Spring is showing itself all around the ranch. Birds are pairing up to nest, flowers are pushing their way to the warming sun and our seasonal ranch tours have begun. Our first Wild Idea Buffalo customers arrived early last week, from Hawaii. They are all “Purium” sales associates and believe in healthy foods to complement the line of wellness supplements they represent. Although the weather was not very cooperative for our warm weathered friends, once we bundled up, we had a great time. We so appreciated their sensitivity to the land and the animals. They spoke to all, thanking them for being and for allowing us to be amongst them as we passed through. It is typical for all the other ranch animals to want to get in on company tours too. They posture and pose in hopes of receiving an extra pet, a handful of oats, or a little extra sprouted chicken feed. Most often – they get their way. Guests were expected later in the week, but in between I took some time to replenish myself and sit in the herd. I moved at a snails pace in the 4-wheeler and stayed positioned for long stretches of time, observing and listening to the language of their occasional soft grunts. Suddenly out of the corner of my camera lens, I noticed a tail, and my ears filled with hundreds of loud buffalo grunts. Buffalo tails raised to the sky as a coyote passed through, uneventfully. He was moving to fast to get a good photo, but I thought he looked very strange with a red fox like face. Later I was explaining this to Dan and when I showed him the photos, he figured it out. The coyotes face was covered in blood, evidence of its last buffalo meal, from a cow that had not survived giving birth. We have a natural approach in raising our bison and respect their wildness. All seem to understand that this is another layer in the circle of life. Calmness returned a minute after the coyote had passed. The calves nestled into their mothers, with some taking advantage of a little snack before their afternoon nap. Our next group of guests arrived and had tours of both the Cheyenne River ranch and the Conata Basin ranch. It is a great pleasure to be in the company of others that care so passionately. They energize our greater environmental mission. In addition to enjoying the ranches beauty, they were treated to a special mini powwow, put on by one of our artisan butchers at the Wild Idea Buffalo plant, Cyril White Eagle and friends. Our prairie spell was intensified by the hypnotic beat of the native drum. The children sang in their Lakota language and all danced with pride. The week moved quickly, and was filled with the steady sound of laughter. Meals were shared and savored, ideas were pondered, and new relationships were formed under the vastness of the setting prairie sky.
Buffalo are Back
Fifteen years ago I spent most of my time with rattling, smelly farm machinery, either being severely jarred as I drove up and down the fields or lying under it trying to fix something. Our South Dakota ranch supported a couple hundred beef cattle and all summer long we rolled hay into huge, round bales in the blistering heat, and all through the freezing winter we rolled the bales back out on the ground so the cows wouldn’t starve. The smell of diesel fuel permeated my clothes and the skin beneath my fingernails was tattooed with axle grease. One cold, snowy day, just after Christmas in 1996, as I lay under a tractor that wouldn’t start, it occurred to me that what this ranch really needed was an animal that could thrive without my help. I rolled out from under the tractor and rocked up onto my knees. Squinting against the brilliant snow, I tried to imagine our ranch before Europeans came to the Great Plains. I saw buffalo moving silently across the horizon, turning grass to healthy, red meat with no clattering of engines or fog of diesel fumes. The Great Plains is the heart of our country. But like a human heart that has been stressed by abuse, it has been weakened and is in need of restoration. When Europeans first arrived here they found lean and healthy native people. They found seemingly endless pastures of indigenous grasses, huge skies darkened by migrating birds and about 60 million buffalo. American buffalo, also known as bison, were slaughtered in massive numbers in the late 1800s. By 1900 they were near extinction with only about 400 animals remaining. With conservation, their population has slowly rebounded and now there are about 350,000 on public and private lands. Today the Plains are broken up by fences that hold cattle destined for feedlots. Most of the native prairie has been plowed under, leaving the land bare to the ravages of wind and water erosion. Native grasses have been replaced with government-subsidized commodity crops, such as corn, cotton and wheat. These crops grow with the aid of petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that run off into the water. With less available habitat, native animals and birds are being squeezed out. To complete the circle, most of the subsidized corn is fed to the cattle that replaced the buffalo.