My husband, Bruce Meyer was born and raised on a dairy farm just north of Elysian,
Minnesota. He helped work on that farm until his father’s retirement in the mid-1990’s. Bruce’s deep love
of the land and farming life, led him to establish Meyer Beefalo & Buffalo Farm. Having read about the crossing of beef
cattle with the American bison (also known as a buffalo), he sought out and purchased his first beefalo in 1986. With his
small herd growing, he branched out, purchasing several buffalo, and later other animals that were considered heritage breeds,
such as Red Wattle Hogs and, turkeys such as Narragansett, Beltsville White, Black Spanish, and Bourbon Red. Today, our
farm also includes chickens and ducks.
From 1986 through 2003, Bruce increased the size of his herds, tended his
father’s cropland and purchased additional land. In order to keep his farm going he also had a shop where he did small
engine repairs. I met Bruce in 2003, and we married in 2004.
After 25 years of raising buffalo, we made the decision to sell the buffalo
herd in 2011. The herd was able to stay altogether and hopefully went to a good home in Northern Iowa where they can
continue to be out on pasture. As we have seen good increases in the number of Beefalo that we have been selling as
meat over the past few years, we decided to expand the Beefalo herd and are also adding some Bison Hybrids. A Bison
Hybrid is similar to a Beefalo although it has a higher percentage of buffalo in it. Whereas a Fullblood Beefalo is
3/8ths (37.5%) bison, a Bison Hybrid is over 37.5% bison.
Together, our goal is to make sure that our back-to-basics, sustainable
farming practices are not forgotten and encourage others to come back to this way of farming. That is why we started working
on ways to get the word out about the excellent quality and great taste of our meat. And although we would prefer to keep
everything in our lives as simple, uncomplicated and natural as possible, the idea of this website appeared to be the best
way to reach the people most interested in the same quality products and values that we have.
We hope that you
will try and enjoy our meat products and spread the word to your family and friends that there truly is an affordable alternative
to mass-produced, confinement raised, food products. We also hope you will enjoy our stories of daily farm life captured in
the farm diary section of this website. And finally, we hope you will take a little time out of your busy life to read about
the plight of small farms all over the country and do whatever you can to help ensure that they don’t disappear.
