Wild Idea Buffalo Company Archives

Wild Idea: Buffalo & Family in a Difficult Land. Dan O’Brien. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014.

Summary: Dan O’Brien continues the story begun in Buffalo for the Broken Heart, describing the growth of the Wild Idea Buffalo Company, the move to a new ranch, and the challenges of a maturing daughter, an aging friend, and the struggle to build an ethical and ecologically sound business on the ever-challenging Great Plains.

In Buffalo for the Broken Heart (reviewed here), Dan O’Brien chronicles the challenges of cattle ranching on the Great Plains and his conversion to raising buffalo, which he argues are better adapted to the harsh environment, better for the grasses of the Great Plains, and better for people. That book ended with the beginnings of his relationship with Jill, and the launch of the Wild Idea Buffalo Company.

This book develops the story from those beginnings. It interweaves the story of his partnership in love and business with Jill and the concerns many parents will identify with as Jill’s daughter Jillian comes of age, makes and later regrets some choices in love as she figures out her own life.

Central to the story is the growth of Wild Idea. First they take on the challenge of purchasing a much bigger ranch (with much bigger debt) adjacent to federal lands where they can also graze buffalo, allowing them to acquire a much larger herd to meet the demand. This in turn requires the acquisition of a mobile slaughtering setup since on-site harvesting could sometimes be more than two hours distant from meat packing plants.

A crucial turning point comes when a socially conscious investor who has purchased their products and loves what they stand for comes on board for a stake in the company. Suddenly the subsistence rancher and his wife, who was running the business side of Wild Idea out of a closet based on her restaurant experience, confront spreadsheets, production goals, and the need to further expand their business capacity–building a production and storage facility, hiring additional personnel, and finding sources of buffalo beyond their own ranch. O’Brien is honest about the struggle between his lofty goal of transforming ranching and the ecology of the Great Plains, and the realities of growing the business operation that must succeed with the workforce at hand in a difficult physical environment.

Life happens in all kinds of challenging and wonderful ways in the middle of this. Jillian, struggling with depression after a breakup adopts a rescue dog who rescues her, and she meets Colton, another dog owner and student, who she eventually marries in a beautifully narrated scene at the end of the book. Erney, Dan’s friend for forty years, has a stroke, and both struggle to adapt to Erney’s physical limitations and yet real place in the family, as he returns to the ranch. The two of them had spent their lives training falcons, including Oscar, who Erney took care of. But it was several years since they had last gone out for grouse, what with Erney’s stroke, and the growing business. The account of what happened when they did was a highlight of the book:

“There was a tiny flicker of silver far above and the chuckle of flushing grouse below. It was all I could do to keep my eyes pointed upward. Another few flicks of light and the anchor shape consolidated, accelerated, and began twisting in freefall. The sizzle of wings came to my ears. Then Oscar was coming right at me and I heard the grouse whirr overhead.

“There was a puff of feathers and Oscar shot skyward as the grouse tumbled to the ground. He reached his zenith and flipped to spin downward and settle on the grouse halfway between my position and where Erney sat in the ATV….Then I turned to call the dogs to me. They came at a sprint and we tumbled into the grass in a pile of laughter and wagging tails.

“When we got to Oscar, Erney had driven the ATV to within a few feet. He sat down looking at Oscar as the falcon ceremoniously plucked grouse feathers. Hank and Tootsie [the dogs] lay down, waiting for their cut of the spoils, and I smiled at Erney. ‘So what did you think of that?’

“He didn’t answer right away, and when I looked, I noticed he that he was choking up. ‘Probably the last really good flight I will ever see,’ he said.” (pp. 255-256)

This book seemed less evocative of the atmosphere of the Great Plains and the challenges of sustainable ranching than Buffalo for the Broken Heart. That book was more caught up with a vision, and this one with the nitty-gritty of turning that vision into reality. The circle of people closes in more around family and close friends–Gervase, Shane, and their investors. Yet what made this book stand out from just an article in Businessweek, was tough love and affection, between Dan and Jill, as parents for their daughter, and with their circle of friends, all trying to eke out a decent life on these Great Plains. And there is the almost mystical relationship with the buffalo for whom they care, and who care for them in turn, as Native American stories would say.

Buffalo for the Broken Heart, Dan O’Brien. New York, Random House, 2002.

Summary: Part memoir, part nature-writing, this book describes the story of a cattle rancher who hits bottom, and makes the transition to herding buffalo for economic and ecological reasons.

Dan O’Brien grew up in my home state near Findlay, Ohio and even holds a degree from Bowling Green State University in northwest Ohio. He has traveled a long way from the flat, rich farming land of northwest Ohio to the plains of South Dakota. Along the way, he has written novels and worked as a wildlife biologist who helped reintroduce peregrin falcons to the Rocky Mountains. Eventually he bought the Broken Heart ranch on the Great Plains of South Dakota, and like so many around him, tried to make cattle ranching work.

Dan O’Brien

This book describes those efforts, and the losing struggle to make cattle ranching viable. The book alternates between his efforts to use the range land in an ecologically thoughtful way, the economics of the cattle industry that worked against him, and the attempts of others to make a go of things on this land before him. He hits rock bottom when his wife leaves and the bottom drops out of the market for beef. About this time, he encounters a buffalo on the road, and then begins to talk with others who have turned to raising this creature which lived on these plains until nearly exterminated.

He helps out at a buffalo roundup on another ranch and comes home with thirteen young buffalo. And so begins the story of how he and his ranch hand Erney convert the Broken Heart to a buffalo ranch and the “wild idea” they come up with to circumvent the typical feed lot and meat packing industry to provide buffalo meat as it was eaten by the people of the Plains for thousands of years. Along the way, he continues to narrate the stories of the people around him, including the suicide of the son of a Native American family living next door to him, and the redemptive experience of allowing the husband to shoot the first buffalo harvested on the land. This story was beautifully narrated, both in the description of what it meant for the neighbor, and the almost mysterious way the buffalo bulls came to their hunter. I won’t say more because you must read this in context to fully appreciate it.

O’Brien writes in the tradition of ecological writers of place going back to Aldo Leopold, Louis Bromfield (Pleasant Valley, his narrative of restoring Malabar Farm near Mansfield, Ohio), Wallace Stegner, who also wrote of life on the Great Plains, and Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson. Some of his best writing in this book comes in his observations of how buffalo just “fit” the ecology of the Great Plains:

“Was the increase in bird life on the ranch a partial result of a different, evolutionarily more compatible kind of grazing? Did the buffalo’s way of moving quickly from one part of the pasture to another affect the grass more positively than the wandering of domestic livestock? Was the entire matrix of the ranch’s ecosystem improved by the simple conversion back to large herbivores that had evolved to live here? In my heart I was coming to believe that the answer to all these questions was yes. I wanted to shout it to the skies, but I had learned long before that when profound questions are asked of the heart, the answers are best kept to yourself” (p. 168).

The concluding part of the book narrates the beginnings of The Wild Idea Buffalo Company. The big idea was to kill buffalo at the peak of their development on the range, fed on the range grasses and not artificially fattened on feed lots (destroying the beneficial qualities of lean buffalo meat) and killing them in their natural habitat without the trauma of slaughterhouse. As you can see from the web link above the company has continued to grow and you can buy from them. The website describes Wild Idea this way:

“The Wild Idea Buffalo Company is the leading provider of grass-fed, naturally-raised buffalo meat in the United States. All the buffalo (also called bison) meat we sell is antibiotic and hormone free, 100% grass fed, non-confined, free-roaming and humanely, field-harvested. Ours is the best gourmet meat you can buy on-line and have delivered to your home. No other red meat is better tasting, better for you or better for our planet.”

This book was a birthday gift from my wife, along with Dan O’Brien’s sequel, Wild Idea. She knows my love of writers like Wendell Berry and Wallace Stegner, and heard about this book, and O’Brien’s story on public television and it truly was a wonderful gift and leaves me looking forward to the sequel. And you can look forward to a review in weeks to come!