Father’s Day and Father Time

Being farmers we find ourselves talking a lot about Mother Earth and Mother Nature but hand in hand is also Father Time.

It’s an old fashioned phrase to be sure but with Father’s Day on the horizon it feels like the right occasion to reflect on a little bit of the history of Elmwood Stock Farm.

The Bell family’s farming legacy began with Bel-Clair farm in the 1930s, owned by Cecil D. Bell and Clara Bell. They had a family dairy cow, cattle, chickens and other types of livestock along with a variety of crops. They worked the fields using horses and mules and as the years passed and technology evolved they eventually switched to a tractor.

After Cecil D. and Clara Bell came Cecil and Kay Bell. Elmwood Stock Farm as we know it had grown considerably but Cecil considered ways in which it could expand offerings. The Bell family had been breeding, raising and selling registered Angus cattle for generations but Cecil realized that the farm business could really grow by selling beef by the cut directly to customers. 

Working with his son John Bell, they knew that the meat needed to be of the highest quality and wanted to ensure that the best genetics were present in the herd as well as crafting an appropriate diet that would lead to the absolute best flavor and finish.

Enter: Wagyu. If you’ve heard of Kobe beef, it’s meat that comes from a specific lineage of Japanese Wagyu cattle raised in the Hyogo region of Japan. The meat is known for its exceptional buttery flavor and tenderness, traits that John and Cecil knew they wanted to capture. They also knew that feeding and finishing the cattle with grasses and forages only (as in no grain) would be the best way to protect the health of the herd as well as make a more nutritious meat. After much trial and error, fast forward to today where we are now proud to say that we’ve arrived at a superior beef-eating experience unlike any other.

To this day Cecil still helps John with the Wagyu-Angus cattle herd and ensures that the quality of the beef we sell remains top notch.

If you’d like a little taste of his and our legacy we invite you to sample our 100% organic grass-fed and pasture-raised Wagyu-Angus beef in one of our three Father’s Day meat bundles: The Grillmaster Father’s Day Gift Bundle, Pit Master Father’s Day Gift Bundle and Father’s Day Ground Meat Bundle are all delicious and make for excellent gifts for the dads in your life.