Our Story

Beef On Grass is run by Fiona Bryce from our property at Mount Burrell in the Northern Rivers of NSW.

I’m a mortgage broker by trade. The farm is something else entirely, a different pace, different work, different rewards. Being out with the animals and on the land is about as far from a desk as you can get, and that’s exactly why I do it.

When we moved here and started running cattle, we quickly realised the price at the yards didn’t reflect the quality of what we were raising. So we stopped sending our animals to the yards and started selling direct.

That decision became Beef On Grass.

How we farm

We raise our cattle on our own land in the hills behind Mount Burrell. One animal is processed at a time. Our beef is MSA graded at processing. We know what we’re selling because we raised it ourselves, from the paddock it grazed to the box it arrives in.

The cattle graze pasture across the property, moving between paddocks as the season and grass growth dictate. When conditions call for it, we supplement their feed, because pasture alone doesn’t always give them what they need to grow well, but pasture is where they live and where most of what they eat comes from.

Each animal stays on our property right through to processing, raised, fed, and looked after by us the whole way. When it’s time, it goes straight to a regional abattoir nearby that handles one animal at a time.

Why MSA matters

MSA stands for Meat Standards Australia. It’s an eating quality grading system that measures tenderness, juiciness, flavour. Every carcass gets independently assessed. It’s not marketing, it’s a measurable standard that tells you the beef you’re buying will actually eat well.

We chase MSA grades because it matters. You can raise cattle well and still produce tough, disappointing beef if you don’t manage it properly. The grading holds us accountable.

Why direct-to-consumer

There’s no aggregation, no co-mingling, no mystery about where the beef comes from. It comes from here.

We sell direct because it gives us control over quality and pricing, and it gives you a direct line back to the source. No middlemen, no markups along the way, no guessing about what you’re actually buying.

When you order a whole beast or a side of beef, you’re getting cuts from one animal that we raised, that grazed specific paddocks on this property. If you want to know what it ate, when it was processed, or how old it was, I can tell you. That level of detail doesn’t exist in the regular supply chain.

Why we keep doing this

I didn’t grow up farming. I came to this without assuming I already knew how to do it. I’ve learnt as I’ve gone, made mistakes, fixed what didn’t work, and kept the parts that did.

What’s kept me at it is simple. There’s something in working with the land and the animals that a desk job doesn’t give you. You’re outside, you’re paying attention to weather and grass growth and how the cattle are doing, and at the end of it there’s something real to show for the work. A box of beef that someone’s family is eating on a Tuesday night.

We’re not trying to build the biggest beef business in the Northern Rivers. We’re trying to do this one thing properly, raise good cattle on our own land, sell the beef ourselves, and make sure the people buying it know exactly who raised it and how.

If you’ve got questions about how any of this works, get in touch. You’re talking to the person who actually runs the farm.

Fiona Bryce
Mount Burrell, Northern Rivers NSW