Tuolumne County ranchers process locally raised beef
By Caleb Hampton Leslie Hurst got an early start to cat- tle ranching. “My grandfather gave me my first calf when I was 6 years old,” she said. “I’ve been in the cattle business ever since.” As a small-scale rancher in Tuolumne County, she took pride in taking care of her cattle, running a hands-on ranch and raising all-natural grass-fed beef. “We’re out there feeding them and checking on them every day,” she said. Hurst, who retired from raising cattle in 2021, and a handful of other long- time ranchers in the area knew they had a product they wanted to market to local customers. “Instead of going to the grocery store and buying meat from Kansas, we wanted them to come to us and buy meat from Tuolumne County,” Hurst said. But regulations on the slaughter and sale of beef meant they had little choice but to put their cattle up for auction or sell them to various buyers. “It is really hard to raise your own cattle and take it from pas- ture to plate,” explained Lettie Beeman, another Tuolumne County rancher. Finally, in 2008, Rawhide Meats in Jamestown, the area’s only meat processing plant, went up for sale. Five
local ranching families, including Hurst and Beeman, bought it and went into business together. If they processed their own meat, they were allowed to sell it to customers. The owners started out processing some of their own meat, which they used themselves or sold at farmers markets, and providing cut-and-wrap services for ranchers and people raising animals on small farms or in their backyards. The locally raised meat was a hit and the business grew. “We just gradually ex- panded the retail side of it,” Beeman said. In 2014, when a pizzeria on Jamestown’s Main Street went out of business, Rawhide Meats rented the building and opened a retail store. Today, the same five families continue to operate the business—one part pro- cessing plant and one part retail store— located, as the crow flies, a few hundred yards from each other on either side of Table Mountain. While Rawhide Meats has grown, its primary selling point hasn’t changed. “Where did my food come from?” That’s a question co-owner Dick Gaiser said he hears more and more. At Rawhide Meats, “we can trace it every step of the way,” Gaiser said.
Co-owners Leslie Hurst, left, and Tricia Gardella work at Rawhide Meats in Jamestown. Five ranching families purchased the area’s only meat processing plant and went into business together.
While each of the co-owners does it a little differently, for the most part, their cattle are born on Jamestown and Sonora ranches and raised there, among low rolling hills and oak trees, until they are about 6 months old. At that point, Gaiser takes his cattle to the mountains to graze for a few months before bringing them back to the ranch to wean. “It’s all right here in this county,” he said. “People appreciate that.”
When the cattle are around 2 years old— or 1,800 pounds—the owners take six to eight head at a time to a slaughterhouse in Modesto. “I just realized there’s a time. If I can bring my calves up to that time, and I’ve given them two years of the best care they could possibly have, running free in a pasture,” Hurst said, “then I’ve done my part.”
See BEEF, Page 20
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April 12, 2023 Ag Alert 9
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