Ninja Cow Farm LLC

Before we get back to the store, I have to tell a few funny things that happened on the tour.

First, one of the big bull bison apparently likes to use the tractor as a scratching post.

SWMBO had been asking me if there was any way we’d have bison on our farm. “Nah, not on our place.”

“Well not an entire herd, but maybe a couple. Think what a neat part of the tour that would be.”

“We’re not really set up for bison.” I was trying to be polite in front of our hosts.

Then this bull starts pushing on the tractor moving it, and our 40 foot long trailer like it’s nothing. Really rocking it back and forth. Terry, our driver, is yelling at him to go away and he’s pretty much ignoring him. Terry I notice, won’t set foot on the ground around this bull. Only swatting at him from the safety of the tractor. An angus bull I’d hop down and shoo away. Not this bison. SWMBO sees the same thing.

“They are aggressive, aren’t they?!”

“Yep.”

I’ve been asked about raising bison before. Some years back, they were all the rage. They new super meat. Everybody got into them, and then the market collapsed. We had small kids at the time and I knew I didn’t want anything to do with an animal that would turn on you and charge if it felt threatened. We missed that little train wreck, thankfully. But seeing this 2000 pound bison push a tractor around like it was nothing just trying to get a scratch was pretty funny and a good reminder why I don’t want bison.

The second thing that happened on our tour, especially in this election year, was we saw Donald Trump.

We made it back to the store and SWMBO and I promptly fell into their meat selection. On the tours on our farm, we end the tour by giving what we call the “inside tour” which is taking you all around our store and telling you what we sell and where it comes from.

On this tour, when you made it to the parking lot, it was over. We kind of invited ourselves into the store to go shopping. However we paid about $65 for this tour whereas on our tour it’s $20 total so maybe for them the tour is the income whereas for us it’s just the way to get you to the farm.

Once we got inside, we found something interesting. They only stocked prime cuts of meat like ribeyes and sirloins, and of course ground meat. We asked where the rest of the animal went and they said most of their meat was sold as primals to restaurants. I guess they held back some prime cuts for direct retail sales and the rest is wholesale. For us, our whole business revolves around our little store, for them it seems that the wholesale market is their main business. Just another interesting difference.

Also interestingly, they only kept their meat freezer at 30 degrees meaning the meat was barely frozen. We keep ours at negative 10 degrees so it’s hard frozen. Being at 30 degrees would be handy for someone who wants to buy today and eat today. But it would be terrible for someone who wants to buy today and make the 45 minute drive home with safe meat (or for us the four hour trip home). I wasn’t sure if I saw an opportunity or a problem. I also wasn’t sure our USDA inspector would like us being that close to a problem temperature by hovering just below freezing.

Luckily for us I had my new Yeti cooler so we could transport our meat home safely. They were very kind and let us fill up on ice from their ice maker and pack away our meat. We bought bison ribeyes, elk hamburger, pork bacon, and some kind of jerky. The meat was cheaper than our meat which was interesting since it’s an exotic animal. I guess the bison market really hasn’t recovered since it’s collapse.

All in all it was a great trip. I know some things I want to try, and I know some things I’m glad I’m not doing. I got to work a bit on my vacation which made me feel better and got me back in gear to come home and go to work.

SWMBO planned and executed this vacation. She made sure we were busy, we had down time, and we had time for dad to work. Thanks SWMBO for being a great mom and wife!

 

So about this soil erosion.

In addition to the watusi and the bison, they have camels, and a few pigs on the farm. So let’s do some cattleman’s math.

Let’s assume they have less bison now than they did when the blog post was written, say 400. They have 250 watusi cattle. And call it 25 camels. Plus say 25 pigs.

I don’t have good data on grazing requirements for watusi, but I know they do well on less so let’s assume 1.5 acres per cow vs. the standard 3 acres per angus cow.

For bison our guide said that for the acres 2 cows could be on, 3 bison could live on. Since the standard is 3 acres per normal cow, that would mean 2 acres per bison. Then 25 camels have to have at least an acre each. Plus the pigs would need their own area, call that 3 acres to be generous. So that means:

250 watusi x 1.5 acres each = 375 acres
400 bison x 2 acres each = 800 acres
25 camels x 1 acre each = 25 acres
25 pigs x 3 acres = 3 acres
Farm buildings, roads, paths, fencing = 30 acres

The total land needed to sustainably run this operation would be 1,233 acres and they have 600 acres total. Does that mean they cannot operate this way? Nope. Are they being mean to their animals? Nope. Are they being misleading? Nope.

Are they protecting their most valuable asset, the soil that makes up their farm? Nope. It’s washing away, down stream.

It is exceedingly easy to get caught up and do things this way as a livestock farmer. Everything is based on profit per acre. Profit per animal. The more animals you can drive though your system, the more of a chance you have to make it as a farm. These folks have made it since 1985. They’ve paid their dues.

But based on the field conditions, I’d say they have played out the farms nutrients and they are importing a lot of the nutrition they are giving their animals. Either in the form of hay or feed. Some of the fields were more weeds than grass.

Unfortunately these things happen over decades and you don’t see the decline as it happens gradually. Each year the hay bill gets a little higher, the cows looks a touch thinner, the ditch that was always there now can’t be crossed anymore. It’s too deep. It’s so easy to not see the signs, and I know. Because I never saw it on our farm in the past. Thankfully we are fully aware of them now and I watch them like a hawk.

We finished the tour back at the house that serves as a store front, an office, and an apartment for one of the farm hands. But more about that part in our next post.

I’m somewhat familiar with the watusi breed. Some of the cattle folks I follow have interbred them with more traditional breeds in Florida trying to breed in some of the Watusi’s heat tolerance. The watusi comes from Africa and had made a living out of thriving on less than ideal conditions. Sparse vegetation, extreme heat, extreme predator pressures. The massive horns are actually hollow and their blood circulates through the horn acting as a type of radiator to help dissipate heat. Seeing cows with horns as wide as some of our cows are long was pretty neat. Also, the pasture the watusi were currently in had a much better stand of grass. 5-6″ of height and probably 80% ground coverage.

As cute as the watusi were, I have to get back to the soil erosion.

They were feeding hay to their animals in August. There are a few reasons to feed hay this time of year. One, the grass is too rich and is giving the animals scours (diarrhea). And indeed, I did see evidence of scours.

Yes this is a picture only a cattleman would take. Every poop I saw from a buffalo looked liquid like they had scours. Maybe that’s the way buffalo are, or maybe they had too rich of a diet. Feeding hay is one way to solidify the poop so maybe it was medicinal. However, coupled with the lack of grass, lack of ground cover, signs of years of significant erosion, and no real mitigation efforts I saw underway, I was guessing overstocking was the problem and feeding hay during the growing season was a band-aid.

So I asked how many watusi cattle they had. 250 head was the response. I looked online, and from an older blog post I found that they had 600 bison on the farm as well, at least at that time.

But more about overstocking, and more cute pics, in the next post.

In the last post, we’d just made it over to the bison in the pasture. The bison, like our cows, were used to this gig and came right over to get a handout from the tourists allowing us to see the bison up close.

However Spork and I weren’t just tourists on this trip. As professional tour guides, we were paying close attention to how the tour was handled and we made every effort to pick up tips when we could. The consensus between us? We do a better job. Our tour guide was knowledgeable but didn’t offer much information unless directly asked. Spork and I keep up a running dialogue and try to insert humor whenever possible. In other words, we try to entertain as well as educate. Plus there was a lot of down time just sitting on this tour. We keep ours moving. I’m not knocking their tour by any means. However we just couldn’t help but compare our efforts to these well established professionals. We were pleased.

I mentioned that I noticed some erosion on the ride in. Once in the pasture I saw many more signs of significant erosion. When asked, the tour guide said that the red patches were bison rubs, where the bison would roll around and scratch. Indeed, one of the bison plopped down and rubbed on one while we were there. However, that wasn’t the reason for what we saw.

Nearly everywhere I looked there were signs of over grazing. The grass was about 1-2″ tall and had maybe a 35-40% ground cover. The top soil was thin to non-existent. I recognize these signs, because this is what we had before I changed our management practices.

Also, there was a running stream through the bottom of this property. Running water is ubiquitous in the mountains but this stream bed was about 4-5 feet deep but running about 1-2″ deep in actual water. I could see the exposed tree roots of where this stream had eroded over the years to its current depth. 5 feet deep, 5 feet wide, crossing 160 acres. That’s a big erosion, I should know, we had to fix something similar in our farm. Our ditch was 1/10 the size of this one and it took multiple years and 55 dump truck loads of dirt to fix it. This one would take 300 dump truck loads, easily. Probably more.

The more I looked around the more I saw that this farm was overstocked.

We continued our tour and went to the “cattle” pasture. I put cattle in quotes because on this farm, they run Watusi cattle.

Watusi are simply stunning to see in person. Their horns are unbelievable, larger even than Texas longhorns. But we’ll hear more about the Watusi in the next post.

 

This past week the family and I disappeared to the mountains of NC to do a little R&R and to take a field trip to another farm. SWMBO had procured for me for father’s day this tour to Carolina Bison outside of Asheville, NC. It coincided with our family trip to the mountains and was on the way so as usual, great thinking SWMBO.

Planning a work related trip for hubby was very smart because I don’t vacation well. I need to do something to justify my time, whether its educational or productive. I’m not good at sitting around. Normally on a trip like this, I get up extra early and break out my laptop to do some blog posts, read some trade publications, do some bookkeeping, etc. That lets me get my work done. Then when everyone else wakes up, we go into vacation mode.

However when we arrived at our cabin I found we had no 4G signal. No 3G, in fact we had no Gs at all. I had a big “No service” on my cell phone. But as pretty as this cabin was, surely it had wi-fi.

Nope

I spent Monday – Thursday with no internet and no cell signal. In theory it sounds wonderful. In reality, I was not able to do anything and emails, texts, tour bookings, questions, and work all backed up on me. So thank Goodness SWMBO had booked this trip where I could do something productive and see some critters.

We arrived at the farm about 20 minutes late because in the mountains GPS was sketchy and we simply guessed wrong on how long it would take to get there. But they were very accommodating and worked us right in. The farm is located on 600 disjointed (separate tracks), and gorgeous acres way up in the mountains. They list their tours as being part of Asheville but in reality they are a good ways from Asheville, maybe 40 minutes or so. The first thing I noticed was their farm didn’t smell like pigs. Something we are slowly working on here on our farm. We have slowed the input side of our pig business dramatically. Now we need to just work down the existing stock over this fall and the winter.

I also noticed they had a great yard area for kids to play, including an awesome tree house and picnic tables on a deck. This is some of what I’d like to do at our store but we have some bigger fish to fry first. Did I mention we are reducing our number of pigs?

We quickly signed away our lives with a liability waiver, something we don’t require here as we are protected by agritourism laws. But it got me wondering if we should anyway. Maybe they have this as a holdover from the past. They have been doing this since 1985 and the protection laws were put into place in the last decade or so.  Dr. King wasn’t there to ask so I guess I’ll never know but maybe I’ll check with CFSA and see if they have some ideas or best practices.

Sitting in the parking lot was a tractor pulling a mobile hay wagon. 

They had removed some of the side bars and installed a bench seat directly down the middle of the wagon. It looked like about 30 people or so could ride in the trailer. I’d never thought of using a hay wagon before as a tour trailer but with its very low deck height, it really made for a good trailer. Plus with the bars it kept people in and critters out. I filed this one away for a future idea. Where am I going to find a worn out hay wagon? Hmm.

After loading up, we headed out past different animals on our way to see the buffalo. I noted that they had what appeared to be a lot of erosion on the farm however I wasn’t sure if it was actually from tractors or from animals. I did keep a keen eye out as we progressed. But first, fizzy critters.

First, it’s neat to see bison. After all the cowboy movies, and stories about the old West, it’s just neat to stand in the presence of the herbivore that used to rule this country and drive the ecosystem for animals and man alike. But more about them, in the next post.

Wow! Just wow.

I was stunned reading this article out of Tampa. (Warning, it’s a long one.)

We don’t really deal with restaurants much. We have one small restaurant where we sell a bit of hamburger and occasionally some other cuts but that is about it. 99% of what we sell is sold directly from our on farm store. 

The article out of Tampa took a LOT of work to put together, and many months of research and work. And I bet if someone would put in the time here in Raleigh, we’d find something similar. Maybe not as bad, but at least similar. I think Florida being the tourist destination it is, restaurants have a tendency to play faster and looser than what we have in Raleigh. But I know about enough behind the scenes trickery that I can promise you some digging would dig up some skeletons.

It’s REALLY hard to source from actual farmers and still run a profitable restaurant. I get call routinely from restaurants wanting to source from us. My answer is pretty much always the same.

“I can’t supply you. We are not big enough.”

The chef/owner is really trying though.

“What if we start small. Say 3 whole hogs per week.”

That’s almost my months production. I could meet that demand right now, for about four months. Then I’d be out of hogs and there wouldn’t be any pork in the store for my regular customers. And the whole hogs turns into just shoulders or hams, or pork chops rather quickly leaving me with the rest of the hog.

It sure is nice to drop off your months sales in one stop, but it isn’t who we are. We are a small family run operation and those girls in the picture above need a job.

I’m sure some day we’ll find a relationship with a restaurant that works well for us and for them, but for now, we’ll keep doing what we do and actually knowing where our (and your) food comes from. I’m just glad my farm isn’t on some menus somewhere being used where my product isn’t like the farmers in this article.

This morning I took the big truck and big trailer and went to the market to pick up cantaloupes and our pallet of watermelons fresh from the field. I’m so used to slinging produce around here, I had to be gentle with these babies. I’m not used to buying pallets of watermelons!

The whole pallet made it in place safely and they are sitting, waiting for you to stop by tomorrow and get one free with your $50 purchase. The girls will be working the store so there will also be cookies!

Come see us between 8-5 (except lunch), no appointment needed to shop in the store!

Since we are keeping such a close eye on the watermelons getting ready for tomorrow, we noticed this thing riding around at the market.

This thing took up 1/2 of the truck bed!

Alas, this particular watermelon was destined for fame and glory. The ones we are looking for are destined for dripping chins and happy folks.

This morning I’ll be heading to the market to get our pallet of watermelons for this weekend. Stop by and get your free watermelon Saturday. The girls will all be working, including SWMBO. Spork and I will be off at an event so the women will be running the farm!