Feb 03, 2026
By Meagan Cramer
Melinda Jones of Jones Cattle Premium Beef loves the stories she hears from customers.
“One customer prepared our beef for his big Irish family gathering,” Melinda says. “He said you normally can’t get a word in edgewise but once they started eating the beef, you could hear a pin drop.”
Melinda, her husband, Jeff, and their four children live near Seneca and have been members of Shop Kansas Farms (SKF) from the beginning. They attended SKF’s first Market of Farms (MOF) in Lyons and will often drive up to four hours to set up a booth. At the recent MOF in Lawrence, they gained 100 new customers in one day.
Jeff grew up near Seneca, a small town near the Nebraska border and a far distance from any sizable population base. His family both farmed and ranched.
Melinda grew up on a farm and ranch near Ashland, which is just a few miles from the Oklahoma border.
She went to college at Southwest Oklahoma State University, but her brother Travis went to Kansas State University and had become good friends with Jeff at FarmHouse Fraternity.
“There was a semi-formal dance, but Jeff and Travis waited until the last possible minute before they decided to attend,” Melinda says. “Travis told Jeff that he would call his sister in Wichita to see if she was free. Jeff had been to the ranch in Ashland, so I knew who he was and that we would have a good time. Being the last minute, I didn’t have a thing to wear. I had three hours to get ready and get to Manhattan! Those boys called me the whole way to see what was taking me so long. When I finally got there, I told them both that they would never find wives if they continued to treat girls like that.”
“When we started dating, I was afraid to ask Melinda out,” Jeff says. “She was one of my best friend’s sisters, and if things went south, it wouldn’t go well between him and me.”
Although they wouldn’t date for another two years, they finally married on Dec. 2, 2006. Then, like many young people who grow up on farming and ranching operations — especially those separated by a six-hour drive — they faced the dilemma of where they would settle. Jeff had a job as the manager of Blair Milling and Melinda had a job teaching special education at Jackson Heights; it seemed natural to lay down roots in Seneca.
“Trying to find land was very difficult,” Melinda says. “Plus, purchasing all the equipment to ranch is a major investment. Since we both grew up with our own family’s beef in the freezer, we decided to start selling our beef directly to consumers in addition to our current cow-calf and backgrounding operation. We started finishing out steers for ourselves and our family in 2007. As people tried our beef and word spread, our business kept growing. Then, when the pandemic hit, it exploded. This has truly been a family affair. As soon as all four of our kids could walk, they have been involved in chores, sales, making deliveries and MOF events.
“Shop Kansas Farms was a huge part of our success and still is,” Melinda says. “We recently posted that we had beef ready to go to the locker and sold seven full beef in three days. It is through this amazing format that we have had the pleasure of putting food on so many families’ dinner tables.
“We knew early on in our beef sales that if we wanted to grow our customer base, providing delivery services was a must,” she continued. “We have a trailer full of freezers and make a loop every few weeks that involves both urban and rural locations across the state of Kansas, as well as Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado and Oklahoma. We don’t even like to call people our customers because they have become great friends. We’re not going to an address to drop off beef; we’re going to visit our friends. Meeting new people, making connections and telling our story is the best part of what we do.”
We at SKF love hearing stories about how we help farmers and ranchers prosper. In fact, it’s the driving force of what we do as we continually create new ways to fulfill our purpose to connect you to the wonderful farm and ranch families of Kansas to purchase the food they raise. What we love most are the friendships made along the way.
Note: Melinda is part of our series of celebrating the International Year of the Woman Farmer and Rancher, 2026.
To find out more, go to their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/jonescattlepremiumbeef
Call them: 785-294-0565
Email them: jonescattlepremiumbeef@gmail.com