Wildlife Lakes Elk Farm - Farm to Plate

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Farm to Plate
by Marlene Lucas
Courtesy of The Gazette

WEST BURLINGTON - When Henry Bohlen talks about alternative farming, he's not talking about a huge garden and weekly trips to the farmers market.
            He's talking about elk production, animals that are often described as magnificent while on the hoof and as delectable on the plate.
            Bohlen, 65, of West Burlington, has been raising elk since 1990 and has been among those that will be talked about in years to come as having sold breeding animals for $15,000 each.
            But those speculative days have dimmed, and now it's time for the elk industry to get down to business and build an acceptance for its meat products with chefs and consumers.
            "You have to get the meat market established so it doesn't collapse like the ostrich thing did," he said.
            So for almost a year now, Bohlen has been going to restaurant chefs and offering samples of elk pastrami and prime cuts of elk. Several chefs have welcomed his unusual product.
            James Adrian, chef and co-owner with Jack Piper of the Atlas World Grill in Iowa City, serves pepper-crusted rack of elk on the third weekend of the month.
            "We like to bring unique items to the menu," Adrian said. " It sparks interest in the guests, and they tell friends we had something interesting.
            "We like to have as much on the menu from local producers as possible. Burlington is Jack's and my home town, so we call it local."
            "Henry was our drivers ed instructor at Burlington High School. I was surprised to know he was raising elk."
            The rack of elk at $29.95 is the most expensive menu item at the Atlas, Adrian said. He arranges the meat on the plate along with celery root and Yukon Gold puree and haricot verts cooked with garlic, walnuts and honey.
            Diners should not be put off by the red color of the elk, he said.
            Elk is naturally more red than cooked beef, and it should not be cooked too far past the rare stage. It has so little fat that it will dry out and become tough if cooked until well done.
            Kurt Michael Friese, chef and co-owner of Adagio Restaurant-Bar in Iowa City, serves elk ribeye for $18. And Chef David Wieseneck, owner of Motley Cow Cafe in Iowa City, recently served elk during a special five-course meal.
            At the Jefferson Street Cafe in downtown Burlington, the Blackhawk Elk Pastrami sandwich, at $6.95, is one of the top three most requested sandwiches, said Executive Chef Michael Clem. Clem's San Antonio Elk Medallions, at $19.95, goes fairly well, too.
            "People were hesitant at first, but repeat customers buy it again. A lot of hunters in this area like it," Clem said.
            One skeptic who has been won over by Bohlen is Doug Coyle, managing partner at the Jefferson Street Cafe. He thought the meat would taste strong.
            "Oh we can make it taste strong like deer venison," Bohlen said. "We can pick an old elk, chase it for a few hours, wound it, chase it some more, kill it and dress it in the woods, drag it on the ground and then take it around in a pickup for half a day and show it to all our friends before we cut it up."
            Instead, the elk are raised on about 70 acres of fenced grassland. The bulls are fed a mixture of corn, oats, elk minerals and soybean meal. Cows are fed the mixture when they are providing milk for calves.
            When Bohlen moves the elk, he places food where he wants them to go. He avoids herding them because the action frightens them. He strives to stress the animals as little as possible.
            So Coyle sampled the medallions, and now he includes elk medallions on the menus he serves to his dining club customers. Some customers liked the flavor of the elk so much they bought more meat directly from Bohlen.
            Bohlen is the producer and the marketer, but he needs a middle man, someone to butcher the elk and process the meat. That's where Doug Havel comes in. He's the owner of Bud's Custom Meats at Riverside.
            Havel uses his own recipes to make pastrami and ready-to-eat sticks from the meat that's left after the prime cuts are taken.
            Bohlen picks up most of the meat, but Havel offers some elk steaks and tenderloin from his own meat case, just below the rabbit and turtle meat. Havel enjoys offering his customers novel meats.
            Recently over a table at Jefferson Street Cafe, Coyle and Bohlen talked about the need to find a better use for all the cuts of elk meat.
            "The trick is to learn how to use the lower cuts of meat to reduce the cost of the upper end of the meat. We've got to learn to use all the animal," Coyle said.
            They laughed when Bohlen reminded Coyle about osso boco, a recipe that had been unknown to Coyle. It's a long-simmered Italian dish that uses the meat from the lower section of a lamb's leg. Bohlen tasted osso boco made with elk in Canada, where the elk industry is more developed.
            Bohlen has a second reason for wanting to develop the elk meat industry.
            Until a few years ago, elk velvet antler sold for $110 a pound, with South Korea buying much of it for medicinal purposes. The price dropped to $15 a pound after the Koreans stopped buying directly from North America, based on the fear the antlers were tainted with chronic wasting disease.
            "They still buy our antlers, but now they go through Hong Kong," Bohlen said.
            Velvet antler is a term describing antlers that are taken before the antlers harden. It has been used for centuries in Asia as a medicine to treat arthritis and many other illnesses.
            Bohlen believes elk meat is a winner for health reasons as well.
            Elk meat ranges in fat from 0.7 percent to 1 percent, coming in lower than chicken breast with 2 percent to 4 percent fat, buffalo with 2 percent to 3 percent fat and roast beef with 6 percent to 10 percent fat, according to the USDA.
            "The hardest part is getting people to taste it," he said.