Market Friday ~ The Gunpowder Bison & Trading Company

Today, I'll be going someplace a little different. I went to the Gunpowder Bison & Trading Company back in April. I've had a lot going on the last few months so it got away from me on posting about it till now. If you are concerned that looking at Bison as food may be upsetting then you may want to skip over my post but I mainly just wanted to check this place out to see the bison. There used to be three places near me that raised bison and this is the only one left out of those three. Gunpowder Bison & Trading Co. is located at 1270 Monkton Road in Monkton, Maryland.

This was the same day that a tornado touched down about a mile from where we were. I think the bison must've known that bad weather was coming as they stayed off in the distance.

I had been wanting to stop here but, actually, stopping this day wasn't planned so I only had my phone camera. I'll tell you now though that I did go back to get some nicer photos of the bison. I'll show those in another post as today we will be checking out the bison and the store that is on the property. The company was founded in 2006 and the property in Monkton, Maryland is 75 acres.

The store was like a small country store. It was very clean and items were displayed nicely.

They had some goat milk items for sale and other products from local farms including sauces, pickles, honey and more. They also had some bison pet food and treats as well.

The back wall was lined with upright freezers and they had one large chest freezer which they kept the ground bison and bison burgers. They raise the bison without hormones and antibiotics and the meat is processed under USDA inspection. They also have some prepared dishes by a chef in house.

There was also another upright refrigerated unit that had different kinds of drinks and bison charcuterie products.

I talked with the person there quite a bit about the bison that they raise and about the bison on the property. The main herd is in Pennsylvania and the small herd here included seven pregnant cows.

They have several pastures that they switch the herd out in as they eat mostly grasses.

The bison are surrounded by fencing both wooden and electrical. That is for the safety of both the bison and the people. Bison are not domestic animals and they can run up to 40 miles per hour.

As much as I would love to pet one...well...I will have to settle for petting the one on the wall. I don't say that to sound like I'm being funny because I'm not. The animal is no longer living and I did want to feel the coat and learn more about them. The person working the store spent a lot of time talking with my husband and I and we learned a lot of interesting things about bison. She was fine with letting me touch the one taxidermied in the store and I carefully and lightly felt his coat. He was a breeder that had passed away and his coat was dense and coarse to the touch.

I'll be covering more about bison in my next post which will be just about the bison. I was also looking forward to possibly seeing some babies on my next trip.

While we were outside after checking out the store, we had a second alert about that tornado. The sky was looking very ominous and the wind picked up even more than it already had so we thought it best to part ways and be on our way out.

We found out later that an EF1 did touch down about a mile away from where we were. We've been back for a return visit since then and I was able to get a few better photos. Did I see any babies? Well...you'll just have to come back to find out!😉

A photo from my second visit.

Thank you @dswigle aka Denise for #marketfriday!!