The Homestead Story

During the summer of 2009, a group of ranchers and farmers came together to form Homestead Natural Foods. Their collective efforts currently serve a number of highly regarded Treasure Valley restaurants that include the Red Feather Lounge, Bittercreek Alehouse, Le Café de Paris, and the Cottonwood Grille.

Homestead Natural Food’s “beeves” are free of the antibiotics, hormones, and herbicide or pesticide residues associated with grain. What they have is a higher concentration of omega-3 fats, more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA is credited with cancer fighting properties), more beta-carotene, more vitamin E, and less total fat and calories than conventional beef. Grass-fed beef, like wild salmon, also tastes better than its factory farm alternative.

“Our steers look like they came right off the feed lot, with good marbling in the fat,” sixth-generation Idaho rancher Ed Wilsey points out, “but the fat tastes more like a fine olive oil, and the meat has an excellent flavor and tenderness.”

Homestead Natural Food’s approach to a more sustainable and healthy food supply is to begin with the soil itself. “We’re all of us grass farmers first, and beef is the by-product,” says Wilsey. “My granddad always said, “take care of the land and it will take care of you. We’ve cut our soil erosion down to practically nothing – the cows don’t take anything out that they don’t put back in.”

In this Local Food, Local Voices podcast episode, we’ll meet the ranchers and farmers who have joined together to create Homestead Natural Foods, and we’ll learn the reasons they’ve turned they’re back on the commercial beef industry to return to pasture-raised livestock.

To read our Behind the Menu Profile on Homestead Natural Foods, click here.