It’s been almost two months since the 15 orphaned, buffalo arrived at the ranch.

After the loss of the tiniest calf, we lost the older cow. Jilian and Colton took on the early feeding of the buffalo, but when school started back up in mid-January it became more challenging for them to find the time. I volunteered my catering services for their am feeding.

My fur fashion boots are now full of stickers and burrs and all of my gloves are stiff and hard from milk replacement. But I don’t care. Feeding these little buffalo’s is the highlight of my day.  They are all unbelievably tame, and although I am tempted to try to feed them by hand for a chance to run my fingers in their thick wooly coats, I resist.

The babies are now as fat as bears, and the older ones are healthy and strong.  It’s the “almost yearlings” that are requiring a little extra TLC.  So Ebby (Erney’s brother’s dog, who we are caring for this winter) and I came up with a plan: We herd the stronger buffalo away to hay, then double back and slip the younger ones a little extra feed. The yearlings picked up on the drill right away and are responding well, with visible weight gain.

There is just one who remains fragile. I have named him Theodore (after Theodore Roosevelt), in hopes that some TR karma might come his way. We have an extra special routine for him and so far, so good…. We remain hopeful!

Mousse au Chocolate

This is my own concoction. I use both a high quality bittersweet chocolate as well as a high quality milk chocolate. The addition of beaten egg whites gives it an extra lightness with out compromising its rich creaminess!

Ingredients:

• 6 oz. Bittersweet Chocolate
• 6 oz. Milk Chocolate
• 1 pint Heavy Whipping Cream
• 1 Tb Cointreau
• 4 Eggs, separated

1. In heavy saucepan over low heat, add 1 cup cream and chocolate. Melt together stirring occasionally. Mixture should never become hot.
2. Meanwhile, in electric mixer, beat remaining cream until stiff, scrape into other bowl and place in refrigerator until needed.
3. Place egg yolks into mixing bowl and beat until pale.
4. While mixer is running slowly add in chocolate mixture. Mix thoroughly to incorporate and aerate.
5. Transfer chocolate mixture to a large bowl, cover and refrigerate until mixture is slightly cool, but not set.
6. Gently fold whipped cream into chocolate mixture in 3 small batches.
7. In a well chilled mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff.
8. Gently fold in beaten egg whites to chocolate mixture until well incorporated.
9. Spoon mousse mixture into steamed glassware and refrigerate until set. (3 hours or up to 3 days in advance.)

Garnish mousse with additional whipped cream, dark chocolate shavings or fresh fruit.

Jill and I just got back from a few days in the borderlands – not only the country that runs along the border of Arizona and New Mexico but also the land that divides the United States from Mexico. We were guests of The Nature Conservancy and a dynamic collection of ranches controlling about a million acres of rough grazing land, wide valleys, and a couple mountain rages. The organization is called the Malpai Borderlands Group and their land is centered on the geographic borders between those states and countries. But, in a lot of ways the Malpai Borderlands Group occupies a border that is much more difficult to describe and more important than any physical geography. The Malpai Borderlands Group floats in the geography of the mind – somewhere between the past and the present – but not in the clichéd way you might think. It is not that the Malpai Borderlands Group is moving from the historic, open range days of the past into modern times. These people have been in modern times for many years. They are moving into the uncharted territory of the future.

The big landscape country of the American West has been in turmoil since just after the Civil War. If God himself had put out a call for folks with poor qualifications for cooperation, a motlier crew would not have turned out. Armed and angry Civil War veterans from both sides, greedy industrialists, arrogant European aristocrats, land hungry peasants, disenfranchised Native Americans, the lunatic fringe of religion, misanthropes, and desperadoes of every sort poured into the unclaimed lands of the West. At first the only character trait that they shared was an abiding acquisitive nature: they all seemed to be out to get as much as they could. To make things even worse, many people coveted and seized concessions and property to which they had little or no solid claim. Of course local, state, and the federal governments had there own set of claims and they ended up in the mix as the entity that everyone could hate.

The great gorilla on the prairie is the additional 250 million new Americans that have come on the scene since the Civil War. It seems like most of them have ATV’s, four wheel drive pickups, camouflaged clothes, bird books, hiking shoes, new ideas about the relationship between humans and animals. They have a sense of ownership in public land, even if they have never set foot on them or have any intimate knowledge of how they work. For my entire life I have watched this colossal scramble and after sixty-four years, I wondered if it is possible to sort it out.

I know that we in the Northern Plains have not done as good a job of juggling these pressures, as we should have. Most of us have spent time at contentious meetings, often on different sides of issues, and have seldom worked toward conscientious. In fact, our ineptitude and intransience may have made the tensions over land use worse. I believe that perhaps the saddest part of our failure is that almost all parties agree on the basics: the land and the horse culture that grew up here deserve to be conserved and protected, the animals and plants should be encouraged to thrive, it should somehow be available to be enjoyed, and solitude should be honored.

I am reminded of the Founding Fathers of America, who are held in such revere out in this country, and I wonder if other people ever think of the tension and acrimony in those hot, stuffy meeting rooms in Philadelphia. The differences of opinion between those delegates, and the life and death decisions they faced, make the problems of the American West seem like a squabble on a grade school playground. While we have argued for a hundred and fifty years and produced very little, they debated for a few years and came up with the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution. I fear that the difference between these two deliberations is in the wisdom, reason, and patience of the participants.

Of course there are few Jeffersons, Franklins, Washingtons, Jays, Calhouns, or Monroes driving pickups around the American West. But there may be enough to fill a hot, stuffy room. Even a cursory reading of the history of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention makes it clear that real change is not all roses and the feeling of brotherly love. Maybe the magic of the Founding Fathers came from the nexus of personalities, philosophy, and the pressure of crisis. Maybe such forces could never coalesce again. But there is no denying that something strange and unusual was in the air down there on the Malpai.

It could well be the first time that any of us ever traveled like tourists – pressed into a generic, white, ford van. The SD delegation was made up of Jill, me, and two other SD ranchers who we had met but really didn’t know. They were officers of different SD livestock organizations and were far from agreement on all agricultural policies.  They were not sure about Jill and me. We were not sure of them.  And none of us was sure of Bob Paulson, our Western South Dakota TNC representative, who had been after us for a year to go down and see the progress in co-operation that was taking place in the borderlands. Bob’s trust quotient had risen in recent years because he had proved to be a good neighbor, but it was still hard to believe his stories of disparate ranching families joining forces with government agencies, and non-governmental conservation groups. We barely took Bob seriously because all of us had experienced scores of meetings including such groups. The meeting usually dissolved into hyperbole, innuendo, accusations, and old fashion mean-spirited gossip. The idea that these groups could get together to insure reasonable public grazing, protection of threatened and endangered species, continuance of legal hunting, furtherance of rangeland health, and limits of development and urban sprawl seemed a little too much. But Bob had been persistent and done a great job of organizing a trip that, finally, made us take stock of what we understood about the American West.

On the border we were guided by an unassuming botanist who worked for the Nature Conservancy and had been advising the Malpai Borderlands Group since just after their inception in 1991. Like everyone we met that week, he was a straight shooter who laid out his ideas and understandings with a gentle methodology and listened to all other points of view.

We visited several of the members of the Malpai group at their widely dispersed ranches to get a flavor for the sort of people who made up the group. Of the dozen Malipai people that we talked to that week we found no grandstanders, no festering, insecure egos, no dilettante ranchers or environmentalist. What we found mostly were regular folks in dusty blue jeans with respect for each other, honest science, their land, and their heritage. All were ranchers: fathers or mothers. Most had other jobs. One was a well driller. Another was a lion hunter. One was a MacArthur Fellow. One was a border guard. All were brave and all had a worldly understanding of how problems concerning the connection between men and land might be solved.

On the last day we sat through their quarterly meeting and were awed by the friendly demeanor of administrators from the Forest Service, BLM, National Resource and Conservation Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Custom and Border Protection. A Department of Agriculture conservationist told me with deep emotion that, “it is a joy to work with people who WANT your help.” Everyone in the room seemed intent on achieving the goals of keeping the big country of Arizona and New Mexico open and healthy. For those of us from the SD, the experience was disorienting. We jabbered for three hours in the back of the van on the way back to our motel room in Tucson, where we would spend the night before flying back to Rapid City.

We knew damned well that we could never become a second Malpai Borderlands Group. Our problems were unique. The personalities, pressures, and economics were very different. But something had changed. We talked for hours in one of our motel rooms and we were three quarters of the way through a bottle of Crown Royal before it dawned on us that we were talking like we had never talked before.

One evening while he was dining with a group of friends, I thought he had inquired if we had any pork? We just so happened to be featuring a pork dish that night that was most decadent. I went into a methodical description of preparation and ingredients. He listened intently, and after I finished, with that rye smile of his, he said “That’s nice, but do you have any PORT?” Again, I blushed shades of red. Our friend chimed in to offer some recovery and said “Maybe you have a Tawny Pork!”  We all broke out in laughter.

Weeks later while perusing my bookcase for something to read, I noticed a book that I had read years earlier called “Spirit of the Hills.” Opening the cover there was my supposed newspaper journalist and tawny pork drinker, Dan O’Brien. I broke out in laughter again.

We have retold this story a time or two, and occasionally it gets a laugh, but for some reason it cracks Dan and me up to tears. A memorable moment, complete with the unforgettable pork dish. This month’s recipe is an adaption of that delicious concoction. Wishing you all a memorable moment with unforgettable laughter. Happy Valentine’s! Jill

Seared Buffalo Steaks on Polenta Cake with Spicy Cherry Mole

Serves 4  This recipe is super easy and most can be made ahead of time.

Mole Ingredients:

• 1 – Tablespoon butter
• 1 – cup red onion, chopped
• 1 – clove garlic, chopped
• ½ – teaspoon each: cinnamon, cumin and fennel
• ¼ – teaspoon cloves, oregano and black pepper
• 1 – 15.5 oz. can dark cherries in heavy syrup
• 1 – 3oz. can roasted green chili’s
• ½ – cup diced canned tomatoes
• squeeze of fresh lime
• 1 – chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
• 1 oz. 70% dark chocolate

In saucepan over medium heat add butter and melt. Add onion and garlic, stir and cover to soften but not brown, about 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add remaining ingredients except chocolate and bring to a simmer. Place all ingredients in blender and pulse puree until smooth. Return to saucepan and bring to simmer. Break chocolate into pieces and stir into sauce.  (Sauce can be made in advance and reheated).

For the Polenta: * Note: You will have leftover polenta – but great as leftover by itself or crumbled to use in omelets.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups 2% milk
• 1 cup half and half
• ¾  cup polenta
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 oz. Chevre
• ½ cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
• 1 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil for pan frying

In heavy pan over medium high heat bring liquid to a boil. Using a whisk, whisk in polenta slowly. Once incorporated reduce heat to low and continue to whisk, adding remaining ingredients except cilantro. After about 3 minutes stir in cilantro. Salt to taste. Line a 6×9 pan with saran wrap and pour polenta in pan. Cover with an additional piece of saran wrap and allow polenta to set. (Polenta can be made ahead.)

Cut out polenta cakes with cookie cuter or knife to desired portion. Heat oil in sauté pan over medium heat. Pan fry cakes for 3 minutes on each side or until golden brown.

For Steaks:

• 4 – 5 oz. Top Sirloin Steaks
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• ½ teaspoon salt and pepper

Rinse steaks and pat dry. Rub steaks with oil, salt and pepper, and let rest for 1 hour at room temperature. In cast iron skillet over medium high heat, sear steaks for 2 and a half minutes on each side.  Remove steaks to platter and cover until ready to serve.

To Serve: Place a puddle of Mole sauce on plate. Place polenta cake on sauce and top cake with seared buffalo steak. Serve with pan fried red onions and garnish with cilantro.

Wine Pairing:

2008 Apothic Red, CA: A blend of three grape varietals, Syrah, Zinfandel and Merlot. The fruity semisweet wine was a nice compliment to the spicy mole.  After dinner we enjoyed a Tawny Pork!

So perhaps the message is that creativity and thoughtfulness are all that count. But just in case, I am not taking any chances this year. I am celebrating my first Valentine’s Day with my girlfriend who has made it clear she does not share my “Hallmark Holiday” view of Valentine’s Day. I would give her one of our Wild Idea February Sweetheart Deals, but she gets to eat a fair amount of buffalo by being in a relationship with me.  I would love to hear readers’ suggestions – so please post a comment with the best Valentine’s gift you have ever given or received. In fact, I will throw in a gift of a steak on the next order for the reader who has the best one.

One result of the growing popularity of Valentine’s Day, aside from increased sales for Hershey’s and other chocolate makers, was the beginning of “American Heart Month.” Congress started it in 1963 with the purpose of promoting awareness of heart and cardiovascular diseases to make people aware that it is the #1 source of death in the U.S. As someone with a family history of both Valentine’s Day curmudgeoness and heart disease, I certainly think about these things. I do like thinking about Valentine’s Day and Heart Health month together in the context of being healthy and being around for the ones you love. A couple years ago to kick off Heart History month, Obama made a speech that said that cardiovascular disease is one of the most widespread and costly problems in the U.S. and it is one of the most preventable. He acknowledged that obesity is a leading cause of the disease and that a combination of quitting smoking, exercise, and healthy eating is a great way to prevent it.

The American Heart Association has recommended bison meat as part of a heart healthy diet. The AHA likes bison meat because it is lower in fat, calories, and cholesterol than most other meats, but high in iron, zinc, and other vitamins. In addition to our own web site I found several sources that are good resources for talking about the heart health benefits of grass-fed buffalo:

www.healthyheartdiet.info

www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits

www.dakotadiet.com/farmed

www.livestrong.com/article/412575-how-healthy-is-bison-meat

I wish everyone a Happy and Heart Healthy Valentine’s Day, and please post your gift ideas.

Love,

Josh

I had heard of Bea a couple years back and started to follow her food blog, La Tartine Gourmand, and she was good – really good. Making delicious, beautiful food has kept me employed for most of my adult life, but I knew nothing of food photography. I would set my camera on automatic and hope for the best – if I was lucky – there might be a shot. I needed some help.

The connections were made and Beatrice arrived on the ranch a few weeks later. She was joyful, passionate about her work and honest. We hit it off right away.

We worked diligently, but allowed ourselves outdoor timeouts.  “Stop, I want to take a picture of that. Stop, stop I want to take a picture of that”, Bea would say, while on our adventure breaks. She quickly connected that we were not ranchers that raised meat, but we were ranchers that were environmental stewards of the land and that buffalo meat was a by-product of caring for the land.

I prepared real food for our food shots, which meant that we ate a lot of Buffalo.  Even Dan complained – no more Buffalo! We escaped to town that night for fish dinner at Tally’s Silver Spoon.

Beatrice’s posting on her blog last week was a re-cap of her time at the ranch, and includes beautiful photographs. It’s definitely worth a read. Her new cookbook is also available and is a must have!

It is still unknown if I am capable of taking successful pictures without Beas’s help. But the camera and magic lens are on order… Wish me luck, and thanks Bea.

Click here for Beatrice’s story.

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.

They were weak and vulnerable, so we kept them in the corral where they would be a bit more protected and would hopefully gain strength. We started a twice a day feeding regime, which consisted of grass hay, weight on protein pellets, and calf manna milk pellets. We approached the corrals quietly and moved slowly while feeding them, attempting to gain their trust.  On the second day, Jilian brought home some powdered milk replacement to be mixed with warm water, in hopes that they would drink from a pail. The older one’s ignored it, but the orange calves slowly came around taking in soft little slurps.  But it wasn’t enough for the youngest. On January first, we were down to 4 orange calves. The loss of the smallest effected us all, but there were still 14 other’s that needed us, and looked forward to our arrival and the food that came with our presence.

After a couple of successful weeks of putting some weight on them, we felt comfortable with moving them to the open pasture. Still wanting to keep a close eye on them, we made a plan to move them into the horse pasture, closest to the house and outbuildings.   Our plan was to move them slowly – but once the corral gate opened they took off at a charge, free at last.  After a quick 300 yard dash they slowed, giving us a chance to catch up on foot.  We gently guided them along the fence line that led through a green gate and into their new home of 20 acres.

It’s still early to tell if they will make it. The thinnest of the yearlings do not show a lot of progress, but we keep trying and hoping that they will pull through.  Rolling out a big round bale of hay, Jilian said, “I wonder if the inside of a hay bale is like the inside of a cinnamon roll?” We can only hope so.

The first post we wanted to share in the re-launched blog was about a story that NPR did right before Christmas. South Dakota Public Radio did a story on the booming buffalo market, which featured Wild Idea Buffalo with interviews of Dan and Jill. The story ended up being picked up by NPR nationally, and we started getting calls from around the country from old customers congratulating us, and new people who wanted to learn more of the story about the little buffalo company on the prairie.  For those of you who did not hear the story, here is a link to it on the NPR web site. South Dakota Buffalo Farmers Relish Bison Meat Boom

Here is what has me riled up: After a tragic house fire in September, we contracted to have a house built and moved onto the old site. Daughter Jilian and her fiancé, Colton, had been living in the house when it burned down. They moved in with us but we were determined to battle heaven or hell to get them back into their own space. We did our best to keep a positive attitude but nothing about this transition has been easy. The loss of the old house and all the property inside – including two of the best dogs that ever lived – was traumatic. Though the new house that we chose is modest in the extreme, the financing was still difficult and entailed very real sacrifice. The timing too was difficult because, in addition to both being full time students, Jilian, who is an anchor in the Wild Idea office, and Colton, who helps me on the ranch, are planning to get married next June. They needed a home and they needed it quickly.

Had there been time, we would have chosen to build the house ourselves – something we have always wanted to do. But there was no time, so we went to a builder of pre-built homes and made a down payment on a home that we were promised would be ready for habitation in a month. Of course we were not so naive to think that the kids would actually be living in their house in four weeks. I’ve learned that building contractors are a little like horse traders – a certain level of exaggeration is to be expected. But we pinned the builder down to habitation by Thanksgiving. Jilian, who had been fighting off gloom and depression since the fire, was uplifted and just seeing her smile made me smile too.

Well, of course that didn’t happen. The guy that we dealt with left the company under a very stressful set of circumstances. The company had over sold houses in the North Dakota oil boom and ours got “pushed back a little.” Then they lost the list of appliances that Jilian and Jill had pick out and, for a while, the carpet was “unavailable.” They couldn’t figure out how to get the bathtub upstairs. Even though the house was being built in the warm, windless confines of a huge building, weather somehow delayed them. Just before Christmas, Jilian and I met with the production boss and the owner of the company. The boss was a pleasant, Scandinavian-looking, young man from Minnesota. The owner was an old, white guy from the west coast who didn’t say much but obviously held the purse strings. They were very apologetic and very nice. With only a small amount of effort we extracted renewed promises of completion. Jilian, whose sprits had been sinking, brightened up and suddenly a merry Christmas seemed possible.

But delay struck again in the form of an inability to find a concrete contractor who could put in a simple foundation for the house that we were assured was “just about ready to roll out.” Now South Dakota has not been hit by the recession as hard as some places but our house had been on the docket for three months by then. Surely there was a concrete contractor looking for work. The general contractor sent one of his guys out to trench in a couple hundred feet of electrical line – which turned out to be the wrong size and had be torn out and replaced with larger wire. While he was there with the backhoe he leveled out the house site and a concrete contractor finally showed up. They started off by having an argument about whether or not the pad was level.

The concrete contractor was a sickly, older man who sat in his truck and ordered his grown kids around from the driver’s side window. He shook a bottle of pills and laughed that they were the only thing that keep him getting up in the morning. When he wasn’t arguing with his kids, he was telling me how terrible his life had been: how he’d been cheated on almost every job he ever did. He pointed at the younger boy and said that he had probably made the mistake of not beating him enough when he was small.

Three days later I checked in on the foundation progress and found that none of the boys had shown up. The old guy was out of the truck picking up a few tools. “It’s almost Christmas”, he said as if that explained everything. “They’re all drunk and that little one,” he shook his head. “Little son-of-a-bitch stole my pain pills. I fired his ass.”

I was worried about what was going on up at the site and I sent a text message to the builder but I never got an answer. I finally got a hold of him by phone on the day before New Year’s Eve and he assured me that the house would be there on the next Friday. The crane that would hoist it onto the foundation would be there at 7:30 Saturday morning.

My family felt like celebrating so we went out on New Years Eve. Jilian, Colton, Jill and I were joined by Jill’s older boy, Lucas. We had a great dinner at a wonderful restaurant in Rapid City (the Silver Spoon) where a discriminating diner can get Wild Idea buffalo meat. We went dancing and hit a couple bars before the old folks had to go to bed in their room at the Radisson. We had wisely decided that 42 miles was too far to drive on New Year’s Eve. Jill and I did not stay up late enough to see the New Year come in, but we were still up when our party ran into the youngest son of the concrete contractor. He was just leaving the Oasis Bar. It has always been known as an “Indian Bar” and, in our younger days, it was a favorite of Jill’s and mine. The kid hung on the wall of the Oasis. His eyes were not focusing and I don’t think he recognized any of us, though he spoke directly to me. “Don’t go in there” he slurred. “Full of fuckin’ Indians.” He was the drunkest ambulatory man any of us had ever seen. We tried to call him a cab but he broke away from us and somehow disappeared down a nearly vacant street.

The house – in three parts – did indeed show up on that next Friday and everyone was excited. Jilian was up long before 7:30 the next morning, ready to watch her home be resurrected. We all stood clad in coveralls and stocking caps in the cold South Dakota dawn to watch the miracle of the western can-do sprit come to fruition. At the edge of our vision was the reservation where almost nothing works. But there on the White side of the river we were about to watch a modern home actually decent to earth from above. The wonders of western industry were all in place. The huge crane swung its boom over the largest portion of the house and the workmen made the straps secure. In an instant the house was air borne; dangling over the foundation and it looked like the dream might indeed be true. But when the house was lowered, it was painfully clear that it was a foot too small for the foundation. Upon careful examination, the crew found that the three parts of the house did not fit together. People stood, dumbstruck in the cold, still air. No one could speak and I thought that Jilian might burst into tears.

There is a way to fix things. There always is. But dreams do not always die dramatic deaths – they can wear away through constant, tiny insults that can be inflicted by any of us. Of the dozen or so people who are directly responsible for the tragic comedy of errors that has been our house raising, none are Native American. Many of those same people would make a cruel joke out of such a debacle if it had happened on the other side of the Cheyenne River. But what has happened to us will never be a joke. Excuses will be made. The buck will be passed. Deals will be struck. Judgments may come down. But somehow the White people will get a pass for their incompetence and dysfunction. The protective mythology will live on, and the truth avoided once again.