I am sore from head to toe. My fingers hurt from gripping knives and buffalo hide. My back is stiff from a hundred ascents of a step-ladder. Ancient injuries are screaming from every quarter of the old body. But I slept like the dead last night and, today, I am content.

Sustainable Harvest Alliance was using its new machine for the second time this last Wednesday. It is a beautiful thing for all of us who are interested in sustainable agriculture, healthy food, prairie restoration, social justice, or nifty machines. It is a thirty-six foot long, thirteen foot high, enclosed trailer pulled by an over-the-road semi tractor with a sleeper cab. It has its own 240 volt generator, a twelve by ten walk-in cooler, a three hundred gallon water tank, built-in restroom, propane hot water heater, over-head winches, space heaters, and ventilation louvers that open and close according to the ambient temperature. It was designed to harvest buffalo in the pastures of western South Dakota, to save them from undue stress and to bring more grass-fed buffalo to markets from underserved areas. From places like Indian reservations. It gives native people jobs they can be proud of, helps restore the prairie by promoting sustainable buffalo production, encourages buffalo herds that are more like wild herds, and connects us all to the spiritual aspects of gathering good food from the land.

I help schedule the Mobile Harvest Facility and, because it takes a commercial driver's license to drive it, at least for now, I'm the driver. What I am not is a butcher's helper, and that is way I was a little dismayed to get a call the day before the harvest from the regular assistant butcher, (a retired policeman and a good guy) saying that he couldn't make it. But we were ready to go. Buffalo in the right pasture; tractor, shooter, main butcher, helpers, inspector all lined up. But none of it works without an assistant butcher.

On the phone, it was pointed out to me that my friend, the ex-policeman, and I are about the same size. The rubber boots, apron, and hard-hat would probably fit me. And since I am the volunteer driver, I was going to be on sight anyway. I'm thinking, wait, wait, wait, wait. I believe in volunteerism and it is a good cause but I'm the truck driver. I've never butchered anything bigger than a broiler chicken. But it was late and we had to have an assistant butcher.

So very early on that next cold, windy morning, I crawled from the cab of the truck and into the rubber boots of the assistant butcher. I didn't say much and was determined to do everything I was told by Maynard, the head butcher and enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. I also intended to do exactly what Brian, the meat inspector, told me to do. So we gave the white, bright inside of the trailer a good washing while the "outside guys" drove out to the herd and shot our first buffalo. I was inside, out of the wind, but I'd seen that part hundreds of times before. It never ceases to amaze me how the buffalo react to one of their number giving up their lives to feed their brothers – us. They don't seem to mind in the slightest and in a few minutes a fist beat on the trailer's back door.

When we opened the door to accept our first buffalo the cold wind hit us like a buck of slush. I could see Bear Butte in the distance, through the mist and quiver of a thirty mile per hour gale. The men scrambled to unhook the tractor chains and to hook up the over head winches. The first buffalo began his slid into the trailer and the rest of the herd lay content, three hundred yards away, oblivious to the wind and the men straining in the distance to "make meat". When the door closed the wind vanished and the buffalo began to give us his heat. Maynard went to work – lifting, skinning, carefully eviscerating the animal. He dipped his knives in the 180% water, he washed his hands frequently, he talked to the buffalo. And I did what I could to help: hold the leg up, give a pull there, hand the saw to Maynard.

I watched the way he sharpened his knives – easy, nearly subconscious strokes on the steel. Thinking, studying the animal as the edge was honed sharp again. My own set of knives hung at my waist just like his, but I knew I would be lucky not to cut myself. I didn't think I would have the time to consider this animal in front of me or any of the eight we planned to harvest that day.

But, after the first two, when I'd learned a little about my job, I could not keep my thoughts businesslike, white, and impersonal. When the buffalo were split and attached to the overhead trolleys that rolled them into the cooler, they were turned over to me to trim and touch. And, as I became more familiar with my job, I came to savor the way they felt as I inspected every square inch of them for perfection. I caressed them as I climbed up and down the ladder, with my knife and hook suddenly extensions of my fingers. A sensuality that might have embarrassed me ten years before – I watched them slowly spin for their last antiseptic rinse and savored the order of the hanging carcasses and the rich smell of this freshest of all meat.

I will never forget Maynard's soft, Lakota laugh and smile as he cut a carcasses length ways before turning it over to me. "I love the smell of these pasture buffaloes", he said. Then a little of the Sioux humor that all of us who know it love. "Smells like something good to eat!" And he smiled and wagged his head back and forth to underscore the irony.

So at the end of the day the truck driver stood in the cramped mechanical room as the inspector and Maynard went over the paper work for the day. I smoked a cigarette with these working men – something I almost never do. But I couldn't help it. Dog tired with the sun gone and the temperature following it down, I couldn't have felt better. Sixteen half carcasses chilling in the cooler and the rest of the herd close enough to hear in the darkness now that the wind had stopped for the night. I wanted more, more, more of this. Beats hell out of sitting in front of a work processor. Worth every ache and pain.

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by Gervase Hittle

Well folks, the first real chill of winter has come upon us, catching us not completely unaware; but the first night that the temperature dropped to about 4°F, the previous day had been in the low 70's. Yes, around here it happens like that. We really try to stay ahead of the onset of winter by readying everything for freezing temperatures. What that means in practical terms for this ranch is fairly simple. Erney puts in his winter supply of firewood. His stove helps to heat my apartment, which is above his; so he gets all the help from me that he needs.

We then go around to the water tanks that we will not be using and turn off the water and drain the tanks. On the Cheyenne River Ranch that translates to summer pasture watering locations for the horses as well as the buffalo, as the buffalo are on the U.S. Forest Service pastures for the winter; and the horses have access to a year round supply of spring water in the corral. They can come and go at will. At the Broken Heart Ranch, where we have the harvestable herd, the water supply is a little more complicated and harder to keep open. The situation is ameliorated if we have a good snow cover, but without that, watering the animals can be a little labor intensive.

Of course water for the buffalo would not be a major concern if there were no fences because the animals, having co-evolved with this land are perfectly capable of fending for themselves. The winter grazing on the U.S. Forest Service pastures is a perfect example of that--with the availability of the Cheyenne river to them. Fences, however, change the dynamic.

Once we enclose animals within a fence, they become our charges, our responsibility; and adequate food and adequate fresh, clean water is our job. We must and do accept that as a fact of our lives. It is both the least and the most that we can do for them. We provide for them; they provide for all of us; and it is the quality and quantity of grass and water that determines the quality of the meat they provide.

To facilitate the operation with the animals we must ready the machinery for winter. We also try to prepare the driveway and roads for fluctuating conditions and organize everything from snow shovels and jumper cables to battery chargers, tow chains, and diesel starter fluid. Every vehicle has at least minimal emergency equipment, and we institute a simple protocol of communication, especially if for some reason (to repair a fence for example) we are going into the government ground (22,000 acres of sometimes very rough country). Someone at the ranch, usually Erney near the comfort of his stove, will know where we are going, when we expect to return, and our anticipated route. These are some of the small winterizing preparations that keep us viable and in business. So once winter sets in, assuming we are ready, we can spend our time and energy making sure the buffalo have access to water rather than having to replace a pickup trucks battery in the cold.