The Lander school district is serving up local beef to students from animals the students raised. 

Fremont County School District Food Director Denise Kinney grew up on a dairy farm and was a member of Future Farmers of America as a kid. With recent government interest in getting more locally-sourced foods into schools, she started thinking about what type of food that could be in Wyoming. This year, she partnered with the Lander FFA program.

“We bought two steers and we got a little over 700 pounds back,” she says. “We’ve made homemade meatloaf, it goes into our spaghetti sauces, you know, sloppy joes. We are working, hopefully next year, we’ll be able to get burger patties made.”

She says, while local meat costs more, it’s better quality.

“We do pay a little bit more,” she says. “However, we’re not throwing away 30 percent of it away, being grease [or] fat.”

She says they plan to buy four to six steers for next year.