About 30 minutes away, at Highlife Ranch.

When we were at the Cow Yoga last weekend, the owner of the ranch told us that we were welcome to come back and get a full tour of the ranch. Joel and I went yesterday and we spent about an hour learning about the ranch and it’s philosophy on raising beef cattle humanely with little stress to the animals. Over the years we had consciously tried to avoid any beef from the grocery stores – Joel had always kept the freezer full with game meat and following Ross at 10mph through the Kansas cattle yards on his RAAM quest was enough for me to be totally disgusted by mass-farmed and processed beef. As the freezer has been depleted of game meat, we wanted to look at local sourced beef. This seems to be the place.

We started our tour looking at some of the bulls that are part of their herd and a bottle-fed baby whose mom didn’t have enough milk. I think that David said the mother was 13 or 14 years old – interesting fact that “normal” beef cattle only produce until they are about 6 years old. They also mature much faster – in 1 1/2 years (probably due to steroids, antibiotics and mass “finishing” operations) whereas the Highland Cattle are very slow maturing and only head to the dinner table at about 3 years old.

Pigs used to be raised on the ranch but are now just pets as the cattle operation took up all of their time.

The Highland Cattle need a lot of shade so the ranch bought this portable shade unit. It has a scratching/brush extension on it that has essential oils that help protect against flies. The shade unit is pulled by a small 4 by 4 and the cows will follow it around the pasture. This is one of the things that helps minimize stress. When moving the cattle they don’t use herding dogs, horses or vehicles – basically the cows are just trained to follow this shade unit or someone with a bucket of treats.

We drove around the main pasture that had the cows and their calves, a few bulls and young steers. The steers being the ones that were being sold for meat once they are 3 years old.

All the cows have tags with their names on them. I chose not to learn any of the names of the steers lest they be the one that ends up on our dinner table. They are quite docile and I was able to brush this one for a little bit until she decided I was a stranger and needed me to move on.

We were very impressed at the care that the family takes of the cows. It is a very thoughtful and humane environment so we decided to get on the list for 1/4 cow sometime in November. Joel took care of the transaction using PayPal which is on the verge of being obsolete, I think. He told me as I was leaving that I needed to figure out how to do Venmo. Put that on my list of things to do.