By Barth Anderson

Talking to dynamic entrepreneurs like Doc Hatfield and his wife Connie on the phone is a little like drinking a stiff espresso in one, fast gulp - high energy, very fun. A married couple of over 35 years, they speak in seamless overlap on a phone call from Brother, Oregon, and finish each other's sentences so quickly that a typist can burn his fingers trying to keep up. Plus, they speak with a passion for ranching that's catchy and infectious.

"We love what we do," Connie says.

"When you're good, it's hard to be humble," Doc says.

"We love our ranchers," finishes Connie, "and think your customers will, too."

While new to the Twin Cities, Country Natural Beef Cooperative has been a mainstay of co-op groceries and natural food stores out west for almost twenty years. They've been approached by conventional grocery stores, as well, but the Hatfields are dedicated to seeing Country Natural Beef only in stores sharing their co-op's values of sustainability.

"We've turned down typical chain stores," says Doc, "because sustainability isn't part of their core values."

"We love the Wedge," Connie says.

The Wedge trusts that customers will love Country Natural Beef, too. Just in time for the holidays, the Wedge will be carrying their tenderloin, top sirloin, sirloin tip, ribeyes, New York strips, flank steaks, two different kinds of grind, lean cuts (sandwich steaks, cube steaks, diced round, and stir-fry), all of your favorite roasts, top round/London broil, not to mention standing rib roast.

Meat Department Manager Aaron Nytroe is very pleased with this "co-op to co-op" partnership. "We've been looking for a partner like this in a beef producer," he says - namely, one that matches the Wedge's "core values," as Doc put it.

The relationship is made all the easier, says Nytroe, because Country Natural Beef sells a superior product.

"I cooked a steak medium rare and it was tasty, very juicy," says Nytroe. "I'd call it sagey. It's very good beef."

Eighties Flashback

Though Country Natural Beef has garnered great success in recent years - their beef appears in Whole Foods stores all over the Western United States - things weren't always so rosy for these cattle ranchers.

Doc stopped being a ranch veterinarian in the mid seventies because the health system on the farms he worked was broken. He didn't like the rise of antibiotics and hormones in cattle management and realized that, as a doctor, he was applying "too many band-aids."

"I spent too much of my time on avoidable problems," Doc explains, "problems that were due to unsuitable environments, poor management, and bad genetics."

So Doc and Connie sold the vet practice and bought a ranch in Oregon in order to raise cattle the way they wanted: Free of antibiotics.

That worked fine until the farming crash of the early eighties. "1983 was a tough year," says Doc. In the worst farming crisis since the Great Depression, land values went down, interest rates went up, and U.S. farms were disappearing at an alarming rate. "Besides that, red meat was worse than being a drug addict," says Doc. "We weren't at death's door but we could see it from where we were."

Connie Hatfield took the initiative of marketing for the farm by contacting a health spa coordinator, named "Ace," who was recommending that his clients eat red meat three times a week. "He was a 25-year-old Jack LaLanne type and he gave us our market," says Connie.

When Connie met with him, Ace said something astonishing. "He said that he had the hardest time getting Argentine beef [in Oregon]. And I said 'Argentina?'" Connie recalls. "'Why do you want beef from Argentina?' And he said because it had no antibiotics and no hormones. And I thought, we can do that. We do that. I got home told Doc, and we called Ace right away and said, 'Ace if we got a bunch of ranchers together would you come out and talk to them?' He did and heard that we were all raising beef with no antibiotics or hormones and he said, 'Good golly, you guys, you got to get your product and go to town and market it."

Through Mary's Gate

That group of ranching families was the foundation of the co-op that would become Oregon Country Beef, and later, Country Natural Beef. "Fourteen ranchers founded it in 1986, and we had that many for the first 11 years," says Connie. "We've lost two who passed away with no heirs, and two more who retired, with no heirs, and the rest of the originals are still with us."

It's hard to argue with longevity - or growth: Ninety-three ranching families now make up the cooperative, in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and New Mexico to name a few of the states where their members ranch.

But why structure Country Natural as a cooperative in the first place? Wouldn't a corporate structure be more nimble, lucrative?

"A cooperative is structured the best to return dollars and values to our members," says Connie, and, because of that structure, transparency is a key tenet of the co-op. "When the Wedge buys our beef, that money goes straight to our financial officer, Mary Foreman. [Wedge shoppers'] money goes through her farm gate and she distributes it right out to the ranch families, five checks per year."

The total operation of the cooperative is run on less than 4% overhead, which means 96% of sales pass through Mary's gate and return directly to ranchers who raised the cattle from birth.

"We have to stay profitable," says Doc. "But we want to be a vehicle for linking consumers and ranchers for the benefit of both."

To that end, Country Natural Beef is priced rather affordably compared to other all-natural and grazed beef. Wedge shoppers should call ahead to confirm this pricing, but the Meat Department is hopeful that chuck roast, for example, will retail for 50 cents less per pound than the Wedge's previous natural beef vendor.

"Part of our philosophy is that we don't want our beef to be cheap," says Doc. They need to price the product in order to sustain their ranching families economically, after all. "But we want to be affordable to regular folks, so people of modest means can buy our beef, too."

While Country Natural isn't 100% grass-fed beef, their cattle are finished on a mix of potatoes and the whole grains left over from mill-runs. "All the good wheat germ that they take out to make white flour?" says Connie. "We finish our cows on that. They eat better than a lot of us do."

"We would like to be 100% grass-fed," adds Doc.

"But in Oregon, we have 4-5 months of snow, so we can't do that," Connie finishes.

Nytroe says that a key reason he likes Country Natural is that the cattle aren't corn-finished. "I don't like grain-finished or corn-finished meat," he says. "I'm opposed to it." Corn finishing is a problematic practice in cattle husbandry, he says, because cattle were not meant to eat corn and health problems, like feedlot bloat, result from the practice.

Country Natural Beef Co-op's attention to proper husbandry is clearly a result of Doc Hatfield's years spent as a veterinarian, as is the co-op's criteria for accepting new ranchers into the organization. "We're third-party inspected by the Food Alliance. Our labor, land management, and animal handling all come under review. We hardly use any chemicals. Grazing principles are adhered to. Part of the value [of this co-op] is that you have to be nominated to become a member and pass the Food Alliance to do anything with us."

"We want to instill a sense of pride in our ranchers," says Connie, "and also a connection for our customers that those are really people out there on the ranch and that we do exactly what we say we do."

Co-ops: Communities of Shared Values

Forging those kinds of bonds is key. One prospective member of the co-op is just five hours away from the Wedge in the corner of southeast North Dakota. Connie says, "That family will be some of the first of our co-op's ranchers to visit to your store, we hope."

"They have triplets in that family," says Doc.

"Twins, Doc," Connie interrupts.

"Twins? I thought it was triplets there."

"Nope," says Connie. "I think its twins."

"Well, they have a lot of kids, I know that. They're a real nice family. The good thing is we've accumulated folks with shared values," Doc says. "In Oregon, there are 60-70 ranchers, but the co-op isn't all next-door neighbors."

"Our neighbors are the McCormacks," Connie overlaps, "but the next ranch is a hundred miles away."

"So what we are is a community of shared values rather than a community of place," Doc finishes.

And now, in accordance with sixth principle - cooperation among co-ops - the Wedge and Country Natural share a community, too.