Ranch to School

From High Desert Beef, and 100 miles from town: the Alvord Beef Ranch story of Remote “Ranch to School” lunch.  Join us as we head to the remote high desert of Southeastern Oregon to meet Paul and Toni Davis of Alvord Ranch. With a herd of 2,500 cattle, no neighbors for miles, and a kitchen that feeds up to 25 ranch hands a day, the Davises share what life is really like on a working cattle ranch—and how their homegrown beef is making its way to school cafeterias. From breathtaking landscapes to farm-to-school innovation, this is a story of connection, commitment, and good food from the ground up.

Transcript

Title:

“Ranch to School” 

From High Desert Beef, and 100 miles from town: the Alvord Beef Ranch story of Remote “Ranch to School” lunch.  Join us as we head to the remote high desert of Southeastern Oregon to meet Paul and Toni Davis of Alvord Ranch. With a herd of 2,500 cattle, no neighbors for miles, and a kitchen that feeds up to 25 ranch hands a day, the Davises share what life is really like on a working cattle ranch—and how their homegrown beef is making its way to school cafeterias. From breathtaking landscapes to farm-to-school innovation, this is a story of connection, commitment, and good food from the ground up.

Alvord Beef Transcript

00:00:04 Rick

Welcome to the farm to school podcast where you will hear stories of how you thrive and farmers prosper when they learn how to grow, cook and eat delicious, nutritious food in schools.  And we're your hosts, I’m Rick Sherman.

00:00:19 Michelle

And I'm Michelle Markesteyn, and we have guests here! Why don't you introduce yourselves?

00:00:25 Paul Davis

Paul Davis and my wife Toni.

00:00:27 Toni Davis

Nice to be here.

00:00:28 Michelle

Are you from?

00:00:30 Paul Davis

Southeastern Oregon and 10 miles southeast of Burns OR.

00:00:35 Rick

And that, for those of you who don't know, Oregon… Tell paint us a little picture of what that's like in very Southeastern Oregon.

00:00:45 Toni Davis

I can help with that. I'm a newcomer. I've only been there for 38 years. Our nearest town is 110 miles away.

00:00:55 Rick

Not what you call a big city.

00:00:58 Toni Davis

No, Burns is a small town.

I'm going to say approximately 3000 people.

00:01:03 Rick

Yeah. Do they have a traffic light?

00:01:06 Toni Davis

I think they have two.

00:01:09 Rick

All right. So that's so it's pretty remote out there.

00:01:13 Toni Davis

We are very remote out there the first time I went out there with my husband, we were just dating at the time and I… about 40 miles from the ranch, I finally had got up the nerve and I said, where are we going and how well do I meet this guy? Because it was a long ways from anything I knew. Jordan Valley.  We'd gone through Jordan Valley and he had told me they lived just a little out of Jordan valley.  And then he just kept driving. That “little ways” is 112 miles away. So…

00:01:49 Rick

And when people think of Oregon, they think of, like Evergreen trees, tall forests, lots of rain. What's it like there?

00:01:54 Toni Davis

I was wrong. We live right at the base of mountains, right at the base of a 10,000 foot mountain. And it's absolutely beautiful.  It changes every single day and then there is on the other side of us, there's a lake bed, and it's roughly about, let me say, 11 miles long. 6 miles wide. There you go. And it's the Alvord lake bed. And so the ranch is situated right between the two. It's absolutely beautiful. Mountain range with rocks and there is some trees, there's a few.

00:02:27 Rick

High desert, right?

00:02:28 Toni Davis

It's desert, and then the ranches in.. It's all meadowland and between there, so it's absolutely it's, it's beautiful and it to take me a little while because I was expecting mountains with trees and lakes and running rivers. And it's not exactly trees, lakes and running rivers, but it's lots of creeks. There is lots of water. You don't realize it until you see it from the ground, it's gorgeous.

00:02:52 Rick

Fun fact, when I've driven through there a few times and when you go.

Like on your way to like Reno. Phoenix. Tonopah. I've driven through there and like I told the story of how my son was driving. I fell asleep 3 hours later. I thought we hadn’t moved. It looked the same. He's like no dad, you’ve been out three hours.. and it's like that's the same one. No. And it's like, we drive and we'd see a house. Like, where do they get their if you have to go somewhere to get a tank of gas, you would take a tank of gas to get to the gas station. It seems like it's just very remote so.

00:03:30 Toni Davis

It is remote and I'm sorry Oregon, we do most of our shopping in Idaho because it's actually close. Boise ID is only 200 miles away from us.

00:03:38 Rick

Yeah. ONLY 200.

00:03:40 Michelle

This brings up a really good point, Paul.

Like how did you find your way to the ranch.

00:03:45 Paul Davis

My family bought the ranch in 1969-70, somewhere in there, Anyway, I was three years old. We just moved out there, predominantly runs 2500 mother cows and I've been there all my life.

00:04:00 Michelle

What? How many cows are still around?

00:04:02 Paul Davis

We still predominantly hold 2500.

00:04:05 Paul Davis

There's three things that that you might find where we live that they get Steen’s mountain. Got the Alvord desert and then and then Alvord Hot Springs. Pretty famous in the state of Oregon for one of the Hot Springs, and we've owned that forever too. So when you look us up, that might, but it's you might. Pinpoint, pinpoint is where we might be.

00:04:25 Michelle

So what's a day on the ranch like? What's a day in your life?

00:04:30 Paul Davis

Boy. It depends on what age you're talking.

00:04:32 Michelle

What do you mean your age? Or. Oh, OK, OK.

00:04:36 Paul Davis

So my belly is getting bigger 'cause. They're getting lazier now. It varies. Days are different. I wouldn't trade it for the world, and that's what makes I'm lucky because my day is never consistent. I have a different.. everyday is different. I have a variety of things that we get done and so it's different for me. I can't tell you. It's not, it's not the same everyday, is different.

00:05:02 Toni Davis

Mine's little more consistent than his. We are lucky  we have five of the most hard working children in the whole world. And so they have over the years have stepped up and taken over a lot of the activity that we did. We don't have a cook house, so to speak, on the ranch.  We use our own house for the Cook House and so for the years I've done all the cooking for the crew. And so we might have 5 people who might have 25 people eating in our house, 3 meals a day.

00:05:37 Michelle

I love that.

00:05:37 Toni Davis

And so up until just recently, my daughter-in-law and my and one of our sons, we have a set of triplets and the triplets wives has really stepped up and has taken a lot of the cooking duties away from me, so my role has slowed down a lot just since October, so that's been kind of nice. And she's willing to do it.

00:05:56 Michelle

So how did you get involved in selling to schools and what do you sell?

00:06:00 Rick

And just so people know, we’re still at the Oregon School Nutrition Association state convention and so we just saw these wonderful people across the way from our booth and grab we tend to grab them.

00:06:12 Michelle

I talked about their photos. Their daughter did these photos at their booth.

00:06:15 Rick

We’ll but that on our show notes. Farm to school typically isn't just fruits and veggies, and in some parts of the country where you can't grow anything because when you put your shovel in the ground and it goes Clank. You do ranching and that's farm to school, right? So, so ranching and like, how did you guys was that ever, did you the light bulb come off and how did you get involved in the schools and stuff.

00:06:42 Paul Davis

That's a great question. So with the Hot Springs that we have on the property, I've learned that people are there to camp and have a good time and they're looking because it's on the ranch and they sell their own ranch raised beef down there and that's the intriguing thing that people want the work comes from, so I'm sitting here going wow, farm to table.. Predominantly we're selling when they leave the ranch when 850 lbs are going to a feed lot and then they're finished there and then they go and move on from there.  So we lose track of them from when they leave the ranch and some…

Well, people don't know where their next comes from and we're selling more and more and more out of time because people are very attracted to what it comes for and know what it's.

And so this this start my attention to find the table we're taking the minimum out of the Cali. You know where they come from and where and when they get to your table you know. The whole trail.. That's the training. That means this is what you guys are doing the farming.

00:07:49 Michelle

And that is it. And I am seeing you can hear the dim is rising, the nutrition service directors are coming. We are going to let these two go off and meet the folks and we just really appreciate you being.

00:08:01 Paul Davis

Yep, thanks for your time.

00:08:01 Rick

Thank you so much for being here.

00:08:03 Michelle

Thank you.

00:08:04 Toni Davis

Thank you.

00:08:11 Rick

Hey everybody, thank you for listening today.

The Farm to School podcast was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn with production support from LeAnn Locher of Oregon State University. This podcast was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture. The content and ideas in the farm to school podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University, Oregon Department of Education and the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA, ODE and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and employers. Do you want to learn more about farm to school?  Other episodes, show notes, contact information and much more by searching for school podcast, OSU. We would love to hear from you. Stop by that website that we just mentioned and say hello and give us an idea for the future podcast. Thank you, everybody. And we'll see you next time.