Day of the bison

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam / Where the deer and the antelope play. / Where seldom is heard a discouraging word / And the skies are not cloudy all day …

We sure have deer up here. No antelope. More than our share of grouches and cloudy days.

But we do have buffalo. Near our home, within 50 miles, there are at least two ranches where bison are raised and bred. The one closer to us has been holding a Baby Bison Fest every June for the last few years, but we had never been to one because of other events taking place–either stuff I have to cover for the paper or our vacations.

This year we made a note of the date, and we adjusted the dates of the Canada trip (a story not yet written) to make sure we were home in time to take it in. So, on a recent Saturday, we got in the car and made the journey as a side trip during a normal visit to Iron Mountain.

The place keeps 50 head of bison, and the website explains that they are 100% grass-fed and pharm-free. “No drugs, pesticides or herbicides involved … ever. Our buffalo are raised in an open, natural setting in an effort to keep them as stress-free as possible. They are never feed-lotted.”

In case you didn’t see the website, they tell you that several times while you’re there.

We first visited a large metal storage building where they were selling buffalo-based items. (More on that later.) They also had littler, cuddlier bison for the littler, cuddlier people …

They also had a petting zoo, a car show and a number of vendors for a number of things. But the stars of the show were grazing in the field a short distance away …

They had a tractor pulling farm wagons into the field, where you could get up close and personal (but not too close or too personal) to the bison. Of course, we joined the line …

When we finally got our turn, I found out we would be riding in the royal carriage. Two of the county’s “Fairest of the Fair” were in our wagon, along with the reigning Wisconsin “Fairest of the Fair,” who was crowned at the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis last summer …

All three were wearing their tiaras, and they were taking pictures of the bison like everyone else …

We heard once more how naturally the bison are being raised. It’s hard to tell a happy bison from an unhappy one, but these looked reasonably content–at least until the wagon got too close. Then they moved off–both the big ones and the little ones …

It was low-cost entertainment. You could park on the grounds in exchange for a $3 donation to the local high school’s forensics team. The ride into the field to look at the bison close-up was $1 a head, which went to the local county fair.Make no mistake, they raise the bison for harvest. They had bison burgers and bison brats for sale inside the metal building (also a benefit for the fair), and we each bought one. Yum! So good that my wife bought another five pounds of them. Last Saturday, we each had a home-cooked bison burger for lunch.

That’s the ultimate fate of the bison at ranches today, like the beef cattle we see in the fields. But there were 50 bison at the ranch we visited recently, and there sure were a lot of baby bison to look at. The population is no danger. It’s a short life but a happy one.

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I have spent most of the last week watching with increasing disgust what is happening in Iran. It is a very important story, and the media finally started paying attention. Not that there is a lot we can do to influence things one way or another.

Weatherwise, we got pretty warm Sunday. I covered the local Father’s Day car show and other events Sunday afternoon, and luckily I remembered to put on the sunscreen–it was mostly sunny and very warm. When I got back home, I found it had gotten up to 88F (31C), though the humidity was not too high. I had wanted to mow the lawn, but I delayed that until after supper, when it was a little cooler.

On Tuesday, the temperature rose into the low 90s (about 33 C), and it got close to 90 today (Wednesday). It is supposed to cool off over the weekend.

This started out as a very cool June, but that changed about two weeks ago. Now it’s summer here, too. Unlike other parts of the Midwest, though, we haven’t had a lot of rain. We could use a little more.

If you happen to bump into the weather man, tell him that for me.