Our Story
Our Story
Many people ask why we do what we do…the simple answer is, we love it! My name is Lisa Hammer, my husband Garrett and I bought Grassroots Meats from my parents in November of 2023. My parents, Allan and Lois Higgins, have been ranching since the early 80’s. After learning how finishing cattle on grass was healthier for the animals, the consumer, and the environment, they switched from conventional ranching to pasture finishing and never looked back. My love for animals began ranching with my parents and I grew up raising steers for 4-H. Now my four children are all part of the business and ranching life in their own ways. We are 3 generations deep with over 20 years of experience and dedication, bringing the healthiest meat to your family’s table!
Family, faith, and hard work are what our family lives by. Together we take turns irrigating and moving the cows as a family. I have been involved in the ranching side of the business and meat sales off and on for 20 years. My son Kyler started ranching when he was tiny alongside his grandpa and myself. Now he and my youngest, Teeg, raise the heritage pork. The pigs are out in open pasture 24/7 and the boys love being outside with the animals. Teeg has a blast riding horses, driving the side-by-side and helping his big brother with the pigs. Kyler hopes to raise his family in ranching and continue the business for years to come. My daughters Reece and Taylor also have ranched with the family since they were small. My oldest daughter, Taylor is out in California pursuing her dreams. Reece has higher needs and being outside, and running around with the animals, is an important part of her life.
Our goal is to keep the family business growing over the years. We want to scale the herd to provide more families with the tastiest and healthiest meat on the market. Our hope is to continue to do what we love to do: ranch in the beautiful San Juan Mountains, love the animals, and appreciate them for what they provide our family and yours.
Why Grass Finished?
Technically all cows are grass-fed. The conventional and even organic grass-fed labels can be deceiving. We all want to feed our families the healthiest food possible in the most humane way. Large companies know that and will use wordplay to sell you an idea- but not be forthright in their actual methods. We stand by our practices and give our animals the life they deserve on pasture for the entirety of their lives. Eating what God intended them to, grass. No grain ever.
“For years we were involved in commodity beef as most ranchers- completely bought the whole idea of finishing cattle on grain. One year we even retained ownership through the feedlot, hoping to be able to make a profit that way. Didn’t happen, and when the medical bills started coming in on the animals we started to panic. We called the feedlot owner and were told that our animals were pretty healthy and our bill was not nearly as high as other rancher’s bills. Hmmmmmm.
We are located in southern Colorado near the New Mexico border, and our two kids grew up on a small ranch raising grain-finished steers for our 4-H program. We got pretty good at it and won Grand Champion several times. Lambs too. And pigs. And rabbits. Didn’t have a goat program back then or I am sure we would have tried that. Our daughter was even reserve champion in her breed at the state fair once. That was the year we learned how all the games were played at the state fair and all the things you could do to the animals to push them and pump them and legally medicate them. It was a very interesting learning experience.
In the meantime, Allan was guiding hunters on the side. One year he had a hunter that would rather talk to him about grass-finishing beef and intensive rotational grazing than hunt. He introduced him to the Stockman Grass Farmer magazine. It turned out to be a great source of information. The more Allan learned the more it made sense. He began to talk about butchering one of our animals straight from the field instead of sending it to the sale barn and eventually the feed lot. I protested greatly. We were about grain finished, not grass. I had spent years trying to get buyers to the 4-H auction, very carefully explaining to them that this was the best quality beef available anywhere. How could we continue in 4-H when his mind was elsewhere? Allan saw this as a chance to be in control instead of being controlled. However, unless we were convinced that grass-finished was BETTER for the consumer as well as for the animal there was no way we were going to change.
I will always remember the evening that we had our first bite of meat from our steer. Allan insisted that I pick the calf, knowing it would be important to me that the animal was showing “finish”. Since we had heard about the awful experiences other folks had eating grass-finished beef, I chose a nice, plump Hereford steer that showed a lot of nice finish. We grilled a sirloin steak, my personal favorite. No special seasonings, no marinade, just beef, salt and pepper. From my first taste, I was completely sold on grass finished beef. I had never tasted beef with more flavor, and the tenderness was all there. No complaints whatsoever.
After this I became more interested in and involved in Allan’s research. He began to educate me about the health benefits of grass-finished meats. We were introduced to the importance of omega-3s and CLA. We learned that in grain-finished animals the presence of these essential fatty acids were greatly diminished. This is because they are a product of photosynthetic process and require the presence of green grass. Something feedlot cattle have no access to. So although the animals entered the feedlot with a good level of both, after 150 days in the feedlot they had less than 25% of the omega 3 and CLA left in their system. We also learned that eating corn causes the animals to have much more saturated fat. Grass-finished has higher amounts of vitamin A & E. From the human viewpoint this looks convincing. When we learned that cattle lack a critical enzyme necessary for digesting grain, this closed the deal for us.
It explained why we had so many bloat problems with our 4-H animals. Why so many of them got sick and some died when finishing on corn. The feedlot system of feeding grain in confinement is a new concept. Before WWII no one finished animals on grain in confinement. Grain became a cheap and abundant commodity post war and feeding it to animals seemed like a perfect way to use up the surplus. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that the commodity program of feed lots and grain finishing took over the market. That’s why only people alive before WWII and very few ranchers even, realize that the meat today does not taste the same as when they were growing up.
Some grass-finished programs still feed their cattle grain and can legally claim the grass-fed, grass-finished label by fattening them up, up to 30 days before butchering. While I suppose this is better than a feedlot, we’ve become purists of sorts. We want the real deal and our customers do too. We learned that you can’t just take a steer off the grass and process it. There is an art and science to produce this kind of meat. We think you will agree that you can taste the difference that over 20 years in the business makes!”
-Lisa hammer