COLFAX, Whitman County — Up on the hill at Palouse River Premium Beef in Eastern Washington, Richard Griffiths broke the silence. Looking out at rolling hills covered in green winter wheat, Griffiths called out to his yearling heifers — year-old female cows that have never given birth.

“C’mon girls,” Griffiths shouted, rattling a 5-gallon bucket filled with cracked corn, barley and protein-rich camelina: breakfast. 

He calls these cows “weaners,” as they have been weaned off milk within the past year. Moving slowly, mooing as they walked uphill, the girls — some black, some a burnt-umber red — jostled for space, their massive tongues curling up the grain, snuffling and snorting as they munched. Gossamer strands of snot unspooled in the breeze.

Twice a day, Griffiths and his 24-year-old son, Ryley, hand-feed their herd, a few hundred head of wagyu and red devon cattle. It is neither time- nor cost-effective. Griffiths didn’t start his herd to make money, though he’s built a steady business selling premium meat at Palouse River Premium Beef. Wanting to escape Seattle, Griffiths happened to stumble upon his greatest passion. 

After the weaners, the cattlemen moved on to older heifers, like Julie and Jasmine, then to another pen with the “fats” — older steers (castrated males) that are being fattened on around 14 pounds of grain per day in preparation to be killed and processed for beef.

Then it’s down to young bulls Luke and Clyde — two “weaners with wieners,” Griffith jokes — and then to the starters, steers getting worked up to the fats’ diet, followed by any cows recuperating in the barn. The bullpen got a hay delivery, too, before Griffiths visited lazing mother cows Warden and Smokie, dispersing another bale of hay and a few buckets of grain. 

Most cattle ranchers don’t hand-feed their herd twice daily but Griffiths isn’t most ranchers. He doesn’t even call himself a rancher. He’s a carpenter, a born-and-raised Seattleite who wanted a bigger yard for himself and his three kids. Raise a few cows. Grow some lavender, maybe keep chickens, bees and a couple of cats for his daughter, Pearl, who’s now 27.

The family — Griffiths, Ryley, Pearl and Richard IV, now 30 — moved to Colfax in 2012 and bought their first cows in 2013. The lavender died, Pearl and Richard IV moved off the farm, and it turns out Ryley is allergic to bees. But after a dozen years of raising cattle, Griffiths has fallen madly in love with his cows at this boutique ranch, where he treats his cows like family — with an end product of beef that’s among the best in Washington. 

Of course, there’s a long road between birthing a calf and selling it as beef. Griffiths is intentional about every step. 

He’s quick to cry — especially when talking about his land, the cows or even Chuck the rooster. He’ll hang onto cows beyond the point of profitability, continuing to feed them when other ranchers would bring them to a sale or slaughterhouse. He loses sleep thinking about how to make the beef taste better, matchmaking the perfect bull with a group of heifers and dreaming about how their genetics will lead to beautifully marbled beef.

“I absolutely love my life. I’ve never been so at peace,” Griffiths said. “I tell people I won’t live long enough to be the kind of cattleman I want to be; I don’t have enough years left. But I’ve never loved anything more. It moves me to tears to talk about the girls.”

Starting the herd 

The first eight cows were red devons, an old English breed that’s even more niche than wagyu. When they arrived, Griffiths “just fell in love with them.”

“If people treated each other like cattle treat each other, this world would be amazing,” Griffiths said. “They aren’t going to do a quadratic equation, but they’re smart.” 

Griffiths soon bought a wagyu steer, which led to him snapping up 20 and then 90 more wagyu cows. He’s set with around 200, though Griffiths noted it’s taboo to ask a rancher how many head of cattle he’s running — likening it to “asking someone what’s in your bank account.” 

He operates a “closed herd” these days, meaning he grows the herd internally with selective breeding and intentional feeding practices instead of buying cattle.

Since that first purchase, Griffiths has taken his wagyu and red devons and bred them into crosses of varying degrees while also keeping purebreds of each type. It’s safe to say he is obsessed with his cows.

On a cold February morning at the ranch, Ryley Griffiths rubbed behind the ears of Bruce, a massive black bull, as he chewed hay. Some cows, like Secret Agent and Freeway, are named corresponding to their tag numbers (004 and I5, respectively). Others, in accordance with Griffiths’ sense of humor: Fruit Loop, Cindy Lou, Rose, Cliff, Kiwi, Ugly and Nebraska, who’s from the Cornhusker State.

The majority of the herd is destined to become beef at some point — even older mother cows make great grass-fed beef. Young bulls might be sold to other ranchers intact to be turned into steers or, eventually, to become the next big, breeding bull. Heifers become mothers or beef. 

The names, the face time with each cow — it takes time and money that big ranches won’t spend. But “what else am I going to do?” Griffths jokes. “I’m single.” 

He lies in bed each night dreaming up genetic matches and slight shifts in what he feeds his herd. When Chuck the rooster crows in the morning, Griffiths is often awake, baking scones or whipping up batches of jam or granola.

“I have a semen tank in my dining room. I’ve got six bulls outside my window and we’ve had calves in our living room,” he said, summing up his lifestyle in a nutshell. “My son has spent nights in the barn. These cows do not leave until I put them in the trailer to take them to Moses Lake (to be killed and processed).”

Griffiths means it when he says he runs a farm-to-table ranch.

“It’s not complicated. There’s a farm. You take care of (the animal), it goes to the processor and then it goes to the table. It doesn’t go to the feedlot,” he said. “You’re not buying it from some farm and then the feedlot and then the processor.”

Taking pride in his animals’ lives, from birth until death, leads to a better steak, burger or roast, Griffiths argues.

Wagyu beef is prized for its marbling. That intramuscular fat melts out in a pan or on a grill, creating a steak that you can cut with a fork. But getting to that point — when the fat content of a cut can be as much as 40% — takes more money, in the form of feed. And it requires time to put on weight, so while an Angus rancher would like to harvest a steer after around 25 or 30 months, wagyu cattle take longer. 

At Palouse River Premium Beef, Griffiths’ cows are between 36 months and 4 years old when they are processed — which he does to order, instead of killing to a quota. He’s even got a few that are 5 years old, like a massive black F1 steer named Bruno.

“He’s almost 5 but we haven’t had a market for him,” Griffiths said. “Big programs couldn’t afford to do what we’re doing, but if I don’t have them sold, I’ll hold them and feed them longer … I have a tough time letting them go.”

Over the past decade or so, Griffiths has gone through nearly a dozen processors to find one that meets his standards. Processing is the only thing that doesn’t happen at the Palouse River ranch; though harvesting on-site might be less stressful on the animals that die, it dampens morale. 

“I tell you, you shoot a cow here and other cows are around, they do not like it,” Griffiths said. “Not even a little bit.” 

Instead, he takes his animals to Pure Country Harvest in Moses Lake.

The animals are killed using a captive bolt stunner in accordance with tenets of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. Any livestock being handled and slaughtered must be “rendered insensible to pain,” and there are strict rules about how the animals make the journey, down to specifications for the truck they arrive on, the facility where they die, and the fact that the cows must be kept calm until the bitter end. 

After a Palouse River animal is killed, the processors at Pure Country Harvest will hang the carcass for 21 days in a dry-aging cooler, then cut and wrap to Griffiths’ specifications — down to the four grinds of minced beef.

“We don’t do that for most people,” said Sarah Farve, Pure Country Harvest operations manager. Griffiths is one of the “most particular” customers at the midsized processor.

His cows’ meals, their daily lives, the four grinds — these things all reflect the care and attention Griffiths affords his animals. That’s just how Griffiths thinks about his herd. And he hopes people eat his products and think bigger about beef, too.

“My assertion is different flavors, like wine and cheese,” Griffiths said of shifting the narrative around beef. “Some days you feel like cheddar, but other days it’s Swiss. Beef has that same thing.” 

Wagyu in Washington 

Zooming out: Where does Palouse fit in the massive American beef industry?

Washington isn’t a top 10 beef producer in the United States, though it’s tough to find accurate numbers. (Again, asking a rancher about acreage or a herd head count is like asking a stranger for their salary. That includes questions from journalists.) But Hanna Ostrovski, director of research, education and programs for the American Wagyu Association, said between 1,000 and 1,500 of the 20,000-25,000 registered wagyu in the U.S. are in Washington. 

Wagyu represents just a sliver of the total U.S. herd of beef cows, which numbers nearly 28 million as of Jan. 1, per the USDA.

“It’s definitely more niche,” Ostrovski said. “We’re still getting a foothold here in America and most (American Wagyu Association) members are farm-to-table producers with a small number of animals.”

Washington isn’t a wagyu factory, but it was the first state to receive a Japanese wagyu steer. To understand why the U.S. adopted this niche Japanese breed, diversifying from popular European breeds like Black Angus, ask Jerry Reeves — the “godfather of wagyu.” 

Reeves, who owns Bar R Ranch in Pullman with his wife, Heidi, is a former animal sciences professor at Washington State University. In 1989, he and two colleagues went to Japan to research wagyu. Due to changes in tariffs with Japan, there was an opening in the beef market.

“Japan could only produce a third of the meat they needed to consume, so we were sent to look at what they were doing now and what their consumer would want,” Reeves said. “I had never even heard of wagyu meat. Like any other American, I thought our USDA Choice was the best, but I saw a product there that we couldn’t even compete with.”

Washington congressman Tom Foley was speaker of the House at the time, and a “friend to WSU,” which led to the first 91 wagyu cattle that were ever imported to the U.S. being flown into Plum Island, N.Y., then trucked to Moses Lake.

The initial goal: Combine wagyu genes with American cattle breeds, creating an American wagyu to sell back to Japan. But mad cow disease struck in 2003, essentially shutting down the beef export business. Suddenly, ranchers and producers had cattle bound for Tokyo stuck in the U.S., where consumers didn’t know anything about the product.

“They had to sell it at 60 cents on the dollar because nobody had ever heard of wagyu,” Reeves said. “Within about a year and a half, these restaurateurs saw it was better meat than certified Angus and the industry turned around. Mad cow was the best thing that happened (for wagyu sales) because it got us into the U.S. restaurant market.”

Jerry Reeves, Heidi Reeves, their daughter Arlie and her husband, Taylor Kraal, run a “small to midsize cattle ranch” of about 300 wagyu and wagyu crosses. On about 3,000 acres of canyon and range land in Pullman, Jerry Reeves has been known to yell for his cattle like oversized dogs. 

In contrast, Agri Beef, “the biggest player in the U.S.,” operates a feedlot of wagyu and F1 crosses with 15,000 to 17,000 calves, Reeves said. Agri Beef sells American wagyu under brands like Snake River Farms, Double R Ranch and more. 

Unlike Palouse River Premium Beef, the majority of the Bar R stock is cultivated and sold as breeding stock. They also specialize in embryos and semen, and hold back about two dozen a year to be processed for beef.

The majority of their cattle remain on the ranch until they’re sold — but those earmarked for beef harvesting are transferred to a feedlot to finish out before they’re brought to slaughter.

“A feedlot has become the ‘f’ word in the industry,” Arlie Reeves said. “When consumers hear that, they think, ‘industrial farm, bad,’ but in reality it’s not.”

For the Reeves, who have a small portion of their business dedicated to beef, bringing steers to a feedlot allows nutritionists to monitor the animals’ diet in a more cost-effective way. Arlie Reeves said they prefer family-owned feedlots, because “we know our animals are in good care,” she said — “and if they aren’t, we get a call and are able to make a decision.” 

Eating the beef

Thirty-five years after efforts began to crossbreed American wagyu, the definition of wagyu (and the genetic purity of the breed) has been watered down. A cow must now be at least 46.875% wagyu DNA to be sold as American wagyu. These cows, usually called an F1 cross, are crossbred with breeds from Black Angus to Holstein and Jersey cows. 

That’s why some say American wagyu isn’t real wagyu. Unless you’re buying imported Japanese wagyu — including Japanese Kobe beef, which must be from Kobe (similar to French Champagne) — American wagyu can be more than 50% Angus without being listed as such. 

Fact is, Americans still have some things to learn about wagyu. It’s this education, and convincing customers, that takes a toll on a small rancher like Griffiths, who says the hardest part of his job is selling the beef.

“I’ve tried distributors,” Griffiths explained, back on the ranch. “You could rattle off butcher shops and restaurants and I’d say I’ve called them or given them samples. I’m either too small or too big or I don’t fit their program.” 

Many restaurants stick to selling rib-eye steaks or tenderloins, and there’s not a lot of those on a cow. Griffiths needs a partner that wants to utilize an entire animal.

He’s found that in Seattle at Cafe Campagne, where he makes deliveries every three to four weeks. You’ll find Palouse River Premium Beef in burgers and brisket sandwiches, as tartare and in various specials.

But Griffiths also wants to find more regular consumers. People who taste the beef and decide nothing less than Palouse River Premium Beef will do.

That takes time. Griffiths hopes the taste makes a difference, too. 

American beef has three quality grades: Prime, Choice and Select. USDA Prime is considered to be the best, with abundant marbling. Choice has less marbling and usually encompasses the less tender cuts, while Select is the leanest of the three; these cuts are best after a long braise.

Japan, meanwhile, ranks wagyu on two scales: the yield, from A-C, and a grade from 1 to 5. The yield is based on the ratio of meat to the whole carcass and the grade is the overall marbling. An A5 wagyu steak is the gold standard — the beef has the highest meat-to-carcass ratio with the highest amount of marbling. 

That marbling makes a big difference on your plate.

“A USDA Prime is 12% intermuscular fat,” Reeves said, “and these wagyu, most of them are all over that. Some will be 35-40%.”

That isn’t an issue when you’re eating 1 to 4 ounces of steak — like portions in the Japanese market. But when you’re looking at a 40-ounce tomahawk steak? Even shared between two or three people, “if you overdo it, it’s going to hurt,” Reeves said. “I don’t believe a tomahawk is the thing to do with wagyu meat.” 

That’s true for your gut and your wallet. A Japanese A5 rib-eye could run $125 per pound or more.  

“It still scares the American consumer,” said Evan Carter, co-owner of West Seattle restaurant and butcher shop Lady Jaye and co-host of the “Meat Dudes” podcast.

The price can be off-putting — and the pressure to cook that meat perfectly is high. But Carter said you don’t have to spend a ton of money to eat great wagyu. That wagyu fat and flavor goes beyond your typical cuts of rib-eye or tenderloin.

“You can utilize the whole cow,” Carter said. “There’s more steak-able items. You can take a London broil and grill it because it’s more tender.”

Carter said they push cuts like the Denver or zabuton at Lady Jaye — which have incredible flavor and run around $14 a pound.

“I could eat an F1 cross every night and it won’t break the bank,” Carter said. “You can get really good steaks.”