Since June 2000, Kathy Panner and Leonard Gondek (two of the founding members of the Umpqua valley Lamb partnership) have produced natural, grass-fed beef along with their lamb operation. But it wasn’t always this way – they used to send their cattle to feedlots and conventional processing plants when they reached 150 days old, to be sold on the nationwide commodity beef market.

“I never even considered raising grass-fed beef or even processing it myself,” Kathy says. “I had always heard that grass-fed beef didn’t taste as good and … it was easier to sell my cattle to someone else.”

But an Argentinean high school exchange student changed all that. The student, who stayed with Kathy and Leonard for six months at the beginning of 2000, was appalled at how the Panner's ran their cattle business and wondered why they wouldn’t finish them on their beautiful Umpqua Valley pastures. Argentinean beef is always entirely grass-fed, the student argued, and is widely considered the best beef in the world.

Kathy challenged her exchange student to produce and process a grass-fed cow, and then they’d do a taste test. Up until the moment she tasted it, Kathy was convinced it wouldn’t taste good – she only had two steaks cut, because she figured she’d have no use for the rest of the meat. But when she tasted it, she was shocked at how good it was. In a blind taste test among 40 of their closest friends, not a single one said the conventionally produced beef tasted better. Starting right then and there, Kathy and Leonard paired up with another ranching family, Troy and Holly Michaels, and started producing hormone- and antibiotic-free, grass-fed beef. 

For five years, their “Emerald Hills Beef” was the exclusive beef provider for Ashland Food Co-op in Ashland, OR. In 2005, New Seasons Market asked Kathy and Leonard if they’d like to start experimenting with selling their beef in our stores.

Kathy and Leonard held in-store tastings during the first two weeks it was in our stores, but quickly realized they couldn’t do them any more – it increased demand for their beef so much that the stores would run out too quickly. It is now available in all of our stores under our Pacific Village label.

Along with changes to their beef production came a shift in Kathy and Leonard’s environmental practices as well. After getting involved with their local watershed council and other environment- and agriculture-related committees, Kathy and Leonard began to realize that they could minimize the impact they were making to the environment. They now consider themselves not just ranchers, but also environmentalists.  Both their lamb and her beef operations are certified sustainable by Food Alliance, a national certifying organization with headquarters in Portland, and their annual reviews from the organization consistently say their ranch is a model for other sustainable operations.

Now, Kathy, Leonard and their partners are exploring possibilities for producing more for our stores. But there are limits to extent of their pastures. They need to find more producers to work with to expand any further. They’ve also begun to overwhelm the small, family-owned processor that they use to process their cattle. With ingenuity, a little hard work, and perhaps some guidance from New Seasons Market, they should be well on their way.