September 2023

New Addition to our Cowboy Team

We are excited to announce the introduction of two new residents at our bunkhouse. Josh and Echo, a married couple who are expecting their first child very soon, have made their way to our ranch. Josh is a cowboy who will be working for us, and his wife Echo is a professional photographer. (Get a taste of her exceptional work with the photo below). This exciting employment will benefit all of us, but especially Aaron and Faith as managing a ranch as large as ours can be challenging for just two people.

As we are joyous for this new employment relationship, with change comes change.  This change we speak of is Faith & Aaron’s living situation.  They have moved across the “street” to a more spacious home.  They have worked tirelessly to transform both these houses over the past several months/years to make them into homes we can be exceedingly proud of.  

Our relationship with our employees is important.  TriTails is very proud to say that our employees are our family (both figuratively and literally).   This new employment has only increased our family!  

Social Media Trolls:

Every so often on our social media, we come across specific individuals who feel the urge to comment some hate towards us without ever having tried our product. We get the classic vegan/PETA supporter, the greeny who thinks cows destroy the planet, the individual who stereotypes ranchers into a specific category of their ideology, and the person who flat-out does not understand our company and thinks it is somehow ripping our hearts in two by making a comment followed by a bunch of laughing or clown emojis. You often hear these individuals referred to as trolls.

These individuals are not to be confused with customers and interested shoppers who have legitimate questions or concerns. These "trolls" have no interest in our brand, want to spit on our company for no reason whatsoever, or simply want attention. You may think that we find this annoying as a company; however, it turns out that these comments can be enlightening. It allows me to explain to anyone reading the thread how our company works and who we are. I'd love to share two examples of such comments with you for your entertainment and to inform you. These won't be word for word but are very much the type of trolling we receive.

Troll Number One: "I bet TriTails uses glyphosate on their grasses and hay. Ask them, and they won't answer."

Our Reaction: My answer to this individual was to explain to them that, in fact, we do not use glyphosate on our grasses and hay. This, however, is a hilarious assumption or trolling from this individual. Glyphosate is used in roundup and will kill all grass and hay. What rancher would use roundup on his pastures and hay fields? Why would we want to kill grasses and hay, which are food for our cattle?  A lot of people think they know ranching based on news articles, shows like “Yellowstone” and other resources.  However, our mission as a ranch (Harrell Ranch) is to raise quality grass.  Yes, you read that right.  Grass.  Why grass, you may ask?  It’s because grass feeds our cattle.  Yes, we do supplement with grain due to rain conditions.  However, in order to have good quality cattle which in turn brings you quality beef, it starts with what they are eating.  It’s why the Harrell ancestry chose this land, because it was “quality grass belly high to a horse.”  We wouldn’t destroy the land that gives us food just like we wouldn’t smack the hand that feeds us.  

Troll Number Two: LOL, who buys meat that expensive? I can go to (insert big box company) and buy 20 pounds of steak for that amount.

Our Reaction: We totally understand this comment.  Our beef is quality and with quality comes a higher price tag.  However, there are a lot of differences between big box store’s beef and ours.  Firstly, go to your local grocery store and look for a steak that has been aged for 37 days.  Yep, that’s right, you probably won’t find it.  You might find a 21 day aged steak, 27 at the most, but our pricing is very competitive to theirs with the fact we age longer.  Next, we could go into what makes our beef higher quality… but if we go there in the entirety, you might be reading for a long time.  Let’s just sum it up in  a couple sentences (half a paragraph max, I promise!).  Our beef is quality Black Angus.  100% Black Angus.  It is raised, as my husband likes to say, “with love and you can taste it.”  Cattle can go down in quality with one bad day, as I’ve said in other newsletters.  And that one day or one week of being sick, shows poorly on the output of steak you are receiving.  Unlike many box stores, we don’t supplement that one bad day by mechanically tenderizing nor injecting water into our steaks because we want the meat to shine for itself.  We don’t need to do this because we take pride in our quality and that starts at the live cattle side of things.  Sam has made raising quality cattle a science.  Frankly put, you can taste it!   All of this aside and to top it off, we ship your beef order to your door as compared to you having to go into a big box store. Yes, that does mean you’ll have to have patience to receive it and might need to plan ahead a little (which can be avoided with our monthly subscription boxes), but all in all, isn’t that better?  A gift for you from you in the mail!   This long winded explanation aside, a majority of these comments, we don’t typically respond.   It’s not that we don’t want to, we want to feed everyone and be everyone’s beef supplier!  However, reality then sets in: we can’t win them all.  In a way, we choose to ignore them because, though we wish we could change their minds and be their beef suppliers, we probably will never be and it saddens us.  When there are those occasions we do respond, it is to educate them like I did above.  Why is TriTails different?  Why is the price tag larger?  Frankly put, what makes TriTails better?  

TriTails is not here to sell you an ordinary piece of beef. Our cuts come from a world-class group of high-quality black Angus cattle. We age our beef to give you something you would find at a five-star restaurant or even better.

Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletters.  We appreciate you and your support of our small business.  If you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.