Despite the colorful fall leaves that painted the drive up to Golden Hour Farm, it felt more like summer than fall in Hyrum, Utah, on the first day of October.
The farm’s main attraction — its herd of Highland cattle — wasn’t visible from Spencer and Chelsey Butterfield’s home and barn, since the cows freely roam the pasture, perhaps enjoying the panoramic views of the Wellsville Mountains and Wasatch Mountain Range.
But visitors could easily spot the five mothers and four babies that temporarily resided in the “moo-ternity” ward located between the two buildings.
The calves were just as beautiful in person as they are on the home decor you’ll see if you visit your local Hobby Lobby or Target. Their long fluffy hair looked soft and inviting, and their mother’s long horns appeared more majestic than fear-inducing.
Inside Golden Hour Farm’s barn, Spencer and Chelsey’s 5-year-old son, Bodhi, chased chickens as they shared how they traded in a life of professional basketball in Europe for a life raising Highland cattle in Cache Valley with no prior agriculture experience.
From Utah State to European success
Spencer Butterfield is perhaps best known to Utahns for playing basketball at Utah State.
He finished his time in Logan in 2014 as one of Utah State’s top 3-point shooters with a 44.7% shooting percentage from beyond the arc, according to the university.
He also led the team in steals with 19 as a senior.
While at Utah State, Spencer met Chelsey, a student at the University of Utah, through a mutual friend. Their long-distance relationship grew more complicated when he left to play in Spain in 2014. The couple married the following May, and then Chelsey joined Spencer in Europe later that summer for his second season.
Spencer’s career took the couple — and eventually their children, Bodhi and Summer — to Lithuania, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium. They’d typically spend the nine- or 10-month basketball season in Europe before coming back to the United States for the summer.
For two of those summers, Spencer played closer to home when he was named to the Utah Jazz Summer League roster in 2016 and 2017. He’s proud he was there the summer before the Jazz drafted Donovan Mitchell and was then able to play with the then-rookie the following summer.
While it ultimately didn’t work out for Spencer with the Jazz, he found success in Europe.
“It fit my style of play a lot, so I feel like that’s why we were able to kind of be successful over there. ... I just really liked the basketball and that fit,” Spencer said.
In his third season, he won the French Cup with Nanterre 92 and won the FIBA Europe Cup. In the quarterfinals game of that FIBA Europe Cup, Spencer set the record for most 3-pointers in a single FIBA Europe Cup game with 11. His record has been tied, but it still stands.
Starting Golden Hour Farm
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to hit pause, the Butterfields thought Spencer’s basketball career had been paused for good along with it.
They didn’t have plans for animals at the time, but they knew they wanted land — something they didn’t have in Europe — so they returned to Utah and purchased the land that would be their future home.
But when the European leagues opened back up, the family left for Spain, leaving their land untouched while they started dreaming big dreams for it.
When Spencer suffered an injury that season, the couple thought it was the end of his career again and bought their first horse and 13 cattle. But the basketball itch wouldn’t leave a healthy Spencer alone, so the family headed to Belgium in 2022 as a late addition to the Antwerp Giants in November and hired a ranch hand to care for the animals in their absence.
The Butterfields grew the farm remotely from Belgium, focusing on purchasing high-quality Highlands that would enhance the genetics of their herd, which grew from 13 to 50 that summer. They even stayed up until midnight one night in Europe to acquire a large group of Highlands in the U.S.
That season, Spencer and the Giants ultimately made it to the 2022-23 Belgian Cup and won. Spencer’s shared-team high for points earned him the Belgian Cup Final MVP award even though he blew out his knee with four minutes left in the game.
It was then that he knew it was time to call it a career and go all-in on the farm.
Growing Golden Hour Farm
What started as Chelsey’s yearning for a hobby farm after reading about and falling in love with the farming lifestyle has grown into a full-blown Highland cattle operation and the couple’s second act.
“It really just evolved from like a tiny little hobby farm to everything you could do with a farm: beef, horses, breeding,” Chelsey said.
Golden Hour Farm now has 100 to 150 cattle at a time that roam the 160 acres they own and the couple hundred additional acres they lease.
Spencer and Chelsey have become ambassadors for the Highland breed and the ranching lifestyle, promoting both on Instagram with the hopes that their videos give an authentic glimpse into ranch life.
“We want to promote the lifestyle. It’s so good for us. We’re so happy in it, and we find some fulfillment in it,” Spencer said. “I think that’s what (Chelsey) does good on Instagram. That’s what people are drawn to.”
This year, they opened the farm to the public by offering trail rides through their pastures to see the cattle.
“It’s been fun to share the farm because it grew a lot on Instagram, and I’ve been able to share it that way, but to have people get to come and experience it with their own eyes, it’s been really, really fun,” Chelsey said.
But starting Golden Hour wasn’t easy. In their first calving season, the couple lost a lot of calves. Being responsible for so many lives was really heavy, Chelsey said.
“If anything did get sick or didn’t make it, I felt so much hurt, (thinking,) ‘Because of my lack of knowledge and experience, that happened. It’s my fault.’ That was really hard,” she said.
Weighed down with guilt, she felt like an imposter.
“There was a lot of tears, a lot of crying over calves that were in the house in front of the fireplace because we didn’t know what to do and everything was closed. ... We didn’t know who to call because we didn’t know a lot of people in the (cattle) world yet,” she said.
But the Butterfields believe the best learning comes through doing, even in tragic times like that.
From that experience, they learned to switch their calving season from winter to fall, which is easier for the Butterfields and allows the calves to be born in warmer weather.
While they admit that they still have a lot to learn, 2024 is the first year the couple feels fully assured and confident enough in their knowledge and abilities that “if something goes wrong, or something happens, it’s not the end of the world,” Chelsey said.
Why Highland cows?
Why did the Butterfields choose Highlands? To the Butterfields, Highlands are appealing because of more than their cute, fluffy appearance.
“We’ve really grown passionate about the Highland breed of cows,” Chelsey said. “When we were first looking at Highlands, we felt like we could carve out our own niche with them.”
Highlands are relatively rare in the U.S. — until 2019, when the breed was taken off the Livestock Conservancy’s Conservation Priority List, meaning there are at least 1,000 annual Highland registrations in the U.S., according to Livestock Conservancy. Their popularity has continued to grow.
The Butterfields see Highlands as an overlooked breed in the beef industry. Spencer describes Highland beef as a flavorful, “really rich meat” with less fat, and unlike a more common breed like Angus, Highlands have “never been tampered with” genetically.
But their beef boxes of ground beef and steaks are the smallest aspect of the business because there’s currently not enough Highlands to mass produce beef.
Instead, the cattle themselves are Golden Hour’s bestseller.
The Butterfields have built a herd “with the best genetics you can find in the country,” according to Chelsey. Capitalizing on their high-quality herd and the demand for more Highlands, the couple started an embryo program and hope to become well-known breeders nationally.
The embryo program is what Spencer is most passionate about when it comes to the farm. Like humans, cows are pregnant for roughly nine months, meaning a cow will only have one calf a year, with the rare exception of twins. That limits how many Highland calves can be born each year.
The Butterfields found a way around that.
Working with Rusty Stott, an embryologist from Utah State, they take the embryo of one of their 15 high-genetic moms with the semen of a good bull in a process similar to IVF with humans. The embryos can then be transferred to any cow regardless of breed. That cow is known as the recipient or recip cow and serves as a surrogate, who will then give birth to a high-genetic, purebred Highland calf. The Butterfields currently have 30 Angus cows in their herd to serve as recips for the Highlands.
“Like with horses, if you got good parents, chances are it’s probably going to be a pretty good foal or a pretty good calf. It’s cool to be able to create that,” Spencer said.
Through their breeding and embryo program, Golden Hour is able to choose a calf’s pedigree, which should result in a better calf.
“You could find the healthiest cows, the best frame, the best utter, conformation, stuff like that, to create a cow that’s so hearty (with) no health issues, just so strong, which in turn, creates a better mom, better cow, better beef. Whatever you choose to do with it, it’s just a better product,” Chelsey said.
Buyers from across the country have purchased Golden Hour’s embryos, calves and confirmed pregnant recip cows to start their own herds or to use the docile Highlands as pets. The calves are their most popular commodity compared to the recips because “everyone loves babies,” as Spencer said.
The Butterfields sell their recips for $1,200 while a calf born in September is currently listed for $7,500.
It’s been a major learning process to create a good Highland embryo. Spencer said “even (Stott) was stumped in the beginning because it is such a heritage breed and there’s not a lot of data on it.”
The program had some failures in the beginning, with some of the recip cows not taking the embryos. But after better understanding the Highland reproductive cycle, Golden Hour Farm had its first Highland calves born from surrogate moms this year.
As of early October, they expected 20 calves this calving season.
The rewards of Golden Hour Farm
The Butterfields have embraced the lifestyle that comes with ranching.
The couple didn’t know how to ride a horse until after they bought their first, but riding horses together as a family has been the most rewarding part of the ranching journey for Spencer.
He said of their 5-year-old son, “He knows how to steer a horse around and move a cow a certain way. He’s 5 and he can do that. That’s just so cool. I didn’t know how to do that at all.”
“Watching our kids enjoy the lifestyle and what we’ve created is by far the most positive aspect of all of it,” Chelsey said. “They get to experience the heartbreak as well if we do lose an animal or something like that. They’re really learning about life in the most natural way possible, which is really rewarding.”
The Butterfields have come a long way in a few short years — and they can’t quite believe it. Their friends and family were in disbelief when Spencer and Chelsey first shared their plans with them for Golden Hour, but now they can’t see them doing anything else.
“I’m glad that we found it. ... Even when I did start having the farm dream, like I said, it was just a little hobby farm. I never could have expected a whole working ranch, which is super cool,” Chelsey said.
Spencer added, “Life’s been awesome — way different than what we both expected.”
