Cow chow

"You have to grow or you have to go," says Judi Hammond, owner of Sierra Nevada Ranch, a mom-and-pop company based in Yerington that sells a wide range of smoked meats.

The leader of their line, however, is the food that won the West: beef jerky, but not the tough old dried up shoe leather many think of as jerky.

To dispel that myth, the company gave out samples at the recent Made in Nevada reception held in Carson City to spotlight homegrown products.

This jerky is tender, almost meltaway moist, homemade by Steve Menesini, smoked and spiced using his own recipes.

It's made, not from cattle grown in Brazil, but from home grown, made-in-America cattle.

Making meat products has been a life-long business for Menesini, who cut and wrapped meat for individuals when younger.Where, along the way, did he pick up the spicing technique to make meat memorable? "It's just natural," he shrugs."Judi would say it's in the family, because my mother is Italian." The Yerington couple credit the Made in Nevada program, part of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development, with helping them reach beyond the isolation of trying to run a business making a product with wide-scale distribution potential from the hinterlands of Lyon County.

"The agencies are helping us to see the bigger picture," says Hammond, who handles the administrative side of the business.

They plan to explore the import export market.

It's all about distribution, she says.

Sierra Nevada Ranch is a small company with just one employee besides its owner set in a rural community out of the loop.

Not far away is Las Vegas: a huge market,with millions of the very tourists who love the product.

But the city presents numerous obstacles to finding sales outlets and distributors.

Still, the company has survived for 15 years without widespread distribution channels.

Some product is sold on the Web site snrjerky.com, but most is sold direct to customers at craft shows.

Every summer weekend,Menesini drives 65 miles to Lake Tahoe to set up shop in the Horizons casino parking lot.

For three days he sells four-ounce bags of jerky to tourists, up to 70 customers a day, each of whom buys an average of four bags at $6 each.

It's the perfect Nevada souvenir, he says, because it's light in weight and non-perishable.

"I've met people from all over the world, and of course, from all over this country," he says.

Before discovering the arts and crafts venue at Lake Tahoe, he sold direct to jerky chewers for 14 years at a farmers market in Roseville, Calif.

The 280-acre Sierra Nevada Ranch, founded by Menesini's grandfather,was in the family for 80 years, and swelled to 1,000 acres.

It's since been sold and is planted in alfalfa, but Menesini kept the smokehouse property, a 2,700-square-foot building where the top and bottom rounds are cured, not with fake smoke flavoring, but with authentic Nevada smoke.

The cattle now come from Oregon.

The smoked meats are USDA inspected, which poses another challenge.

"The USDA inspectors come every day," says Hammond."The regulations go beyond comprehensive.We spend a lot of money to comply.

Government regulations make people wonder if it's worth being in business."