Cows in Florida

[FireDancer]

You are probably eating in the tourist area. We have immigrants here from many places. There are some wonderful German, Polish, Vietnamese, French, Italian, Cuban, Peruvian and others. You just have to know where they are located. Rarely do you see a tourist in these places, if ever.

I think that is true of most places. Whether you are talking about Orlando or Rome the food in the tourist areas is often garbage but if you go off the beaten path you will find good stuff.

As for your offer on suggestions, can you recommend any good African restaurants near WDW? I love Boma but we have an Ethiopian restaurant here in Cleveland that is great and much more authentic. I'd love to have a more authentic eastern African restaurant in the area since I will probably have a car for the first time in a while when I am down there next January.

 

[golfgal]

Just to set a few things straight:

There have been cows (along with horses, dogs, pigs and citrus plants) in Florida since 1521, 19 years before Coronado brought them to the American southwest...

Florida is one of the biggest cattle producing states in the US...

The legends of the "Wild West" are mostly fiction, written by Frederic Remington in the 1800s for Harper's Bazaar Magazine...

There were more killings in one year in the Arcadia, FL. cattle war alone, than in the 10 years of the 'great cattle drives' of the West...

It is more economical to ship the calves to feed lots out west than bringing the food here...

Deseret Ranch (a subsidiary of the Mormon Church) near Kissimmee, Fl. has the most cattle east of the Mississippi...

Most Florida cattle are free range cattle, raised for breeding and beef, not dairy....

Florida has just started to import more milk than exporting it, due mostly to the almost 20 times growth of population since 1965; and the loss of land to development...

What is now Disney World (and all surrounding area) was prime cattle ranch land until the 1960s, with Orlando being a little know small town....

There are more cowboys in Florida than there are in Texas...

The first 'American Cowboys' were native Indians, hired to herd cattle by the monks of St. Augustine, Fl.....

and so on...

Not true, it doesn't even make the top 10 and those top 10 produce 99% of the cattle in the US.

Disney World was a swamp before Walt bought it, no where near prime cattle land.

 

[Golf4food]

Not true, it doesn't even make the top 10 and those top 10 produce 99% of the cattle in the US.

Disney World was a swamp before Walt bought it, no where near prime cattle land.

Per the Florida department of agriculture:

Livestock
As of January 1, 2009, all cattle and calves, including dairy cattle, on Florida farms and ranches totaled 1.7 million head, down 10,000 from the previous year. Nationally, Florida ranked 10th in beef cows and 18th in total cattle. The average annual beef price of cattle marketed in Florida in 2008 was $70.70 per hundredweight, down from $76.40 per hundredweight in 2007. In 2008 Florida dairies produced 2.06 billion pounds of milk. That same year, the total value of Florida poultry production was $404 million, and the average market price for hogs was $39.40 per hundredweight.

Obviously Florida is not the cattle state that it used to be as more and more land is bought up for commercial and residential development.

However, the area around WDW is full of prime Florida cattle land. It isn't all swamp.

The point here isn't a who has the most cattle contest. It is to show that Florida is more than beaches and theme parks and that if you leave the bigger cities that Florida is mainly an agriculture state full of plants and cows.

 

[Planogirl]

I've never seen cowboys in Florida so it's interesting that there are so many. Drive west of here and pretty much all you see in the plains outside of the the towns is cowboys.

By the way, much of those stories did actually happen in the southwest but they were certainly played up to make them more exciting. There are good museums that tell the true story.