Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelsey Leavitt.
Hi Chelsey, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My entire life has consisted of three main categories of interest – animals, business or entrepreneurship, and sports. But for the sake of this article, I will talk about the first two categories of interest: animals and business. I started my first business when I was eight years old, renting out my goats to eat people’s weeds. I hung signs all over my small town titled ‘Goats for Rent.’ “Call me at (landline), and I’ll deliver my goat to your house to eat your weeds. $5/day.
This new goat-renting venture was the beginning of many small startups I did throughout my childhood and adolescence. Throughout this time, my mom always told people, “She brings anything home that breaths.” I would show up at home with stray ducks, dogs, or cats; it didn’t matter what kind of animal it was; if it breathed air and looked lost, I brought it home. A few local farmers regularly gave me bum lambs or goats whenever they had one so I could nurse them back to health. It wasn’t unusual for me to make a makeshift little stall in my bedroom to house a weak baby goat or lamb so I could get up with it throughout the night to give it a bottle.
Once I nursed these young animals back to health, I would either send them back with the farmer or keep them if the farmer offered. From a very early age, I counted down the days until the local feed store had spring chicks in stock. As soon as I knew they’d be there, I’d rush to the store with a little box and buy as many as my young self could afford. Without the permission of my parents most of the time. Buying spring chicks every year was a regular occurrence throughout my growing-up years. And thank goodness my parents were so supportive. They could have said no and made me return all of these animals.
But I think they saw how it lit me up, how responsible it made me from a young age, and how it got me thinking and focusing on something outside myself. Once I had whatever new animal it was, I was always happy to take on the new responsibility. Flash forward to my high school years. I tried a few jobs at a grocery store, gas station, and restaurant, and I quickly realized working for other people wasn’t for me. I disliked every second of it. So, I quit and started a window cleaning business. I did that throughout my high school years and into my college years.
I did this for ten-plus years, making a living for myself being self-employed. I’ve never lacked motivation or ambition. Once my mind is made up on a specific task, I do it and see it through. I may eventually decide that that particular course isn’t what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I always give it my all and see it through before I pivot to something that aligns with me more. My grandma and grandpa were cattle ranchers in central Utah; they raised Beef Master, beef cows, and Foxtrotter horses. Any chance I got, I would have my parents take me to stay with them as long as they’d let me, where we’d spend our days riding horses, checking cows, taking care of puppies, and just living the ranch life. I couldn’t get enough of it.
Unfortunately, my grandpa passed away from cancer when I was only 8—leaving a big hole in my heart and a craving for more horses, cows, and ranching. When I was in middle school and high school, I would contact local ranchers who I knew had cows to see if they’d be willing to let me help them gather their cows in the fall. In the spring, summer, and early fall months, ranchers often keep their herd of cows on thousands of acres of range in the mountains so they can eat the grass and don’t have to be fed hay.
When fall comes around, the ranchers rally together on horseback and head up in the mountains to gather their herds, bringing them down to their ranch in town for the winter to feed them hay until the following spring. The ranchers were nice enough to say yes and would kindly come and pick me and my horse Phoenix up before sunrise to head up on the mountain to herd cows all day. Phoenix was the horse I spent all my savings on buying. This lifestyle lit me up and set my soul on fire. I couldn’t get enough.
After graduating high school, I headed off to Utah State University to study Agribusiness (Agriculture business). My dream was to own a ranch and raise beef to sell direct-to-consumer in hopes of making a living while living the ranching lifestyle I always dreamed of. At this time, I had my horse and a handful of other animals, but I didn’t have any cows. Fast forward to 2014, when I got set up on a date with who would end up being my husband. He was a 25-year-old hunk of precisely what I was looking for living in a barn (with an apartment, I’ll add), training horses for a living, and working cows for his family ranch.
We dated for three years before getting married and then shortly after bringing home our first of what would eventually be three children. My husband’s family had a cow/calf ranching operation that had been operating since the early 1900s. However, in today’s day and age, it isn’t easy to make a living operating a cattle ranch the traditional way. Insert where my life dream comes into play! So my husband and I decided now (2019) would be the perfect opportunity to work with his parents to transition the ranch to a direct-to-consumer model where we would raise the calves for their entire life cycle and then sell the 100% grass-fed and finished beef to consumers.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t always been a smooth road. We’ve had many days filled with confusion, frustration, and discouragement. But keeping an eye on the big vision and goal has helped us to stay on course for what we’re working on, even on those hard days. I’ve learned over time that there’s a lesson to be learned in literally everything.
Every situation in life just is. It’s neither good nor bad until we make it that way. If something seems bad, it often takes a change in perspective to find the good or the lesson to be learned. When you’re starting something new, there’s always a steep learning curve that comes with challenges and obstacles. I always tell people to take things one step at a time. If you don’t know how to do something, call someone you think might; if they don’t, they can often point you in the right direction towards someone who does.
Persistence is key. I also think that a lot of people venturing into the unknown with a new business compare themselves to someone who may have been working on whatever it is they’ve been working on for ten or so years! There’s a quote by Jon Acuff that I love and have kept near to me throughout this journey, “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle, or your middle to someone else’s end.”.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Our operating business is L2 Ranch, where we raise and sell 100% Grass-fed and finished beef and other products. We offer delivery in the Park City and Kamas Valley areas and have pickup times throughout each month. For more details or to sign up for pickup or delivery, visit our website at www.L2beef.com. We also recently launched a supplement for dogs consisting of freeze-dried beef organs. It is an excellent high-end product made from our beef organs, freeze-dried, and packaged in small batches by us. The supplement is available for shipping and subscriptions. We plan to continue growing and offering more products as time goes on.
Being able to raise these animals for their entire life cycle, providing them with the best life imaginable for a herd of cows, is such an honor. Our herd spends its summer in the Uinta-Wasatch National Forest, the same forest permit our family has held, and our cows have been grazing for over 100 years! They spend their days grazing the lush green slopes and valleys, lying in the shade of tall pines, and drinking from the freezing spring runoff. In the winter, we bring our cows back home to the ranch in Oakley, where we tend to them daily, feeding them a mix of grass and alfalfa hay.
Oakley has a rich farming background dating back to the early 1900’s. It was then that the L2 brand was government-appointed to the first generation of our family’s cattle ranch. Nearly 100 years and six generations later, the backbone of the operation remains the same.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.L2beef.com
- Instagram: @L2.Ranch
Image Credits
Tressa Stevens @tressa_stevens
