Buffalo Dale

There isn’t an animal that Dale Epps won’t consider buying.

In fact, the owner of Baldwin Body Shop and former Baldwin County Commissioner wanted to buy a giraffe at an auction in South Carolina, but instead settled on a buffalo.

“You’d have to have a special permit to have a giraffe. Anyway, we decided we’d buy that thing,” Dale said referring to his pet buffalo, Bill.

That would not be the last time Dale would purchase a buffalo. A few years later he and his wife, Kay, bought a mate for Bill, named Jill.

The two have owned Adams Acres, a 150-acre farm located on Vinson Highway right past the Veterans Memorial Cemetery, for the past several years. Kay said Dale would tease her and call the farm the Ponderosa, the name of the ranch on the long-running Western television series “Bonanza.”

“When Dale first started coming down here he called this the Ponderosa,” Kay said.  “He got making fun about the Ponderosa and I told him ‘no this was Adams Acres’ and then that’s just what it stuck with after that. I wanted something to remember my mama and daddy by.”

Animals have always been a part of Dales’ life. Born on May 28, 1939, in Sandersville, Ga., he was raised on a farm that housed chickens, mules, horses, cows and even hogs.

“We planted corn. Back then you ate what you made,” Dale said. “I was born right after the Depression (and) money was tight.”

He met Kay, who is nine years his junior, in 1962 when the two were set up on a date so that her sister could go on a double date with one of Dale’s friends. Kay remembers the exact moment that he stepped foot on the front steps to pick her up.

“He came to pick me up the first night and walked off the end of the porch. He forgot where the steps were, and instead of walking off the porch, he walked off the other end of it,” Kay says with a snicker.

After dating for five years, the two married on Dec. 2, 1967, at Hardwick Baptist Church.

Kay had an upbringing similar to Dale’s. She grew up on a dairy farm. Her mother and father had several hundred dairy cows and sold their milk to PET Milk Company. But cows were not the only animals on the farm. Neighbors frequently brought over several kinds of animals for the family to raise.

“I was just raised in the country, and any time anybody down here was plowing a field and plowed up (found) some kind of animal, they always brought it down here to us so we could raise it for them,” Kay said. “We just liked stuff like that.”

When the two got married, they moved to town in Milledgeville. Kay missed the old farm, so she asked that they go back to her country roots.

“I told him ‘you either got to do one of two things. You either got to get me back to the country or give me a divorce,’” Kay said.

Dale listened. Three months later they bought a trailer and moved onto Kay’s parent’s land in the country.

Her parents agreed to sell them 14.9 acres, and after her father passed away in 1987, they bought the remaining acres, which was split up among Kay and her two sisters.

The farm housed an array of animals: llamas, ducks, rabbits, peacocks, mini horses, billy goats, donkeys, buffaloes and, as Dale puts it, “every kind of chicken that was made.”

Other than their beloved animals, the two have had two children: their son Dale Jr. and a baby girl who died 24 hours after birth.

Dale Jr. said he had an interesting upbringing.

“Kids had dogs; I had a mean-ass billy goat,” Dale Jr., said.

His father bought this notoriously mean horned animal after spending a day at the Moose Club with his son.

“I went out there in the yard, and there was a billy goat out there,” Dale said with a smile. “Dale Jr. picked up a stick and he’s hitting that billy goat and the billy goat ran into him and knocked him down. Done that four or five times, and I went over and told that man ‘how much you want for that billy goat?’ I don’t know; that’s why I bought that billy goat. I took him home for him (Dale Jr.) to play with.”

Adams Acres has seen many animals come and go to old age. It now is home to five mini ponies, three donkeys – Maybelle, Cisco and their baby Eeyore – and four buffaloes.

Visitors pass by frequently to admire the animals. As long as they stay at the fence to pet and feed them (the buffaloes), Dale and Kay are happy to have them.

“They’re tame to us but they will always be wild animals,” Kay said. “I tell people, ‘you can stand at the fence and pet them and feed them and whatever you want to do to them, but don’t get in the pen with them.’”

Dale Jr., visits his parents quite frequently and plans to eventually move onto the land with his wife Daphne. They will be bringing along animals of their own, their two children, Jessie and Will.

Posted by Lauren Davidson on Nov 10 2011. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.