BY NANCY HILLER
Meet Buffy, Ginger, Nilla, Sassy, Blanca, and Bella.
Judging by their names, the girls in this list might be characters in a reality television show. But these particular flaxen-tressed lovelies have cloven hooves, and they like nothing better than to submerse themselves shoulder-high in a muddy pond.
They are water buffalo—six of the nineteen at Loesch Farm, the latest venture of longtime business partners Jeff Mease and Lennie Busch. Acquiring a herd of water buffalo with a plan to manufacture mozzarella cheese is not your everyday business move in the uplands of south-central Indiana. But Mease and Busch see the animals as an adventurous outgrowth of their more conventional undertakings—Lennie’s Restaurant, Pizza X, Bloomington Brewing Company, and One World Catering & Events, all of them organized under the umbrella of One World Enterprises.
