JEFFERSON – It began as a joke, a diversion by Forrest Peaslee’s cousin simply to cheer him up. It was late in 1999, and Peaslee had slumped into a depression fueled by the loss of both of his parents in a single year.

“My cousin Gabe [Gaboury] called and told me there was a buffalo auction in Iowa City,” Peaslee recalled Thursday. “I laughed at him and told him he was crazy.”

The pair ended up going anyway, just for the fun of it.

Four years later, Peaslee stands on a hilltop straddling the borders of Jefferson and Somerville, surveying more than 400 acres teeming with a herd of 340 buffalo. Sixty births are expected this summer.

The massive beasts, which have come to be such a symbol of America, join 200 red deer, 35 fallow deer and 15 elk, all part of a breeding, farming and hunting facility that Peaslee developed in the deep woods.

Today Peaslee spends $1,200 a week for hay and grain. He has a half-million dollars invested in breeding stock; just the wire for the fences cost him $80,000.

“I put my all into this. I don’t do anything in a shoddy way,” Peaslee said.

But he’s quick to admit that his farm isn’t about profit. “Money doesn’t buy you the feeling you get when you see these animals,” he said.

Peaslee began buying up the land for his farm years ago, eventually piecing together 18 different parcels.

Carving more than 25 miles of roads from the stony hillsides, Peaslee built more than 100 acres of wooded pastures separated by a dozen paddocks, each with its own pond. There are birthing barns, feed and grain storage barns and equipment sheds. There is a Wild West town created for tours as well as a spooky church for an annual haunted hayride.

Looking down on it all, with impressive scenic views, is the Peaslee homestead. It isn’t separate from the farm, however, and just feet away, the buffalo graze and the deer tend to newly born fawns.

“When we started, there were only one or two buffalo farms in the state,” Peaslee said. Today no one in New England has buffalo in the numbers that Peaslee does, nor do they concentrate on breeding for purity, he said.

And why buffalo?

“The meat,” he said. Low in cholesterol, carbohydrates and fat, the meat is quickly catching on with those concerned about health and nutrition, Peaslee said. “It’s the best meat you’ll ever eat,” he bragged.

Gaboury, who started it all, is the deliveryman, supplying 60 stores from Kittery to Presque Isle, including the Graves’ Supermarket chain, with Maine buffalo meat.

The popularity of the meat is growing at such a rate that Peaslee will send three times as many animals for processing this year as he did last year. “We sent 50 last year. This year we’ll slaughter about 150,” he said.

Still, the buffalo business hasn’t been profitable, the farmer said. He augments the costs of the farm with logging and rock businesses and a store and carwash he owns in Jefferson.

“It may not be profitable at this point,” he said. “But I know it will, particularly because of our dedication to quality. I am proud of the reputation I am building.”

In the beginning, he admitted, wrangling buffalo that can be as large as cars was quite a challenge. “People think they are cows,” Peaslee said. “They are not cows. They are wild animals, and they are dangerous.”

On that first trip out West, Peaslee and his cousin toured several buffalo farms and learned how best to set up the Jefferson property. They returned with elk purchased in Ohio but waited until the next January to buy their first buffalo. “We brought back 36, 15 calves and two large pregnant cows,” he said. “And we brought back Nebraska.”

Nebraska, a 3,200-pound bull buffalo with eyes as big as saucers and a 300-pound head adorned with foot-long horns, didn’t like the trip. While Peaslee and Gaboury tried to sleep in a motel one night, Nebraska demolished a door and walls in the transport trailer.

“He was making so much noise, I didn’t want people to know that was my truck,” the farmer said. “I was ready to change my mind about raising buffalo. They are crazy, I told Gabe, too dangerous.”

On a sunny afternoon this week, Peaslee was able to feed Nebraska by hand. The animal dwarfed both the man and the ATV he was riding, standing more than 6 feet tall and at least 12 feet long. “He’s amazing, isn’t he?” Peaslee said with pride.

As the buffalo herd milled around him, Peaslee said they are quite happy and healthy living in a wooded area rather than the plains of the West. The buffalo cows moan and groan, warning their calves not to get too close. Quick and lithe, buffaloes can turn on a dime, he said, and often the ground will rumble when they decide to stampede. “They do it quite often,” he said.

Peaslee and his brother, Dannie Peaslee, who run the operation with several other family members, have learned a lot in the last four years. “These animals are wild and you can’t ever forget that,” Dannie said.

Changes were made to the farm to accommodate the huge beasts, including the building of special loading chutes that allow a single person to walk a buffalo into a special cage for medical treatment.

Peaslee said he is putting a lot of money and research into breeding and has gained a reputation in Maine and New England for raising top-of-the-line purebred animals. The cost of a single buffalo of breeding age begins at $1,500.

Nationally, the buffalo population once was down to fewer than 100 animals. “There are more than a half-million now,” Peaslee said, adding that he is proud to be part of a quality breeding program that is helping to restore the stock.

“We’re expanding so rapidly there doesn’t seem to be enough time to get everything done,” he said. This year the ranch will host the second annual haunted hayride and often provides tours of the facility for schoolchildren. Peaslee is purchasing a bus to safari handicapped children and adults through the buffalo pastures, and he plans to develop the tourism side of his business.

“I love these animals,” Peaslee said, gently stroking a red deer that recently gave birth. “You had a struggle, didn’t you, girl,” he whispered to the deer.

“I want to make this operation break even and create good-quality breeding stock,” Peasley said, gazing down across his ranch. “But this place is not about money. Not at all.”