This years rainfall finally came in early May, alleviating our drought worries that had started to settle in. The rain continued to come and come. This is a good problem to have when you are a grass farmer/buffalo rancher, as the grasses will be in good supply for all the native species that rely on them for grazing for months to come. The abundant rainfall does not come without its effects; like flooded roads, washed-out dams, and fences blown out or covered in debris from the river swells. When the excess surface water dries up the repairs begin. For us, the main repair is fencing, a lot of fencing, which means extra, needed help. Our good friend Gervase Hittle came to the rescue. The guys work in the hot, humid days when time allows. A catered lunch is often required to keep up their strength, and they welcome recipe testing’s. The Beer Bottle Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Buffalo Burgers were a big hit! And, the cold beer at the days end was welcomed too. The thunderstorms continue to move in and out, creating beautiful skies and landscape. The wild flowers sprinkle the pastures with colorful dots of purple, yellow, and white, reflecting the colors of the sky. And, the prairie dogs stay busy mowing their green prairie lawn to keep a close eye out for predators, which the buffalo assist with as they pass through. A pretty glorious site!
Happy Mother's Day!
What Mother’s Day looked like on Mother, Earth Day, at Wild Idea Buffalo Companies, Cheyenne River Ranch.
DREAMING LIKE A BUFFALO
I watched my paint horse, Camo, stretch his nose out and sniff the nose of a young bull buffalo. They sniffed deeply and then, in unison, turned to look across the Cheyenne River and into infinity. It was hard to tell what was in their minds but I want to think that their daydreams are like mine: an enormous blue sky and rolling grasslands to a distant horizon. There is a steady breeze bringing the scent of possibilities. There are no restraints, no boundaries, and no limits. History merges with the present and the past. I don’t think that my daydreams are unique. I think that, many Americans dream like horses and buffalo. It is as if we can stand in their skins, stare with their beguiling dark eyes, and let the rare prairie rains drip benignly from our sturdy coats. We imagine ourselves as country boys or strong, young women with long smooth muscles – solid bodies, and steady hands. We feel a kind of innocence, tempered with confidence and power. There is the thousand-yard stare of wisdom, patients, and endurance. When we dream like horses and buffalo we can imagine ourselves as the center of the world. Yet the horse stands a little taller than the buffalo and there is something sad about the buffalo. They have long been misunderstood, exploited, commoditized, mystified, and abused. Even their identity has been hijacked by a succession of cultures. They are the animal with two names, buffalo and bison. The first name stems from the confusion of the Europeans who landed their puny boats on the eastern shore of America. Those crude men thought they were on a different continent and that the large, shaggy animals they found were a variant of the water buffalo they knew from Asia or the Cape buffalo they had heard of in Africa. It was centuries later that stuffy European taxonomists decided that the American bovine was a unique specie and named it Bison bison. A better name might be Tatonka, the name given by the nomadic natives of the Great Plains that, at least for a time, knew the buffalo best. It is a word that embodies not only the animal but also the habitat and the spirit of the animal. There is nothing erroneous or taxonomical about the name Tatonka. The buffalo that we know have been the center of a huge, continent-wide drama for perhaps 5,000 years but, before them, there were several other varieties. The first buffalo were native to what is now Asia and Europe and crossed into North America on the famous Baring land bridge. It is hard for us to imagine how different the world was back then – the continents all ajar, molten rock surging up from below, and sea levels rising and falling as a result of ice caps varying in thickness from mere ice sheets to gigantic water repositories many miles thick. But there was a window of about 50,000 years that all sorts of creatures made the trek across the land bridge. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of species moved. They traveled both ways – the ancestors of animals like camels and cheetahs heading for Asia and mammoths, ground sloths, and like on their way to America. Later, a few wretched humans trailed along behind the mammoths. I like to think of the tiny, eight inch tall great-grandmother of the modern horse moving carefully beside the giant ancestor of our buffalo, Bison antiquus. Did they size each other up in a long grassy valley between two mountain ranges somewhere in what is now Alaska? The ancient …
The Third Plate
If you haven’t yet read Dan Barber’s new book The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food, you should. This is not a book review but it needs to be said that Barber is a wonderful writer who can tell an important and complicated story as easily as chatting over dinner with old friends. The setup of the book is that three different “plates” can symbolize the evolution of food in America. The first is what many of us were raised on: meat and potatoes. The second plate is where we are now: more progressive ideas such as grass-fed, heirloom, and farm to table. The third “plate” is about serving up a delicious meal that “begins to reflect what the landscape can provide”. That is where Barber captured my attention – the place where “The Third Plate” merged with the philosophy of Wild Idea Buffalo Company. Though Barber admits to knowing nothing about the Great Plains, he includes the deterioration of grasslands on a list of ills brought about by a sick agricultural system – along with eroding soil, falling water tables, collapsing fisheries, and shrinking forests. He rightly connects the environmental crisis with the menus in white tablecloth restaurants and a food system that is more about the system than about the food it produces. The book is full of enlightening stories of the maiming effects to ecosystems from monocultures of corn and wheat and the assault on the ancient and sacred labyrinth of bio-diversity. Fighting these effects and the system that creates them are all imperatives that have shaped the evolution of Wild Idea Buffalo Company. Barber relates his efforts to fight these same effects at his Blue Hill Restaurant at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. At first glance Wild idea Buffalo Company – connected to many thousands of acres of remote buffalo country – has little in common with a supper-inventive, gourmet restaurant on an 80 acre farm dedicated to small scale, sustainable farming. But when you look closer, you find the missions of both to be very much the same. One of the memorable stories in the book is about the love and care taken by the livestock manager at Stone Barns farm when he moves the sheep from one pasture to the next. It mimicked the grazing pattern of our buffalo, except the buffalo make their own decisions about when to move. The fertility of New York sheep pastures must be thousands of times greater than our humble Great Plains, so it follows that instead of dealing with pastures of tens of thousands of acres the livestock manager at Stone Barns farm likely deals in football field sized pastures. The most notable similarity between Stone Barns farm’s moving of sheep and our moving of buffalo is the way the animals react to the fresh pasture – they love it, they need it, it is in their genes. The most notable dissimilarity is the fact that the fresh pasture at Stone Barn Farm is “managed by man”. The vegetative composition of the pastures at Stone Barns is likely a selection of annually planted tame grasses. Wild Idea pastures are mostly made up of the perennial, deep-rooted grasses evolved to thrive in drought conditions. In fact, what was left out of entire book, “The Third Plate”, was the realization that, in a few parts of the North American continent, there are places that remain, to a large extent, the way they were when Europeans first began to alter the environment. One of the stories in the book, that was news to me, was …
Kirkus Review
KIRKUS REVIEW WILD IDEA Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land by Dan O’Brien South Dakota novelist and memoirist O’Brien (The Indian Agent, 2004, etc.) delivers a bracing portrait of the pleasures—and considerable pains—of ranch life on the lone prairie. “The best definition of success on the Great Plains is the ability to move from one disappointment to the next without losing your enthusiasm,” writes the author, who, long ago, had the odd idea that he might just try his hand at raising buffalo—“a unique species that thrived only in the center of the North American continent”—in somewhat the same way as one might raise cattle or sheep. Underscore somewhat: O’Brien and his partner realized early on that becoming just any old livestock producers would yield just any old livestock, and “neither Jill nor I wanted anything to do with forcing buffalo through the cattle production model.” Instead, working with like-minded friends, O’Brien resolved to produce organic, free-range bison before those words were current. Passages of his memoir are not for the squeamish, especially those involving the evisceration, joint loosening and beheading of captive animals. Overall, however, this is a deeply humane book that looks at ranching as a sustainable enterprise, a way of life more than an economic engine. The author’s critique of the cycle of debt, techno-lust and more debt that the economic engine calls for will be both familiar and welcome to fans of Wendell Berry and Gretel Ehrlich. The best parts of the book, though, are O’Brien’s portraits of the people of the Plains, such as a friend and partner who, self-taught and immensely hungry for both knowledge and experience, still melts down at the prospect of driving in a big city in which he has no business. There may be plenty of disappointments out on the Plains, but this book is not one of them. Dan will be at the South Dakota Book Festival in Sioux Falls this friday and saturday, September 26th & 27th. For a complete event schedule go to http://www.sdbookfestival.com
Sunset In The Buffalo Herd
Capturing images of the bison herd, ranch, and other wildlife or prairie scenes, is a highlight of my job with Wild Idea Buffalo Company. So often when I’m out in the field, I wish that you were there with me, so you could see and hear for yourself. Although we have attempted video, it came with its challenges, like holding the camera steady! My latest purchase was for a tool that should assist in sharing live images with you. I am super excited to share this first Go-Pro clip of the buffalo herd at sunset, complete with the seasonal mating sounds of the rut. I hope it transports you to the ranch momentarily, and that it gives you a little peace and joy in your hectic day. I welcome any feedback or requests. Very best from the Cheyenne River Ranch. Jill
A Case for the Limping Metaphor
The trip back from a grazing seminar took me right through the center of the Black Hills. Jill was in the seat beside me, but we didn’t talk much. We were all talked out from spending most of the week in a classroom setting considering a holistic way of looking at buffalo grazing on the Great Plains. There were a dozen other people in attendance and so there was a lot of talking. It was a late winter afternoon and the roads were deserted. We were content with watching the Black Hills grow larger in the windshield. When Jill fell asleep, I turned on the radio but could only find a few country stations. I fiddled with the dial until I found one that played the old, classic stuff. Johnny Cash was walking the line, Bob Wills was singing about the yellow rose of Texas, and I was flipping back through the ideas in the grazing seminar. A lot of the topics concerned how grass grows and how buffalo eat it. That process is more complicated than you might think – it has a lot to do with the symbiosis that results from co-evolution. There had been a few “Christians” in the class and I wondered how they squared their professed faith with the evolutionary bedrock of life on the Great Plains. Soon after Jill and I entered the Hills, we passed through an 83,500 acre area of forest that burned in 2000. It was called the Jasper Fire and it burned hot and fast through country that I had surveyed 30 years before for peregrine falcons. That evening we drove through miles and miles of barren slopes. The hills looked like the Land of Oz where the wicked witch lived, but I noticed scores of white-tailed deer grazing on the grassy slopes between the charred remains of ponderosa pines. We did not find peregrines back in the 1980’s but we spent weeks walking the bottom of Hell Canyon and, in all that time, I didn’t remember seeing a single white-tailed deer. The Jasper and Hell Canyon area isn’t a grassland, but some of the same concepts that we talked about in our grazing seminar applied. Plants and animals have a natural succession in the way they regrow after devastating events that are common in natural settings. In the eyes of humans, fires, floods, and droughts are catastrophic, but nature simply begins again. Life forms with the lowest requirements stand ready to lead the charge. Years before, the Jasper fire area had begun its comeback with small annual plants. Those plants began to stabilize the soil with their roots and more complicated plants had gotten toe-holds in an empty environmental niche. The perennial grasses that the white-tailed deer were munching on came next. Now they were giving way to small brushy plants that would eventually allow the ponderosa pine to re-start. It was the same with The Green, Green Grass of Home that Porter Wagoner was singing about on the radio. Most prairie plants respond to stress by growing vigorously. One of the main concepts of the grazing seminar was that Great Plains grasses need the grazing stress from large herbivores. Those grasses were originally dependent on the pressure of the buffalo as the buffalo were dependent on them. The wolves and grizzly bears were dependent on the buffalo, and the coyotes were dependent on the larger predators. Everything broke down the sun’s energy that was stored in the plants and animals – the prairie dogs, the snakes, the toads, frogs, and all the ground nesting birds. Even microbes preform …
Preparation For Winter Grazing
In preparation for the annual move of Wild Idea buffalo into their winter grazing area in the Indian Creek/Big Corral Draw area of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, the perimeter fence enclosing the 22,000 acres must be inspected and repaired. That job has often fallen to me. One person can handle some of the fence fairly easily, but most of the work requires two people. Some of the country to be traversed, however beautiful, is tough to get around in, and after the devastating snowstorm/blizzard that we just endured the familiar trails often change course and become impassable by the old routes. So getting to some of the isolated areas that contain a fence that stretches between natural barriers can be quite an adventure. A team of workers, therefore, is safer than for one person alone. I have worked this fence line with several different people. It usually takes about a week to complete the roughly twenty-six miles of fence. This year, like last year, Colton Jones (by now a familiar to Wild Idea Buffalo Company), and I started out on a Saturday morning toward one of these remote areas, Taylor Mountain and the East branch of Big Corral Draw. There is a narrow trail up the mountain that we hike. It is about 3/4 of a mile to the beginning of our inspection tour. The fence itself is maybe about 1/2 mile long, but it spans some deep, steep gullies where some of the posts had been knocked down by the weight of the snow and wind. We had carried our tools with us: fencing pliers, hammers, post pounder, wire stretcher, and wire splicer. We worked our way down the mountain and re-strung, the water crossings at the base of the mountain. Colton and I work easily together, and catch up on the details of each other’s lives in between pounding fence posts and stringing wire. It was late afternoon; so we headed for home. The next day was longer but without the adventure of blazing new trails. In between weekends Dan and I spend a couple of days pheasant hunting while Colton attends classes at BHSU in Spearfish. On these occasions I have the privilege of staying in my former apartment at the ranch, with my two dogs. I feel right at home and enjoy some of my old routines of; coffee with Erney, buttoning up the shop at night, and dinner with Dan and Jill. Back to work, Colton and I head out to the headwaters of Indian Creek. Indian Creek presents its own challenges. Mud and creek crossings, steep hills and deep gullies. We load a four-wheeler on a trailer pulled by a pickup truck and drive for about 1 1/2 hours to arrive at where we start. It’s more of the same but always with a new problem to solve. High water from snowmelt and runoff does amazing damage to fences that cross the waterways. It is a little less remote in this area, but nobody ever comes out to see what we are doing or to give us a hand. We just go along, do our job until it’s finished and go home.The following day we finish that section. There are only two more sections to go, which isn’t too bad for a crew with an average age of 50 years old. Note: I’m writing this piece on the birthday of the US Marine Corps. Happy Birthday to all Marines–past and present. Once a marine, always a marine. Semper Fi.
Moving Buffalo
This past June we moved the Buffalo from one pasture to the next. Buffalo are roamers and have come to understand what an open gate means – new digs to roam and fresh grass. We believe in a gentle approach of simply opening a gate, offering a little incentive with cake (a small cube of pressed alfalfa with some minerals), and having a subtle presence on the back end. When babies are little we are very careful to guide in a very slow manner. The lead herd cow is usually the first to approach and once she has moved through the herd will start to follow. The babies stay close to their mothers and instinctively shoot to the outside. The wind was blowing on the day we moved them, which added extra excitement for the babies who frolicked, leaping through the air, bucking and kicking. A few stragglers held up the back end with the largest herd bull completing the move. They quickly joined up with the herd, and found their way to their new pasture. They other day we moved the buffalo again. What struck me, was not only their calmness with the babies now two months older, but the beautiful healthy pastures, still green and plentiful with grass, thanks to continued summer rains. The baby buffalo are now kids, in a varying stages of golden to black, with sprouting new horns. They are gaining independence, but will stay close to their mothers and remain in the family group until they are two years of age. They vocalized their happiness with their soft grunts and grazing noises. Listening to 300 buffalo eating grass is pretty amazing! We wrapped up our task under a pink sky of a setting South Dakota sun.
10 Facts about Bison
1. Bison are the largest land animal in North America. A male bison, or bull, can reach a weight of 2400 lbs. A female bison, or cow, weighs between 900-1200 lbs. Bison range in heights between 5 and 6.5 feet tall. 2. All bison have horns, not just the males, which they use to help forage for food and for defense. 3. Bison can live up to 25 years old. 4. Bison consume approximately 30 lbs. of roughage a day. 5. Bison need approximately 30 acres per animal to roam and feed on. They are not stationary while feeding, but rather continually move as they consume prairie grasses and roughage thus preventing overgrazing. 6. Female bison, or cows, typically begin calving at 3 years of age. They will have on average 1 calf per year for up to 17 years, with a gestation period of 9½ months. A calf will stay with its mother for 2 years if possible. 7. Bison spend time in family units within the herd, usually numbering between 12-24 individuals. Bulls, however, are only typically found in the herd during breeding season. 8. Bison on average can run up to 30mph. Their speed along with their incredible size can make bison a formidable force for predators. 9. Bison will grow a new coat annually. Their coat is made up of course outer guard hairs and a soft undercoat. Bison need their thick coats to help protect them from severe weather during long winters. 10. Bison are a keystone species of the Great Plains and critical to the health of the prairie ecosystem. Their presence in an area allows the land and other species to thrive.
Falls Arrival
Fall has arrived and this year it’s brought with it the beautiful autumn colors. Below are snapshots of scenes around the ranch. You would think that I could edit to a few, but they’re just too pretty. Although our garden wasn’t much this year with the draught, our apple trees pulled through. The hearty crop of apples has me preparing some of my favorite fall dishes. This apple cake is one of my favorites; it’s easy, and oh so good. I like to make up a few and stick them in the freezer to have on hand. It makes for a great breakfast, or serve with caramel sauce, and fresh whipped cream for an elegant dessert. I would have taken a photo, but we ate it before I could get the camera out! Apple Cake A delicious fall dessert. Serves 18. Note: I often split the flour using half whole wheat baking flour and half all purpose flour. Ingredients: 3 cups flour 1 Tb.. baking soda 1 Tb. cinnamon 1½ tsp. nutmeg or allspice ½ tsp. salt ¼ cup butter, softened 3 cups sugar 3 eggs 3 cups applesauce 3 cups apples, peeled and finely chopped or flash processed Instructions: Preheat oven to 400*. Butter a 13”x9” cake pan or two, 9” round cake pans. Mix all ingredients together with electric mixer, until batter is well incorporated. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 35 minutes for round pans and 45 minutes for rectangular pan. Serve with a little caramel sauce and fresh whipped cream! Happy fall. Cheers! Jill
The Caring of Buffalo
On December 28th, 15 buffalo arrived at the ranch. There was one older cow, nine just turned yearlings, and five orphaned orange calves. The youngest was only a couple of weeks old. They had come from a farm that kept them as a novelty item to their operation. The prices were high for their mothers, so they sold them off, leaving the babies and yearlings motherless. Our friend Duane Lammers had heard about them, and told Dan. And as if it were 15 years ago, Dan said “I’ll take em’.” (Dan started his herd 15 years ago with 13 baby buffalo). Much like before the large trailer pulled up to the corrals and the buffalo, trickled out one by one. They looked real tough, a few emaciated. The yearling’s coats were scruffy, and their bones stood out from beneath their prematurely shedding fur coats. It would be a big job to keep them alive, and offering them a chance at life on the prairie.
Restoring the Serengeti of the American Plains
The order arrived on time and still completely frozen! We love knowing that the little meat we do eat, does not come with moral guilt and in some small way we are helping to restore the “Serengetti of the American plain.” Thank you so much for what you are building there! Sandi and Amaya
Hearty Zucchini Bread
This year Dan & I put in a bigger garden. We built 4 raised beds and planted a variety of vegetables and herbs. We were very excited about reaping our rewards at harvest time, but unfortunately our garden – well, it was a dud. At first it looked promising, lively & healthy. We had spring lettuce and were hopeful for sugar snap peas, green & fava beans, but something black came over them and they just never took. We were still hopeful for the rest of the crop, and then the grasshoppers invaded. They ate everything, everything that is but the zucchini & tomatoes. I’m not quite sure why they left the zucchini & tomatoes – but we are very glad they did. We pride-fully pick them as the precious gifts that they are, and have yet to tire from either. When the zucchini occasionally gets ahead of us, it’s Zucchini Bread making time. My recipe for it is as follows, (although I must admit not as good as the one I lost many years ago from a Fireman’s cookbook), but still pretty darn good. Enjoy! 1½ cup wheat flour 1 ¼ cup unbleached all purpose flour ¼ cup flax or cracked wheat 1 cup walnuts/pecans, ground 1 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. cinnamon 2 tsp. salt ½ cup pure cane sugar ½ cup pure cane brown sugar 1 cup light olive oil 3 eggs Zest & juice of 1 lemon 4 cups packed grated Zucchini 1.) Mix ingredients adding one at a time in order as listed, mixing well. 2.) Pour mixture into 2 lightly oiled loaf pans. 3.) Bake at 350* for 1 hour or until firm. 4.) Let rest at room temperature until completely cooled. Zucchini bread is best after it rest for awhile. It can also be stored in the refrigerator and freezes nicely. Slice and serve with butter or cheese. It is also a great accompaniment for stews and roasts. Wine Pairing: Campo Viejo Tempranillo Reserva 2004: From the Rioja region of Spain, this is a medium bodied red, layered with a nice balance of fruit, a bit of ash and mineral, and a full soft finish. Goes nicely with hearty breads and cheese, but would also stand up well to stews and roasts.