I have the pleasure of introducing you to our friends over at Windy River Livestock (WRL)! Will and Jocelyn Stauffer are the power couple extraordinaire keeping SO many families in Clark County supplied with beautiful, pastured meat from their herds. If you’ve spent any amount of time at one of our local farmers’ markets, then you’ll likely recognize them if not KNOW them already. It is a small county after all.
Will and Jocelyn established their farming enterprise back in 2012 and have grown steadily since then – from a couple cows on a few acres to a couple hundred on a few hundred acres. Through incredible hard work, tremendous dedication, and saintly patience, WRL has demonstrated great, consistent value to their customers time and time again. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you visit with them at one of the local farmers’ markets they attend – Downtown Vancouver (year round), East Vancouver, or Camas.
Will got his start farming by growing up on his family’s dairy farm in Washougal. Even after establishing himself in a career as a traveling aluminum welder, the love of farming never left him. He is after all a fourth-generation farmer! So after he married Jocelyn, who was already well versed in raising livestock herself, it didn’t take them long to form the joint dream of farming. And after years of sacrifice and working off the farm, they are now farming full-time and living their dream! …with all the required hard work and challenges inherent to farming and running a small business.
WRL raises their cows here in Clark County on pasture using organic practices, mostly grass-fed (including hay) while supplementing non-GMO barley, which the cows love! Their herd is a variety of breeds, including Angus, Hereford, Wagyu cross, British White, Charolais, etc. This variety is intentional and the Stauffers are always looking to have the most vibrant, healthy, and delicious beef to sell to their loyal customers.
Although we’ve talked a lot about beef (which is by far their bestseller) they also raise pastured pigs as well as pastured chickens for eggs. And they work with a couple great processors to be able to offer fantastic value-added products such as broth, jerky, sausage sticks, and BACON!
Fun fact from this farm visit: even after several attempts I could NOT get a family-friendly photo of the bull, Magic Mike, who was doing his very best to be highly productive!
Leah and I are so grateful we conjured up the courage back in May 2020 to ask Will and Jocelyn if they’d be interested in partnering with us in our envisioned farm-to-table grocery delivery service. While we’ve done a lot of business together over the past six years, we’ve also become great friends and are so thankful for the Stauffers!
If you’d like to learn more about Windy River Livestock, check out their website, Facebook, or Instagram, and even better go say hi to them at the Vancouver Farmers’ Market. You can peruse all WRL items we sell here at Gathered Harvest with this link.
I’m a sucker for alliteration, but I couldn’t find a way to fit it in so here it is all by its lonesome. By and by, benevolent buyers be bartering bucks for beautiful beef before basting and broiling their butchered bovine. Ha! Add your own alliteration in the comments to get 10% off your next GH order!
Until next time, farewell!
~Peter Hatfield
P.S. AI was not, and will not, be used to write these blog posts – if you can’t already tell lol!
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“Betty Botter bought some butter
But she said the butter’s bitter,
“If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter,
But a bit of better butter
Will make my batter better.”