Ewalt family celebrates May Beef Month at Waubonsie Ridge Beef

IARN — As the Ag industry continues to celebrate May Beef Month, a local family-owned business in Tabor continues to provide a high-quality product to your dinner table.

Justin and Jamie Ewalt are the sole owners of Waubonsie Ridge Beef along with their children Teagan, Ryleigh and Chance. The Ewalt family’s cattle feeding roots go back four generations. Justin says their farming operation is located just west of Tabor on the east edge of the Loess Hills. They started selling their own beef in the year 2017 and decided to expand those efforts to an in-store setting in 2020.

“We actually started in a little square in the corner of our shop on the farm,” said Justin. “That was right about April a year ago, right when the pandemic exploded and the meat shortages that were happening really took off. We instantly knew we were not big enough to service what we were doing. We started looking in town for a spot and found this building that was vacant.”

The Waubonsie Ridge Beef store resides at 702 Main Street in Tabor. The building has been fully remodeled, and Justin says it features a wide variety of meat selections straight from the Ewalt family farm. They purchase calves from local cow/calf producers typically weighing in between 400-600 pounds. From there, they hand feed them until they are around 1250 pounds.

“Our feedlot is probably not as traditional as you think about a large-scale operation,” said Justin. “We’re about 100 head max and we have three or four different pens based on size that we move the calves through.”

“When it comes time for processing,” he continued, “we use Wahoo in Wahoo, Nebraska. They are a federally licensed facility. Minden Meats does the bulk of our processing in Minden, Iowa. And then we also use Gress in Hancock for processing.”

Using locally grown feed products, Justin says the animals in their care are not fed any antibiotics or hormones and are not implanted. For customers, there are a variety of ways to stay up to date on deals, store hours and other information for Waubonsie Ridge Beef.

“The big one is Facebook,” said Justin. “We have the Waubonsie Ridge Beef Facebook page. We’re also on Twitter @BeefRidge. My cell phone is 712-355-2300. That’s openly used for anything that you need if you don’t have social media. We have a Waubonsie Ridge Beef website that you can go on and place orders there.”

More expansion plans are in the works for the Ewalt family as they will soon be utilizing the meat department in the former Tabor Grocery Store to cut their own meat and will also be using the walk-in freezer for storage.

Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network

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