February 23, 2025 • 10 mins
Matt spent the weekend on a farm in Clevedon and was amazing to find buffalo on the farm - which prompted a discussion about unusual animals farmed in New Zealand.
Clevedon Buffalo Company co-founder Helen Dorresteyn joined the Afternoons team to discuss.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Onto Unusual Animals that you farm.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
So I was in Cleveland over the weekend and I
was hanging around some buffalo and I was impressed by buffalo,
butly the thought about farming different different animals, and of
course Cleveland buffalo are very famous.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
You can you get you get the.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Buffalo milk, you get the buffalo fetter ship, the buffalo
buffalo meat. But it just made me think about what
people are farming around the country, and the challenges of
farming different things, and why you farm something that isn't
just the standard cattle and sheep like you.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I had no idea buffalo farms existed, and I'm glad
they do. But remember there was a time where alpacas
was quite trendy. There was a lot going on with
the alpaca community, maybe because their wool was worth a
bit more. But one hundred and eighty ten eighty is
the number to call if you farm an unusual animal.
We love to we'd love to see I just.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Want to hear about it. Yeah, I found it uniquely interesting.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Imagine the challenges you know, from a from an abatoas
perspective and just a grazing perspective, and fencing and just
the logistics are very different from the tried and true
that have been done by so many people over the years.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Even deer would be considered, you know, slightly left field. Yep,
dead quite unique.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, a few people farming emo out there.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I'll tell you what. Someone who was listening a little
bit earlier when she heard that you stayed at this
farm and saw the beautiful buffalo is Helen Dorristeine. She
is the owner of Cleveton Buffalo Company, and joins us
on the phone now afternoon, Helen.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
Hi, how are you so?
Speaker 4 (01:51):
You own the buffaloes that I was probably staring at?
Do you own the ones that are near the cafe the.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
And here's a cafe, so we own We've got we've
got a large head and we have two farms, one
down North Road and one towards carcr ah right, what
about two hundred head? Oh you would have seen. No,
I raised the ones that are at a little cafe.
They were my they were my pits. They used to
follow me around the garden and then used we sold
(02:20):
them to the farmhouse.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
The Farmhouse Cafe, which is a fantastic operation. Boy that
I mean that you have to book a table there.
It is a very very busy, great food, great great time.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
So what what what made you guys get into farming Buffalo?
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Well, simply, we started the Farmer's Market, Cleveland Farmer's Market.
We still run it.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
That's can I just compliment you on that. I was
at the Cleveland Farmer's Market. What a great, great set
up that is. It's just so cool, you know, buying
eggs that have been that are from the farmer.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
That that that you know that.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
I was going to say the farm that laid the eggs,
the farmer probably collected them rather than laid them. How
life should be going right bas wine from the wine makers,
eggs from the egg makers.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
It's it's fantastic.
Speaker 5 (03:08):
We've you know, we've eaten exclusively from the market for
the last twenty years and it's been an absolute pleasure,
you know, absolute pleasure. So we've got the many friends, sorry,
we've got many friends friendships that have developed from that process.
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So going back to starting up the Buffalo farm, how
does one get a buffalo into the country.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
Oh, we flew them in. They flew and lifthanza b buffalo,
Bogie buffalo. You know. They were in the cargo hold.
And actually we had one shipment, so we bought sixty
head and we were the first people to bring a
milking herd in. And it was we had to write
the protocol. Honestly, we were young, and we just thought
we were bullet proof. And you know when I say young, fortyish,
(03:54):
but we thought we were capable of anything. And it
certainly tried us. But so we wrote the protocol, got
them in. But the third shipment because we we bought
in sixty head altogether in four balls, and the third
shipment was just before Christmas, and they loaded them wrong
and they kicked a hole in the in the crate,
and the whole plane had turned around, and we thought
(04:17):
we were in for about three hundred thousand dollars worth
of plane turnaround. But it was their fault, thank goodness,
and we did get them in, and we got them
in just in the nick of time because to bring
in sufficient animals, we brought them in actually pregnant. But
you can only bring them in to a certain extent
of their gestation or you know, it's not fair. So
that was tricky. It was Christmas, the planes were shutting down,
(04:40):
and the animals were pregnant, and there were hundreds of
thousands of dollars in line. It was hair raising. Yeah,
so it was pretty exciting.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Yeah. So I think I interrupted you when you were saying,
when your answer to the question, why.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Oh, well, farmer's market. So, Farmer's market, Cornerstone. Farmer's Market
is everything you need for a good meal. You do
have to cook it, but a good meal, and cheese
is one of those things. And I had lovely cheese there,
but they wouldn't come on a wet day and they
went regular, and I needed that market to have regular cheesemakers.
So my husband said, I'll make you some cheese, darling,
(05:17):
and I held them so and we thought. We looked
at it long and hard, and we decided that the
only way to have an edge in a place, an
open market like New Zealand was to have a milk
that was different, where one of the requirements was the
freshness of the milk. And so Buffalo, we're not farmed here.
(05:38):
We'd been to Italy, We'd eaten Motsralla in the Bay
of Naples. We knew how good it was. You know,
anyone that's traveled through Pakistan or India will know how
beautiful the buffalo and mok products are there. And it
just wasn't happening here, and so we thought, well, we'll
have a go. And you know, six literally six days later,
we were in the middle of Darwin in a little
(06:02):
old jimney sort of tied together with string, going through
creeks full of salties, looking at these buffalo and I said,
I'm not milking them. It would take a crocodile Dundee moment.
And they were wild. So the first first year or
five milking was this was like the wild whist. They'd
jump around and turn upside down and climb out and
(06:23):
it was it was hell on wheels. But now we've
got a tremendous, milky, beautiful herd, and we've through sleeped
of breeding and ai from we bring the semen inform Italy.
We've actually got tripled our milk volume. Well, yeah, it's
now it's now looking viable, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, yeah, Well, I'm our producer. Andrew here is a
huge fan of buffalo milk. He said, there's no creamy
of milk in the world.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Oh, it's divine. I like to lay a track on
people and they come over to the house for you know,
we had we had a guy there this morning doing
some contracting for us, Derek. He's lovely and he I
gave him a fat white said and then I said,
it's buffalo milk. And they literally they, you know, because
I don't know why it's so creamy, but it's beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
A cup of coffee, we can you get it outside
of the Farmer's Market.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
Well, we sell our cheeses throughout the country, you know,
wonderful support of places like more Wilson and so on
and through the New Worlds and pharaohs. But we also
sell hospital and too hospital about sixty percent into hospo.
But the farmer's market is where you'll get to try
the whole range. And we're there. We're there every weekend anyway,
(07:33):
and so I don't know if you know, but it's
actually Farmer's Market week coming up this Saturday. So if
you get on down to a farmer's market, nine times
out of teen, you're guaranteed to find someone doing something
really interesting. You know that you haven't tried before. Yeah, So.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Speaking of things you haven't tried before, what would you
say to people that are thinking of bringing in an
animal and trying to farm creatures and aren't the typical
New Zealand creatures to farm.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
I would say keep your day job, because it's a
long time before you actually turn it around, like a
really long time. It's not that coin, you know, And
I'd say embrace it and be patient and have faith
in yourself and don't need I mean I had people
(08:30):
literally laugh at me when we were doing it. I
had one guy, I just laughs, what did you do
that for? It said, we just laughed at me, you know,
and I just think, well, yeah, you know, I'm probably
not the most sensible thing to do, but gosh, we
make grape cheese and we've had a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Good on you. It's a very cool thing. Yeah, and
it's exciting.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
And you know, the challenges because those buffalo need to
be underwater part of some of the time, don't.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
They They love to wallow. And actually that was one
of the hugest challenges because of course the farms, some
of the farms in Clevedon like parks, you know, and
so trying to because we wanted to keep the horns
on them, because they use them like a radiator, because
they have they have less sweat glands and a car well,
so they cover themselves in the clay from the from
the from the wallows to kit themselves call and keep
(09:15):
the pests off themselves. And so to try to make
sure that we could keep the horns on them, you know,
and say, well, you so do make holes, but we
will fill them on every year and so on, and
so you know, one of the dreams is one day
and we have our own farm, we'd build a beautiful, big,
permanent wash for them. And you know, because they love
they do love the water. They just love it.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
What a great story.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
I well, thank you so much for sharing that story
with us, Helen, and congratulations on your success with the
Buffalo and good on you for doing such a bold thing.
And also love the Cleveland Farmer's markets. Such a good time,
so cool.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Hey, thanks for coming to Cleveland. We're pretty we're pretty well.
We love it out there.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
We'll be back, all right, have a great day.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
By that is Helen Dorenstein, co founder of the Cleveland
Buffalo Company. What a great story, I mean, you know,
Key is like that taking a punt, and they obviously
took a massive punt and it's worked out phenomenally.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
For more from News Talk set B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Onto Unusual Animals that you farm.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
So I was in Cleveland over the weekend and I
was hanging around some buffalo and I was impressed by buffalo,
butly the thought about farming different different animals, and of
course Cleveland buffalo are very famous.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
You can you get you get the.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Buffalo milk, you get the buffalo fetter ship, the buffalo
buffalo meat. But it just made me think about what
people are farming around the country, and the challenges of
farming different things, and why you farm something that isn't
just the standard cattle and sheep like you.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I had no idea buffalo farms existed, and I'm glad
they do. But remember there was a time where alpacas
was quite trendy. There was a lot going on with
the alpaca community, maybe because their wool was worth a
bit more. But one hundred and eighty ten eighty is
the number to call if you farm an unusual animal.
We love to we'd love to see I just.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Want to hear about it. Yeah, I found it uniquely interesting.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Imagine the challenges you know, from a from an abatoas
perspective and just a grazing perspective, and fencing and just
the logistics are very different from the tried and true
that have been done by so many people over the years.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Even deer would be considered, you know, slightly left field. Yep,
dead quite unique.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, a few people farming emo out there.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I'll tell you what. Someone who was listening a little
bit earlier when she heard that you stayed at this
farm and saw the beautiful buffalo is Helen Dorristeine. She
is the owner of Cleveton Buffalo Company, and joins us
on the phone now afternoon, Helen.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
Hi, how are you so?
Speaker 4 (01:51):
You own the buffaloes that I was probably staring at?
Do you own the ones that are near the cafe the.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
And here's a cafe, so we own We've got we've
got a large head and we have two farms, one
down North Road and one towards carcr ah right, what
about two hundred head? Oh you would have seen. No,
I raised the ones that are at a little cafe.
They were my they were my pits. They used to
follow me around the garden and then used we sold
(02:20):
them to the farmhouse.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
The Farmhouse Cafe, which is a fantastic operation. Boy that
I mean that you have to book a table there.
It is a very very busy, great food, great great time.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
So what what what made you guys get into farming Buffalo?
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Well, simply, we started the Farmer's Market, Cleveland Farmer's Market.
We still run it.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
That's can I just compliment you on that. I was
at the Cleveland Farmer's Market. What a great, great set
up that is. It's just so cool, you know, buying
eggs that have been that are from the farmer.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
That that that you know that.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
I was going to say the farm that laid the eggs,
the farmer probably collected them rather than laid them. How
life should be going right bas wine from the wine makers,
eggs from the egg makers.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
It's it's fantastic.
Speaker 5 (03:08):
We've you know, we've eaten exclusively from the market for
the last twenty years and it's been an absolute pleasure,
you know, absolute pleasure. So we've got the many friends, sorry,
we've got many friends friendships that have developed from that process.
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So going back to starting up the Buffalo farm, how
does one get a buffalo into the country.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
Oh, we flew them in. They flew and lifthanza b buffalo,
Bogie buffalo. You know. They were in the cargo hold.
And actually we had one shipment, so we bought sixty
head and we were the first people to bring a
milking herd in. And it was we had to write
the protocol. Honestly, we were young, and we just thought
we were bullet proof. And you know when I say young, fortyish,
(03:54):
but we thought we were capable of anything. And it
certainly tried us. But so we wrote the protocol, got
them in. But the third shipment because we we bought
in sixty head altogether in four balls, and the third
shipment was just before Christmas, and they loaded them wrong
and they kicked a hole in the in the crate,
and the whole plane had turned around, and we thought
(04:17):
we were in for about three hundred thousand dollars worth
of plane turnaround. But it was their fault, thank goodness,
and we did get them in, and we got them
in just in the nick of time because to bring
in sufficient animals, we brought them in actually pregnant. But
you can only bring them in to a certain extent
of their gestation or you know, it's not fair. So
that was tricky. It was Christmas, the planes were shutting down,
(04:40):
and the animals were pregnant, and there were hundreds of
thousands of dollars in line. It was hair raising. Yeah,
so it was pretty exciting.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Yeah. So I think I interrupted you when you were saying,
when your answer to the question, why.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Oh, well, farmer's market. So, Farmer's market, Cornerstone. Farmer's Market
is everything you need for a good meal. You do
have to cook it, but a good meal, and cheese
is one of those things. And I had lovely cheese there,
but they wouldn't come on a wet day and they
went regular, and I needed that market to have regular cheesemakers.
So my husband said, I'll make you some cheese, darling,
(05:17):
and I held them so and we thought. We looked
at it long and hard, and we decided that the
only way to have an edge in a place, an
open market like New Zealand was to have a milk
that was different, where one of the requirements was the
freshness of the milk. And so Buffalo, we're not farmed here.
(05:38):
We'd been to Italy, We'd eaten Motsralla in the Bay
of Naples. We knew how good it was. You know,
anyone that's traveled through Pakistan or India will know how
beautiful the buffalo and mok products are there. And it
just wasn't happening here, and so we thought, well, we'll
have a go. And you know, six literally six days later,
we were in the middle of Darwin in a little
(06:02):
old jimney sort of tied together with string, going through
creeks full of salties, looking at these buffalo and I said,
I'm not milking them. It would take a crocodile Dundee moment.
And they were wild. So the first first year or
five milking was this was like the wild whist. They'd
jump around and turn upside down and climb out and
(06:23):
it was it was hell on wheels. But now we've
got a tremendous, milky, beautiful herd, and we've through sleeped
of breeding and ai from we bring the semen inform Italy.
We've actually got tripled our milk volume. Well, yeah, it's
now it's now looking viable, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, yeah, Well, I'm our producer. Andrew here is a
huge fan of buffalo milk. He said, there's no creamy
of milk in the world.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Oh, it's divine. I like to lay a track on
people and they come over to the house for you know,
we had we had a guy there this morning doing
some contracting for us, Derek. He's lovely and he I
gave him a fat white said and then I said,
it's buffalo milk. And they literally they, you know, because
I don't know why it's so creamy, but it's beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
A cup of coffee, we can you get it outside
of the Farmer's Market.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
Well, we sell our cheeses throughout the country, you know,
wonderful support of places like more Wilson and so on
and through the New Worlds and pharaohs. But we also
sell hospital and too hospital about sixty percent into hospo.
But the farmer's market is where you'll get to try
the whole range. And we're there. We're there every weekend anyway,
(07:33):
and so I don't know if you know, but it's
actually Farmer's Market week coming up this Saturday. So if
you get on down to a farmer's market, nine times
out of teen, you're guaranteed to find someone doing something
really interesting. You know that you haven't tried before. Yeah, So.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Speaking of things you haven't tried before, what would you
say to people that are thinking of bringing in an
animal and trying to farm creatures and aren't the typical
New Zealand creatures to farm.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
I would say keep your day job, because it's a
long time before you actually turn it around, like a
really long time. It's not that coin, you know, And
I'd say embrace it and be patient and have faith
in yourself and don't need I mean I had people
(08:30):
literally laugh at me when we were doing it. I
had one guy, I just laughs, what did you do
that for? It said, we just laughed at me, you know,
and I just think, well, yeah, you know, I'm probably
not the most sensible thing to do, but gosh, we
make grape cheese and we've had a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Good on you. It's a very cool thing. Yeah, and
it's exciting.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
And you know, the challenges because those buffalo need to
be underwater part of some of the time, don't.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
They They love to wallow. And actually that was one
of the hugest challenges because of course the farms, some
of the farms in Clevedon like parks, you know, and
so trying to because we wanted to keep the horns
on them, because they use them like a radiator, because
they have they have less sweat glands and a car well,
so they cover themselves in the clay from the from
the from the wallows to kit themselves call and keep
(09:15):
the pests off themselves. And so to try to make
sure that we could keep the horns on them, you know,
and say, well, you so do make holes, but we
will fill them on every year and so on, and
so you know, one of the dreams is one day
and we have our own farm, we'd build a beautiful, big,
permanent wash for them. And you know, because they love
they do love the water. They just love it.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
What a great story.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
I well, thank you so much for sharing that story
with us, Helen, and congratulations on your success with the
Buffalo and good on you for doing such a bold thing.
And also love the Cleveland Farmer's markets. Such a good time,
so cool.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Hey, thanks for coming to Cleveland. We're pretty we're pretty well.
We love it out there.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
We'll be back, all right, have a great day.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
By that is Helen Dorenstein, co founder of the Cleveland
Buffalo Company. What a great story, I mean, you know,
Key is like that taking a punt, and they obviously
took a massive punt and it's worked out phenomenally.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
For more from News Talk set B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
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