Grass Cattle Co. Flips Burgers at the BTV Farmers Market

A Grass Cattle Company cheeseburger with caramelized onions Credit: Courtesy

Folks hitting up Grass Cattle Company‘s tent at the Burlington Farmers Market will find a menu of fresh-grilled, creatively topped, 100 percent grass-fed burgers for any time of the day. A farm egg- and cheese-topped breakfast burger ($16) hits the spot in the morning, while a Kim-Cheese burger ($18), with kimchi, a Cabot American slice, crispy shallots, hoisin sauce and sriracha mayo, is just right for lunch.

The breakfast burger is “a staple of my Saturday routine,” artist and fellow market vendor Daisy Hutter said.

If Grass Cattle owner Steve Schubart had stuck to his original plan, Hutter might have had to find another go-to.

“The burgers are like a calling card for our beef.” Steve Schubart

Schubart, 38, had no intention of selling cooked meat when he lugged coolers of frozen beef to his first Burlington market in winter 2022.

“But people kept telling me, ‘You oughta sell burgers,'” he recalled. Schubert protested that he wasn’t a cook. “I said, ‘But I’m a farmer.‘”

The people prevailed. Three years later on a nice Saturday, Schubart said, “We bring 160 burgers, and we sell out.”

The cash flow is helpful, but the juicy, griddled patties made from a custom blend of brisket, chuck, round and shoulder are also a marketing tool for his frozen cuts, he explained: “The burgers are like a calling card for our beef.”

Hutter said she especially appreciates Schubart’s collaboration with other vendors. Her morning burger features Birch Hill English Muffins from Jericho, which she called “the best I’ve ever had.” And the Kim-Cheese burger is topped with kimchi from Sobremesa of Charlotte.

Steve Schubart and his cattle Credit: File: Daria Bishop

The latter partnership recently took a new turn. In July, around when Sobremesa scaled back and stopped vending at the market, co-owner Jason Elberson joined Grass Cattle. He now works its market burger grill and manages the chicken flock which provides the eggs for the breakfast burgers. Schubart is also grateful for help moving his 58 Angus and Angus-Wagyu cows between paddocks across his Charlotte home farm and rented Hinesburg land.

During the growing season, the animals travel daily to fresh pasture. This rotational grazing system is the foundation of Schubart’s operation, which the Lincoln native started in 2016 on leased acreage in Shoreham.

“Hoofed animals have been living in grass-based ecosystems for as long as we’ve been around — or longer,” Schubart said. In the wild, he explained, predator pressure keeps them in tight groups and on the move. Rotational grazing mimics that pattern.

The practice provides animals with high-quality forage and allows pastures to rebound between grazings, which improves soil structure and the land’s capacity to absorb water and carbon. As cows range, they enrich and water the soil with manure and urine.

Managing the cows is relatively easy compared with making a living from a small beef operation.

Schubart kept an off-farm job for several years while building his business. He cobbled together mortgages to buy his Charlotte farmland and barn, where he opened a self-service farm store in 2022.

Last year, Grass Cattle added a second store next to Red Wagon Plants in Hinesburg. Schubart’s team grilled burgers there this summer on a few Sundays until double burger-day weekends became too much.

The stores are part of Schubart’s focus on direct-to-consumer sales; he’s building a new facility that will allow him to ship beef to out-of-state customers. The profit margin is higher than selling a truckload of beef to a grocery store, though it takes more work.

Luckily, the farmer is a natural salesman. He can talk until the cows come home about why his grass-fed beef tastes so good and the benefits of regenerative farming over the industrial meat system.

Flipping burgers at the market is one step toward a more ambitious mission, Schubart said: “My goal is to take down Big Meat.”

Grass Cattle Company grills burgers year-round at the Burlington Farmers Market. Its stores are located at 1677 Hinesburg Rd., Charlotte, and 2408 Shelburne Falls Rd., Hinesburg. grasscattlecompany.com

The original print version of this article was headlined “A Better Burger | At the Burlington Farmers Market, Grass Cattle Company sells freshly griddled patties with a mission”