Julie Sullivan began to run, her lithe frame pounding up a dirt enbankment after the cows. She waved her hat and gave a yell, trying to turn the errant bovines back to the rest of the herd in a rocky canyon near Saguache, Colo.

Sometimes she’s herding on an all-terrain vehicle while her husband, George Whitten, helps out on horseback.

Normally, they try to move the cows along at a slow pace, no yelling or running. It’s a part of the low-stress livestock handling she and Whitten use with their animals.

But sometimes bovines don’t listen to gentle persuasion.

Sullivan loses only a couple of cows and lets them go. She knows they’ll rejoin the herd later. She wipes sweat from her brow, the hot July sun beating down.

Whitten and Sullivan move cattle every day on the solar-electric fenced-off pastures they lease from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management or at their San Juan Ranch near Saguache in the San Luis Valley.

It’s a hard, back-breaking way to raise beef, but the couple are aiming for something out of the ordinary: creating healthy grasslands while raising certified organic, grassfed beef.

The couple’s approach to managing their San Juan Ranch is as unique as their relationship.

Whitten is a third-generation rancher and son of a World War II Marine veteran who has long tried to walk among both ranchers and environmentalists. Sullivan is a city-raised vegetarian who spent most of a decade living out of a tent as an outdoor educator for the Audubon Expedition Institute at Lesley University in Massachusetts.

When they met eight years ago at his ranch, their respective friends might have predicted disaster. But both have open minds and a commitment to healthy ecosystems. Now they run the ranch together.

Sullivan talks calves, fencing and pastures like an old hand. She even learned to drive when she became a rancher. But she’s still a deep ecologist and a Buddhist who abhors the way conventional agriculture treats animals.

Whitten learned to see animals as more than a commodity and to think even more deeply about his impact on the planet.

Influenced by Kentucky farmer-poet Wendell Berry and Holistic Management International guru Alan Savory, Whitten is convinced good ranching is better for the land on which he lives than organic farming.

“I tried it, but when I sold the crop for human consumption I couldn’t figure out how to get nutrients back in the soil. It is hard to farm both organically and sustainably. I didn’t want to haul in fish emulsion because it has to be trucked in,” he said. “I wanted to do a closed system.”

Whitten went back to ranching, determined to do it better. He didn’t like trucking his cattle to feedlots and then suppliers. But it was the way the system was set up if a rancher wanted to make a profit.

“It’s still hard to find a viable alternative,” Sullivan said.

For the last few years, Whitten and Sullivan have worked to devise a system where their cattle are raised on nothing but grass from birth to slaughter. They change pastures often with solar-electric fencing and move the cattle every day to keep them from overgrazing.

The cattle in turn fertilize, enrich and cultivate the pastures.

Some of their rotated pastures are packed so thickly with more than a dozen species of grass and forbes (other edible plants) in the middle of summer that there’s not a spot of bare ground.

The couple set up their own breeding program to raise smaller, light-framed cattle that do well on nothing but native vegetation.

“They don’t need to be pampered with grain or propped up with medicine,” Sullivan said. “Most organically raised cows end up at feed lots. That’s something they don’t tell consumers.”

The couple pay $2,500 a year to have their pastures and operation certified organic. “It is prohibitive,” Whitten said. “That’s why you have a lot of people who raise organic but aren’t certified.”

Whitten said the family struggles to stay organically certified — it’s expensive and time-consuming. But he and Sullivan are hoping that over time, if their ideas catch on, more local producers and meat processors can make a living.

They sell some of their steers to Pecos Valley Grassfed Beef, which sells at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. The rest they have slaughtered and processed at a small, family-owned facility in Romeo, Colo.

Direct-marketing the beef from their small, 300-head operation was difficult. Saguache is “an extremely economically depressed community,” Sullivan said.

Most people couldn’t afford to buy a quarter, half or whole side of beef. Plus, most people don’t have the freezer space to store that much meat, they said.

But Whitten thought high-quality food should be available to everyone, not just high-dollar customers, so he devised 25-pound bundles of mixed-meat cuts that he sold at $5 per pound.

A hundred and twenty-five dollars “is doable for some people and 25 pounds of meat will fit in a conventional freezer,” Sullivan said. “We give people recipes and tips on how to cook it because grassfed beef must be handled a little differently. We try to make it a positive experience.”

Now they sell their meat directly to friends and neighbors, some in Crestone and some in Alamosa, who sell at the farmers market.

Sullivan does periodically eat meat now. “I eat the meat we raise,” she said. “Part of it is living in a place where the winters are 20 below. I find my body needs it. I’m out moving fence or walking through snowdrifts or pounding holes in the frozen ground.”

Some of Sullivan’s environmentalist friends think she’s gone to “the dark side” by ranching. She sees it differently.

“For all of of my ecological learning and awareness, I think George’s footprint on the planet was smaller than mine,” she said.

“Even though I was an environmentalist and he was a rancher, my impact on the planet was greater. All my food had to be trucked to me.”

u For more information about the San Juan Ranch and its certified organic beef bundles, send an e-mail to moovcows@amigo.net; call 719-655-2003; or send a note to 52501 County Road U, Saguache CO 81149.

u For more information about Holistic Management International, visit www.holisticmanagement.org. Representatives of the organization also will be exhibiting at the Roundup of Local Flavors on Sept. 14.

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Grassfed meat great on the grill, in stews

 

Recipes from George Whitten and Julie Sullivan:

CHILENO VALLEY BEEF STEW

(Serves 4-6)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil, or more as needed
• 2-1/2 lbs of beef stew meat, cut into 3/4-1 inch chunks (chuck roast, chuck steak, or arm roast works well)
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 5 fat garlic cloves, chopped or whole
• 1 cup red wine
• 6-inch sprig of fresh rosemary
• 4 fresh sage leaves
• 2 sprigs fresh oregano
• 2 sprigs thyme, leaves only
• Salt and ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

 

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy ovenproof pot that has a lid

Dredge beef chunks in flour, then brown slowly in the medium-hot oil, until browned on all sides. Remove meat from pan. Add a little more oil if needed, then add onion and garlic and cook gently until translucent and starting to brown; be careful not to burn.

Remove onion-garlic mix from the pot. Put meat back in, add onion and garlic on top. Add wine and enough water to reach almost to the top of the meat. Add the rosemary, sage, and oregano and sprinkle the thyme leaves, salt and pepper over the top.

Cover the pot and place in the oven; after 10 minutes, turn the heat down to 275 degrees or lower (down to 225 degrees is OK — the lower the temperature the longer the cooking time, but this often translates to the tenderest meat.) Cook until the level of the liquid drops by a 1/2 inch or so, leaving a glaze over the exposed meat. (This takes about 3 hours at 275 degrees.) Check every 45 minutes to be sure the level is dropping, but not too rapidly.

If using fresh herbs, pick out the sprigs and serve.

 

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SPICY BRAISED BEEF WITH FERMENTED BLACK BEANS

(Serves 4 to 6)

• 2 pounds chuck roast or steak, removed from the bone and cut into large cubes (a 31/2-pound chuck roast will generally yield approximately 2 pounds meat)
• Salt and pepper
• 3 tablespoons canola or olive oil
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• 11/2 tablespoons salted fermented black beans, rinsed and mashed*
• 1 teaspoon minced or pressed garlic
• 3/4 cup dry white or red wine, preferably with no oak
• 1 cup chicken or beef broth
• 1/2 cup tomato paste
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 generous teaspoon chopped fresh thyme or a scant 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
• 1 teaspoon minced chipotles in adobo (or more to taste)

Season the beef with salt and pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a medium-size Dutch oven or the equivalent over medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmering, brown the beef on all sides, removing pieces to a bowl as they brown. Do not crowd the pan — work in several batches if necessary, adding more oil as needed.

 

When all the meat has been browned, add the remaining oil to the pan and reduce heat to medium. Add the onions and black beans and sauté until the onion begins to turn translucent and the beans become fragrant. Add the garlic (if using) and cook 15 to 20 seconds longer. Add the wine and increase the temperature to medium-high again.

Stir to remove the flavorful bits that may have stuck to the pan and then simmer until the liquid is reduced by half. Stir in the broth, tomato paste, bay leaf, thyme, and chipotles. Return the beef to the pan. Add enough water so that the beef is covered with liquid. Turn the heat up to high, bring to an easy boil and then reduce the heat so that the beef reaches a slow but steady simmer.

Partially cover and cook until the beef is tender, approximately 11/2 hours. When the beef is tender, uncover the pan and, if necessary, simmer the sauce to reduce it to the desired consistency.

*Salted fermented black beans are available at Albuquerque Asian food stores and in the Asian section of some Santa Fe markets. If unavailable, replace with the more widely available black-bean paste with garlic and omit the garlic from the recipe.

Olive oil and Garlic marinaTED

• Rib-eye, Porterhouse or T-bone steak
• 3 tablespoons good olive oil
• 2 teaspoons kosher or coarse salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• Grass-fed beef steak
• Lemon wedges for serving

Mix together in a small bowl. Put steak in a shallow dish and rub mixture all over the meat. Marinate at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours, or better still, covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days. Turn meat from time to time.

Remove steak from refrigerator at least 1 hour before cooking.

Prepare grill so you have areas of lower and higher heat Drain off excess oil. Sear steak over high heat area of grill for 3 to 4 minutes per side. Put steak on low heat area of grill, cover, and turn steak frequently.

This should take 10 to 20 minutes depending on the thickness of the steak. Use an instant-read thermometer and remove steaks from grill when temperature reaches 5 to 7 degrees below the desired degree of doneness.

Let steak rest, covered loosely with foil, for 10 minutes before carving.

Serve with lemon wedges.

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HEALTH BENEFITS OF GRASSFED MEATS

According to the American Grassfed Association, grass-fed animal products have been shown to be higher in beta carotene (vitamin A), conjugated lineolic acid (CLA), Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids, important in reducing the risk of high cholesterol, diabetes, certain cancers and highblood pressure. Grassfed beef’s lower Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acid ratio is linked to reduced heart disease and greater bone
density.

Grassfedmeat products also are lower in fat, cholesterol and calories.

Some sources compare the amount of fat in grassfed beef to that in skinless, boneless chicken breast.

The risk of E. coli contamination in locally raised meats that have been slaughtered and packaged in small facilities is much lower, the organization says.

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