Heart and Herd

BY MORGAN MARIE
PHOTOS BY MADDISON FOLEY

As Frankie Browning grabs gear from the tack shed and saddles up her horse, Oakie, it’s hard to believe she hasn’t been a cowgirl all her life. Sliding her boot into the stirrup and effortlessly lifting herself aren’t skills one learns teaching English in Japan.

The way she and Rizzo, her beloved cattle dog, ease their way towards the back acreage on her ranch in Spangle, doesn’t give the impression she was ever a river rafting guide. The only clue you might get that Browning used to be a school teacher at Freeman is the calm comfort she displays emerging from the trees with two calves born the night before, making their first drive to the main pasture with the rest of the herd.

As she approaches, Frankie’s keen eyes scan the cattle, assessing their disposition and gauging their movements. With a calculated precision, she maneuvers Oakie, using subtle cues to guide and direct the animals.

As I watched this mesmerizing scene unfold, I was captivated by the interconnectedness of it all—the unity of the cattle, the land, and the cowgirl. Seeing the familiar weight of the reins resting comfortably in her hands gives the impression that Browning learned to rope and ride well before she actually did.

I was shocked when Frankie shared with me she learned how to do all of this only after meeting her husband, Bill Browning. “I didn’t know how to ride a horse or do any of this,” she says with a chuckle.

“I didn’t really feel like a cowgirl even though I was. I mean I was roping and you know, training on horses. But being a rancher now, as my livelihood. I’m not a teacher anymore. I’m a rancher. And so it feels funny to say that though like, but I am a cowgirl obviously. We use our horses to do everything. It never gets old to saddle up.”

The sheer joy on her face as she rides captures that truth.

Perhaps the most mesmerizing part of watching her in her element is that from start to finish, that hour was just one in Frankie Browning’s day. The remainder of her days often consist of even more challenging tasks. “You have to love it. It’s too hard not to love,” she states. But she dreamed of these days “I wanted to be a cowgirl when I was a little girl and I begged my parents who lived on 64th and Pittsburgh, because it was kind of in the country. So when I met Bill I was like oh yeah dude, this is it.”

Bill always had dreams of this life but it wasn’t until he wrangled Frankie that he was able to both swing a hammer by day and return to his bride and beef by sunset. “This is a dream of his, this ranching thing. He’s been a carpenter for 25 years, and always did the cows on the side. And I was like, you know, if you want to do this, let’s try. And if it doesn’t work, then we jump ship, but I’m in.”

Together, they’ve never looked back.

“It doesn’t feel real,” Frankie said when asked what it is like to have built such a legacy in such a short time. “We started out with nothing right? Like it’s getting easier, but like we are not set up for it to be easy. We are not set up to have things be streamlined. We just slowly built the herd up because, you know, we didn’t come into this with any money or anything passed down to us. We lived in a fifth wheel for three years over where the horse pen is. Had a Honey Bucket, did our laundry in town, took Navy showers.”

All of the sacrifices are well worth it for one reason alone, River Browning. Named after Frankie’s river rafting guide days and the true reason for the existence of Browning Beef, River serves as the driving force behind the determination to overcome any obstacles that arise on the ranch. The kindergartner’s learning transcends the traditional confines of textbooks. During calving season he has been known to trade in recess for nature’s playground. A treasure of experience to be cherished. A treasure way greater than anything he could find in the classroom chest.

“100% of everything revolves around him and he’s along for this ride,” she says with a beaming smile. A wild, but wonderful ride.

“I did a lot of things wrong in the first part of the business as far as where I wanted it to grow, but that’s how you get better, right? You do everything wrong.”

That model has certainly seemed to work for Browning Beef as they began with only a dozen head of cattle.

Their cows live the dream, too. Roaming free and eating what a cow would naturally. “I figured if we raised them and they live one hundred percent of life with us. It still ends but at least it’s a good life.”

They have often been told that their beef tastes different and Frankie attributes that to a variety of reasons. One being that there are some Longhorns in their breeding. There was a time when they shied away from sharing that because they’re often referred to as mutts, however, after years of positive reviews Frankie has learned that “it doesn’t matter if the beef tastes like it does.”

I asked Frankie to share about the cost of shopping local and what she says when someone mentions it’s too expensive.

“It’s so expensive, especially the grass fed and finished, because we have to keep the animals so much longer than you would a conventional steer that goes on, gets fattened up on grain because they’re in confinement and they just eat copious amounts of food. They’ll eat anything but the fattening agents and we don’t do that and so the length of time that they have to be kept alive, to get to butchering weight. It’s so much more, it’s a premium product. And the health of the animal because of its diet is much cleaner, and then for our bodies too and we all know that it’s so expensive to be healthy, right? It’s not just protein, but everything that’s good for you. It’s not cheap by design.”

Everything Frankie Browning does is by design. Frankie is a steward of the land. She proudly carries the weight of generations that have come before and thoughtfully considers those that have yet to come.

The story of Browning beef can be found in the flavor of their beef and felt from the heart of their family.