Keepin' It Local

By Karin Edmondson

Culinary dicta howl at us from covers of serious food magazines. Ardent gastronomic directives issued by celebrity chefs hope to persuade us to consume specific items: native plants, foraged herbaceous goods, heritage breeds, antique this and heirloom that. Eat Local. Eat of the season. Eat native. But America is the Melting Pot. What exactly is native in these hodge-podge, hoi polloi days? Our European ancestors successfully displaced indigenous peoples. Native animals indiscriminately bred with pilgrim stock escapees. Blood lines run thin and weak. I have a difficult time envisioning the Native American warrior hunting the docile, cud-chewing black and white dairy cow. Time to hark back some several hundred years ago and simplify things down to pig, buffalo and deer. According to Peter Kaminsky’s Pig Perfect: Encounters With Remarkable Swine, “Pigs came ashore mainland North America in 1539 when Hernando De Soto brought them from Cuba—where thirteen year prior Columbus had deposited his 8 pigs, as indicated by his cargo manifest—to the Southeastern United States.” (Kaminsky, Peter. Pig Perfect. New York: Hyperion, 2005. p. 130.) So while perhaps not entirely a blue-blooded, Pleistocene native, after 500 years in this country, the pig is assuredly more native than most of this country’s meat-consuming population. Buffalo are native to North America as are certain species of deer, white tailed being the most abundant. Each year white-tailed deer become the culinary object of thousands of hunters’ eyes and for several weeks in the autumn adorn country roads, byways, gas stations and backyards as carcasses are hung up to dry and age before morphing into venison steaks, sausages, burgers and other assorted edible shapes. Europeans have farmed fallow and red deer for consumption (and no doubt allowing for close-contact examination by artists for many a royal portrait or tapestry) for hundreds of years. Highland Premium Farm Raised Venison in Germantown has been following that tradition, albeit on New World shores, for the last twenty years.

Highland Premium Venison
Louise Rose, who has been raising venison at Highland Premium Venison for fourteen years, is a realist. “The only way you will successfully keep deer out is with high fences or dogs. Both are best.” Although Louise was referring to the antagonistic relationship between suburban homeowners and white-tailed deer, the theory worked at the farm to keep deer and elk herds in. The fences at the fifty-acre Highland Venison Farm are ten to twelve feet high. Some are chain-link, like the elk and fallow deer enclosures, and others that protect Moufon sheep and Barbados Black Belly sheep are wooden. In a little over an hour, Louise manages to impart several interesting tidbits of venison knowledge, the most basic being that venison is a term that refers to not only to deer meat but also to meat from elk, moose, caribou and reindeer—any antlered (as opposed to horned—animal. “Horns are for life, antlers drop off.” Male deer grow the antlers for mating season in order to fight and proclaim dominance. Antlers are made of minerals so typically, males of deer species have a shorter lifespan due to the exertion of growing antlers each year. Antlers sap the minerals sooner from males than females. In the reindeer world, both males and females have antlers during mating season. While the males drop their antlers in December, usually before Christmas, the females retain their antlers for approximately one week after giving birth so that they remain the dominant ones in order to secure food for their babies and to protect the young. (Scientifically, the reindeer depicted pulling Santa’s sleigh are females.) Note: Highland Venison Farm is not in the antler business. They do, at times, have to remove antlers from particularly aggressive bucks and only then might have those antlers available for display or for sale at their booth at one of the regional farm markets.

The deer raised at Highland Venison Farm are fallow deer and red deer, with nary a white-tailed deer on premises. “Red deer are born with a scent so the doe and the herd actually protect the young deer. White-tailed deer are born without a scent so they mother typically stashes the baby for safekeeping which is why folks’ll often stumble across a lone baby deer.” The deer are rotated throughout pastures and their diet is supplemented with local hay and corn. No growth hormones or antibiotics are ever used and the deer are closely monitored for health. Highland Venison utilizes a Deer Management System that includes a unit with a hydraulic squeeze and a drop-floor chute so that the deer are never tranquilized or drugged even for routine exams. The meat quality or purity is never compromised. The deer are gentle enough to eat kernelled corn out of our hands. At fifteen to twenty-seven months the deer are harvested in a pen adjacent to the processing facility. Louise explains that “the animals are not herded or prodded. The pen where they are shot—once to the head, through the ear—is familiar to them so they have no absolutely no increase in stress levels which ensures that the meat is tender. Farmed deer meat is vastly different from hunted deer meat. When the deer is aware that it is being hunted so it’s stressed, its muscles tighten. Some deer might need multiple shots to finish the kill. Treatment after the kill might include hanging outside in the sun and the elements, all of which affects the meat quality, which is why you often hear of hunters speak so fondly of marination. Farmed deer meat needs no marinade to tenderize. If you must marinate, then do so for only thirty minutes or less.”

Venison meat is “naturally light, lower in fat, cholesterol and calories than beef lamb, veal or pork, contains less cholesterol than chicken and falls below the American Heart Association’s guidelines for fat, cholesterol and calories. Venison also has as much protein as lean beef with only half the calories. A three-ounce cooked portion of venison has 139 calories, five grams of fat, 62 mg of cholesterol and 22 grams of protein, as compared to 85% lean ground beef that contains 213 calories, 12 grams of fat, 84 mg of cholesterol and 25 grams of protein.” The boneless loin roast is tender, moist and delectable, sautéed briefly in olive oil and sprinkled with a little sea or Kosher salt or pepper. Tart fruits such as raspberry, red or black currant and blueberry make wonderful marinades, reductions and sauces for venison. On a recent visit, my friend and fellow Spruceton-ite Mark Fairchild and I tasted the meat, which we found to be remarkably effervescent, with flavor notes of grass. Four days after consuming the deer loin with me, Mark remarked, still wondrous: “The deer tasted fresh, like grass.” The value-added products of venison pepperoni, smoked tenders and smoked sausage are all flavorful and moist with varying degrees of smoke and spice, and would make excellent additions to any charcuterie platter in town or country. Highland Venison Farm also raises buffalo for meat and breeding purposes and sells a Buffalo Strip steak that is remarkably robust, flavorful and lean, clearly most like the cow meat of American palette predilections.

Highland Venison processes all of its deer in a modern, white-washed, airy slaughterhouse complete with meat hooks for hanging in a cold room and a sub-zero (-50 degrees) freezer unit. The retail cuts of deer—available in all cuts familiar to cow or pig eaters: London broil, boneless roast, medallion, ground, cutlets, stew meat, jerky and hot dogs—are vacuum-packed and can be shipped via insulated coolers packed with ice. The meat is super-fresh: harvested on Tuesdays, processed for the market on Thursdays and then sold at farmers markets that same weekend. Highland Venison has booths at the following regional farmers markets: Kingston, Rosendale, Saugerties, Millbrook and Rhinebeck. Highland Venison also raises buffalo and wild Russian boar on another larger 800-acre farm two hours north. Highland Venison Products can also be ordered directly from the farm by calling 518 537 6397 or 845 758 2549 or by e-mailing Bonny Corrado at bonnycorrado@yahoo.com. Highland Venison is located at 283 County Route 6, Germantown, NY.