Where's the beef?: Grandview business relies on native grasses to produce organic meat

GRANDVIEW, Nov 17, 2008 (Cleburne Times-Review - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- SHLD | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Once upon a time in America, before the white man altered prairie society with fast-food restaurants, life in its simplest form was self-sustaining.

Rain fell from the sky. Native grasses grew wild and free. Buffalo ate the grass. Indians consumed the buffalo.

Life in general in 21st century Grandview is as complicated as in other communities, but production of food at one emporium, Burgundy Pasture Beef, follows the 19th century script.

Angus cattle, hogs, lambs and free-range chickens are being grown more or less organically at the Grandview ranch base and at satellite farms and ranches. The cows and lambs are fed nothing but native grasses.

The Indians and the buffalo would be pleased.

"We started this business in 1999," said co-owner Jon Taggart. "Wendy [his wife] and I had been ranching in a kind of conventional way, and that's a tough way to make a living. We decided to come up with a better way and thought about what niche we were going to use."

They opted for healthy and natural.

"Wendy would give you different reasons for it than I would," Taggart said. "I'd give you more economic reasons. She'd give more warm and fuzzy reasons. It's all natural and sustainable, and I'm in agreement with that, but you have to make money."

"Making money is healthy for you, too," said co-owner David MacDonald.

"When we started, we ran the business out of the house," said Taggart, a Fort Worth native. "We had more freezers than Sears ... freezer in the well house, freezer in the barn, three or four in the house.

"We home delivered. That was the only way we could compete. We still home deliver."

MacDonald and wife, Debbie, were friends of the Taggarts before becoming their business partners.

"Our kids go to school together, and we go to church together," said David MacDonald, a Cleburne High grad. "I was selling a business I had in Dallas, and this was very intriguing to me. I thought it was a great opportunity to grow the business together, have some fun along the way, and maybe make some money.

"We haven't made any money yet, but we've had a lot of fun."

From the storefront on Farm-to-Market Road 4, the four sell grass-fed beef and lamb, pasture pork, free-range chicken, eggs, cow-milk cheese and burgers.

"We have a customer base that's a little more concerned with things like reading labels," Taggart said. "The grass-fed product offers some health benefits that some people are looking for.

"The cattle, hogs and lambs are raised in a sustainable, mostly organic way. We're not certified organic, but we operate the ranch completely organic. That's what our customers have told us they want."

"The natural diet of the animal changes the nutritional profile of the beef," said Wendy Taggart. "The fat profile includes a lot more healthy fats."

Jon Taggart runs 300 to 400 head of cattle on 1,370 leased acres.

"We've grown a lot in the last 10 years," he said. "We killed about 15 cows the first year compared to several hundred now. We kill cattle every week and cut beef every week.

"We harvest the cattle at 24 to 28 months. When we started, we had them all the way through. Now, we're buying them all from one ranch [in West Texas]. We bring them here at 800 to 900 pounds."

The pigs, lambs and chickens aren't Grandview-bred.

"A family east of Dallas raises the pigs for us," Taggart said. "They're also the ones who make the cheese. A byproduct of the cheese is whey, which is fed to the pigs, which makes an outstanding pork product.

"The lambs come from a farm up around Paris. They're 100 percent organic. Another farm does the free-range chickens. They have a processing facility of their own."

"All the producers raise the animals to our specifications," MacDonald said. "We finish them here."

The $64,000 question: How does grass-fed beef taste? The answer: Not the same as grain-fed beef. Whether better or not as good is, of course, up to the consumer.

"The grass gives it a little different flavor, and that changes throughout the year," Taggart said. "This time of year, we have a lot of clover and rye grass. We use all Angus cattle. They marble a little better, produce a better carcass than some other breeds. And everyone knows what an Angus is.

"We also dry-age them for 21 days to enhance the tenderness and flavor. The big producers don't do that anymore. It's expensive, and the carcass shrinks."

Taggart has learned much from the Indian and the buffalo. He's put it into practice.

"We don't fertilize," he said. "We practice high-intensity, short-duration grazing. The buffalo would graze in great numbers for a short time, do the fertilization themselves, and then move on to the next pasture to graze.

"We mimic that."

For more information, visit burgundypasturebeef.com

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