Giardini Trattoria in Columbus, NC rightly claims to be a farm-to-table restaurant that sources local produce, some of which they grow in their own garden. The meat is provided by nearby farms. But one supplier, Broken Arrow Ranch, isn't in the Carolinas. It's in Texas. And technically it isn't a ranch at all, but a cooperative of sorts, a collection of over 100 ranches covering a million acres in the central and southern portion of the state known to many as Texas Hill Country.
The ranch land isn't suitable for cultivation but growing on the open range are a wide variety of natural herbs and native grasses that feed a wide variety of non-native species of wild game introduced to the region over half a century ago. Blackbuck and Nilgai antelope, Axis, Sika and Fallow deer and wild boar roam free in a climate ideally suited to them as they feed on the ground cover growing there.
Most meat processing plants receive live animals that have been transported to their facilities. But the owners of Broken Arrow have successfully developed a different and unique system. Partnering with ranchers they field harvest the wild animals with mobile units. With a team of three, a marksman, a butcher and a government meat inspector, the animals are humanely taken down and immediately processed on location, reducing the animal's stress level and improving the quality of the meat product. The entire operation has been approved by the Texas Department of Health since its inception in 1983. Their story was even told on the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods show narrated by Andrew Zimmern.
As an artisnal purveyor of high quality free-range meat from truly wild animals, Broken Arrow Ranch supplies meat to restaurants in nearly all of our 50 states, including the Giardini Trattoria. And I can attest to the texture and tenderness of the venison from the Axis deer that I savored in North Carolina one Saturday night.
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