School lunches feature meat from Boulder Valley

It was a cold, snowy morning in November when Brud Smith loaded up a cow and headed to the Franchi Ranch to pick up a hog from Lori Norby. The two Boulder Valley ranches are used to shipping animals, especially beef, out of the valley to be sold and processed out of state, but on that winter day, the trailer was only going as far as Butte.

After processing at Ranchland Packing in Butte, ground beef and sausage packaged and frozen in convenient sizes for school kitchen use made its way back to Boulder.

Sloppy Joe’s, lasagna and taco salad are only a few of the most popular school meals Boulder kitchen manager Lisa Giulio and staff make from scratch for school lunches. And now those meals and others feature local meat.