The Splendid Table Audio Transcrip
Lynne Rossetto Kasper
June 8, 2002
Buffalo for the Broken Heart

This week it's a saga of money, ecology and a struggle to survive on the South Dakota prairie. Dan O'Brien, author of the autobiographical Buffalo for the Broken Heart, is a cattle rancher who asked some difficult questions and found some unexpected answers. One led to the restoration of life to his Black Hills ranch.

Intro by Lynne Rosetto Kasper:
Today we go to the Broken Heart ranch at the foot of The Black Hills in South Dakota to meet one of the men who raises our food. He’s Dan O’Brien, a cattle rancher, who has come to believe cows don’t belong on the prairie. His book is Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch.

Minute 14:11:

Kasper: Dan O’Brien is one of the people who raises our food. He started ranching cattle in South Dakota twenty years ago on his Broken Heart Ranch. And like most ranchers he’s had a hard time making ends meet. Yet, because he is also a biologist, he sees the Great Plains through slightly different eyes. He sees cattle not belonging in the ecosystem. In fact, he sees cattle devastating the plains.

Chance and the need to survive had him turn to the animal that had been native to his land for thousands of years -–the buffalo. His book is Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch. Minnesota Public Radio’s Euan Kerr paid him a visit.

Euan Kerr: It is early Sunday morning on the Broken Heart ranch—way early. Just after sunup. Dan O’Brien is piloting his Kawasaki mule down a muddy back road. It’s a golf cart on steroids.

We’re on our way to see a wonder of the prairie. Not buffalo though. Birds: Sharp tail grouse. It’s a primeval mating ritual. Wings spread, drumming, and stamping their feet. Male grouse can do this for hours. So, what does this have to do with the buffalo? Well, maybe a lot. O’Brien talks in terms of the ecological matrix. A giant jigsaw puzzle. He says the grouse seem to do better since the buffalo came back to the Broken Heart ranch.

We take off again. He says a lot of long absent birds are returning too. Then, there’s what's growing under foot.

Dan O’Brien: "This is an example of the grasses that are here. There’s Western [Wheatgrass] here, and there’s Side-Oats Grama. And I don’t even know what half this stuff is. But, there’s a lot of diversity in here. And we go to a lot of pastures and it’ll be just like 2 or 3 kinds of grass, period."

Kerr: This land was settled more than a century ago. All of it has been plowed since. So has much of the rest of South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, and man points west. Back at his house, the coffee pot rumbling, O’Brien is blunt is assessing the results.

O’Brien: "My view is that the Northern Great Plains is really an abused and battered land. Not only from a physical sense, but from a sociological sense, an economic sense, which go hand in hand--from a human point of view."

Kerr: O’Brien says he realizes this strikes at the heart of two American icons: There’s the cowboy, tough and self-reliant out on the range. Then there is the rancher, harnessing the land through honest hard work.

O’Brien: "But the facts of the matter are that the people on the great plains are not doing well and never have done well."

Kerr: Ranchers exist on razor-thin margins. They have to work hard to keep their cattle alive in the harsh plains climate. O’Brien knows the economic realities. He’s teetered on the edge of the financial abyss himself.

O’Brien: "I read The Grapes of Wrath again a few months ago. And, you know, no one has said it better, you know, these plains simply won’t sustain those kinds of populations. So, I’m not out to convince people that they should change to buffalo. I’m out to convince people they should respect the land and should become part of it."

Kerr: Dan O’Brien raised cattle for decades. From the beginning he kept trying different ways of managing his land. He was trying to restore the prairie. He moved his cattle around regularly so they wouldn’t wear out the pasture. He replanted native grasses. He lost a lot of money. Such was the stress, he literally lost his hair. One weekend he helped out at a big buffalo round up on a giant operation near by. He heard the manager trying to decide what to do with 13 orphaned infant buffalo cows. O’Brien offered to take them.

O’Brien: So the experiment has been ongoing. It is just that finally, the situation was right to say, "okay, the missing piece is this big herbivore, which is a big part of the puzzle." And I see that there’s a puzzle, so wham, here comes the buffalo back. And the experiment really sort of picked up speed at that point."

Kerr: The buffalo evolved on the Great Plains. They don’t need extra feed. And they don’t need shelter from the wind, snow, or sun. In the early days, O’Brien was perplexed at how little they needed him. He got over it though.

Kerr: Six years later Dan O’Brien is making buffalo burgers at his kitchen table. He squeezes great wedges of ground meat into shape. These are prepared to the specifications of his partner, Jill Maguire. She’s a restauranteur in Rapid City who knows a bit about cooking buffalo.

O’Brien:"As you can see, it is very lean. And what we do is put a little bit of Jill’s special seasoning with this stuff, and basically cook it rare, medium rare, because it is very easy to overdo the cookin’ on these things. There’s really no fat in it at all."

Kerr: Moments later we’re out on the deck where the grill is ready. O’Brien’s animals only feed on native grasses. They are slaughtered in the pasture by a sharp shooter. It is done under the supervision of a federal meat inspector in the fall. O’Brien says it is much more humane than in the slaughterhouse. The animals are not stressed when they die. The adrenaline produced by stressed animals can change the flavor of their meat The carcasses are quickly taken to a local processing plant to be butchered. The slaughter makes some people squeamish, but O’Brien says it is an important part of the cycle. He doesn’t shy away from the spiritual overtones.

O’Brien:"Killing a buffalo is not the greatest part of this job, but it’s a necessary part. And it’s a part I actually do celebrate. I believe this also: I believe that all of our beliefs in communion come from exactly what I do with the buffalo. It’s the only real communion that there is, is when you go out and hunt something and put it on the table."

Kerr: The burgers are set steaming on huge buns.

Kerr: "So, I’m going to try this."

O’Brien: "Let’s see how we did. A little overdone."

Kerr: "That is remarkable."

O’Brien: "It is really wonderful. Really good."

Kerr: They taste very good. And that’s important. For Dan O’Brien’s dream to pay its way, his product must taste good. O’Brien talks a lot about agricultural models. What works and what doesn’t. The model that interests him now is the wine making in Napa Valley. If it’s possible to develop an industry based on Subtle variations of grapes, why not do the same with meat? He hopes to convince ranchers there could be a future in grass-fed buffalo. Last Fall, O’Brien’s Wild Idea Buffalo Company slaughtered over one hundred animals. That’s thousands of pounds of meat. Steaks, roasts, ground buffalo. It sold out by spring. The business isn’t going to make the Fortune500 soon, but it is making financial headway.

Kerr: And off we go again on the mule. Jill’s daughter, Jilian, joins us. We’re off to herd the buffalo into a new pasture. THEY are elusive for such big beasts. As we look down from the top of a hill, it is clear why they’re so skittish. Each of the buffalo cow has a small reddish-brown blob at her side. Babies.

O’Brien: "That is what we call the maternity ward, there. They kind of get off by themselves."

Jillian: "Oh, look at that little one."

O’Brien: "Now, that’s a real baby there."

Kerr: "Oh yeah. So, maybe even a day old?"

O’Brien: "I would say this morning, probably."

Kerr: The herd has grown from the original dozen to hundreds of animals. And that’s just the beginning. With his business partner, Sam Hurst, O’Brien is now in the first year of running buffalo on two new ranches a few miles from here. Those ranches cover 22,000 acres and lie adjacent to 4 million acres of federal grassland. Its managed by the Forest Service specifically for grazing cattle. Strangely enough, Buffalo are not allowed to run on the land. But O’Brien and Hurst hope to change that. O’Brien gets a little wistful. Four million acres space, he says, truly worthy of the buffalo. He still worries about the ranches' debts, but he says feels whole. Out on the mule, herding the buffalo, he’s a happy man.

O’Brien: "We got eagles, we got mule deer, we got buffalo. What the hell else does a guy need? Scotch whiskey." Laughter.

End.


Eaun Kerr is a News Editor for Minnesota Public Radio. The Splendid Table with host Lynne Rossetto Kasper can be heard on weekends on Public Radio stations nationwide and Saturdays on Minnesota Public Radio.

Listen to Dan’s story from the Listen archives at www.splendidtable.com.
Select the June 8, 2002 program.

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