On Misty Morning Ranch – The Ostrich Experience

Boys,

This post is meant to be a side post from another post I’m writing. (How you like me now, AI bot who is constantly grading my “readability” and wants to underline things that don’t need to be underlined because the AI thinks I’m writing too weakly — skit skat skoodle butt I don’t care…. would not have thought that would have come out in the first paragraph about ostrich’s, but we’ve come too far now to turn back!)

When we were down in Pinehurst and your mom was playing golf, the three of us + Memaw found a place called “Misty Morning Ranch,” which I’ll link to but my guess is that by the time your read this, the website will no longer be operational.

I’m not sure how I came about this place, but we like doing adventurous things, so I figured this would be a story to tell, if nothing else. Well, story to tell it was!

First of all, this place is 30 minutes away from our rental house, so it’s not like we have to commit the whole day to this thing, but it’s far enough away that once you get there, you’re kind of committed to doing the thing, even if it might not look like what you thought it would.

It did not look like I thought it would.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I thought I saw online that on Saturdays, which is what day we went, there was some kind of a farmer’s market there, which would imply at least some amount of people would be there and we could see what we wanted to see and leave when we wanted to leave.

It did not have some kind of a farmer’s market. We could not leave when we wanted to leave.

We get there and as I slow down to make sure the address in my phone was the same as the place we found, your Memaw and I both said, “this can’t be it, right?” So we drove on a quarter-mile and pull off to double check the address. Address was correct. That was the place.

So we loop back and I park. From there, I could see some ostriches in the back (good sign)You three stayed in the car and I got out. No one around except a guy standing in front of a food truck (good sign). I ask him if this was the place, and he said that it was (medium sign) and that he’d go get the owner. So he heads toward the house, which wasn’t giving off “misty morning ranch” vibes, but it was fine.

Meanwhile, I’m sensing some nervous energy from Memaw and Reagan in the back and Koen, you fell asleep. I might have had a twinge of nervous energy too, seeing how we were out in the middle of Nowhere, NC and both Memaw’s phone and my phone were about dead. So we had that going for us, which is nice.

Cut back to the house where three grown men all come out with Coors Lights in hand, along with one woman and two kids about Reagan’s age (no Coors lights on the latter three that I could tell, but hey it’s a Saturday in the south and there’s probably a Nascar race on, so no judgies either way).

I get introduced to the owner, Ryan, and when he learns my name is also Ryan, he makes a joke to Memaw, who has emerged from the car, about how she shouldn’t forget his name.

Side bar: what is the right way to introduce yourself to someone who has your same name? Like, if someone’s name is Dave, and they stick their hand out to say “Dave” with introductory tones, it’s easy to just say your own name, “Ryan” with understood emphasis and it’s over. Easy. But switch the “Dave” with “Ryan,” and when I return the “Ryan,” he’s probably thinking I’m obtuse for just repeating his name while he waits for me to return mine. So I say something clunky like, “Ryan. Uh, also Ryan. My name is Ryan, too.” Great start.

Anyway, he has me move the car, and I wake up Koen to go on what is shaping up to be a pretty, pretty, pretty majestic afternoon. Naturally, Koen would be attached to either my hip or up on my shoulders for 99-point-100% of the time we were there. So I had that going for me, which was nice.

Now, spoiler alert. I had the most fun there. Memaw had the second most fun after she realized that we weren’t going to get kidnapped — which neither of us were completely sure wasn’t going to happen until we were almost done with the tour. You boys tied for third, but Koen, you won’t remember this when you’re older anyway so who cares? Reagan, you told us it took too long.

Here’s my thing — I just didn’t want to sit around the house or go to a playground because I wanted to do something that was different. I knew we were going to splash pad it up the last day there, so I thought there might be more to the ostrich farm than maybe there actually ended up being, but we all learned some things about ostriches. For example:

• They’re two lbs. when they’re born, and get up to 350 lbs. within a year.
• In the wild, they can live up to 70 years.
• They can see over two miles in African plains, and can kill a Lion by kicking it (need to see it to believe it though).
• The males have darker feathers and the females have lighter, grey feathers.
• Males with more pink or orange in their beaks and upper legs have more testosterone and are chosen as the breeders.
• You can eat ostrich in just about as many ways as you can eat cow.
• Ostrich is considered red meat and is the only bird as such. It’s also low calorie and high protein.
• Since they grow so quickly, they use considerably less resources to grow and to harvest than alternative meats like beef or pork.
• We’d be eating a lot more ostrich in this country if the G.D. cattle industry didn’t spend all their big money lobbying congress in the 90s to push their agenda. Where’s the ____? Beef! basically crippled the emerging ostrich industry and that is why people don’t know about it. Well, Big Pork didn’t like that but since they were buddies with the cattle co., they go to do Pork. The Other ____ White meat! Right! So now we’re all eating pork and beef, and no one heard about ostrich for decades after that.

That last one came out of a rant from our tour guide, Ryan. He was getting a touch worked up about it, and if there was a point we were going to go missing, it would have been then. Thankfully, we made it through the other side. When I asked about how someone would eat an ostrich, he said you can eat it just about all the same ways you can eat cow. He tells me that he sells ostrich steaks to higher end restaurants in the area, and makes a joke about how it goes for $45 a plate at those kinds of places, where people like he and I don’t get to go to.

That one kind of threw me. Like, I know I didn’t roll up in my limo and have my driver open the door for me, but the Ford Explorer is new enough and I didn’t know I was giving “ramen for dinner again tonight, boys” vibes to him, but we laughed about it later while we were eating our leftovers from last night because that shit cost money and money don’t grow on trees, Reagan!

Anyway, we petted some baby ostriches that were two days old, and learned that Ryan’s 5 year old son helps him on the farm, Reagan. Said he is driving around the ATV and would be operating the tractor if it weren’t too big where he couldn’t reach the pedals, Reagan. I guess he wakes up with his dad and starts helping with all the things that need to get done on the farm, Reagan. I found that to be very interesting, Reagan.

We also learned, thanks to Ryan saying it multiple times throughout the tour, that ostriches are really dumb animals. At one point, an ostrich mostly-escaped out of his pen. He was flailing around like he just took a slide tackle in the world cup and was trying to sell an injury to the ref. I mean, imagine a 300 pound bird aggressively squirming and wriggling about — like, it was a scene. So naturally, we stop whatever we were doing to watch this play out. And I’m wondering, like, is this something that happens a lot? Should we be concerned? Do ostriches escape sometimes and run away and now you’re lining up your putt on 16, and all of a sudden a wild ostrich just emerges from the woods running 45 mph across the fairway. How am I supposed to chip with that going on, Doug?!?

So to our surprise, Ryan doesn’t spring into action, just makes a comment to one of the other guys (who did not put down their Coors Light for the tour) and comments on how dumb these birds are. Buddy (not his real name), who we found out was Ryan’s cousin visiting from Albuquerque, just kind of shrugged and Sling-Bladed a “mmmhmm. Dumb bird.” I’m not sure how, but from having been nearly all the way out of the pen, the ostrich go back into the pen and just went about his day like nothing happened. And, so, we did the same.

I came to find out that Ryan moved there from L.A., was a veteran, and went to colleges and spoke about ostriches — the guy must have known more about ostriches and how to farm them than just about anyone else in the world. He was super-nice, considering we didn’t book a tour online and just showed up on a Saturday at his house while he was with family. Buddy was wearing a tie-die Iration concert T-shirt, which I’d never seen before, and I told him we were going to see them for my birthday in a few weeks. Also super-nice. Their kids tagged along and were stomping through the mud and having some fun, which was fun to see, too.

I asked him how I could pay him for the tour, and he said not to worry about it. He said we could buy some product which would help support the farm. So his wife came out, and he introduced her to me and made the same “bet you won’t forget that name” joke to her. So I bought some ostrich jerky and some ostrich body butter. We said our goodbyes and we headed home.

Now, I got exactly what I wanted out of the day. The tour itself lasted maybe 30 minutes, and it was fine. The ostriches looked funny and followed us along while we walked from one side of the farm to the other, which was also funny. Plus, we all learned something. So we had that going for us, which was nice. But at the end of the day, we were able to laugh about it when we got home and we have a pretty good story to tell, considering this was unplanned and I thought was a great way to kill time while your mom golfed.

OK. This post is long enough. Love you boys.

Dad