Local ranchers purchase Yellowstone River Beef
Kristen Jones
Farmer Staff Writer
CJ and Calli Thorne have partnered with Luke and Courtney Taylor as the new owners of Yellowstone River Beef, a butcher and processing plant located in Williston. The McKenzie County families are not just the new owners of the processing plant, but they are long-time local ranchers as well.
Calli and CJ Thorne explained that their children are fifth generation McKenzie County ranchers, and they see this as an opportunity to take their cattle from the field, directly to the table, all in one operation.
“This probably started, if I really think about it, back in 2020 during COVID. That’s when CJ and I really decided, hey, we should start selling beef because of all the issues we saw then. Grocery stores were empty, feedlots were getting backed up, the processors were getting shut down because of COVID, And it was, it was a mess. Everyone saw that,” Calli explained. “So, we started selling beef because we can do it. Instead of relying on these giant processors and relying on everybody else to get people their beef, what if we did it?”
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