Americans didn't gopher 'other, other white meat'

Dear Otus,

I was driving past Bella Vista Monday when I saw an old sign that said something about a gopher farm. I remember reading about this some time ago. Is that fellow still in business up there?

-- Hugh Morris,

Dover

Dear Hugh,

It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and an ancillary pleasure to be able to catch up with Kevin Ely, who made a splash about 10 years ago with a bold enterprise that would surely land him on Shark Tank if it launched today.

The sign is still there from Ely's glory days as the entrepreneurial wunderkind of booming Northwest Arkansas. "Gopher -- The other, other white meat," the sign reads as it slowly creaks in the August breeze.

Ely, a retired trucker from Detroit, moved to Bella Vista in 2003 riding the giddy wave of the future -- gopher farming. Or, if you prefer, "organic, hydroponic prairie dog cultivation and harvesting." Ely started by keeping a few dozen free-range gophers and prairie dogs for his personal use.

"Gophers, prairie dogs and squirrels are pretty much the same thing," Ely said. "The gopher is a large burrowing rodent of the family Geomyidae. So are ground squirrels. The prairie dog is in the Sciuridae family, but most folks think they're identical."

Ely says they also taste pretty much the same. "Your basic gopher is a tad gamier," Ely noted. "Prairie dogs taste like chicken. Only without the rancid aftertaste, carcinogenic skin, salmonella danger or artery-clogging low-density lipoproteins. They're simply good, healthy eatin'."

Convincing customers to sample prairie dog meat proved to be the budding industry's downfall. It seems that any food with the word dog in it faced a marketing nightmare. Ely's dizzy run at the top lasted until the Great Recession put the kibosh on it.

Ten or 12 years ago, Bella Vista was the Silicon Valley of gopher farming. For a modest investment of $50,000, an enterprising self-starter could acquire enough land, equipment and seed stock to make a name for himself in gopher ranching.

"I called my place Gopher Broke," Ely chuckled. "I thought it was just a clever name, but it turned out to be oozing with ironical irony."

At the height of the Arkansas gopher boom, there were more than 50 enterprises in and around Bella Vista. The four-mile stretch east of town out Lancashire Boulevard and Arkansas 94 was known locally as "Gopher Gulch." Ely's 10-acre spread is still there, set back off the highway and nuzzling the Missouri border.

Before it went bust, Gopher Broke boasted a half dozen 4,000-square-foot, prefabricated gopher coops, solar-powered heating units and a hydraulically operated "gopher gulper" that sucked up the critters (unharmed) for transport to the processing plant in Pineville, Mo.

"In 2007, our best season, we shipped 14,000 dogs to Pineville," Ely boasted. "They were used for Gopher Fingers, Prairie Pups On-a-Stick, gopher filets, summer sausage, PD Nugglets, pet food and fertilizer. The skins were used in ear muffs."

The downturn began when a callous internet troll posted a meme suggesting Gopher Fingers were the new Soylent Green and PD Nugglets were actually made from a more common rodent that American culture doesn't find all that appetizing.

The bottom fell out of the market and today, according to the Arkansas Gopher Farmer Association, there are only 11 family gopher farmers left in the state -- nine of them around Bella Vista.

In a bid to boost Arkansas' gopher industry, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced on July 6 the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Suzhou Tianyuan Gopher Oil Co. of China. The accord was the result of Hutchinson's latest trade mission overseas last October and could be a real boon to the state's economy.

"Gopher oil is considered an aphrodisiac in parts of China," Ely said. "I hear it goes for 10 bucks an ounce on the black market in Guangzhou."

But Ely isn't waiting around to find out if there's a gopher recovery on the horizon. He's busy converting his spread to emu ranching. "If we work this right," he said, "emuburgers will be the biggest thing since beefalos."

Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that Otus the Head Cat is not available in North Dakota.

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HomeStyle on 08/19/2017