GOSHEN COUNTY – The pandemic has made shoppers more conscious about spending their money locally, especially in Wyoming. Mac Sussex and his wife, Celsie, of Hawk Springs are giving Goshen County residents one more option to buy local beef with their new operation, Bear Mountain Beef.

The family has sold retail beef for roughly three years, and they’ve spent the last six months putting together their company, named for Bear Mountain in South Goshen County, where they hope to open a meat processing facility within the next year. 

“This year, we ran into a scenario where we had the cattle, we just did not have the processing for those cattle,” Sussex said. “We had a lot of customers we had to turn away through the summer, and earlier on in the year. They wanted beef, but we had no way of getting it to them.”

At a recent Wyoming Stock Growers Association meeting in Goshen County, Executive Vice President Jim Magagna said in an interview with The Telegram that there are roughly 30 processing facilities throughout the state, a low amount in terms of ability to process.

“A lot of discussion was about the need for processing facilities in the state,” Magagna said. “We need more small facilities in order to cater to the local food movement that people want to buy locally and know where the food comes from.”

Sussex aims to fill that gap. He said he’s been looking at properties in south Goshen County but has yet to decide exactly where he’ll build his processing plant.

“Our goal is to provide people in this area with a constant supply of affordable beef,” Sussex said. “With COVID-19, we’ve seen how our food supply can be disrupted. We’re trying to negate that and make (beef) always available here in Goshen County.”

Sussex said their first batch of beef will be ready to sell around mid-December. For more information about the Sussex family’s operation, visit their Facebook page, Bear Mountain Beef.

“We want it to be affordable, and we want to have a good product,” Sussex said.