Christmas at the bison ranch
Santa poem part of the retirement adventure for Verna and Vern Wright
Long ago on a cold winter’s night the fence along the south quarter on the 400acre Kole Creek Bison Ranch just north of Hixon needed mending.
Where the buffalo roam below-freezing temperatures, a snow storm and dwindling daylight made fence mending more daunting but it didn’t stop the ranchers from completing the task.
“As I stood along the fence line shivering in my boots, Vern told me he’d only be a few more minutes and to go sit in the truck,” said Verna Wright, talking about the catalyst for her creative thinking a decade ago. “I was still shivering but to take my mind off the cold I started thinking about bison and Santa’s sleigh because it was close to Christmas and when I realized Vixen rhymed with Hixon I was off.”
Verna wrote a poem with her own tongue-in-cheek twist on Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore to tell a tall tale to her grandchildren.
The key members of the bison herd, including Fernando the bull, are the stars of the poem as Santa’s whole team of reindeer, except, of course, Vixen, got sick and couldn’t fly.
“T’was the night before Christmas – Santa didn’t know what to do
Most of the reindeer had come down with the flu.” And so the adventure begins. Verna is a locally known poetess who wrote a poem about moving to the ranch as well her holiday poem and continues to entertain the troupes at the local Elder Citizens Recreation Association with her witty word play as she creates posters for special events, contributes to the newsletter and sings in the choir.
“My neighbour Earl kept telling me I needed to submit my Santa poem to The Citizen but I kept putting it off,” Verna said, her kind eyes smiling. Earl has since passed away but finally Verna decided to venture into the new location of the Citizen office recently to see if there was any interest in her poetry.
“And now here we are,” she laughed as the camera shutter clicked away, capturing special moments during the interview at the buffalo farm earlier this week.
Vern’s dream to own a bison farm began in the 60s when he read an article in a prominent magazine about a successful 5,000-head buffalo ranch in the states but back in the day bison came under the wildlife act in Canada and no one could commercialize bison, he explained. So he put the dream away for a while. Traveling the province as an insurance claims adjuster, Vern came upon the 400 acres he and Verna live on now and made the purchase in 1998. The couple moved from Nelson and all those they knew and loved in 2000 after they built their house. Vern was in semi-retirement for a couple of years so he and Verna could make the transition to full time farmers.
There is now 320 acres that are fenced and cross fenced for their 51 head of bison and the 80 acres across the road is logged off in preparation for a hay field to make the farm that much more self sufficient.
Vern is bison’s best ambassador, talking about how the meat is more lean than other red meats, with a lower cholesterol count and grass-fed bison, like the Kole Creek herd, even contains essential omega 3s as an extra perk.
“This meat is great for the health-conscious and that’s the direction the public seems to be going,” Vern said. According to statistics offered on the Canadian Bison Association web site, there were reported 119,314 bison on 975 Canadian farms and ranches in 2016. The BC bison industry is relatively small with provincial government statistics showing 53 licensed ranches and 7,250 head of bison, according to the information offered on the B.C. Bison Association website.
Fernando the bull has been the sole stud at Kole Creek for the last 18 years. Recently he was replaced by his son Kole as both Vern and Verna decided that seeing him deteriorate and get injured because of his weakened state as an aging bull was not the end of life Fernando deserved. The breeding plan at the ranch has changed and Vern said Kole will have six years and then be replaced by newcomer, two-year-old Rambo.
Vern sells long yearlings, which means the bison are sold on the hoof at 18 months when the heffers weigh in at about 550 pounds and bulls come in at about 700 pounds. And then, of course, there’s the baby, who was born in October and still has the sheen of auburn that is characteristic of youth. As the bison mature their coats get darker, so in the field it’s easy to see the wee one as he keeps close to his mother.
In the past Vern used to sell the meat to restaurants and individuals as special orders, but as the details and demands got more complicated, he decided to simplify the process and just ship the bison to an Alberta company, where the meat is distributed internationally and nationally.
— See ‘OH VERNA’ on page 5