MAY, Idaho — Caryl and Glenn Elzinga started their grass-fed beef production business from scratch. They came to eastern Idaho in 1987, soon after they were married, and both had seasonal jobs with the Bureau of Land Management. They lived on a small ranch near Tendoy and began raising beef to sell direct to customers.

By 2004 they were selling 160 yearlings annually direct to individuals and natural food stores, with a waiting list.

“This program kept getting bigger, until we outgrew that little place and moved to a large ranch near May, Idaho,” Caryl said.

Purchasing that ranch was a complex challenge because there were many players involved — Idaho Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries, The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Idaho Power.

“I insisted on reading the easement document and realized we needed to change a lot of things to make it work,” she said. “Some people think we had this ranch given to us, but we are still paying on the mortgage, two decades later The Nature Conservancy has been a great partner, however, and the easement does not preclude us from doing anything we want to do.”

Caryl homeschooled all seven of their girls—and now helps with the grandkids. Four of their daughters are still working on the ranch.

Four years ago, Caryl was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, making it harder to do the physical jobs.

“I still go out with Glenn to look at plants, and to figure out what we’ll do next with the cattle management, but I haven’t been on a horse for many years,” she said. “I still run all the finances and a lot of models, trying to figure out how to make things better. We don’t have any outside money, so everything we do has to make a little money.”

Until three years ago, Caryl ran much of the shipping business but now has some help with that.

“I’ve become more involved with the actual marketing,” she said. “We used to do it all through our website, and it’s still there for orders, but we now rely more on social media for new customers.”

Several of the girls are excellent photographers, with many photos on the website and social media.

“We keep gaining new customers and they want to know about the beef, how it was raised, and about the family who raised it,” she said.

“We have taken a relatively small operation and created a larger source of income that is sustainable for the family; we can keep our kids employed at a decent wage and give other people jobs,” Caryl said. “Currently, we have five full-time employees who are not family. In summer we have a couple temporary employees, and also run an internship program; we bring in young people for three to five weeks to ride with us on the range to help take care of the cattle.”

Their range operation is unique in that they have total control over where the cattle graze, and when. Because of problems with wolves, they have a crew that lives with the cattle, herding them to new grass every day and bringing them back to camp at night to a battery-powered electric fence enclosure.

Camp is periodically moved to different areas. This system has been good for the range and for the cattle; they no longer have any killed by wolves or die from eating larkspur, and the cattle gain more weight being always on the best grass. They are also kept out of riparian areas and can be used as a tool for ideal range management.

Another benefit from this type of grazing is that the cattle get the nutrient benefit from all kinds of different plants and a well-balanced diet. The meat produced is healthier for the people who eat it.

“A researcher at Utah State University has been testing beef with a process in which he can evaluate meat for all the compounds in it,” Caryl said. “He tested some of our beef and said it was the first beef he’d found that has an omega 6-omega 3 ratio that is 1-to-1.”

“Good grass-fed beef might have a ratio of 3-to-1 or maybe 2-to-1. Typical feedlot beef can be 6 to 12 omega 6 fatty acids to 1 omega 3. The ratio in our beef, by contrast, rivals that in sardines,” Caryl said.

Her goal has been to produce healthy beef on healthy rangelands and help educate people about benefits of beef and the true value of properly managed rangelands.