For Alan Rousseau, he found life's 'reset button' with a grocery store on legs
By Nina Mehlhaf, KTVZ.COM
For the past two nights, we've been introducing you to Central Oregonians whose careers are unconventional, unusual or just plain dirty.
So far, you've met a taxidermist and the production manager at the Bendistillery.
Tonight, we continue our look at "Odds Jobs in Central Oregon" with a man who has a list of goals and dreams a mile long.
A man whose vision for America's health and nutrition has led him to make life-changing decisions.
"We're going to feed 100 head - there's buffalo and Tibetan yaks."
"I'll tell you it's something new every day - it's not a boring job by any means."
Alan Rousseau is a dreamer. The kind of man who always has a hare-brained idea, but the heart to pull it off.
A certified nurseryman and a former commercial salesman for Home Depot and Lowe's in Bend, until three years ago, when his long-time dream became financially sound enough he could live off it full-time.
"My inspiration, 'Dances with Wolves' - the movie, 1997," said Rousseau. "I sat down and wrote a couple hundred goals, and one of them was to raise buffalo."
He started with a small herd back in 2000, selling the meat at a farmer's market here and there.
"Again, it's just a passion, something you love," said the impassioned Rousseau. "Something you want to do - and then it was great when the customers were telling us it's the best meat they've ever eaten."
Talk with Rousseau about nutrition in America, and he provides footnotes to studies done on Aborigines, cites documents on our obsession with fast food and getting the biggest portions for the least amount of money.
His answer is simple: Go back to our roots and go back to health. And buffalo is our roots.
It's lower in fat, calories and cholesterol than skinless chicken, and it has more iron and vitamin B-12. And many have said it has a sweeter, richer flavor than beef.
"I'm really a grass farmer, I'm not a buffalo farmer," Rousseau says. "If I raise good grass, then the buffalo take care of themselves, and you provide good grass and minerals they need and water. God created it, I just found a good location for it."
Now, nine years and many goals later, Pine Mountain Buffalo Ranch, Rousseau's property on Highway 20 east of Bend, is a veritable grocery store on legs.
With yaks, lamb, pastured chickens and heritage turkeys that many will be "thankful" for next week.
He and partner Loretta Spahmer now do seven farmer's markets a week and sell out of their barn, off their Website www.pmrbuffalo.com and at a few natural food stores in Central Oregon.
Spahmer herself used to be a city slicker on the East Coast, but got the same hare-brained idea to buy a ranch in Bend, Oregon and grow yaks. The two met at a yak convention, of sorts, in Colorado, and it was love and exotic meats ever since.
"Get an elk tenderloin, a buffalo tenderloin and a yak tenderloin and try that. That's the ultimate. You can't die until you've tried that, you just can't," Rousseau said with a laugh.
And as you can imagine, being a buffalo/yak/turkey rancher does come with a sense of humor.
It has to. You're dealing with 2,000-pound animals that have been around since the dawn of time - and they live in your backyard.
"If you want to think of our dirtiest job, take buffalo skulls and put them in bags and let maggots accumulate in there and clean them - and that's kind of a gory thing," Rousseau admitted.
But as Rousseau says, it's sustainable. Every single part of every animal is used, nothing wasted.
Buffalo hair is turned into pillows, hides into purses, shoulder blades into canoe paddles, and skulls, teeth even jawbones given to Oregon's Native American tribes for ritual ceremonies.
It's all part of a dream that Rousseau isn't even close to waking up from.
"I want to cover our barn with solar panels. I want to put in windmills. I want to be off the grid. I want to eventually build greenhouses. I want to run solar panels so they run water underground, so we can heat the ground, so we can grow 10 months out of the year."
But behind Rousseau's list is an idea - an idea that a richer, slower quality of life and better health can actually start in beautiful, sunny Central Oregon.
"We all have a reset button in life, and what do you do to reset? You go take a walk with your dog," he said philosophically. "For me, a reset is set the tractor on cruise control and feed hay out of the back of the wagon and watch the animals."
