The Akers family lives in Richland, where they raise grass-fed and grass-finished beef on their ranch, Rising A Custom Beef.

RICHLAND — Brianna Akers was ill, but couldn’t pinpoint a cause.

“I’d been sick on and off in high school, but didn’t really know why,” she said.

Brianna, 29, grew up in Halfway. In 2013, she married Joe Akers, who grew up just 13 miles away in Richland. The newlyweds settled in Richland after buying a small ranch, and she was soon pregnant with her first child.

She had a miscarriage. Then lost two more pregnancies.

And through it all, her symptoms continued with abdominal pain, diarrhea and malnutrition.

In 2016, Brianna gave birth to Amelia.

Three weeks later, Brianna was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a disease that causes chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.

“It took forever to get diagnosed,” she said.

Now having a name for her condition, Brianna started a “specific carbohydrate diet” to try and curb the symptoms.

“It’s super strict,” she said.

Her diet was mostly eggs, or chicken and carrots that were cooked for hours and then blended.

She went into remission, then got pregnant with their second child, Zeke.

“That threw me into a flair again,” she said.

He was born early by C-section, and weighed just five pounds.

Her health continued to decline, and her family assisted any way possible.

“Myself and our other two sisters and mother would go to her house every Monday to cook her meals for her as she was bedridden and was on such a strict diet, all meals needed weekly prep,” said her sister, Jessica Binford.

“At one point, I was 104 pounds,” Brianna said.

Brianna tried immunosuppressive medication to combat Crohn’s, but said the side effects were worse than the disease.

She even traveled to Chicago to explore triple antibiotic therapy.

“At this point, it’s ‘what else can we do?'” she said.

Surgery was an option that she wanted to avoid.

Until she ended in a Boise emergency room in February 2019.

Her colon was inflamed and clogged with 12 inches of scar tissue.

“Nothing was getting through,” she said.

Doctors removed her colon, and she now depends on an ostomy to rid her body of waste.

Their third child, Silas, is 2.

A new look at food

Brianna’s health improved, but after a lifelong struggle with nutrition, she said she started to think differently about food.

“It completely changed our view of food,” she said.

She started milking her own cow to make cheese and butter, and grows a garden every year to eat vegetables fresh and also preserve the harvest for the winter. She cooks everything from scratch, and “as close to organic” as she can.

However, she noticed that eating beef wasn’t easy on her gut — a tough situation, because they raised cattle.

“All my symptoms would come back hard,” she said.

But eating venison or elk did not cause the same reaction.

“I could eat that, and my symptoms weren’t horrendous,” she said.

She and Joe considered their own herd, and made the decision to transition to grass-fed and grass-finished cattle. They don’t use antibiotics, hormones or pesticides.

In addition to selling steers at the market, the couple could sell beef locally to people who wanted a whole cow, which the buyer would get butchered and processed themselves at a local facility.

However, sustaining a small ranch isn’t easy, Brianna said. Joe works in construction as well as managing their herd of 100 head, and Brianna homeschools their children.

They started thinking about ways to expand their reach, and make grass-fed beef available to a wider audience. In order to do this, the cattle must be processed at a USDA-certified facility, and they chose Billy Bob’s in Elgin.

“We chose to expand to USDA shipping of our beef so that we would be able to continue ranching and support our family on ranching alone, and not dissolve like so many other small ranches have had to do,” Brianna said.

To further their reach beyond Eagle Valley, they took a course on how to market their meat nationwide. In September, they shipped their first orders to Tennessee, Florida and Missouri.

“I never thought I’d be shipping beef to Florida,” she said.

The frozen beef is packed with dry ice.

“We put enough dry ice in for four days,” Joe said.

They’ve developed a website for customers to learn about their ranch, Rising A Custom Beef, and the way they raise their cattle. They also utilize Facebook and Instagram. 

“It’s connecting the buyer with the rancher,” Brianna said.

To learn more, visit risingacustombeef.com.