Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9407070066
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-19 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RINER LENGTH: Long
Nowadays, the place of honor is the refrigerator door. In the Politis household, someone has affixed this credo: "Pray as if it's all up to God. Then work as if it's all up to you."
Not a bad motto to follow if, like Jan and Jim Politis, you decide to take up a risky venture in midlife.
The couple bought her great-grandfather's farm in Riner three years ago, shut down their faltering consumer electronics distributorship in Knoxville, and did what almost nobody does anymore: They became farmers.
"If somebody had told me five years ago I'd be raising buffalo, I'd have said, 'You're out of your mind,'" said Jan Politis, a short woman in T-shirt and jeans who's quick with a laugh - especially when discussing the endless adventures in her new life.
What else can you do when an inch of midwinter ice encases the horns of the nest egg - a new buffalo herd?
The Politis family, including 15-year-old Jimmy, Jeannetta, 14, and Jason, 10, moved to Brush Creek Farm in Riner two years ago. The bison came in October.
Before that, they went through standard farming experiences - raised a couple of pigs, a few chickens. "It was ... OK," said Jan. One of the children brought home the rooster, old Henry, mean enough that he's best navigated with a thick "Henry stick."
The Holstein calves were fun to watch grow, but rough on the schedule. Every 12 hours, they demanded their bottles.
It was just about this time a year ago that the light bulb went off over Jim and Jan's heads, triggered by a Farm Bureau article a neighbor brought by. They'd been considering ostriches, 300 pounds of avian bravado given to attacking their caretakers, so the idea didn't seem so farfetched.
"You can deal with one of these," said Jim, standing a thin wire fence away from Tommy, the 1,200-pound-and-still-growing, chief-honcho bull of the 15-critter herd.
"You just stand on the other side of the fence. Making a go of the improbable "crop," formally known as American bison, is a small, yet increasingly entrenched, part of American agribusiness. The largest buffalo farm in Virginia is in Craig County, where Hollow Hill Farm has grown to a carefully selected 300-head herd.
The draw? Bison are relatively easy to raise - as easy as you can expect from farm animals - because they graze on pasture, require no hormones and are wild enough to want to be left alone.
They're also a low-fat alternative to beef. A 3-ounce serving of bison has 1.8 grams of fat compared to 8.7 grams for beef, according to a brochure of the American Bison Association, making it appealing to the health-conscious.
The problem is the relative scarcity of their meat.
"The meat is just going like crazy," said David Sverduk, manager at Hollow Hill. "It's hard to find meat to buy, because whatever is there is sold."
Estimates set the number of buffalo in the country at 100,000 to 140,000. Despite its claims to healthfulness, the
buffalo industry has no current designs on surpassing the beef industry, which slaughters about 120,000 cows a day.
"We offer it as an alternative," said Kim Dowling, administrative director for the National Buffalo Association in Fort Pierre, S.D. "There's demand all over - for breeding animals and meat."
Back at Brush Creek, it all sounded to the Politis family like a way to make a go of the farm.
Jim, 20 pounds trimmer than his business-suit years, is the "just-do-it" guy who plows right into any new task at hand.
He built a field in six weeks. He felled trees on several acres and used them for fence posts. He bartered his help to a neighboring farmer with a post-hole digger, and the field was born.
But not before the bison arrived.
One day last October, a shiny trailer came swinging down the road. The driver stopped by a neighbor's house to ask directions to the herd's new home.
The entourage arrived at 11 a.m., a full six hours and a quarter-mile of unfinished eight-strand, high-tensile, electrified fence before the family was ready. Like the old days when neighbors showed up for a barn-raising, all hands were called to finish the fence. One of the buffalo had died en route, duly upsetting her companions inside the trailer. (A buffalo's heart rate and adrenalin can soar when confined, putting it at risk.)
Wire was unrolled at lightning speed. The buffalo, still housed in their trailer, were starting to fuss.
Night's about the worst time you can let the new herd go, Jim said - at least, according to "the book." "The Buffalo Producers Guide to Management and Marketing," compiled by the National Buffalo Association, is the Brush Creek
Farm bible, referred to often.
"It sounded like thunder," said Jim, describing the sound made by the ever-restless, trailer-bound bison.
"And we knew there was one dead in there already," said Jan.
They knew the buffalo would go examining their new boundaries. And they knew there was a weak spot in the electrified fence.
"We got every vehicle we could to shine a light down on the fence," said Jim.
"They hit the ground running," said Jan, who knew, according to "the book," that bison take off from a standstill at 35 miles per hour.
Since that day, the buffalo have settled in peacefully at the Riner farm. They've only escaped once - when the Politises were out of town - and neighbors had to set up road blocks to turn the beasts around and head them back home.
A big difference between raising buffalo and their calmer cow cousins is the buffalo's dislike of being confined. The family has learned to move them from field to field by just leaving the gate open rather than trying to herd them as they would cows. As far as corraling the powerful animals for vaccinations or other medical care, the Politises say they'll cross that bridge when they come to it. Super-strength loading chutes are one option to contain a charging, angry buffalo, tranquilizer guns another, according to Jan Politis and local extension agents.
The past several months have been filled with learning: that bison are pretty docile if you leave them alone, that a raised tail means they're on the defense.
Now, Jan and Jim Politis are focusing on building up their herd to about 50 animals so they can begin selling calves for breeding stock. They are hoping their nine bison cows will calve each spring - but even that can be risky as the buffalo won't breed if the summer is too dry and they don't get enough nutrition.
Prices for breeding stock can run two to three times the price for beef cattle. A buffalo calf now ranges from $950 to $1,250, said Jan Politis, as compared to $350 to $500 for a beef calf. A buffalo cow would cost $2,000 or more, compared to $900 to $1,000 for a beef cow.
The farm is also marketing buffalo meat to the public at prices from $3.95 for ground meat to $16 a pound for tenderloin steaks. Since the farm doesn't yet have enough buffalo to use for meat, the Politises bought four buffalo to slaughter for meat later this fall.
Since the beginning of April, all Politis hands have been on alert for babies. One can't really tell when a buffalo is pregnant, but nobody will forget the birth of little Cinnamon - named for her color.
"One way we check to see if anybody's missing - we feed them," said Jan. (The buffalo eat a ration of corn, molasses, vitamins and minerals in addition to grass.)
One cow didn't come. Jan went down to the road, to walk the edge of the pasture to see if she could find the cow.
"I could see her standing at the edge of the woods," said Jan. Jim got home. So did Jimmy. When they found the cow at 3 p.m., there was the newborn, "all dried out and fluffed out," said Jan.
The calf had arrived on the same day as four new bulls.
The nine cows and Tommy, the bull "were all back there with her keeping the [new] bulls away," she said: The cows protected the calf, grunting and running at the new bulls if they came too close.
Then came a remarkable procession, a slow walk by the whole herd across the big pasture, to present the baby to the world. It took 30 minutes. with cows around the calf like "guardian angels," said Jan Politis.
And even as buffalo prices zoom up - 30 percent in the past six months - Jan and Jim Politis keep steady. Someday, they'll support their family with their dream herd of 50.
After all, as the refrigerator's second slogan says, "It will happen. You just have to keep believing."
by CNB