Patti Beard
Proprietor, Beard Ranch
In 1955, the Beard family purchased a 135-acre ranch and built a Grade A dairy barn. The Beards removed the old pear and plum orchards, installed irrigation pipe and planted 45 acres of clovers and grass in the irrigated pasture. The re-mainder of the acreage is dry land along with Blue Oak woodlands.
The Beards had previously lived in Citrus Heights on a Grade B dairy and raised citrus and olives. That acreage is now the corner of Mariposa and Madison avenues.
In the 1960s, Patti Beard's brother and his wife acquired the Lone Star Dairy, a milk processing plant on Highway 49 with retail and wholesale routes in Placer and Nevada counties. Lone Star had purchased all the milk that was produced at the Beard ranch. In 1969, the dairy cattle at the Beard Ranch were sold and the Beards started to build a cow/calf beef cat-tle herd.
Currently, Patti Beard operates the ranch with 65 head of registered Angus and Angus Cross mother cows. Beard runs the cattle here and leases ranches in three other areas of the county. The calves are sold when they reach a weight of 650 to 750 pounds. Buyers of the heifers typically are local people getting started in the cattle business. The steers are sold through livestock markets in Galt and Roseville.
The cost of irrigation water and feed may curtail any future expansion of the operation. But, Beard remains optimistic that upon her retirement she will have the ranch in shape so that it can generate some additional income from agritourism or selling processed meats directly from the ranch.
