, there's lots of logistical management things on the back end. Anyway, that's all to say, like we're not operating a huge beef empire out here. Like I'm marketing 30 to 40 head a year and then I have my mother cowherd that kind of feeds into that finish. Yeah.

So that's kind of how we've been approaching things up until last year when my butcher told me he was cutting his numbers in half because they, you know, labor is just a perennial issue in that industry. Well, in a lot of skilled trades industries, but definitely, and I'm sure Sarah, you can speak more to this than me, but every processor I know is struggling with labor right now. And it takes so long to train someone to become like actually skilled and proficient at the level. Like yeah, Jeff, my, my butcher has been cutting meat since he's 11. He was 11 years old so like wow, knows what he is doing.

Yeah.

So to get someone that is like working to his standard takes a lot of time and the job doesn't really pay that well like for the level of skill and training that it really requires. Any other industry where you had to like apprentice for six to eight years, you know, you'd probably want to make more than $15 an hour.

Especially considering that they're like such a necessary and critical link in the chain, you know that we often are like all about farmers and farmer support. But like this is an industry that takes two. It takes these two linked things to really make it work. And yeah, it's so difficult to watch it unfold and have little power to change it. Although, you know, I know Sarah's Sarah and folks are working on it, but yeah, it's, it's a long pipeline. So you know, you kind of spoke about how you walked into a certain role on the farm and tell us more about like if you always knew you were going to play a role at the farm and how you yourself kind of got into farming and ranching.

I definitely did not envision myself like when I was a young person or in elementary school or high school, I was not, not trying to become a cowgirl. That wasn't. I was a very sensitive like drama kid. Did competitive slam Poetry, a lot of eyeliner, a lot of feelings. Felt very alienated from my very rural. I mean I grew up in a less conservative. Because I, I went to high school in Cheney, which was a college town. It wasn't as conservative as a lot of eastern Washington farming communities.

But yeah, I didn't feel like, oh my God, I hope I get to stay here forever and ever.

Yeah.

And I definitely didn't identify with like FFA or participate in 4H or anything like any of the sort of like pipeline gateway activities, I guess.

Yeah.

I grew up in this incredibly beautiful place and I had a very privileged bucolic barrel childhood where I just had like acres and acres to roam around and like really experience total freedom, which is something that's now so foundational to my quality of life that I can't leave this place no matter how much I might watch. I just can't. I can't trade that relationship to land. I don't know how, I don't know how I would be able to find that in another place if I was going to leave here. So that was really, I think the thing that hooked me was just this incredibly beautiful property. But I was interested in food and I was interested in sustainability issues in general. And when I was in high school I read, I read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I don't know how relevant that book is anymore, but it was kind of a big deal at the time that I read it when it came out.

But it's really about the fast food industry and both like the human exploitation all along that supply chain and also the animal exploitation. And I really felt activated by that book. I was like, oh God, I don't. That's doesn't feel like where I want our animals to be going for sure. Like I don't, I don't really like being part of. Just seemed wrong to me that like everything up until that point was so good. Yeah, we were doing such a good job. And then it was like, oh, and then it goes to McDonald's and like all these exploitative things happen to all of the animals and people all along the way.

And then the first class that I took when I went to college, I went to Fairhaven College and I took a 15 credit interdisciplinary course that was all about food and it was co taught by three professors. So it was a social justice class, an ecology class, and then a critical and reflective inquiry class. And the teachers like coordinated the curriculum was all centered around food. And that class was super transformative for me. We Read Omnivore's Dilemma as like one. Like I read that the summer I went into college and that that book just like totally turned my little 18 year old brain on. I felt like all of these ideas that were sort of floating around were crystallized through that book. And I think they're also like exploring my own, my own privilege, which was a big part of like the social justice lens of that class.

I guess I understood that I also had like a real opportunity. Like Holy crap, there's 800 acres and like a herd of cattle and like all of this cool sustainable stuff happening. It really seemed like I should leverage that as much as possible like because that was, that was an opportunity most people don't get handed and I should not take that for granted. Yeah. And I really did feel passionately that the stuff that my dad was doing and the way that we were managing our animals and the impact we were seeing on the land like was really transformative. And I still really, really believe that. The piece of this work that still gets me excited is the ecosystem restoration piece of it. All of the rest of it is pretty interchangeable.

To me those are all means to an end. But what really like lights me up is seeing this land become more and more vital and healthy.

Yeah, you know, it's like a story around historical farming is that people have walked away over the years and it's like that's a pretty beautiful and amazing thing to walk away from. So it's so fantastic from a family lineage and a management standpoint that you were willing and able to like add some tools to your toolkit, so to speak, and like walk in as the next generation. And that's a great pivot to talking a little bit more about your ranch management practices and kind of the different environmental strategies that are happening there. You talked a little bit about the type of land you're working with that some of it is beautiful and grazable and is sub irrigated. So I would hope continues to be grazed into different points of the year, but maybe harder to get into in earlier points of the year. Year. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about kind of your favorite things that are happening on the farm and in terms of rotational grazing and silvopasture and such.

Yeah, so it's well it's all a really delicate dance like you mentioned because we're like for in 800 acres we have so many eco types happening and we're sort of on this, on the edge, like, like we're on an eco tone so you go, like, if you drive 15 miles in any direction from here, you will either be in sagebrush step or in a forest or in, like, high desert or in a meadow. And it's just like, yeah, it's a very, very diverse place. And we have all of that represented within the land base that we're managing. So I have wetlands with migratory bird populations that I have to be managing. And then we're also really trying to prioritize traditional indigenous resources. So my next, like, big project is really understanding how to manage my grazing around camas production responsibly and to, like, maximum benefit. You asked about the history of the ranch, and what we are is a drop in the bucket in terms of the history of this. Of this land base.

So this is the traditional homeland of the Spokane people, But this whole area in the. In, like, the inland northwest, all the tribes had a lot of trade relationships and intermarriage and political alliances, and also, like, got together to harvest food resources. The main resources of this region are camas, which is this beautiful purple flower which has a starchy tuber bulb that's really high in protein. It was incredibly valuable food source. It was traded on a pound for pound basis with salmon. So it was considered as equal, like, in terms of nutritional value to salmon. And then salmon is the other major food source. And then there's, you know, nuts and berries and game, like, making up the other 20% or so of the diet at that time.

But both of those food sources, camas and salmon, have a short harvest season, and then there's a bunch of preservation work to put that food up for the rest of the year. So basically, you need a lot of people do all of that work at once. And so there were these seasonal rounds where people moved around to do that work. Anyway, that's all to say that a lot of other tribes utilize this area. But the place that we are in specifically is the Camas, breadbasket of the inland northwest. This area around Cheney was a huge camas plantation, which was not recognized by European settlers as agriculture. But if you've ever dug camas with native people and seen the procedure for doing that, obviously this was a sustainable, cultivated food system that fed people. It was general plenty for, like, 10,000 or more years.

There are camas ovens that have been in continuous use for 5,000 years in places in this area. So there is a rich history of a sustainable food system here. And now just trying to figure out how to get back to that. And I think the more that we understand the Historical context, the better informed we are at how to shape what we need today, even though we live a very different type of life.

What sort of management practices have you begun?

Right now, I'm still very much in, like, learning stage in terms of camas. So we started a really cool partnership with the Salish School of Spokane a few years back. They're an indigenous language immersion program in Spokane. They're K through 8 or preschool through 8. They actually maybe take. I think they maybe have even littler kids than that. The kids get all their academic classes in Salish all day long, and then they also participate in a lot of traditional cultural gathering. Oh, my gosh, this school is so great.

I'm going to give a plug. If anybody feels like they just have a little extra money in their pocket they need to put somewhere. You can send a donation to the Salish School of Spokane. Just Google it. You'll find their website. S A L I S H School of Spokane. They are such a great organization. And, yeah, we established this relationship with them a few years ago to bring their students out to harvest camas.

And we also have a lot of tulies, which are this reed that grows in the wetland areas. That's a plant that I grew up thinking had absolutely no use other than it grew in water. It is one of the fundamental, like, textile materials for indigenous people. Like all of their teepee coverings, bats, anything, like what you would eat off of what you would sit on on the ground, were all traditionally woven out of tulies, which are this incredible material. They're, like, spongy. When they get wet, they sweat, swell up and become water resistant. They have insulation property. Yeah, really, really cool.

And I just had no idea that this was even a resource at all. Sometimes I feel like I'm looking at the land with, like, just baby eyes. I'm just now learning what it is that I'm looking at and managing. So I'm in a very exploratory phase. But, yeah, they've also brought students out to harvest tulies so that they can do traditional stuff, but they also do, like, contemporary art projects with them because, you know, like, they're about cultural preservation, but they're very much about keeping their culture alive and here and now. So that has been an awesome relationship. And I'm learning lots more about, like, what resources are already in existence on the ranch and how we can time our other activities around how to make sure that we're protecting those resources and helping them thrive.

This episode of the Farm walks podcast was funded by the USDA National Institute of Agriculture afri grant number 2022-68-00637269. Complexity and trade offs in animal agriculture Sustainability. Building awareness and trust between. Between producers and consumers.

My other big learning right now is just understanding fire as a management tool.

Yeah. And you had lived through quite the experience.

We had a pretty major fire in the area. The Gray fire came through the ranch, which burned 10,000 acres in total. It blew up to 10,000 acres in 24 hours. So it was just a massive fire. There were over 200 homes destroyed. So we thankfully just lost trees and grass and one very used four wheeler and a small structure. But yeah, no primary residences or anything like that for us, thankfully. And all of our animals were safe.

But yeah, we did have to evacuate for several days and we had to leave our cows behind. I did not have time to take my cows out. And if you look on the fire map, like where I left my cows is the. There's this little circle in the fire that didn't burn and it's where my cows were. Thank God.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah, I mean, I knew they were in a place with that, that was wet, so they would be okay. Like, I figured it would burn around them. But yeah, that was a really wild experience. And I mean we're very. I was always raised with a huge awareness of fire, especially with the freeway going through the middle of the ranch. Like. Like even when I was a very small child, like, you just always knew that fire was a risk that we had to be super, super vigilant all the time about fire because people are always driving through the middle of the ranch and it's easy for somebody to throw a cigarette out the window or. We actually had a fire in 2018, so this is the second kind of major fire I had experienced.

That fire was a lot smaller and only burned about 100 acres. But that was caused by a tow chain off of a vehicle on the highway.

Just dragging and sparked or something like that.

Yeah, just dragging and throwing sparks. But it was also in August when it was just. It's just so incredibly dry here. Like, generally we get precipitation from October to May. So our summers, like by August it is like just tinderbox. And especially like that's incredibly exacerbated by climate change and development.

Yeah. How many acres was it that was touched by the fire?

It was about 450 acres. So a little over half the ranch burned.

What kind of recovery had to come in that aftermath?

There was the immediate recovery that needed to Happen because I came back to my cows standing in this little patch of green surrounded by fire, with no fences and the freeway still running past it.

Oh, gosh.

There was immediate, like, well, they're probably not going to go from the green place out into the ring of fire onto the freeway, but at some point, somebody's going to get the idea to walk through the ring of fire onto the freeway. So there was a lot of just like mad scramble building fence, like crazy. And like simultaneously putting out spot fires while you're building fence, which was. Yeah, it was a very intense, like, immediate 30 days getting the things that absolutely needed to be taken care of. And then. Yeah, the way that those fires burn, they go down into the stumps. So we did have spot fires coming up for literally a month after that fire. You just have to constantly.

Yeah, TNR had a presence, you know, for about a month afterwards as well. Yeah. So now we're kind of out of like emergency response into from there. We had a lot of salvage logging to do, just going and. And cutting down the trees that. That were killed that could be saved and sold. And we're still kind of in the process of doing that. Although then the weather's also been really challenging.

We had a mild winter, but it's been very wet, so that has really slowed down. You know, heavy equipment, can't go places when it's muddy. So, yeah, we're a little behind timeline on that, but that's all right. And now we're just building fence, lots of fence building, but we're making steady progress. My dad is a fencing warrior and he hacks away at it every day.

And what about how has the fire affected productivity on the ranch?

Well, I think we won't really know that until we get into the growing season.

Yeah. Yeah.

But I can tell you based on. Based on the fire we had in 2018, there was a massive increase in productivity. So I'm expecting a bonkers grass year because you're just cycling so much carbon back onto the soil surface and you're removing tree canopy, which means a lot of sunlight's hitting the ground. So as long as we. We get a good squirt of rain and it doesn't dry out too fast. Although you can never count on anything anymore, weather wise.

But you could have a little baby silver lining in there.

Yeah, I think this year we're going to have a good grass year. And then of course, there's going to be a lot of ongoing management. But I really do think that fire has traditionally been a Huge ecological management tool from an indigenous management standpoint in this region. And that's been almost completely suppressed for 200 years. And then we've done a lot of really, really, I wouldn't say stupid, I would say single minded development because I live on a suburban urban, because we're 16 miles from Spokane. Like there's been so much development in the county over the last 10. Well, I mean it's been steady pressure, but especially even in the last five years it's just been a, a ton of stuff added and we have county commissioners that are very focused on growth and not particularly focused on what that growth is going to look like, especially in the context of climate change. So anyway, I'm really, really interested in how fire has traditionally been used, which was to basically regularly clear out that underbrush so that the latter few doesn't accumulate.

If you look at, oh my God, it is such a, like, it really is a nightmare the way that ponderosa pine grows. If you don't thin it like all of these tiny little saplings will grow like little 1 inch trees that are all next to each other. And there needs to be some kind of force, whether that's fire or grazing to thin or you know, or manual like removal of trees by human labor, which I have done a lot. Like we do a lot of brush clearing and hat and we've done a lot of DNR fuel reduction projects which did help. We can, we can definitely see places in the fire and that will, so that'll be a really interesting thing for us to watch. There will be so many things to observe. We have places that burned five years ago and burned this time. We have places, and especially because our neighbors all burned too under their different management regimes, places that have been heavily overgrazed, where you can actually see that the fire stopped because there was nothing.

Which maybe doesn't look the greatest on the like a broad scale land management, but is a good case for how grazing can be used to create fire breaks. When you like intentionally do that kind of overgrazing in a focused way. Yeah, we can see how our fuel reduction projects, which we took several different techniques towards, have worked and then we'll be able to see how that fire impacts the Camas fields that we've been harvesting over the last several years. And I have places where canvas has been harvested and canvas has not been harvested that both burned. So I think you have a lot.

Of, what do they call it, citizen science opportunities.

Yes. Yeah. If anybody feels inspired to come do some monitoring on some of these Projects.

Any WSU grad students out there listening. And I think, you know, like you were mentioning, you know, so Pops is in full blown fence fixing mode. But you had mentioned when we spoke earlier about a really cool crew that you have also been working with, and they came out to do some fence fixing and building with y' all.

Yeah, that's another.

A nice little reciprocity story.

Yeah, it's another really cool relationship that we've built over the last couple years with this organization called Hunters of Color, which is a nationwide organization, but they have state by state chapters. So actually a friend of mine from grad school is involved in the organization. That's how I got hooked up with them. But I kind of had mentioned to him, like, hey, if you guys ever need a place to host a camp or do a hunt, let me know. Because we're always looking for ways to engage in reparations work. And I'm really open minded to what forms that takes. And I'm also super pragmatic and I really like to get stuff done. So I don't like to let big scary ideas get in the way of forward progress.

That's a. That's a very core tenant of my social justice work. I really want to normalize people starting to explore these ideas. So part of our reparations work has been working with this organization, Hunters of Color, and helping people of color have access to land. Because I was mentioning that feeling of freedom that I was so privileged to grow up with. That is something that I actually fundamentally believe is a human right and that all people should have access to. So we're always looking for opportunities to kind of share our land base with other folks and especially people that have historically been disadvantaged or excluded from those opportunities. So this partnership with hundreds of Color is an awesome way to do that.

We hosted a turkey camp for them. They brought a bunch of folks out and they. They really try to get people into hunting who maybe didn't grow up with those type of traditions. They pair novice hunters with experienced mentors, and then they host all kinds of really cool events like shotgun safety classes and duck hunts. And yeah, we have a lot of turkeys on the ranch. So we put together this turkey hunt. You know, the folks that came out were just like, so awesome. Some of the best guests we've ever had.

They had a great time, really enjoyed the opportunity to be out on the land. And then we had this fire a few months after that. And I could not believe the response that I got from that group. I had a lot of people say like, oh yeah, I'll come help you fence. But they actually showed up. Like 15 people from this group all showed up to help me fence over a weekend. We got like a mile of fence built.

Wow.

Yeah, they're just such an awesome group. I would totally recommend anyone else that like owns a chunk of land that might be able to host an event with them. Like, oh man, reach out. They are so great. And it's a great way for people that own land to give back and build relationship with folks you might not otherwise build relationship with. Which I think is good.

Yeah. And again, taking that like privilege of the land access you've kind of intergenerationally inherited and being able to, to share that back with so many different groups, whether it's the hunting group or the Salish school. It's fantastic to see like I have been able to follow your story from afar to see all the different things that you've come up with and ways to reach out to different groups and it's fantastic. And another one that you've got a couple rounds under your belt now is a cowgirl camp which yeah, that's a.

Really cool program that we host at the ranch. We do this five day boot camp for women and femmes and non binaries. Y' all are welcome to of course. So it's, it's five days of everything you need to know about regenerative animal agriculture. Ish. So it's not like it's only five days. We can't fit everything of course, but really try to give people a good introductory level to, to all of the basic things you should think about. So we talk about, we talk about grazing planning, we talk about ecological monitoring and how to look at your pasture health.

One of my co facilitators, Sandy Matheson, she's a veterinarian. So she speaks to the animal welfare, the reproductive side of things. We talk a little bit about business management and low stress livestock handling, fencing in facilities. There's just a little bit of everything that you need to know before you get started. And that's here at the ranch. Everybody camps out in my yard and it's always just a really great time.

Yeah, again, just like it's so great that you and your family are willing to open up your home and your land. And it's been cool too. Like you've been, you and your pops have been farm walks hosts in person a couple of times. It's always just been cool to come and scope out different areas of the farm, different topics with you All. So thank you for all of the good educational and access work you're putting out there into the world, Beth. It's great.

Well, you know, I think for me I just so much want to build community around all of this work. I think that's, I mean I'm all about that, that cowboy, that solo cowboy life sometimes. But I'm really happiest when I'm in community with other good folks doing good work. So I think anytime we can reach and create relationship that makes the work that we're doing stronger.

Awesome. Well, you know, you do have some other stars over there which we haven't talked about much yet. And that's your cows. So tell us a little bit more about those ladies and gentlemen, those black beauties out there and like a couple little tidbits about where you've taken your breeding management and then where you're going with that beef. We had kind of started to talk about that at the beginning and let's get to it, let's talk about where that food is going and how it's getting there.

We have Black Angus, Aberdeen Angus Cross cattle with a little bit of a Heinz 57 of a bunch of other stuff because all of the cows are descendant from the cows that my dad had when I started. So it was a commercial mostly black Angus herd. But we had Herefords before that, you know. And when we made the switch to her Angus we just bought black bulls and bred that on. So there's a, there's a bit of diversity in the background and you see that because we have lots of broccol faced cows and I've got a couple red ones out there, but they're mostly black and they're mostly little. And that's what we were really going for with the Aberdeen Angus or they were called low lying Angus at the time we started getting into them. But that, that was a decision that was made around the time we got, we decided to get into grass finishing. Seriously.

It became apparent to me pretty quickly that grass fed beef was a little more nuanced than just not feeding them grain to really like get good, consistent, high quality finish. I still am always working on my consistency in that. I think that's, that's something you never have complete control over because you're working with living creatures and lots of variables. But we've found for lots of reasons we like the smaller framed Angus. They just seem to finish a little better on grass, have a little lower feed requirement. Personally I find them safer to work around having been run over a thousand Pound cow and an 800 pound cow. I prefer the 800 pound cow when it comes down to it. Yeah.

So like I, I do enjoy working with, I mean we're not trying to hold on to any animals that are getting aggressive with anybody. Of course we breed for docility, but yeah, the reality is when you're, when you're handling animals, especially when they're hurt, it's a little easier when they're a little smaller. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, we've been really happy with those changes in our genetics and we've also just done a lot of heavy selective culling and really trying to build cows that fit our management regime. So I'm really inspired by the Lassiter breeding techniques, which is the guy that put together the beefmaster breed. It's really just about putting your cows in, basically putting them in challenging situations and then seeing who brings a calf and.

Who's keeping up in this, in this scenario?

Yeah. And so I have, I think over, you know, the, I mean my dad was doing some of that prior to, to my arrival, but I think over the last 15 years we've built some pretty hearty little cows that get really, really fat on grass, which is great.

And you said you are bringing about 30 head market per year right now?

Yeah, so through our custom beef program, we were doing about 30. We also sell a little that goes USDA through our local food hub in Spokane. They have like a multi farm CSA that has a meat add on, so we sell into that.

And are you going to be continuing USDA specifically or are you feeling or you have challenges there as well with access?

Well, I think the USDA situation is actually a little less dire in my region than the custom meat processing. But that's because a lot, there's been a lot of changes in the last couple years too in terms of like capacity opening up. So that, yeah, the USDA situation I would say seems a lot better than it did. But I'm also trying to take this opportunity to just stay flexible with my business model. As much as I really love the direct marketing and I like knowing where my animals end up, I also can see from a land management perspective like getting into more of a, like shifting towards more of a stalker model. Especially given just the variability of climate and productivity from year to year. Man, there are times when I'm like, if I could just buy the number of steers I knew I had the grass for this year and then get rid of them and not be feeding cows over the winter. It seems like that would be a really nice change of pace.

So.

Yeah, I mean, I am considering like just cutting my, my cowherd back a little bit and letting the custom beef business shrink naturally and figuring out other avenues, but I haven't made any decisions yet. Yeah, I'm still kind of exploring my options there.

So right now, currently, if someone wanted to purchase your beef, they could potentially get it through a link box or they could contact.

There should be. I should be in the add ons for Linkbox in this coming year. So you can sign up for. If you're. If you're local to Spokane, you can sign up for Linkbox and get the beef add on and so many other great add ons there. The best thing about Linkbox is I get to be in a big box with all my friends all the time. And there's. Yeah, there's cheese and chicken and man, they have all kinds of stuff.

Yeah. So having worked in the different roles that I have in the state and like locally to be kind of like a meat advocate or local meat advocate, I guess I should say, and keeping track of all the different regions and who has access to what. It's, it's. It has been a little bit dire and it's interesting to hear in your region that it's a little different for you that you're still being able to maintain some access to usda, at least the amount of access that's working for your business model. And that is the scary thing is losing are really solid. It sounds like custom exempt butcher in your area. So that's really hard. I would like to be able to talk to Sarah Lemon a little more from the WSDA and WA meetup about some of those things.

So we'll get into that in a little bit too. But Beth, thank you so much for sharing your story and all of the little tidbits along the way and all the cool work you're doing.

Thank you.

If you're ready, we're gonna slip into some rapid fire questions. Okay. You into it?

Exciting. Let's go.

All right, cool. What do you love about farming?

Being outside.

Right. I mean, you talked about that land calling you in like a siren. What do you not love?

Having to feel like I have to rebuild the entire food system instead of just being able to do what I want to do. Yeah.

Yeah.

Why do we always have to be like change agents all the time? We just like do things.

Yeah. So profoundly broken. Like at every level, it's pretty bad.

What are your favorite things to do in the off season or when you're not farming, if that, if that exists.

In the winter, it's taking a bath. In the summer, it's sitting in my hammock.

If you could pick up any certain skill, like immediately just be an expert at it, what would it be?

Framing and building.

That's a good one.

I wish I could just be one of those guys that, like, builds a log cabin on TikTok in like 60 seconds.

I feel like often the responses to that question have stuff to do with building or fixing things. Well, cool. And where can folks learn more about you and your farm?

The ranch website is lazyrbeef.com you can also go to newcowgirlcamp.com or roots of resilience.org to learn more about Cowgirl Camp. Linkfoods.com is how you sign up for Linkbox.

Yeah, and I'll, you know, Beth was in the New York Times. If anybody missed that whole moment.

Was a big, it was a big deal. A lot of reality TV producers call you after your name appears in the New York Times, no matter how oblique. That's what I learned. That's no reality TV show yet, but maybe next year.

Yeah, come on Netflix, get with it.

Thank you so much, Beth, for making time to be here with us today. I really appreciate it. Up next, we're talking with Sarah La Lemon with the WSDA Regional Markets Program and WA Meetup. Hear what sort of resources and offerings the wsda, WSU and WA Meetup have coming your way and how you can stay connected.

Hello, my name is Sarah Lemon and I'm the local meat marketing specialist with the Regional Markets Program at the Washington State Department of Agriculture Regional Markets Program works to support the local meat chain by connecting small farms, ranches, and local meat processors to resources that help improve capacity and access to local markets. You can learn more at our website agr.wa.gov farmfoodbiz or visit us at wameetup.com.

Hi Sarah, welcome and thank you for sticking around and listening to us.

Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for having me. Nicole and Beth, it's just always so inspirational to hear more about your story and your family's ranch and all the cool things that you've got going on there.

Oh, yes, thank you.

So, Sarah, you're a member of the WSDA Regional Markets team and specifically their local meat marketing specialist. What's your background? How do you find yourself there?

I came from a conservation district and then I have a background in food policy, specifically around Meat and slaughter policies. And then I also, you know, I grew up in the suburbs but wanted to be a cowgirl kind of opposite of that a little bit there. I farmed for a couple of years, first in Arkansas and then in New York before coming up here to Washington to work on a goat dairy. So yeah, I love that cowgirl life. Although, you know, I think it's helpful to have people that have experience in these sort of resource provider roles because it provides, I think, just a different perspective. You know, I'm not out there doing it every day, but I know what it's like to fix a fence in, you know, 115 degree weather or rain or snow or whatever. So, yeah, happy to be here at the wsda.

Yeah, I fully agree. I think it adds so much value when you do have that frame of reference of what it takes to be a farmer. And we were talking a little bit about some of the processing challenges happening for Beth in the inland Northwest area. Can you speak to just kind of the overall climate for meat processing in Washington right now?

Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, Beth's story is not unique. Labor continues to be one of the top, if not the top issue amongst small to mid sized processors. Everybody's talking about how do I find trained employees, how do I keep employees between that and waste. The challenges facing the small processing industry are just really incredible. And they have been like that for 50 years. So it's kind of cool to hear best story about having a good relationship with a processor. And I'm sorry that they've had to scale back, but yeah, it's tough out there.

I think right now in the state we probably have about 140 custom meat shops. And I think the thing that people maybe don't always appreciate is that's all sorts of processing. So that's, you know, that's not 140 slaughterers, that's not 140 butcher shops. That's across the whole sector. And in different parts of the state, butchery might be the hang up or slaughter might be the hang up, but we're working on it. The WSDA has put together a number of grant programs. We've been very generously funded the past couple of years by the state legislature. So we're hopeful that some of those plants will start coming online and we'll see that increase in capacity.

Would you mind sharing a little bit more about the most recent grant release and any of the other like educational events that are coming up through WA Meetup?

Yeah, absolutely. So we had a grant round. It was open for most of November and we had, I think, 83 applicants just in the meat sector alone. That grant was also available to the rest of the food system. So your veg, dairy, etc. Sort of folks. The request for those meat projects was $30 million, and we had only about $750,000 to give out for this grant round. And unfortunately, the meat and poultry program didn't make the cut into the final budget.

At the Washington State Legislature, we're hoping to ask for a request again for the next biennium to keep that program going because we know it's really important and there's clearly, you know, we had $30 million of requests.

There's.

There's still a need out there. But yeah, I'm very excited for those projects to get going. Big diversity of people doing slaughter versus butcher versus value added, cold storage, you name it. And we really tried to make sure that we were being equitable in our distribution across the state to support as many producers as we could. And that grant will have another round and then there's some funding that will be available in fall of 2025 as well.

Nice. And how about some meetup activities for people to kind of get to know you get to know the programs that are happening and different resources.

Yeah, I mean, I would love to come to cowgirl camp. I think that would be the most fun WA meetup personally. But if you don't have 5 days to spend. WSU has this really cool butcher truck that WSDA helped pay for through the WA Meetup Collaborative, which is partnership between WSU and wsda. And we're taking the butcher truck on the road. So we're actually taking this big, beautiful truck. It's refrigerated. You can process meat in it.

I will say it doesn't have slaughter capabilities, so, you know, maybe a little bit more friendly for kids. But yeah, we're heading up to Sequim and then we'll be at Deer park, heading to Monroe. We'll hit the Okanagan Walla, Walla, trying to reach all of these different areas of the state. So if you sign up on wameetup.com which I have to say, Nicole designed the website and it's beautiful.

What can people expect if they go to some of those butcher truck events? What kind of topics are y' all going to be covering?

Yeah, so it's kind of, you know, you can choose your own adventure a little bit. We have two different offerings. We've got a shorter one day offering that'll feature a demonstration. Dr. Paul Kuber from WSU is going to demo some exciting new ways to break down, I think a lamb leg or maybe a pork loin, depending on what the class you go to is. And then the afternoon for those workshops is all about working on your business, thinking about, working with customers, thinking about, you know, where you can improve efficiencies in your business to try to help both your quality of life and overall business viability. And then if you're loving that and you want to go all the way in, we have three three day workshops around the state. And these workshops are like really intensive, species specific.

So there's one on lamb, there'll be a beef one and then a pork or possibly pork lamb combo. And again, you can go to the WA Meetup Facebook page or thewahmeatup.com for more information about those. And those workshops cover everything you know from reading, feeding, how that affects meat quality through harvest, to processing and value added stuff. And I think Paul's planning to grill, so.

Ooh, yeah, that's always the best, like end result in these scenarios. Is that the food part? The eating part?

Exactly.

Great. Well, that's so cool. Sarah, thank you for taking a moment to come and share more about yourself and about the cool programs that you are helping to support and obviously, yeah, the support that you're providing for processors and farmers and ranchers throughout the state. Thank you.

Thank you for the invitation.

Did you enjoy this episode? You can rate, review and subscribe on Spotify, Apple podcasts and@farmwalks.org or wherever you access your favorite podcast transcripts, show notes, episode evaluation form and additional links about episode topics can be found online@farmwalks.org and finally, a shout out to our Farm Walks podcast production team. Behind the scenes logistics in general wrangling by Kate Smith of WSU Food Systems Sage Zaha Ordani of Tilth Alliance Aaron Mason, our audio engineer, theme music by Abacus Farm Walks website logo and pot art by Riled Up Goats. And I'm your Farm Walks podcast host, Farmer Nicole. Thanks everyone.