Keep your voice down around the herd. It’s not an order — it’s a way of life.
At 44 Farms in Cameron, Texas, you also ride horses whenever humanly possible, because shouting and grinding motors are a stressful thing for the prized cattle. Donkeys lounge around, too, tails faffing in the breeze. Their presence actually reduces bovine anxiety, as the preying eyes of wolves are deterred from these donkey sentries.
But donkeys and quiet voices are just a couple of the ways 44 Farms cares for their animals — the Black Angus live a bucolic, munch-under-the-tree life right up until their end.
Twelve years ago, 44 Farms owner Bob McClaren and his staff partnered with two Houston chefs — Randy Evans and Peter Laufer — to launch a steak program. The first harvest was late summer, around 34 heads. It started with the middle cuts — ribeyes, New York strips, filets and tenderloins.
Back in the early ’90s, McClaren had inherited a third of his family farm — the slice was about 190 acres — and he had the immense task ahead of him to restore it to his parents’ standards. He’d always had an interest in raising future steaks — all the way through law school and even during his gig as president of Houston Astros business operations. But McClaren’s father had tried to dissuade his son from taking on the family business.
“‘Son, I know you like all of that, but you can’t make a living doing it,’” McClaren remembers his father telling him. McClaren’s dad had grown up on the farm and “barely got by.” So, McClaren left it behind and went to law school.
But the old way of doing things called him back. As he rebuilt the farm, he focused the story of the cattle around good genetics — tracking exactly where and how the calves were raised, shaking hands with the ranchers themselves, and studying the animal’s potential for good, melt-in-your-mouth fat. And, of course, proper animal welfare. The latter is more stunning than it sounds. The work that goes into reducing the stressors around the cattle’s lives (before they’re ground into 8-ounce patties) is enough to make you want to move in with the animals.
Good well water — the right kind of water — is key. 44 Farms does not add growth-speeding chemicals or hormone-secreting implants to make the animals develop faster than nature would allow. They nurse their grasslands so that the forage, the animal’s feed, is fresh and clean and a little sweet. The feeder cattle (those that are slated for the beef programs) are weaned off of their mothers at 7 months and raised on grass, wheat, oats or other forage, and generally finished on corn, McClaren says.
They do not use motorized vehicles, and don’t push the animals too fast or too hard.
Why? All roads lead to marbling. It’s about that intramuscular fat. That’s the reason you’d use the phrase “melt in your mouth” when taking a bite of seared steak. The extraordinary flavor is locked in those river-like patterns of calacatta white.
“If you don’t take care of cattle properly, you can never make a living doing it,” McClaren says.
The 44 Farms steak program has now expanded to 14 states and 700 restaurants around the world. They’ve about doubled their acreage and their staff. They export to a dozen countries, including areas in Japan and South Korea. In the past three years, they’ve networked their beef into Walmart stores in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama. They follow their kingly bulls, tracking more data on these docile beasts than you ever knew was possible.
Another major expansion point happened three years ago, when 44 Farms was featured on CNBC’s Billion Dollar Buyer. That led to a handshake deal with Landry’s Restaurants, which includes Saltgrass Steak House, Morton’s, and Del Frisco’s.
Recently, 44 Farms held their semi-annual prize bull sale. They offered more than they ever have in a fall or spring showing. Soon, they’ll haul hundreds of more bulls to Abilene for an epic sale. It’s all looking forward, and 44 Farms will focus on a new sub-brand arriving early 2021.
Chef Jennifer “Suki” Otsuki, an Austin native, has felt a connection to 44 Farms for a long time. When she toured the ranch, with rolling green and sparkling ponds, it struck a chord.
“Getting to go to the farm, you get to really understand who they are and what they believe in...the quality and the livelihood of the animal,” she says.
Her burger at Meddlesome Moth features the 44 Farms 80/20 ground Angus beef. A pass with salt and pepper and a hard sear on the flat top is all it ever needs. “The crust on the outside just locks in all the juice. Set it, don’t mess with it,” she says. It gets Tillamook cheddar and Thousand Island. The flavor reaches high and wide, a brightly-lit beef flavor. You can actually taste the grassland.
Rodeo Goat feels the same way: The Texas burger chain has been using 44 Farms beef for years. Landon Amis, district manager, says “it’s obvious that they care about their cattle.”
The perfect 44 Farms cheeseburger is also at Knife. “The Ozersky,” a Muhammad Ali punch of a sandwich with two blanketing slices of American cheese and red onion sliced as transparent as a lingering spirit, is 44 Farms beef given a hard sear on the grill. Medium rare at Knife means the center is setting sun red.
During Bob McClaren’s time working in big baseball, he downed a lot of weak hot dogs. He told himself that if he ever jumped into the beef business, he’d find a way to make a better one.
Sometime later, chef Otsuki, before Meddlesome Moth, was running the kitchen at now-shuttered Mudhen at the Dallas Farmers Market. She had hot dogs over on the kid’s wing of the menu. One day, a woman approached Otsuki and begged for her hot dog source. The woman’s child had become a super fan. It was 44 Farms, of course, their Angus beef franks made from cows that live a more relaxed lifestyle than most of us will get to experience.
