Food truck and grass-fed beef keeps this farmer operating.

The Grassy Cow food truck in Heber City is a place where you can find beef that was born in the Zollinger Farm close to the next

On the one hand, the man wanted to be a farmer. However, he didn’t want to be broke.

As he entered the 21st Century, he discovered it challenging to be one and not the other.

He’d discovered his passion for farming honestly when he was a kid on the family farm of his parents in Tremonton, where he was taught to cherish the land and feel the satisfaction that comes from cultivating things that provide food for the entire world.

When the time came to attend college, He majored in international agriculture in Utah State to grow into a more skilled farmer.

However, there was a problem. After he got married, he soon found the “city girl” wife Julie (she’s from the city of Orem, and they went back to their farm in Tremonton then rolled on a trailer to the grass and gave it a try on the family’s acreage. As time passed, it was evident that there wasn’t enough land to sustain them all.

Bruce and Julie relocated to Heber City to begin a new venture independently. They purchased a plot of area, grew grass hay, and brought down some steers from Tremonton to fatten them to sell at the market. If he wasn’t busy, Bruce was also working landscaping work. He was a kind of farmer.

Then he came up with a plan. What if you could open an eatery?

In his mind, Bruce could hear old-time farmers murmuring, “What’s a food truck?” Then, “What kind of darn fool sells his cows out of a food truck?”

This wasn’t in 1950, and certainly not 1990. The rate of small farms being wiped out has been a constant issue for a long time but has increased. Nowadays, you can either have large acreage and perform a great deal of volume, or you give it up and convert the lower 40 acres into construction lots.

You can also improvise and invent.

Bruce and Julie enjoyed a few good things happening to them. Through the assistance of a Department of Agriculture loan, they could purchase 14 acres of pasture land located five miles from Heber City, which is just away from Heber City’s Jack Nicklaus golf course. Thus, they were able to establish a headquarters. Additionally, they leased thirty or forty acres of land to graze their cattle.

The cows, who consume only grass, are their ace on the table. The cattlemen who said to Bruce that you could not fill a calf with fat on grass and hay and only grass — proved them wrong.

His cows don’t even have to look at fermented corn hay and grain or even regular alfalfa, for that matter. They aren’t feedlot cattle. They are 100% grass-fed, Angus-mix, organic-as-they-come, premium beef cows.

Bruce states, “They look more like triathletes than sumo wrestlers.”

He takes about 20 fresh calves from his father’s farm and then fattens them for over a year, and then transports these to the process plant located in Springville and transforms them into hamburgers.

The entire cow is incorporated into the meat of the hamburger and tenderloin, except the latter or New York steaks. “Everything else is in the burger,” Bruce says. Bruce, “the brisket, the roast, the sirloin, even the prime rib goes back in.”

It’s been around an entire year since the Zollingers decided to try their food truck idea an attempt. They bought their truck and decorated it with their logo called”The Grassy Cow, a name Julie came up with and an online presence, and were lucky enough to find out when they discovered their chef Manuel Gonzalez, a man who operated concession stands at a soccer field in Mexico before making a move into Heber City.

Every Monday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday, Manuel takes the food truck from its regular location near the tabernacle on Main Street, where it can be parked with other food trucks between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. In addition, the car is getting booked to attend special occasions.

All the member’s Bruce and Julie’s crew are all teens: Anna, 17; Elise and Juliette, 15. And Ryan is 13 — which is their kids.

“We wanted them to work and have an experience and learn to be entrepreneurial,” Bruce says. Bruce. “The children have watched the process go from an idea to realizing it. They’ve learned that, yeah, you can and do whatever you want to do. You need to think of an idea and follow how to implement it.”

Bruce recalls an event that occurred approximately four months after the project that, at that exact moment, four new calves joined the herd. Four were heading to Springville for slaughter, as well as they sold 50 hamburgers from the truck.

“The entire operation is in one place, a complete circle from beginning to the end. This is the epic of it,” he says.

This reception was, most of all, uplifting.

“Every day,” says Bruce, “we’ll get somebody say, ‘That’s the best burger I’ve ever had.’ That’s satisfying if you can make somebody happy through a burger.”

Plus, he can make the dish for his family.

“It’s turned out kinda neat with the food truck,” he says. “You don’t have to have a big operation, but you can still survive.”

He exhales before adding, “Once farming’s in your blood, it’s tough to get it out.”