The Story

Steve Schubart, Founder-Owner

I grew up on my parents very small hobby farm in Vermont where my love for animals was born. We didn’t have cattle, but we had every other animal you could raise in the Green Mountains of Vermont. While in my teens and into young adulthood I worked on diversified farms, but never considered farming a career path for myself until I worked on a successful grass-fed beef ranch in Sonoma County, California while pursuing a degree in Economics.

My education and work in California inspired me to start my own cattle company. After completing my 2013 semester in California, I drove home to enroll for the spring 2014 semester at Vermont Tech to receive a Bachelor of Science in Diversified Agriculture and a Degree in Dairy Herd Management. Upon graduating in 2016, I founded Grass Cattle Company LLC on leased land in Shoreham, Vermont with 30 head of cattle. I raised cattle there for two seasons with the help of good friends. In 2018, I started leasing a 160 acre ranch along The Mud Hollow Brook in Charlotte, Vermont and in the spring of 2019, I bought it.

In 2022, Ian Johnson came on board as Ranch Manager. Ian does everything from rotating our cattle daily, to working the farmers market, to fixing up our barn.

Ian first became inspired to work with animals on pastures while studying ecology at UVM and learned about Allan Savory’s work. Since graduating, he spent six years working on farms and exploring different production systems before coming to Grass Cattle Company in the spring of 2022. He continues to be fascinated by ecosystem interactions in the agricultural landscape and aim to learn more daily. In Spring 2023, he started a small layer flock to diversify the animal impact on the land. He rotates the hens on pasture to complement the beef grazing operations, add nitrogen to the soil, and produce delicious eggs for sale at the Ranchstand.