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 Though they first met in 1999 and married in 2001, it seems Steve and Julie French have been working “together,” or at least in the same direction, their entire lives.
Steve discovered Shorthorns at age 12 while on a family vacation and soon became completely enamored of the reds, whites, and roans. With his parents’ financial support he bought his first heifer and began learning about the breed on his own. He says he got a lot of flack because Shorthorn wasn’t really a popular breed at the time. He is always proud to declare “I was Shorthorn when Shorthorn wasn’t cool.”
Steve has long relied on his experiences and top producers for advice and education. In the eighties, he was showing cattle at the Michigan State Fair when opportunity knocked. The managing partner of Premier Beef, the leading Angus operation in North America at the time, asked him to come and work at their sale, and then offered him a full-time job. He took two years off from college to work and says he learned more by watching them and being involved day-to-day than he ever would have being at college. The professional cattlemen at Premier taught him how to breed, feed and develop purebred cattle.
Steve takes pride in his knowledge of the history of the Shorthorn breed, memorizing pedigrees and the breed-changing sires and dams throughout many Shorthorn lines. He has an amazing recall, and people have found that they can use him as a walking history of the breed’s progression.
 Steve’s “plastics pedigree” stems back to his maternal grandfather, one of the pioneers of the plastics industry. Today, he is a broker of plastics raw materials and also owns a custom extrusion company, but he is equally passionate about managing his Shorthorn cattle business.
At the same time Steve was learning about Shorthorns, Julie’s cattle background began in the Angus breed, growing up through junior activities on her family’s Belle Point Ranch in Arkansas. She served on the first National Junior Angus Association board of directors and is still active in fundraising and creating new activities for Angus youth on the national level. Her breed involvement also includes devoted volunteer work for the Angus Foundation, which supports education, youth and research activities for the breed.
Julie holds a B.S. degree in Animal Science/Livestock Merchandising from Oklahoma State University. She is also an active alumna of Texas Agricultural Lifetime Leadership (TALL), a professional development institute administered by Texas A&M Extension. In 2001, Julie moved her business from Fort Worth to Beaverton. She is a promotional strategy consultant with a major focus on purebred livestock, serving industry leaders in cattle and performance horses.
Though they could have met 20 years earlier, through numerous crossed paths and multiple common contacts, today Steve and Julie take pleasure in their life together in the “backwoods of Beaverton” raising both Shorthorn and Angus cattle. |
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Located in central Michigan, Little Cedar Cattle Co. produces elite Shorthorn cattle and continually works to move the breed and the association in a positive direction. 
