Liz and Jimmie Riffle own and manage Riffle Farms, a bison farm in Terra Alta, West Virginia. They were the first commercial bison farm in West Virginia and they were the first certified for field harvesting as well. They began with seven bison in 2017. Jimmie was raised in this region and wanted to return home to raise a family after he met Liz in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps where they have both served as nurses.
Liz notes that she became a nurse because she is passionate about health. “You get what you put into your body,” she says. “I come from a background in horses and rode competitively. I love being in a farm environment. I knew I wanted to go back to that type of space. I left the Navy to start a family and became very picky about what we put in our mouths. I read the book Eating Animalsby Jonathan Safron Foer and learned about the slaughter process in the U.S. I was horrified. I’m an animal lover and I can’t believe this is what we do.
So, I started sourcing my meat from local farmers. I realized what a wonderful community I’d stepped into and that a lot of people want humanely harvested meat.” With some additional research about the pros and cons of bison after a trip to the West, Liz and Jimmie decided that bison was the right animal for them on their 64-acre woody, hilly farm. Given that this area was once home bison and that these animals could be field harvested, the decision made sense to Liz and Jimmie as they started on their regenerative agriculture journey.
The Bison Advantage
The Riffles were clear that field harvesting was a key component of their production system. They didn’t want the animals to have to get on a trailer and be stressed by the loading and transport. Because bison are considered a “non-amenable” species (exotic/wild) by the USDA, they can be field harvested, but you have to register with the state and use an inspector.
“We worked with the state of West Virginia for three years to get registered to field harvest a bison,” says Liz. “We typically put an animal down in the calm of morning, we have a licensed sharpshooter take the shot and there has to be a State inspector present. Once the animal is shot, they are stuck with a knife and we use a tractor and chains to drain the blood. The animal is placed on a flatbed and sent to the processor. The animal will be eviscerated at the processing facility and the organs will then be inspected.”
Another key component of their production system is being able to run the animals as a single herd and reduce management time with good livestock handling skills. Liz acknowledges it took some time to learn how to handle the bison. “A big piece of handling bison is you have to do it in a relaxed calm manner and not get excited. It’s like with kids; you have to make them feel like anything you want them to do is their idea. We want to pull an animal into a space instead of pushing them in. We work them once a year to tag the calves and sometimes we have used a de-wormer, but we mostly got away from that.
“We let animals move at their own pace. To get them back into a space if they’ve gotten out, we use grain as a lure. They are very herd bound so once we get one moving the rest will follow. In the past 18 months we have done less luring with grain and just waited it out. The one that got out will start looking for the gate and want to get to the rest of the herd. It may take 10 minutes to 2 hours for that to happen.”
Liz likes that bison are more efficient on grass and are a lean meat, thus working well in their grass-based system and their discerning customer base. The Riffles have tried to get genetics that are more similar to the Woods Bison, which stand a little bit taller and who might have been native to West Virginia. “We have both kinds on the 64 acres we currently manage,” says Liz. “Bison’s instincts are still intact in terms of behaving like a herd. Our pastures are 2-11 acres and we use high tensile wire that is five feet high with five strands, two of which that are hot. There is no fencing that will keep bison in if they want out, so you have to keep them happy.” Keeping them happy and being more profitable means growing more grass, and learning about Holistic Management helped the Riffles improve their grazing management and increase their carrying capacity.
A Holistic Lens
As the Riffles were developing their production system, they continued to keep a regenerative focus. However, much of the resources they were introduced to with federal and state agencies, were still responding to their questions through an industrial agricultural lens. For example, when the Riffles talked about their excess of multiflora rose, they were told to spray it. Or, when they asked about ways to improve profitability of their bison enterprise, they were told to feed grain. So, Liz started to dive into the regenerative agriculture literature and heard about Holistic Management from other bison producers. She also read Wild Like Flowersby Daniel Griffith of the Robinia Institute in Wingina, Virginia.
In the fall of 2021 Liz decided to get some Holistic Management training from Daniel and took a virtual course all winter long as well as attending a follow-up two-day training intensive he offered. “It was really great to talk to him,” says Liz. “I found that I wasn’t actually a ‘crazy bison lady’ and the idea of regenerative agriculture wasn’t just some rainbow fantasy, holistically managing a farm is a reasonable method— so I dove head first!
“One of the big insights for me was understanding why we had bare soil. We had been doing some bale grazing, but now I understood why the bare soil was there and the complexity of Nature. Nursing is very linear thinking. Holistic Management helped me think about the space I was managing and what I’m doing with my soils from a cyclical perspective. It helped me look at how I could use different tools to deal with multiple issues. Right now, we have 40 bison on 64 acres. I have a process now that helps me think about how all those pieces work together. Holistic Management has also given me a better financial lens. If I can grow enough grass with enough nutritional value, I won’ need to feed the bison hay. Or, if I can even only buy half the hay I’m buying now that would be huge!
“Holistic Management has also affected our quality of life. We now focus on the idea of ‘less is more.’ The farm planning was really important because we looked at how to move the animals in a way that would reduce the number of people needed. We also looked at how we needed to improve our water sources to help us with grazing rotations. Now it only takes one person to open the gate to move the animals. In the past it would have taken two or three people to move them across roads, etc. We really had to plan, but now our farm manager can do it within five minutes and get on to other things.
“What I liked about the Holistic Management Financial Planning was to think about the profit first. If you don’t determine that number, there are always lots of expenses that can reduce your profit. That process made me think about farm expenses differently and to prioritize. We changed how we looked at expenses to consider was this really the best thing to spend money on for this year.
“We’ve made a lot of changes in the past couple of years. Our rotation is not just based on the recovery or grazing time. We are looking at soils and grasses now and I like the perspective of looking at the various issues of grazing and animal impact, and to think about why you are moving them to the next pasture. The planned grazing made a lot more sense than the prescriptive way that is the industry standard. I’ve seen our grasses grow back more than what it was before we put the bison on the land. Now it is up to our hips, and in the majority of the paddocks the grasses are seeding out at shoulder height. As soon as I put the bison back where the multiflora rose was heaviest, they were trampling and browsing it. It used to be that 25% of our land had multiflora rose and now it is almost gone. We’ve also been bale grazing in the winter from November through March or April to help certain areas that need more impact.
“Right now, we have 52 grazing acres and we are about to get another 10 acres into production. Half of our grazing space is silvopasture with native plants. We’ve been doing some selective cutting back of the woods to open up the canopy so that a third of those areas grows grass. We keep the black locust trees because they have great protein content. The forest is mixed hard woods with maple and black walnut.
“Currently we are carrying 40 animals with most of the bison weighing 1,000 pounds (454 kg), with a couple of the bulls weighing 2,000 pounds (908 kg). Our next goal is to run 60 animals, a third more than our current carrying capacity, and we think we will be able to do that with a little less hay. We think 60 animals will be our limit on the current property. We run one herd and the bison do really well with herd dynamics. We have a lot of cool season grasses which grow very quickly, but we try to give them at least 14-25 days of recovery. We only have two warm season grasses and we are working on that by selectively seeding via low input broadcasting. We have experimented with seeding crabgrass and millet. Our average rainfall is 50 inches (1,016 mm) and we do get snow.
“The holistic context helped us to piece together what we wanted out of our space, our animals, our business and really focused us on grass-finished bison. We do not supplement the animals. If an animal is not doing well in our space, then we harvest it early.”
Increasing Profitability
Liz also started running a business called the Honest Carnivore in 2019, which is a meat collective where people can buy a ticket to come to the farm and partake in a field harvest and learn how to cut up a quarter of the animal. “A small bison or an animal not doing well is a great candidate for an exploratory class like what we offer at the Honest Carnivore,” says Liz. “More folks are out to see what is happening on the farm. We’ve also done pig and poultry classes. We don’t raise other animals; I collaborate with local farmers to get those other animals for the classes.” Three-day classes can run $650-750 while a smaller class might only cost $25.
The Riffles sell quarter animals as well as individual cuts in four farmer’s markets in Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. They have found their value-added products to be explosively popular and profitable. They recently put in a farm store that is open twice a week, Saturdays and Sundays. Their value-added items include bison chili, hot dogs, and meatballs. Liz rents a commercial kitchen to make these products and has been able to turn $15/pound ground bison into $35-90 /pound with her value-added products. This increased profitability has also made the Riffles eager to put in their own commercial kitchen and that is a key focus this year. “Value-added products are really our ticket to being able to raise this amount of animals regeneratively and profitably,” says Liz. “We are only going to have so much meat to sell and prepared foods make that meat go farther.” The Riffles also donate the bones to a local zoo, make pet treats, and utilize the skulls as camping signs. Hides are expensive to process and they have not really been able to tap into that market yet.
The Riffles do a variety of events and Liz really loves this outreach and educational side of the business. “I love to have the customers come up to the farm and learn about all the things you can do with the land and animals,” says Liz. The Riffles also offer camping, farm to table dinners, tastings, and school tours.
Liz wants to focus on buying less hay and getting their commercial kitchen this year. The Riffles worked with Steward, a regenerative agriculture financing platform, to get funding for their expansion. “We had trouble getting a loan for the commercial kitchen because we raising bison is a very nontraditional business, even for farm lenders,” says Liz. “Steward was a good option for us because people can invest in creative farm ideas.” In 2022 they received a $100,000 loan for five years at 8% APR when they couldn’t get that loan from a commercial bank.
Liz would love to see the farm become more of an event space. “We do a couple of farm to table dinners as well as tours and bison testing events,” says Liz. “We host six farm tours a year, but we would like to do it every weekend. I love the educational aspects. I also get lots of questions from farmers. They have asked about how to market their animals and if having a small herd can really be profitable, I tell them it sure can be!
“Any farmer can make a profit, but you have to set it up right. I am no longer an active Registered Nurse, I am able to be a full-time farmer because we are making a profit. We also pay our farm manager a full-time wage with benefits.” It is results like these that the Riffles have seen over the years since learning about Holistic Management that has made them glad of their investment in training. They are eager to continue learning and growing their business and their network as they expand the idea of what it means to be a profitable bison producer in West Virginia.
Liz Riffle has joined HMI's Educator Training Program to be able to build her skills as a Holistic Management Consultant. HMI is currently offering our Online Holistic Marketing & Business Planning Course to help other producers improve their profitability like Liz.