raising responsible beef
Nick’s grandparents had six children, all of whom helped move the cows from winter to summer pasture and helped out with other chores as kids. But it was Francis’ three sons who expressed the most interest in following in their dad’s footsteps and who formed Bradley Brothers Cattle as young men. One of these brothers is Jerry, Nick’s dad, who came to the Chico area from Lincoln in the 1970s to major in agriculture at Chico State. At that time, the family’s cattle herds were grazing primarily in Lincoln and the Sierra Valley, but once Jerry graduated and began leasing land locally, the family started wintering some of the cattle in Chico and Yuba County and summering them on the lush grasses of Plumas County. 16
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The brothers managed their herds together for over forty years, and in 2010, Jerry and Nick formed Bradley and Son to keep the legacy alive for another generation. Bradley and Son operated primarily as a commercial herd until 2015, when they began to get requests from family and friends for beef. They began selling direct-to-consumer beef products shortly afterward, as Bradley Grass-Fed Beef. “The thing about selling direct-to-consumer is you need to jump in all the way. If you’re only doing it halfway, it’ll never work,” Nick says. Although it took a little while for the enterprise to get off the ground, Bradley and Son’s grass-fed beef is now available for purchase on their website, in a variety of stores, at farmers markets, and in restaurants across Northern California and Western Nevada. Locally, Bradley Grass-Fed Beef can be found on the shelves of Chico Natural Foods Co-op and New Earth Market, as well as on the menus of restaurants such as the Red Tavern and Sierra Nevada Brewery. With so many places to choose from, it’s likely you’ve had Bradley Grass-Fed Beef before and perhaps didn’t know it, though you may have recognized the quality of the beef in the dish you ate and marveled at its rich taste. The Bradley’s cattle are grassfed and grass-finished, which means they
eat a steady diet of grass and other plants year-round. Often, if a product is labeled “grass-fed” it doesn’t necessarily mean that the cattle were grass-finished. They may have been finished on grain, which is not a bad thing; it’s just a differentiator from the kind of product that Nick sells. Nick’s family has been raising beef cattle in Butte County and the surrounding areas for over 75 years. They steward the land and appreciate the bounty of native grasses that allow their cattle to thrive. Each summer, when the thermometer starts creeping up into the 80s and 90s, the Bradley and Son cowboys move the cattle from Chico to the cool, water-filled meadows of the Sierra Nevadas, where they feed on the lush mountain grasses until fall. When it comes time to harvest the animals, the Bradleys use Foothill Meat Company, a USDA-certified butcher located in Oroville. “They’re family owned and do all of our cut and wrap items for us,” Nick says. “We work well together and they always do a great job.” The legacy three generations in the making is going strong, and the Bradleys intend to continue bringing the best beef right to their customers’ doors. For more information or sales inquiries, visit their website at www.bradleygrassfedbeef.com.
WRITTEN BY MADDIE RODRIGUEZ
“If you see a cow in Chico, it’s probably one of ours,” Nick Bradley jokes. He is referring, of course, to the many head of black angus cattle that graze the native grasses on either side of town, from Hicks Lane to Richardson Springs and out to the Skyway. Nick is the “Son” in Bradley and Son Cattle, a Verified Grass Fed and Non-GMO Compliant beef herd. He is the third generation of his family to be involved in raising cattle, and he follows in the footsteps of his grandfather, Francis Bradley, who swapped his dairy herd for a beef herd in the 1940s.
