Sitting in the saddle of his horse, rancher Chase Hall seemed to blend into the landscape surrounding South Routt County’s Yampa Valley Ranch as he separated newborn calves and moms in a meadow on the property.

“It’s a lifestyle, so you have to love every aspect of it,” Chase said. “I mean sure some days suck, but you have to appreciate and enjoy every aspect of it.”

With spring hitting the Yampa Valley, it was one of the good days for Chase. He said he enjoys working with Ali, his wife, and hired hands Travis Baldwin and Chrit Rudkin to separate cattle on the 1,607-acre ranch located less than a mile from the town of Yampa.

Yampa Valley Ranch sells ground beef, steak, beef short ribs and cowboy steak boxes. The ranch also offers half and quarter cow subscription boxes online at YampaValleyRanch.com.

The ranch’s meat was featured at Steamboat Resort during Ag Appreciation Week last year and is also available at several local restaurants including Periodic Table, Café Diva and Aurum.

“My ideal scenario is, even if it’s not from our ranch, people buying beef from the place they live,” Ali Hall said. “When we get together with all of our friends, we sit down and try to figure that out. How do we get people to want to go directly to the rancher, and understand the value in that? Not just from either an environmental or health perspective, but just supporting a local community.”

Chase, a Marine veteran who served as a combat engineer officer with the 7th Engineer Support Battalion and Combat Logistics Battalion 11, said he didn’t know if he could put his finger on why he loves ranching.

He grew up working on ranches in Texas before going to college to earn an animal science degree at Texas A&M. After college he had a career as a Marine but found his way back to ranching in Colorado.

“I really enjoy the land management side of it and seeing the progress over time based off of the decisions that you make, and seeing the improvement of the landscape over time,” said Chase, who has been managing since 2020. “Then also developing a cow herd, I really enjoy making decisions that influence the overall improvement of a herd of animals — I love doing that.”

Ali grew up in upstate New York, earned a degree in physical therapy and followed a career path that led her to Colorado. She said she enjoyed the lifestyle that Chase had at the ranch, which led her down the same path. It also made her passionate about sharing that lifestyle with others by connecting individuals to their food sources. 

“I love to be able to share that with people, because not a lot of people have access to it,” Ali said. “It has made me super conscious about all the work that goes into the food we eat, and the importance of being part of it or just trusting that process of where it comes from.”

“I think the exposure to that has been one of my favorite things, and the in-depth knowledge I’ve learned from that,” she added. “And then additionally that community aspect that it creates either with outside people, or just the ranching community itself.”

The Yampa Valley Ranch currently hosts roughly 200 cattle. During calving season that number grows by the day. Chase said about 20 of the 90 calves he is expecting this season should be on the ground by mid-May.

“We’re kind of coming into it right now, and then it starts to slow down after we get all the hay put up. Then we’re kind of transitioning to summer or fall projects and taking a little bit of a breather,” Chase said. “But we’re about to get busy for about five months.”

Real Burger of Earth Day

The Yampa Valley Ranch is taking part in a promotion called Real Burger of Earth Day, which challenges conventional wisdom about meat and climate change, and the rapidly growing, largely unregulated market for so-called “alternative meats,” many of which come from highly processed ingredients with significant climate impacts. 

“I would love it if every single calf that was born here we could sell direct to consumers as beef,” Chase said. “My goal and plan over the next 5 to 10 years is to be able to get there — right now, we’re doing about 25 head per year.”