November 2011 River Ranch Diary

Last month I wrote about the basic structure and vision of what we call the Cheyenne River Ranch, which had its true origins within the confines of the Broken Heart Ranch. This month I would like you to know something about the expansion of the vision and practices of these ranches into the creation of the Sustainable Harvest Alliance: for harvesting buffalo in native pastures.

Coming to buffalo was not an easy move. It required a long and arduous learning curve. When Dan located the small, abused ranch that he called the Broken Heart Ranch, the move was into a working and workable cattle ranch, and into more business arrangements with neighbors than I can enumerate, but the ranch worked and mostly paid for itself. Writing and being a recipient of grants from SD Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, being a visiting writer or artist at various universities and colleges helped make the ends meat. There was also seven years of working for the SD Department of Game, Fish, and Parks and another seven releasing peregrine falcons for the Peregrine Fund. But somehow there was time for the creation of fiction, non-fiction, and documentary fiction about some of which you may be aware. If you have read BUFFALO FOR THE BROKEN HEART, you have read the beginning of the buffalo story.

The main part of the story, however, began once the notion of marketing buffalo meat began. Once the buffalo herd had been put together and had attained a sustainable size it became clear that marketing buffalo meat was a feasible project. Within a couple years the harvest grew to about six animals a week during the Fall and Winter months. By successfully marketing the meat and by developing a website, it became necessary to expand the privately owned land and to increase the size of the herd and/or find other herds, meeting rigid specifications, raised in the same way, which would provide additional supply to meet the growing demand. Thus the move to what we now call the Cheyenne River Ranch.

At this time we were, as now, harvesting in the field, but without the Sustainable Harvest Alliance mobile facility, which would give us much more flexibility. Government regulations for commercial meat production are quite specific. From the Broken Heart Ranch or the early days on the Cheyenne River, we could load two carcasses into a pickup truck, tarp them and haul them to a certified processing plant, for further processing, within the required time window. A pre-arranged timetable for delivery was always established. The harvest crew would often meet at a local restaurant for a late breakfast after. This system held us in good stead for several years, but we were to outgrow it.

In October of 2001

Dan called me. By this time, I was several years retired from academic life; but a little board so I agreed to come to the ranch and serve as caretaker and herd manager. In early January of 2002 I was living in the ranch house where I stayed for my first two years at the ranch. When the Broken Heart sold, we built a couple of apartments on the ranch for Erney and for me. Later Dan, Jill, and Jilian moved to the Cheyenne River Ranch. Shortly after that Dan and Jill took a trip to the northwest coast to visit a manufacturer of a mobile meat harvesting plant, another step toward Dan’s long-held idea and dream. In November of 2007 the semi-trailer truck was on site; Dan had his CDL and the non-profitorganization, Sustainable Harvest Alliance was underway and in operation. We were suddenly on another steep learning curve, modifying the truck’s refrigeration system, its onboard supply of water, and in other ways outfitting it to meet South Dakota state requirements and fierce winters.

Now we were free to harvest buffalo beyond the limits of the original ranch boundaries, and our relationships with Native Indian Reservations began to be mutually beneficial as we could provide a commercial and profitable outlet for tribal members who were too far away from a processing plant to be able to sell their buffalo meat. We brought processing to the reservations and the mobile unit with refrigeration solved the time and distance restrictions we had previously faced.

The next step for Wild Idea Buffalo Company and for harvesting buffalo in native pastures was to become a completely independent operation. Thus it was necessary to build a cut and pack plant, putting the entire process under a single umbrella. In the spring of 2011 that part of the dream became a reality. And then the real work began. In this near disastrous economy a small company has somehow achieved independence and has expanded its workforce from three full-time, part-time employees to 11 full-time employees. The company has the client/customer to thank, for without your support the dream would still be a chimera if not a nemesis. There is more to come – no doubt.