23 Questions for 2023

Jennifer Shaver Friedel

Co-Owner/Operator

Point Pleasant Angus. Blountville, TN & Bland, VA

1. Tell us about what you do

I’m a wife and Mom. That’s most of my task. I’m also co-owner/operator at Point Pleasant Angus. We’re a seedstock operation with 2 different locations that we run. One in northeast Tennessee and the other in southwest Virginia.

I also teach Agricultural Law & Environmental Law at Virginia Tech. I got my undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee in Agricultural Sciences. I’ve had a heart for agriculture all along. Long about my junior year, I started exploring career options and law was mentioned. I didn’t know anything about the practice of law and long story short, I knew I wanted to stay in Ag and natural resources so I got my Master’s in Environmental Law and then decided to go onto law school.

2. Do you commute between ranches often?

My husband and I live about an hour from our Virginia farm. We are on the farm 2-3 days a week most weeks, and spend all of summer between our two farms. I handle most of the farm administrative work remotely.

3. Did you grow up on the farm?

Yes, I grew up on the Tennessee farm, a small farm in northeast Tennessee. I took part in 4-H showing cattle and sheep. The Tennessee farm was where my father grew up as well and that’s been in the family for over four generations. Our Virginia location was also built by my great grandfather and has also been in the family for four generations. It went through a lengthy estate process after my great-uncle who last farmed it passed away, was sold out of my family for about 10 years before my parents were able to buy it back and expanded our capacity and operations. It just about doubled our size of operation and so now we run both of these locations. Currently, we fall calve in Tennessee and spring calve in Virginia.

4. Introduce us to your family at the ranch

So we have my Mom and my Dad, Larry and Gail Shaver. Lots of credit to both of them for the entirety of this operation. Dad was in the banking industry for a long time and, as the saying goes, retired from that and now works harder than ever! We’re setup as an LLC owned by my parents, myself and my brother, who lives in South Carolina. My brother isn’t on the farm often but is very involved with the business management side of things, which is very helpful. My sister, Christina, and her boys, Charlie and Carson, come up and pitch in when they can as well. They are also in South Carolina just by coincidence. Then we have my husband and I, with our little family, 2 little ones Ada & Gilbert who are three and five. Obviously, there’s never a hot cup of coffee in my hand. They are learning the ropes and getting used to animals and having a big time out there.. We also have a crew that we couldn’t ever do without, starting with our herdsman, Josh, and his family that are based at our Virginia location. They do an exceptional job and we appreciate everything they do for us. Then our Tennessee farm runs with a handful of part time folks that we rely on heavily for the day in and day out duties. Mom and Dad are constantly back and forth between the two farms and the Virginia farm is home base for me.

5. Describe your program and was it always Angus?

Well, we’re not the biggest outfit you’re going to find by a far stretch. But what I’ve learned is that your size is not determinant of your success. I believe that very much. We are focused on performance Angus cattle. We are 1,000% committed to that balance of genotype and phenotype. EPDs are very important in our program but we’re not out here chasing the wildest numbers. Functionality is an absolute requirement in our program and because of our size, we have less margin for error. So everything we do needs to be the very best quality that we can produce. Many of the farms here out east are much smaller than most out west. So our task is to create bulls that are going to go work for the small commercial guy on the east coast but also for the larger, western producers as well. They are going to perform in these environments. Our bulls are raised on ample pasture, they’re not in a feed lot or pushed on corn. We are focused on practical genetics.

As far as Point Pleasant Angus goes, it’s always been Angus. During my childhood, we ran a commercial

herd for a little while. My Dad grew up on a dairy farm but in modern day we’ve always been Angus. Angus are never going to go out of style. They’re always going to be in and we see all of these other breeds now incorporating Angus into their registries. They’re a foundational breed that at the end of the day, we find they give a lot of bang for the buck. So our money’s on Angus.

6. Do you have repeat buyers every year?

Yes, we do. Our production sale is typically the first Saturday in October every year. That’s been ramping up and we have some great customers that keep coming back to us every year. Our outreach and our customer list is growing, which is beautiful and we feel very blessed to see that.

7. What's your favorite tool on the ranch?

I would say my favorite tools are the American Angus Association App and Dropbox. We maintain all of our records in Dropbox and so if somebody’s at the Tennessee farm, but we need that information in Virginia, we know we can just log in and it’s there so we can access it. The AAA app is also a great tool that allows us to look up a calf’s EPDs on the spot and run reports when we’re in the field, with customers or just not at a computer.

8. What was your first job?

My first job was managing a show string for limousine breeders. Beyond that, once I got out of school, my first job was clerking for a circuit court judge in Virginia.

9. What do you think about today's cattle industry?

I think it’s very promising. Our breeders today and this whole industry is made up of really good people with common goals and like-minded morals. It’s just a really beautiful industry and despite all the craziness with beyond beef and the anti GMO’s and the likes, I think our industry has and will continue to rise above that and continue to prove that we have the best product out there. So, I think it’s very promising. All of the challenges that we see with marketing, for example with the Big Four packers, is a big challenge for the industry. But without a doubt, as producers, we’re going outwork them and we’re going to outsmart them at the end of the day.

10. What do you see as the biggest challenge in the industry?

I think marketing is our biggest challenge. Absolutely. If we can’t market these cattle right, then we can’t make the budget work and at the end of the day we can’t be in business. Whether you’re a small producer in the east, or you’re a large producer out west, I think marketing is our biggest challenge and we’ve got to find avenues that our ranchers have to market their cattle on a fair and open market.

11. If they could hear you, what would you tell the politicians in Washington?

Well, the really great thing is that they can hear us. They can if we’re willing to speak to them. All of us are way too guilty of not doing enough of that, not calling them directly or not approaching them. I am very passionate about fighting the battles we believe in and not just the battles we think we can win. We don’t call, we don’t write, and we don’t raise a ruckus because we think they’re going to do anyways, it doesn’t matter. It does matter and if we’re not even trying to begin with, we lost a long time ago. So first I would say, they can hear us and I’m guilty as anybody else. But we need to call them, write to them and show up on their doorstep more often. I would tell them primarily to stop taking our tax dollars to then turn around and subsidize us. We know best what our needs are and are better qualified to manage our own money than Congress is.

12. How can local governments do better?

I think the biggest way that local governments can serve the agriculture and ranching communities is to pre- serve the land. That is their job. A job that’s 100% in their court. They have a duty to do that for their own economies, for the betterment of their communities and our industry. They just simply need to step up and do that.

13. Are there any organizations you feel that have been good to you?

I’m very appreciative of our state and regional breed associations. On a broader scale, I’m much more of an issues girl. I care about issues and supporting or opposing certain issues more than I do any organization. I’m not one to leave it up to an organization to speak for me or to tell me how I feel about something.

14. Favorite cut of Beef and how do you like it cooked?

I like a good filet, medium rare.

15. Do you like to eat out or cook in?

Cooking in my kitchen, I love to cook. Of course, with a full schedule and two kids, I don’t have as much free time to do it as I’d like to. But I really like to cook and honestly, I find that what we can eat at home is most often better than what we’re going to find at most places anyways.

16. What’s the craziest/most unexpected thing that’s happened to you on the ranch?

Well, I'm certain I’ve made some dentists some nice bonuses over the years. Once I got popped in the mouth with a pretty heavy gate and broke off my three front teeth. It was ugly. On another occasion, I had a bull in the chute clip my chin with his and chipped my tooth.

17. How about any mentors you’ve had along the way.

Still today, I reflect on the adults in leadership in 4-H when I was a kid. It’s all so fundamental in my upbringing in agriculture and I’m very grateful for that. A couple of college professors were also very significant influences in my future and career path as well. I’m also very appreciate of my Mom and my Dad. If you haven’t witnessed ‘Ying and Yang’ in the flesh, you haven’t met my parents. My Mom has always been a great example, schooling me at how to rock the boat, because sometimes it needs rocking. My Dad on the other hand has always showed me how to steady the ship and stay the course. Both of these skills are very important and I’m very blessed to have them as examples in that way.

18. Do you do anything to get away from it all?

A couple of my favorite things to do to get away are to take my kids and just have a really fun day with them doing something they love. Just watching them enjoy life is really fulfilling. Another thing I really enjoy is every year we visit my husband’s family in Nebraska for a couple of weeks. They plan a fun vacation for all the kids and cousins. They do all the planning really and I just have show up and enjoy myself. It’s a real treat to visit with all of them and watch all of the cousins run around together. We also like to visit other ranches when we’re out there as well. It’s our mission, since it’s something we love to do, to get out and see other operations and visit with them when we can.

19. Ford, Chevy or Dodge?

Fords have served us well here. My favorite vehicle to drive on the ranch is a 25-year-old Cummins F350.

20. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Pat Summit, the women’s basketball coach, says it best, “Here’s the secret to how I’m going to beat you, I’m going to outwork you”. That’s sort of my maxim. Of course none of us in the ranching industry need to be told what hard work is, but I’d say 10 years from now I’ll be working as hard as I’ve ever been. I think the ranch will continue to expand, both in volume and also outreach. That’s our goal, do more of what we do and do it better.

21. What do you find to be most rewarding when teaching your classes at Virginia Tech?

The classroom is where we need to learn to have a voice. I’ve had plenty of people suggest to me that we should shy away from higher-ed, but I think the exact opposite is true. As agriculturalists, we need to be in there, helping to educate these students. I teach Agricultural and Environmental Law. Most students walk into my classes and think these are polarizing issues. I don’t know who it was that convinced the general public that agriculture is the enemy of the environment right now, but we know that nothing could be further from the truth. So having a knowledgeable person, experienced in both of these fields, in the classroom connecting with these students, is what we need more of. Bringing real world practicalities to these issues and seeing the light bulb light up for students is very rewarding.

22. What kind of advice do you have for young people that are just getting started with all of this?

Do it your way. There’s no one way to do this and don’t be discouraged. We’ve had plenty of people tell us there’s no way an operation of our size can be successful. We’ve been told “you need to have X number of cows,” “you need to be this big,” “you need to do this,” “you need to do that.” Credit to my Dad, who again, steadies the ship and keeps us on course, reminds us of the plan and mission and instills the confidence that we’re going to make it work. You don’t have to be a certain size, you don’t have to be of a certain stature, you don’t have to do any certain thing.

There’s a lot of ways to succeed in this. You just have to drown out the noise and keep your feet to the path and keep going.

23. What legal advice would you give fellow producers?

Prepare your wills and estate plans. Put together a solid farm succession plan. We’re all going to die. This preparation is the best gift you can leave your family. Also, don’t skimp on having an attorney review your leases – and for heaven’s sake, put them in writing. This protects both parties. Don’t rely on “this is how we’ve always done it.” There’s horror stories aplenty from even very sophisticated parties who neglected to put simple agreements in writing.

Spring Bull Offerings at Point Pleasant Angus!