On this episode of The Farmer & The Foodie.

We're taking a closer look at the American bison, a national icon nearly lost to extinction.

But not too close.

These guys are huge.

And what could be more American than a summertime cookout?

I'm Maggie Keith, and I'm The Farmer.

And I'm Lindsey McClave, and I'm The Foodie, and this is... The Farmer & The Foodie.

[music playing] [music playing] Today we're at Woodland Farm, a thousand pristine acres of pasture land along the south banks of the Ohio River.

Kristopher Kelley is the farm manager, and he's taking us out to see these beastly bovines on the move.

[music playing] Oh, cool.

Yeah, it's normally cool.

And it's like, there's no pushing.

It's just like they are excited now.

And they're running.

Yeah.

Oh, that looks like a really little baby.

Yeah.

They've got wheels, though.

They got a little tail up.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

So what are you looking for when they move?

If you have one limping in the back, like the same - the same as you would look at when you're moving cows, if you continue to have the same one trailing, there might be something wrong with it.

Listen to that.

It's like, oh.

Yeah, that's about as loud as it ever gets.

Wow.

No mooing, only grunting.

They are prey animals, if they see you there, they will try to cover up a limp.

They'll try to act like they feel fine.

Oh, funny.

And so it is frequently - if we had an animal not move right now, and they weren't giving birth, that animal is in rough shape.

That's a big indication they do not want to be left.

We actually, one year, had an enormous flock of pigeons that stayed with this herd.

There were hundreds, and they actually did a noticeable benefit.

Wow.

Yeah, like we got this.

And on the fly pressure?

Yeah.

That group had less flies that year than any of the other.

Oh, come on, pigeons.

I know.

I was like, would love to encourage this.

This is very similar to cattle, but they're going to eat 3% of their body weight a day in grass.

Actually, a little more than that because the grass is wet, that's in dry matter.

So, roughly, these are all gonna eat 30 or more pounds of grass a day.

[music playing] Kristopher, thanks for having us out.

We really enjoyed riding out in the middle of the herd.

My pleasure.

Happy to see you come out, and happy that the bison cooperated and went where we wanted.

That was one of the cooler things I've gotten to do.

That was wild.

Yeah.

So tell us about the personality of a bison.

Is it safe to go out in the field?

It is relatively safe.

I will say that they are more wild than beef cows, and we try to encourage that.

And also to give them their space whenever possible.

You would not want to walk out through a herd that has calves in it.

But in your vehicles, you're being calm, they're being calm.

They're not feeling threatened.

It's mostly just fine, as you saw.

And so we are in a group of mama cows, and then are they calves if they're bison?

Yeah.

So all the same terminology.

Ok.

We got bulls, cows, calves.

And we were in a group of mother cows, last year's calves, which have not been taken off the mother yet, and this year's calves.

So little family units, as well as the herd bulls, and we're coming up on breeding season.

And so I always have wondered this, what's the difference between a buffalo and a bison?

That's a great question.

I would say every person that comes to the farm asks that question.

And the truth is, it's different words for the same animal.

So there are water buffalo, which is a totally different animal, but for what we're looking at, you can call them bison or buffalo.

The Latin name is bison bison.

So, maybe that's a little more scientific, but buffalo does not refer to a different animal.

Native American folks, they're adamant that they will remain buffalo.

So you hear different terminology, but it's all referring to that animal in North America.

And are there different breeds of bison, like there are cattle?

There are subspecies.

There are woods and plains.

Some people want to say they have 100% plains, 100% woods.

Almost everyone at this point has a mix.

There was such a bottleneck with bison.

The numbers got down to under 1,000.

Now, I think it's very hard to say they're 100% one or the other.

I would say that our herd is mixed between the two.

So you've been working on your genetics of this herd for a while.

Are you a closed herd now?

We're not totally closed.

We do add bulls from the outside, but you're right, especially with bison, which experience a lot of parasite pressure and need to be adapted to a warm and wet climate.

We would not want to buy a bull out of Canada.

That has happened in the past and is not the best.

We know from experience.

But you'd love to buy from as close as possible or buy several and see which ones are able to make that adjustment to this warm, wet climate and are able to deal with the parasites and can continue developing the genes in a way that is beneficial for this land.

And what made you want to have bison here?

The bison here was not my decision.

My aunt and uncle bought this farm to keep it from being subdivided.

My uncle had grown up on a farm and swore he would never have anything to do with the farm.

I think that a lot of people that grow up on farms feel that way, but it's actually in your blood.

And so, as he was coming around, he's like, "Okay, well, I'm not doing anything like normal.

I'm going to do something different."

And so they were in between bison and ostrich, which some folks are old enough to remember when that was almost a thing.

That market totally collapsed.

So, thankfully it was bison, but yeah, they were choosing alternative agriculture.

And then, I think why we stick with bison is they have a really cool story.

Rangers have been a big part of bringing bison numbers back from, like I said, under a thousand to now approaching half a million.

Wow.

And then, they're also great for building soil.

So we're trying in all the ways that we can to mimic how bison would have grazed on the open plains.

And that's like why the plains are so fertile.

Huge, herds of millions of animals grazing, then moving on and grazing and moving on, and the soil building as they did that.

So we're trying to mimic that in all the ways that we can.

When they started slaughtering and having meat, they were literally like giving meat to people to like, "Please try this."

Yes, you can eat bison.

I would say now people are - maybe not everyone has had it, but everyone's aware of bison and is not weirded out by it, which was definitely a case like in the mid-90s.

The scale of bison compared to beef is hard to comprehend.

There are more beef cows slaughtered before lunch any day than there are bison slaughtered all year.

So, like it's a tiny, tiny fraction.

And so, yeah, you do have to seek it out as some effort to go and find it.

So what about you?

Is agriculture in your bones?

Yeah, it is.

My dad is a row crop farmer.

I'm a fourth generation farmer, I think.

There's something about it that calls to me.

The thing that I am most excited about is building soil with like large ruminant animals.

The soil piece and the environmental aspects of that, storing carbon in the soil are what I care deeply about.

[music playing] Next, we're headed back to the bluegrass region to visit Jamie Lewis, a young farmer tending to his herd at Bourbon County Bison in North Middletown.

[music playing] Well, thanks for having us out.

This is an adventure.

Yeah, thanks for coming out.

You kicked us off well going through some streams and uphills.

How did you end up here?

What brought you to Kentucky?

'Cause I know you're not from here.

It was looking to get into farming.

There's a couple areas between here and north central Missouri, and they just seem to be a little bit more here.

Yeah.

A little bit more population and stuff and it just seemed to work out well.

[music playing] Originally wanted to be a veterinarian and do large animal.

So, went to Iowa State for undergrad for animal science and worked on the university dairy farm.

Didn't go to vet school, ended up actually working in the poultry industry for quite a few years before I ended up here.

So I appreciate that you aren't from Kentucky and also bison was brand new.

So tell us a little bit about how you found this plot of land and then also how bison are now roaming so beautifully and blissfully here.

I was thinking about doing beef cattle and had been looking at that and somewhere along the way my dad mentioned like, "Well, what would you think about doing buffalo?"

I was like, "No, I don't know."

I looked into him like, "I don't know.

It seems it's going to be tough.

There's not a lot of them.

We'll see."

I was going to school at Virginia Tech for my master's and somebody was like, "Oh, we're going to this little restaurant south of town as owned by these two ladies and they had a buffalo herd."

And so they ran all their meat through their restaurant to market it.

And they had a fantastic bison brisket sandwich.

I was like, "Right, I'm going to look a little farther."

And there was a bison conference the next week or two, which lined up during spring break.

Okay.

And so for spring break, I went up to Pennsylvania for a bison conference.

I was like, "All right.

I think we're going to try to do the bison thing."

So now that you're a bison farmer, are you finding camaraderie with other bison farmers?

Is it a pretty supportive farming community?

[music playing] I would say it's a pretty supportive group.

There's not a whole lot of us here in Kentucky.

So tell me more why you were deciding on Kentucky.

Is it its natural rolling pastures and just how much grass there is available for a ruminant animal?

Yeah, it was that growing season productivity.

Back then, real estate was far more affordable than what it's become today.

So it seemed like a pretty good balance of everything then.

What an adventure you've been on.

How do you feel now that you're five years in and really getting to know your herd?

How has it grown?

It's definitely grown in size.

As we've gone, we've fenced in more and more of the farm for the animals, and we've added more.

We've just really taken off with the farmer's market stuff.

So you're a young farmer?

Yes.

Are you finding there's a lot of good generational knowledge in this area?

The culture of agriculture is still here?

There's definitely a lot of farming in the area still, and there's definitely a lot of people that have been at it for a long time.

Do you have hope for the future of farming?

I mean, as you sit here and really dig in five years in, are you feeling hopeful about the next five years?

What's your take on things right now?

Yeah.

I was going to say, I'm feeling pretty hopeful about the next five years.

It's definitely been a learning process.

We've been growing and refining things.

So I think we're getting close to getting most of the things figured out and getting in a good routine and get through all the early growing pains.

What are some of the biggest challenges you are facing right now?

One is just as a newer farm and trying to match growing the farm and meeting customer demand.

I think early on it was, "Are we really going to be able to sell this?"

And then, it took off and now we're in a, "All right.

How are we going to keep pace with what the markets demand and stuff like that and try to keep it going?"

When we approached, it was striking how close they came up.

That was pretty neat.

And maybe just a little heart stopping.

How did that make you feel?

And also, do you feel like you know them and they know you?

Yeah.

I was going to say, normally they don't walk up to the truck.

They'll walk up to the tractor because we use a little bit of non-GMO grain to move them from this field to the next and get them through the rotational grazing pattern.

They're definitely familiar with me.

Normally new people, they're a little hesitant and they like to keep their distance.

So it was a little bit of a surprise that they walked on up and said hi.

[Laughs] They knew they had fans.

They did.

They knew it was their time to shine.

[laughing] [music playing] There's nothing like being out in a field with a bunch of bison.

That was like coolest experience.

Yeah.

And then, of course, it always gets you out in the wild with a barbecue.

It does.

Exactly.

So, yeah, we're going to grill today and I'm excited.

This is not my normal thing, but I'm very rich ready.

And I think that is how we do some of these ingredients justice.

So we have this gorgeous bison ribeye.

And then, we also have some bison stew meat that Jamie at Bourbon County Bison said he loves to do as kebabs.

Great.

It is a stew meat, which means it likes low and slow, but in this case we're going to do hot and fast on the grill.

But to assist with the texture of the stew meat, we've been marinating it.

And this is a case when I would try to go 12 to 24 hours if you can with your marinade.

And I've got two whole lemons juiced in there along with some mustard, some grated garlic, some herbs.

Some of your red pepper flakes, a little olive oil.

Really acidic though, because that acid will help break the meat down and make it more tender as we cook it.

So, that's been hanging out and is ready to go.

And we've got some wonderful onions.

Tomato season is here.

So, picked up these gorgeous cherry tomatoes at the market.

And so we're going to just alternate skewering those and take them out to the grill.

And when I think of these kebabs, it makes me think of a little bit of Greek influence.

And so I love to do a tzatziki sauce with this and cucumbers happen to be in season too.

So I'm going to make this tzatziki sauce by cutting this cucumber open.

Scooping the seeds out, and then I'm going to grate it, squeeze out the extra juices and mix it in here with some whole milk Greek yogurt, lemon zest, a little lemon juice.

We'll grate some garlic.

Chop up these herbs.

You've brought us some other gorgeous herbs from your garden.

And that'll just be a nice bright cooling sauce for our grilled kebabs.

And we'll have those on a flatbread.

Oh yeah.

Abundant season.

Abundant, abundant.

[music playing] Okay.

Gorgeous kebabs.

So excited.

And alongside them, we are going to be grilling up, speaking of gorgeous, these bison rib eyes.

There was so much vitality in that field.

You know it's going to go in part into this meat.

So I look at the color of this.

I look at the intermuscular fat.

You can see the different fat strands within, but like this, to me, is just this gorgeous little cap.

And then, the color is so dark and nutrient rich.

And that's what I want to see.

And so what a beautiful gift to be able to share this.

Oh, it's wonderful.

So we're going to just respect these.

They don't need anything.

We're just going to do a nice salt and pepper on both sides.

And I do think it's fun though, as a garnish to do a little compound butter.

So what we have here, it's just a stick of butter, whole stick of butter, and we're going with unsalted butter here because we're adding flavors.

So we want to add our own salt.

To that, we're going to just add some yummy, yummy, brightness.

We're going to do just a little - we don't want to add liquid.

So we're just doing the lemon zest because that'll give us plenty of lemon flavor in the oils of the lemon.

You actually get more pure lemon or citrus flavor from the zest than you do the juice because it's the oils in there and it's just like really concentrated.

When you zest, you don't want to go to where it's white though into the pith because then it gets too bitter.

Yeah.

I could wax poetic about fresh garlic.

So we're going to - and I love grating it because it really just like melt into the rest of the butter.

A little heat from your red pepper flakes.

Very good pinch of that salt.

And then, if you want to take some of this basil, I feel like compound butter is very like old school steakhouse.

So let's do an old school steakhouse, curly parsley.

Yeah, curly parsley has been out, but we are bringing it back.

We are.

And then, some chives from one of my little garden beds outside.

See that.

There we go.

Cooking outdoors in the summertime is just worth it, you know?

It's the best.

And so this butter is going to go on after the steaks are done.

When they come into rest, I'm just going to put a pat on top of each.

So it'll just melt just a little bit.

Keep that fat going throughout, add a little bit of flavor, but also just retain the natural amazingness of the spice and steak.

Chunk of that in there.

Excellent.

And then, we'll just bring this together.

And then, once we have it pretty well, let's make the magic happen.

So try to keep the plastic wrap as smooth as you can.

And then, there is our little butter log.

It's not perfect, but it's delicious.

It's so cute.

I love that last little flip.

I'm going to pop this in the fridge so it can set up just a little bit so it's not completely soft.

And then, we will do a really nice shower of salt and pepper on these guys.

[music playing] Yeah.

Be happy.

We're going to go outside and we're going to take our steaks to the grill, which we've warmed up to over 400 degrees.

We want it really nice and hot, a good flame going.

Bison, you want to go hot and fast.

So these steaks are going to go on for three minutes.

You want to rotate them a little bit in that first three minutes on the same side to get some cross marks.

That's kind of fun.

After three minutes, we're going to turn them.

We're going to close the lid and cook them for another minute-and-a-half to two minutes max.

Then, they're done.

[music playing] For our kebabs, we're going to also cook on a really nice hot grill, and we're going to layer them on across the grates.

Give them a little bit of room so they have nice - they can each take in the flame themselves.

We're going to cook them for two minutes.

Rotate them to the other side.

Cook them for another two minutes.

And then, for the final two minutes, we want to shuffle where they are.

So if some of the kebabs are right over the middle in the open flame, you want those to go to maybe the cooler sides of the grill.

The kebabs that have been on the cooler side, move them into the hot side in the middle for those last two minutes.

But basically, within six minutes, we should have a nice char on our bison stew meat, and it'll be ready to enjoy in our flatbread with our tzatziki.

[music playing] Well, this is gorgeous.

Yeah.

[laughs] I'm ready for some bison, man.

Oh, my gosh.

Me too.

I love this.

I love the little additions here.

Tell us about all this fun garnishes.

What did you bring?

I know.

So this is little borage flowers, which is just a burst of summer.

And then, some echinacea around here and some mullein and old school parsley.

We're bringing the curly back.

Steakhouse.

But I do love that these are forage and wild, a little bit Yeah.

like this bison we're celebrating.

Exactly.

So I've got some flatbread here.

And to me, this is just going to be one beautiful bite.

A full meal, really.

So I'm going to dig into this.

If you want to check our - Yeah.

The rib eye is going to be amazing.

Gorgeous rib eye.

Compound butter just melting on.

Way to get those grill marks.

I know.

When I'm cutting, I'm always making sure to go against the grain.

[music playing] You know, the thing with bison is you definitely want to err on the side of more rare than not.

And I think we did a really good job.

Yay.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Way to go.

I love your little Mediterranean vibe over there.

It's really, really good.

The stew meat's definitely tender.

It's got great flavor.

I like the marinade because it adds a little punchiness, but - Yeah.

I got to try this stew meat.

You never know.

It's like Russian roulette with stew meat.

All right.

As delicious as this is and how much fun it is out on the grill, not everyone has a grill.

And sometimes, it's not ideal weather for grilling.

But it's always ideal weather for making a smash burger on a really hot cast iron skillet.

So that's what I think we should do next.

Oh, let's do that.

All right.

[music playing] So smash burgers are so much fun.

All burgers are fun in my book.

But there's something about a smash burger that's just really indulgent and really extra delicious.

And I feel like, this ground bison is so lean and so infused with goodness for us.

This is like the perfect combination.

Yes.

It's wanting to be smashed.

It is wanting to be smashed, yes.

You want to cook with a fat that has some flavor and also is high heat.

Because we're going to cook this really hot, nice sear our cast iron skillet.

So beef tallow is a favorite of ours.

That would be excellently used here.

This bison happens to be from Woodland Farm where we visited with Kristopher.

And they also raise pigs out there, hogs.

And I had some of their bacon.

So good.

So I just reserved some of the bacon fat.

And I think that is going to be a fantastic way to cook our burgers.

I like to do double patties.

They're going to be small.

These are all about three ounces each.

This is two pounds of bison divided up into 10 equal balls.

So we'll have five burgers.

But that gives you an idea.

2 ounces I've done before, just a little bit too small.

4 is a little bit too big.

So, 3 ounces is that sweet spot.

We have Colby cheese here that I've sliced as thinly as I can that we're going to put on each.

So we'll have double cheese in there.

Made some sesame buns over here.

These look amazing.

Way to go.

Thanks.

So we're going to toast those up.

And nothing is going to make it more complete than our special sauce.

We've got mayonnaise.

We've got some Dijon mustard.

My secret ingredient in it is I just take some of my favorite dill pickle and I mince it up as small as I can.

And it gives that dilly, briny, acidic punch that's just like really, really delicious.

We're going to keep it fresh with some of these herbs we have.

A little bit of grated garlic in there, lemon juice.

It's just really good.

It's like a comeback sauce.

People call it all.

You just keep dipping it all that.

And then, you brought us some beautiful little baby onions.

Yeah.

These little baby onions from Italy.

They're full of flavor, super sweet.

So we can thinly slice those and add those.

Oh my gosh, perfect.

Well, if you want to get to work on that and also maybe butter the buns so we can just sear them on our flat top.

And I'll make the sauce and we'll get going.

[music playing] [chopping sound] [music playing] All right.

So we've just about finished our special sauce over here.

I'm just going to add some fresh basil and maybe we'll do some flat leaf parsley this time.

Yes.

So what we're going to do is I'm going to heat my cast iron up really, really hot.

I'm going to add about a tablespoon of the bacon fat that I've reserved.

And I want that to be almost smoking.

We do want this to be super-hot.

I'm going to add two of my bison burger balls, and I'm going to smash them pretty much right away as thinly as I can.

After I smash them, I'm going to add salt and pepper because if you add that and then smash them, most of the salt comes off on the smasher.

So we're going to cook them for two minutes.

We're going to flip them.

Add our cheese and cover them and maybe one more minute.

And that's it.

Wow.

Then, we'll double them up and we'll keep cooking.

We'll build our burgers and, yeah, we'll be ready to eat.

[music playing] I think these turned out really good.

Yes, they smell delicious.

Yes, they do.

They do.

Okay.

So all we need to do is build our burgers.

And what I like to do is add some of my toppings on the bottom.

So I'm going to do a tiny bit of our special sauce, like a little glue.

I love sauce on both buns.

I do too.

If you want to do some onions on there, I will add our pickles.

And then, we can do tomato and lettuce on the top.

So now I'm going to add our gorgeous double.

And that cheese melted perfectly.

I know it did.

Is that the top that like just gooed that down?

Yes, yeah.

So I love to just add a cover.

You want a little air to come through so a little steam escapes.

But yeah, it just helps melt it really nice.

Tomato next and then lettuce.

I like lettuce on the very top.

Okay.

I'll lettuce you.

But there's no laws here.

Yes.

We're just going to make - This lettuce is so pretty.

Isn't it?

And the tomatoes.

What I love here, even the buns that I made, 95% of every ingredient here is made in Kentucky.

Made, grown, raised.

So proud.

I know.

I am.

You can taste it.

And then, certainly that final bit of glue.

A little more special sauce on our tops.

A little floater.

[chuckles] Got to do that little squish.

Now we're smashing.

Now we're smashing.

Smashing it.

Look at this.

Okay.

I'm going to go get it.

In the middle like that.

Oh boy.

I know.

Oh, yeah.

That's good stuff.

That is really good stuff.

Look at it dripping everywhere.

All right.

Here we go.

Cheers.

hmm.

Perfection.

The two patties side by side, love it.

Do you know what I love about that?

We're still working.

This is like the equivalent of a third pound burger.

So we're not being excessive.

No.

No, but honestly, we're really not.

There's not one thing in here that I have any hesitancy in embracing, enjoying.

I mean, this bison is so good for us and it's just the bison.

Yeah.

And it is leaner.

So it's like lower in fat calories.

You're not going to feel super heavy.

We got our veggies here.

This is good stuff.

I love it.

Okay.

So smash burgers and steak for lunch.

What?

What could we want more?

Hey, bison will do it all.

Cheers to that.

[music playing]