Fancy a joint of bison for your Christmas dinner? A succulent wild boar gammon roast, or some park-reared venison? Rosie McGlade meets one the most splendidly fascinating farming couples in the region
Of all the stories you hear about farmers diversifying – farm shops, traditional breed this and that – the quirkiest, the most outlandish, and yet possibly one of the least known is that of Stuart and Daphne Anderson near Sedgefield, and their herd of wild bison.
The couple should have retired years ago, but bison farming is a tying business when there’s only the two of you.
With 200 red deer and wild boar as well, there is no-one else in the country doing what this couple does, and yet they work it in true
old-fashioned style, putting their livestock’s quality of life first, and building up a solid customer base at the farm’s shop (which sells nothing they haven’t grown themselves), instead of selling to restaurants or delis.
“My husband and his father before him tried everything to make this farm work over the decades,” says Daphne. “We had a dairy herd for 30 years, and beef, sheep, pigs, crops, but farming can be a very difficult life now. We were sitting drinking a glass of wine one evening when my son-in-law suggested we got some bison. We laughed! But he’d worked for a few years in America on the biggest bison farm there and thenext morning we stopped laughing, and said, well why not? The Government keeps telling us to diversify., after all.”
That was seven years ago. The bull and three cows shipped in from the States, along with the massive fence, and even the hammer to bash the fence in (all costing a fortune), have been joined by breeding stock from the south of the UK and Scotland, and there are now so many in the herd Daphne has no idea about numbers.
Colin, the bull’s pet name, is a stupendous-looking beast – ancient, massive, but fluffy, almost cuddly. While you wouldn’t want to put your arms around him, he’ll take a bit of grass out of your hand from the other side of the fence; which is something, for a bison.
“You only go into their grazing area on a tractor. They live on their side of the fence, and we live on ours,” Daphne smiles. “They’re beautiful to look at, but they’re wild animals. The cows will actually charge the fence if you’re nearby and they have a calf at foot. We keep all the females for breeding.”
These are the noble bison of the American plains, hunted for millennia by the indigenous American peoples, the Red Indians of the cowboy films, and their gene pool hasn’t changed in as long. Domestic beef steers, overbred to pump up their rear ends for extra profit, they are not.
Because they’re officially wild animals, along with the red deer they share the park with, and the boar, UK laws dictating that stock be shipped off in trucks and killed in abattoirs don’t apply. “They’re all shot on the farm, at the right age, so their meat is tender because they’re not stressed when they die, and they’re young,” Daphne says. “They know nothing about it. Then it’s hung for nearly a month.”
They taste different from beef, she adds, more mellow, and sweet. “People say you need some fat on a joint of beef to give it flavour, but with bison, the taste is in the meat itself. There’s less fat in bison than a piece of chicken or halibut. They have the most incredible thick hides to insulate them, so they don’t need it.”
Nor does bison meat have any cholesterol to speak of, so it can be eaten safely by people with heart or other health concerns who can’t have normal red meats like beef or lamb.
And the good news for us, though not exactly Daphne and Stuart, is that the meat is for sale as the same price as good beef. “With the slump we’ve had to. It’s great for our customers. But we’ll never be rich.”
Driving to their farm shop is like leaving the main road and finding yourself in Lambton Lion Park (for those who remember), only without the pesky lions and monkeys, and people buying from the shop are welcome to wander down the track to gaze beyond the fence. It’s a beautiful place, with great care taken by the Andersons to foster habitats for more indigenous wildlife, like rare birds. Twitchers are not uncommon.
The red deer herd and the wild boar came after the bison, as a sort of well, we’ve done it now, kind of thing. They never see the inside of a barn, eating grass in the summer and hay and silage in the winter, hence they’re park, rather than farmed, animals.
Rocky the boar has just fathered a litter of adorable, stripy piglets. He is gentle and likes a stroke. Boar meat is less fatty than a domestic pig’s, but darker, Daphne explains. It’s like pork used to taste. She will occasionally dry cure some bacon, but sausages and joints sell best.
“It’s certainly the most outlandish venture we’ve ever attempted,”she says. “It would be nice to have just one day off a week, but old farmers don’t retire, they just die, and we’re happy. And the people we meet in the shop are lovely.”
Farnless Farm Park is between Coxhoe and Sedgefield. For more information, visit www.farnlessfarmpark.co.uk
