Meet April & Rivas Ranch
A modern day vaquero's daughter.
Howdy, I'm April Rivas, the boss lady behind Rivas Ranch. Raised on a California cattle ranch by the last of the vaqueros, my father and my grandfather. The daughter of farm workers.
This is my dad, James Rivas. A total badass, and one of the last of the vaqueros.
I couldn't wait to leave it behind.
After high school I moved to Napa Valley and trained as a chef. I spent more than 20 years in kitchens building farm-to-fork menus and restaurant concepts.
In 2011 I started a consulting company for food safety and small food manufacturing, working both sides: the kitchens making the food and the regulators inspecting it.
in professional kitchens as a chef
started consulting in food safety and small food manufacturing
food safety educator, inspector and industry advocate
The ranch came back for me.
I ended up hobby farming on a tiny Northern California homestead. Chickens, ducks, rabbits, pigs. Learning humane husbandry and processing for myself woke up something that had been asleep since I was a kid.
Then my kids graduated, the pandemic burned me out, and I couldn't ignore it anymore. In 2021 I packed up, sold most of what I owned and moved to North Carolina to start over with Rivas Ranch.
The standards of an inspector. The taste of a chef. The work ethic of a vaquero's kid.
Why we do this.
We're on a mission to bring small farms to everyone's table. Few connections mean more than the one between the people who raise your food and the people who eat it, and most families have had that taken away.
- Grass-fed, grass-finished beef. Lambs, goats, hogs and birds on pasture.
- Every package from a single animal we raised, never co-mingled.
- Tallow skincare from our own cattle's suet.
- Two Barking Dogs treats from the same ranch.
We want to be your family farm.
Not a brand you buy from once. Your farm. The place you know by name, where you can ask anything about your food and get a straight answer from the people who raised it. Most of our customers had never bought meat this way before they found us.
Thank you for joining us on this wild ride. Let's make some good food together and build the new Rivas legacy.
Latina Built. Ranch Raised. Everyone's welcome at this table.
April, your Local RancHer + Chef