Hillview Farms Inc. is building a large, open-air monoslope barn with J-Bunks on both sides on its feedlot in the Marysville area, which will allow the family-owned business to expand its cattle operation to 1,500 head per year.
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A local family-owned farm that partners with Whole Foods to sell natural beef is doubling its stocker cattle operation in an effort to vary its commodities.
Hillview Farms Inc., which is owned by the Hobbs family, is building a barn 110 feet wide and 570 feet long on its four-acre feedlot in the Marysville area.
“The barn will move us to a capacity of having as much as 1,500 head a year,” said Cari (Hobbs) Grome, secretary and treasurer of Hillview Farms.
The barn will be an open-air monoslope building, which has a roof truss that is higher on the front side, which faces the south, and slopes toward the back. The barn will have J-Bunks on both sides to feed the cattle.
The feedlot is state certified for over 1,000 head with proper manure management. A second lagoon was recently constructed to collect waste that will then fertilize the surrounding agricultural land.
There is also a pasture near the feedlot, which the cattle may access to graze.
Hillview Farms was established by George Beeson in 1958 on Route 31 north of Marysville. The farm is now a third generation operation.
Beeson, who passed away in May, and his wife, Phyllis, had three daughters and one son. Two of the daughters continue to serve roles in the operation. Barb Hobbs is the assistant secretary and Chris Beeson is vice president of the business.
Hobbs’ husband, Larry, is the president and her son, Matt, is the manager of the operation. Grome, who has a bachelor’s degree in business, has served as the secretary and treasurer for about 11 years.
“We’re just a family farm that wants to continue for the next century,” Larry said.
Hillview Farms began by growing corn, wheat and soybeans. The operation has evolved to include a cattle ranch in Newcomerstown and the local feedlot.
“It’s always been a business aspect of what can you do to keep your farm operational,” said Grome, who was formerly a market researcher.
She added that her grandfather was entrepreneurial and saw the need to diversify the farm to thrive.
“I think most farms struggle on bad crop years, and so when you have that bad crop year, we now have cattle that maybe would have better markets and you can counteract that, so it keeps us a more sustainable farm because we are able to balance out the good and the bad,” Grome said.
Larry added that “we stayed in something we knew as a family.”
He also explained that the family chose to raise natural stocker cattle because there is more flexibility in negotiating the price of premium beef.
Hillview Farms began expanding its stocker cattle operation 15 years ago.
“The land that they (the cattle) are on over in Coshocton County is reclaimed mine property, and so it was strip-mined and then they actually, by EPA standards, have to reseed all the ground,” Grome said. “It has to sit sedentary for 15 years before anything can be done with that land. At that time, it went for sale and so we purchased it for grazing purposes for our cattle.”
The cattle ranch is 1,800 acres with nine miles of fencing around the perimeter of the property. There are individual pastures to cycle cattle for grazing “as they eat through the grass,” Grome explained.
She said Hillview Farms purchases cattle between March and June as feeders at approximately 750 pounds each. Hillview Farms works with cattle broker Brian Hamilton of Pineland Farms in Maine to purchase the cattle.
Currently, the operation has a head of 750 cattle per year.
“They are taken directly to the Coshocton ranch, where they graze until the grasses die off, and then they’re brought here (to the feedlot) to finish out during the winter months,” Grome said.
Hillview Farms participates in the government-run Global Animal Partnership (G.A.P.) Certification program to offer natural beef, which is free of antibiotics.
Larry explained that Grome can trace where cattle were born and if they were given any medicine through their tags.
“We change the ear tag to a red ear tag if they ever get treated with any bit of antibiotics,” Grome said. “Once the red ear tag is in, it does not go to Whole Foods. It is taken out of that process.”
Typically, Hillview Farms will treat illnesses like pink eye topically to avoid injecting antibiotics, Grome explained. She said only a handful of cattle are not classified as natural every year.
Grome said the natural process begins at birth, with regulations on properly weaning cattle.
The farms that breed cattle “have to comply with the same rules as we do to be natural,” Larry said.
Additionally, G.A.P. certified cattle have to be “on grass out in mother nature for 80% of their life,” Larry said.
“We are audited annually to make sure we are doing those standards,” Grome said. “But that standard is set by Whole Foods.”
Grome explained that Hillview Farms stocker cattle are not considered “100% grass-fed.”
Larry said for a solely “grass-fed animal you would have to keep it almost another nine months longer” and if all farmers did that there would be a shortage of beef.
Furthermore, Hillview Farms cattle are only fed natural minerals to be compliant with the Whole Foods standards.
Larry added that the cattle eat natural corn for the last 60 to 90 days at the feedlot, which puts taste into the meat.
At the time of slaughtering, the cattle are roughly 1,300 pounds each. The cattle are processed at a centrally located butchering plant, and the beef is distributed to Whole Foods along the East Coast region and Ohio. The cattle are transported to a Cargill processing plant in Wyalusing, a borough in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. Grome said according to the G.A.P. certification the cattle can only be transported a certain amount of miles throughout their life to raise them in a “humane nature.”
“There’s processes that we can put in place to make sure that the animals are cared for in a respectful way, and that we as a farm, we do care,” Grome said. “We do want to make sure that what we bring to our consumers, whether it’s at Whole Foods or through our freezer beef here in the Marysville area, is quality.”
Although Hillview Farms does not have an exclusive contract with Whole Foods, the family business has not sold to other grocery stores.
“We haven’t had to,” Grome said. “They (Whole Foods) are able to buy everything we have.”
Hillview Farms has sold beef to Whole Foods for nearly eight years.
“We ship out about 36 head to 72 head every single week January through May,” Grome said, but that will increase with the new capacity of the barn.
She added that when discussions began about building the new barn the family considered growing the business in another way, such as with a grain operation.
“What does Matt want?” she said about her brother. “It all came down to what his future vision for the farm is and diversification. He knows the value grandpa has instilled in the diversification (of the business).”
Grome also said Hillview Farms has “a great farm operator with us, Evan,” who loves working with cattle and offers the support needed to grow in that direction.
“We just want to humbly provide the best quality that we can to the consumers,” Grome said. “For us, it’s about caring for the land, it’s about caring for the animals and really respecting the heritage and agriculture as an industry. To be a farmer is a unique lifestyle and unless you fully embrace the knowledge that goes into it, the challenge and the entrepreneurship that goes into it, then I feel like you can’t survive.”
As the operation continues to grow, the Hobbs family focuses on honoring Beeson’s legacy in the tight-knit community through the farm.
“There’s just an amazing heritage that you can’t really describe when you’re born and raised a part of it,” Grome said.