Weatherford is a long way from Tibet.
But outside the North Texas town about 30 miles west of Fort Worth best known for growing peaches, you'll find a herd of long-haired yaks that look like they could have been plucked straight from the vast, cold plateau of Tibet, on the northern edge of the Himalayas.
For more than 10 years, Robert Payne has been raising yak on a ranch near Weatherford, and for the past year, his niece Alicia, who lives in Pflugerville, has been selling more than a dozen cuts of the grass-fed meat at the Cedar Park Farms to Market farmers' market and to local restaurants like Hudson's on the Bend. (The Cedar Park Farms to Market is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays in the Lakeline Mall parking lot, between Dillard's and Sears.)
"I call him the yak whisperer," she said of her uncle last week during a visit to the ranch. "He never has to use cattle prods to get them to go where he wants them. He just points and they go."
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