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The Trainer from Marcus

By Sentel Schreier

Bud Boudreau says every dog’s mind is different, “and it takes patience to understand each one.”

Bud Boudreau wakes at 3 a.m. on most mornings. He drinks a cup of black coffee, dresses and dons a cowboy hat and boots, strings a dog whistle around his neck and walks out to the barn to start another day of training border collie sheepdogs. He hasn’t missed a sunrise in 60 years.

One morning I rose early as well and drove down Highway 34, past Bear Butte and Union Center in Meade County, to learn more about a little-known man who is credited with changing the way we herd sheep on the Northern Plains. The daughter of a sheep rancher, I still remember the excitement of Boudreau arriving at our ranch with a mule named Lenore, a truck full of border collies and a lifetime of stories.

I spent the last 7 miles of my drive that morning on gravel roads. Admittedly, I had to call Boudreau to confirm I wasn’t lost. I arrived just in time to accompany him as he headed to the barn. A symphony of wagging tails, excited whines and barks greeted us. The old man fed the dogs and cleaned the kennels. Then he saddled his palomino horse, collected the dogs from their individual kennels and let them exercise for a while. He told them to sit and they sat. He called them by name back to the kennels. The dogs were quiet as they waited to see who would be the first to work. He called for Dot, and she waited triumphantly by the barn door.

Boudreau, who is now 84, rode his horse out to the pasture with Dot by his side. She watched him intently for a signal to bring in the herd of Targhee sheep. With one word,”Away,” he sent the dog counterclockwise in a graceful, wide arc around the herd. I squinted to see Dot’s dark silhouette against the sleepy horizon — about half a mile away.

With varying sounds from his whistle, Boudreau signaled Dot to go clockwise, counterclockwise, walk up, look, speed up, slow down, stand or sit. Dot interpreted the slightest change in tone of the dog whistle or pitch of Boudreau’s voice to mean a different command. Boudreau and his border collies have their own language.

“The dogs have such instincts bred into them,” he says.”It’s remarkable. It’s easy to teach them because a well-bred dog already has the instincts.” Watching Boudreau in the field with his dogs is like watching a music conductor. He makes the slightest sound and the dog bursts into obedient motion. The dogs are sensitive to his body language as well as the subtle movements of each animal in the herd.

“It was the strangest feeling for me,” Boudreau says of his move from Maryland to the open spaces of West River.

Border collies have been used for centuries to herd sheep. Today they are invaluable members of many sheep ranches in South Dakota and other states where herds are large, in part because Bud Boudreau came here 40 years ago.

It’s fitting that”collie” is Gaelic for”useful,” because a sheepdog can do more with sheep than several cowboys on horseback. The border collie breed can be traced back to the United Kingdom, to an era when wool was a big part of the economy.

Sheepdog trials also originated in Europe but soon became popular in the eastern United States. Trials are competitions that test a dog’s ability to herd sheep in cooperation with its handler. Dogs must successfully complete the”outrun” or initial gathering of the sheep and”drive” them through different patterns of panels. Typically dogs must then”shed” the sheep or separate a few from the rest of the herd, and then pen the sheep in a corral within a time limit.

According to Boudreau, Englanders literally wrote the book on how to train sheepdogs. He learned the basics by reading an English text when he was in his early 20s, but his fascination with border collies started long before that. When he was 10 years old, his aunt stole him away from the family dairy farm in Michigan to see a short film called Arizona Sheepdog. The black and white documentary kindled his lifetime fascination.

Several years later, a neighbor imported two dogs from Great Britain and brought them to the dairy. Boudreau was amazed by how they could round up cattle, just as he remembered seeing in Arizona Sheepdog. By then, Boudreau’s dad had converted the dairy farm into a racehorse training facility. He helped care for more than 40 racehorses and he broke thoroughbred colts. A fearless young horseman, Boudreau preferred to gallop the ornery young horses around the track in the early morning because they”weren’t so tough if they couldn’t see where they were going.”

Boudreau embraced his dad’s racehorse business and eventually took it over. But he also dreamed of training border collies. As a father of four — Dean, Jean, Jimmy and Susan — he marveled at the neighbor’s dogs’ habitual herding of his toddler children.”I got real excited one day when that dog was herding my kids around the yard,” he remembers.

Boudreau became well known in the horse racing world and ran the family business successfully for more than 20 years before his ambition led to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to train and shoe horses for Alfred Vanderbilt, owner of Sagamore Farm and Baltimore’s Pimlico Racetrack where the Preakness Stakes is held today. Alfred, a pillar in the horse racing community, was the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the world’s richest man in the late 19th century.

Sagamore Farm gave Boudreau the opportunity to work with famous trainers and fine horses like Kentucky Derby winner Native Dancer. However, Boudreau arrived in Maryland in a full body cast after a”brawl” with a young colt. Knowing Boudreau’s reputation, Vanderbilt waited a month for him to recover. He started his job caring for broodmares, shoeing horses and training 2-year-old colts.”I woke up at 4 a.m. and was done by mid-morning with nothing to do in a strange place. I was bored and had a lot of time to think,” he remembers of his Maryland days.”I thought a lot about sheepdogs.”

Bud Boudreau has trained dogs and horses. He prefers dogs, he says, because of their intelligence.

Life changed when a friend gave him a border collie as a gift. Boudreau took the dog to a sheepdog clinic in Virginia in 1982. Jack Knox, a famous Scottish dog trainer, led the program and was impressed with Boudreau’s self-taught knowledge and his ability to interpret a dog’s movement. Boudreau soon met Ralph Pulfer and Bruce Fogt, two of the most respected experts in the industry. He credits them with making him the trainer he is today.

He returned from Virginia determined to train sheepdogs. After working on the track each day, he spent time with his dogs and a small herd of Barbados black-bellied sheep he had purchased.”I would shoe horses for folks in exchange for time on racehorse farms to work my dogs. I would pull up with my trailer, unload my Barbados, then spend the afternoon training the dogs.”

However, he felt he had a foot in two quite different worlds — horse racing and sheepdogs. He knew what he wanted to do with his life, but the decision to train dogs full time would be costly. He had spent years in the horse racing world, achieving credentials, connections and financial security. In six years, Boudreau had become Sagamore’s resident farrier and even shoed horses for the historic Green Spring Valley Hounds and Hunt Club.”I had it made, but I felt like I wasn’t fully committed to the horses or the dogs. I had to choose. I chose border collies.”

When he revealed his plans, the head trainer at Sagamore Farm told him he was,”making a big mistake.” Boudreau chuckles at the memory.”Everyone thought I was plum crazy.” Boudreau left the stables in the hands of his son, Dean, who had been his apprentice.

Not long after deciding to train dogs full time, Boudreau saw an ad for affordable land in South Dakota near the tiny community of Marcus, about an hour’s drive east of the Black Hills. In 1986, he loaded all his belongings, including nine border collies and eight sheep, in a homemade trailer and Toyota truck and headed west.”I moved with my dogs to a cabin on White Owl Creek,” he remembers.”It was the strangest feeling for me; I went from a very crowded area in Maryland to not seeing another human being for weeks at a time.”

In 1988, Boudreau’s three sons traveled there and built a log home for their dad from scratch, incorporating materials from the original homestead 2 miles from the house. Boudreau had spent the winter collecting stones from the dilapidated homestead shack for his sons to repurpose into a hearth and chimney. The original homestead stove sits in Boudreau’s kitchen, a tribute to the pioneers that lived at Marcus before him.”I still make my famous waffles on it from time to time,” he says with a smile.

Boudreau’s sons pooled their skills for the cabin construction. Local ranchers provided further assistance. For example, Boudreau traded help installing Sheetrock for dog training.”My boys had so much fun building the house and the neighbors got a kick out of it too. They would stop by to see the progress every now and then. It was a special time for me.” Boudreau also planted a tree grove behind his house that now provides protection from the strong prairie winds.

*****

With hill country, a river and expanses of land, the Marcus ranch proved ideal for training sheepdogs. Boudreau also fell in love with the resiliency of his neighbors. He believes South Dakotans are special.”People here understand hardship but are some of the most content people I’ve ever known. It’s because they’re doing what they want to do with their lives. Out here in the country, you have to love what you do to stay. I feel I have lived in the best generation that ever was in the U.S. and I couldn’t be luckier to end up in South Dakota.”

Bud Boudreau’s house includes a stone fireplace and a woodstove salvaged from a homesteader’s cabin.

Despite the rural location, sheepdogs have taken him on adventures he would have forfeited had he stayed at the racetrack. He has even competed at international competitions in Ireland.

One of his most memorable trips came in 1993 when he met his future wife, Sarah, at a sheepdog trial in Durango, Colorado. They have worked dogs together nearly every day since they got married in 2000 at nearby Sturgis. Sarah shares his love for sheepdogs and competes in trials. She also serves as a judge at competitions.

For eight years, the Boudreaus hosted a dog trial at their home near Marcus that attracted judges from Great Britain and competitors from all over the country. Bud and Sarah, along with help from Ross Lamphere and Jim Roth, also started the popular midwinter North American Sheepdog Trials at the Black Hills Stock Show. Apart from dogs, the Boudreaus also share a love for music. Sarah spent five years in Italy playing the French horn in Milan’s Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra. Today, Bud’s old guitar hangs in their living room, and he says he knows he’s”doing okay” when Sarah recognizes a tune. He thinks playing the guitar has similarities to training dogs.”You never want to practice a mistake,” he explains.

The couple’s accomplishments also led to an adventure on a big ranch along the Rio Grande River, where Tommy Hayre raises more than 20,000 goats and sheep on 110,000 acres. Boudreau’s skill with dogs was an invaluable resource on the rough, West Texas terrain.”The goats were so smart, they’d hide in caves and you’d have to ride in with the dogs on horseback to gather them,” he recalls. During the drought year of 1998, Hayre sent Boudreau to his ranch in Argentina for two weeks to show Argentinian cowboys (gauchos) how to use sheepdogs.

Boudreau recorded the trip in a detailed journal that he shared:”We stood around the adobe kitchen, with a fire going in the fireplace. Later on I found out there was never an oven in a gaucho residence. There is always a fire in the fireplace, both summer and winter. On the table was a blackboard that had been purchased in town, with the commands — ëaway,’ ëcome,’ ësit,’ ëwalk up,’ and ëthat’ll do’ — written out in a way that they could pronounce.”

Boudreau drank mateÃÅ from a silver gourd and bombilla, ate mutton ribs from a 2-foot machete and rode countless miles in the pampas.”Living with the gauchos was an experience I’ll treasure forever,” he says. He left Argentina confident that his dogs had found worthy handlers in JoseÃÅ, Tabares and RamoÃÅn.

Sheep ranchers in South Dakota and around the world appreciate the talents of the man from Marcus. Boudreau was inducted into the American Border Collie Association Hall of Fame last September, an honor he considers a highlight of his life. He was”in shock” to hear the news, but western sheep ranchers believe the recognition was long overdue.

In a nomination letter, Montana rancher Kelly Bradley wrote,”This part of the country had big numbers of sheep running on it and yet, in the 1980s and 1990s, there were not many places using dogs and certainly not realizing the potential of a well-bred and trained border collie. Bud Boudreau almost single-handedly changed all that for us ranchers when he came to this country and went to work educating so many of us about border collies. For many, it was the first chance to see stock dogs that did more good than harm to their stock.”

My father, Gene Johnson, met Boudreau at a neighbor’s sheep shearing in Harding County. He’s become a reliable presence at our own sheep shearings ever since. Dad says the trainer brought better technique and finesse to our ranch.”I appreciate Bud’s knowledge of sheep and dogs,” Dad told me.”But I also appreciate him as a great friend and mentor to me. He has a way of making hard work more enjoyable because he’s there.”

Boudreau helps ranchers train their own dogs and he has sold dogs to others. Just as he did at our family’s ranch, he also taught sheep growers the benefits of dogs by just showing up to help. When he came to our place, we always offered him a room, but he preferred to sleep in the truck near the dogs, who had a strict bedtime of 7:30 p.m.

We loved his visits because the work always seemed to go more smoothly. Boudreau and a couple of his dogs could round up huge groups of sheep without help. Their movements were like magic to me and I wanted a dog of my own. Finally, Dad traded Boudreau some sheep for our border collie, Kate, after he took her to the National Sheepdog Finals in 2015. He also gifted me a dog whistle, and he came to the ranch to show us how to use the many commands.

He says every dog has its own peculiarities.”I won’t sell a dog I’m not confident in. Sometimes a dog will take years to get to the place where I feel confident in finding him a home. Every dog’s mind is different and it takes a great deal of patience to understand each one,” he says.

Because every dog needs hands-on attention, it’s an inexact and difficult business model.”I’ve been dead broke,” Boudreau admits.”Some people live paycheck to paycheck; I live border collie to border collie. Once a dog gets to be worth a certain amount, I can’t afford to keep him. If he gets hurt, there goes my paycheck.”

Still, he has never regretted leaving his better-paying career with East Coast horses.

“Training dogs has made training horses boring because of their intelligence. It’s a different kind of art form. It requires more finesse because the dogs get so fixated on the sheep, they have to rely on your voice only, and you have to hope they listen, and keep cool if they don’t.”

Boudreau’s philosophy on raising dogs sounds like parenting advice.”You have to be somebody that commits. A collie’s mind is like a growing child — you can’t miss a day. You have to be prepared to exercise their mind daily.”

He also emphasizes positive reinforcement.”I want them to stop doing wrong because they love the outcome of doing right. I want them to think of me as a safe place to look to. In order for that to happen, you have to keep calm. You can’t lose your cool. I want my dogs to look forward to training as much as I do.”

Spend a morning with Boudreau and his dogs and one thing becomes as clear as a Meade County sunrise: The dogs live to hear his gentle voice saying,”that’s a good boy.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Respectful Shepherd

By Bernie Hunhoff

Sheep deserve our respect, says Belle Fourche writer and rancher Sentel Schreier.

Sentel Schreier learned the usual life lessons when she left her hometown of Belle Fourche to study economics at Augustana University in Sioux Falls — things like self-confidence and independent thinking — but she also had a dietary revelation.

“I just figured everyone enjoyed lamb once or twice a day,” she says. She was surprised to discover that most of her new friends didn’t know a lamb chop from a karate move.”They hadn’t grown up with it like I had,” she says. Lamb wasn’t served at the Augie dining hall and wasn’t to be found on the menus of restaurants in her home state’s largest city.

It was a culinary culture shock for a young girl who grew up on a fourth-generation family ranch believing that sheep are magical creatures that generously provide food and wool for mankind, all while maintaining an aura of dignity that she notes is even lauded in Bible passages.

On a college field trip to India, she was even more chagrined to discover that lamb was more popular there than it is in her home state, which ranks sixth in the nation in sheep production.”And most people are vegetarians in India,” she says.

Despite the change in diet, Schreier’s love for her West River roots never changed, and upon graduation in 2018 she returned home to teach Spanish at a secondary school. She married Nathan Schreier in July of 2021, and of course barbecued lamb was served at the wedding dinner.

Now she’s hoping to turn her husband into a sheepherder (he works in technology at the Belle Fourche schools). After two years, she left the classroom to join her father, Johnny Johnson, on the ranch. On a typical day, she rises long before the sun. She often”rounds up” a few ranch hands to help, and then makes the 50-mile trip north to the ranch where — depending on the season — they might rotate livestock to greener pastures, do some fencing, tend to newborn lambs or do the myriad other tasks related to raising cattle and sheep in western South Dakota.

South Dakota ranks sixth in the nation in sheep production.

Over the summer, she was also taming and breaking two wild mustangs that came from a Bureau of Land Management range, while keeping watch on a big ranch dog that was hiding a litter of pups in the high grass that surrounds the outbuildings.

Through it all, Schreier still accomplishes some teaching; she does it now through a website she created to share thoughts on rural living and lamb chops. Her online essays are not the mushy cliches and stereotypes penned by too many western writers who only glorify the blue skies, beautiful landscapes and resilient cowboys.”Rugged individualism isn’t all that great,” she suggested in a recent article.”People who make a life out of isolation tend to be bitter towards society — perhaps because interacting with others takes practice. Complete solitude makes one rusty and we typically don’t like things we’re not good at. But it’s also really easy to hate people; we’re all infected with normalized self-absorption, greed, slander, everything that’s always, always been a problem for our species ….”

She even dared to critique Archer Gilfillan, an early 20th century sheepherder who became regionally famous for his humorous books and entertaining speeches to livestock groups. While she enjoyed reading Gilfillan’s book Sheep, she adds,”I do remember how egotistical and bitter towards other people this guy was … plus he put random Latin in the book everywhere. I hate it when authors do this without any reason other than to say, ‘Hey, I know Latin.'”

In another essay, she admits that as a teenager she sometimes wanted more entertainment.”On the ranch, there isn’t a whole lot of recreation. Your options are limited to either reading, radio talk shows or roping buckets. We barely have cell service so social media is an option only if you want to walk out to a hill or stand on top of a truck.” She surmised, however, that”when you have no one to entertain you, you see what a good, amusing friend you can be to yourself.”

Schreier also writes about her workdays, her family and her faith, including highlights and doubts. Her thoughtful reflections on the complicated culture of consuming the creatures she coddles are a rare take on rural life.

“Last week my dad, husband and I butchered a sheep so we could have grass-fed meat in our freezer for the summer,” she writes.”In about five seconds it was over, and the sheep was dead. It struck me how remarkable it is that the sheep never made a sound. They are silent under stress. Even when docking, it’s very rare for a sheep to cry out in pain. The prophet Isaiah related Jesus’ dignity in the face of death like that of a sheep for a reason. ‘He was oppressed and afflicted yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.'”

Schreier believes there should always be”an air of respect” when eating meat.”Try to buy meat from someone who gave that animal a good life,” she suggests.”Perhaps before a dinner of delicious lamb chops, thank God for that creature’s life and ask Him to make you more generous like the critter whose life ended to preserve yours. Let’s make dinner sacred and special again.”

The hubbub of shearing season interrupts the solitude of life on a West River sheep ranch.

She and her father sell their lambs in the fall to feedlots but someday she hopes they might market meat directly to consumers.”Nathan and I even flirt with the idea of opening a restaurant that features lamb,” she says.

However, she says people need not wait for their grand opening to enjoy the flavor because there’s nothing very difficult about cooking lamb meat.”Lamb chops are comparable to a good beef steak,” she says.”Maybe marinate them with some olive oil and lemon, something acidic just as you would the steak. My dad and I will sometimes grill a lamb chop for breakfast. Lamb and eggs.”

She also recommends serving lamb with a Grecian sauce called tzatziki, which is made from sheep’s milk mixed with seasonings, herbs and cucumbers.”Nathan likes to go Mediterranean, and that’s always delicious,” she says.

She has learned that some people seem to avoid lamb because they think it is more complicated to cook than other red meats.”Or maybe they worry that they are going to mess it up,” she says.”But really there is no difference. You can go rare, medium or well done. You can make burger patties from ground lamb. And you can go traditional, just lamb and potatoes.”

She says her father remembers hearing that Americans soured on lamb after World War II, when the U.S. military supposedly served rations of poor-quality lamb to the troops. For many, it was their first taste of the meat, and they brought home a bad impression.

Give it another chance, suggests the young rancher who at age 25 is already developing a reputation as a rural spokeswoman who thinks for herself and respectfully encourages others to do the same.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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West River Oasis

By Paul Higbee

“Cattle for respect, sheep to pay the bills,” goes an old West River axiom. It was probably coined by a sheep man at Newell, where weekly sales are held every Thursday. The annual show and sale dates back to the 1940s. Photo by Greg Latza.

If you consider the Black Hills home, maybe you’ve got a soft spot in your heart for Newell. Perhaps you’ve returned home across the prairies via Highway 212, from points north and east, and have spotted this town with Bear Butte as its backdrop, and with the Black Hills defining its southern and western horizons.

“Almost home,” you’ve said to yourself.

Not quite. Despite its proximity to the Hills, Newell claims a separate history. It came into being more than 30 years after Rapid City, Sturgis, Spearfish, Deadwood and Lead were founded. Frederick Newell, a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation chief engineer, inspired the name. In 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt had established the Bureau of Reclamation in hopes of transforming dry western expanses into fields of crops. Among the Bureau’s first projects was damming Owl Creek in Butte County, creating one of the world’s largest earthen dams, 6,262 feet long and 122 feet high. Water would be diverted from the Belle Fourche River into the reservoir, and there would be more than 500 miles of irrigation canals and laterals channeling this water to virgin croplands. The Newell town site sat in the middle of some of the most promising countryside. As the dam progressed, this land sold for as much as $25 an acre, a price most South Dakotans considered sky high.

In 1907 the Bureau of Reclamation developed an”Experiment Farm” at the town site. The farm would research crops best suited for local soils, and later it would train young people who were interested in agriculture. The year 1910 saw the dam’s completion and construction begin for Newell’s first homes and businesses.

Churches went up too. Father Wenzel Sobolewski served multiple Catholic churches and sometimes faced frontier-like conditions in traveling from one to another. On foot outside Newell in 1916 or 1917, he found himself in danger of freezing, desperately lost in a blinding blizzard. But, he later recalled,”God was with me and guided me to a barn, where I found myself draped around the neck of a cow.”

Karen Swan and her associates at K-J Leather Company sew chaps, saddlebags, chinks and other tack for working cowboys.

In Newell’s early years there were always outside critics who considered the land there best suited for such cows, even though good crops of corn and grain were growing, along with produce entirely new to the region: cucumbers, pinto beans and sugar beets. But, some observers wondered, were those products worth all the government expense — more than $2 million for the dam’s construction alone? In the 1920s, when farm profits were down everywhere, and in the 1930s when more dust than water filled the reservoir, the criticism seemed valid. Then the rains returned. By the late 1940s local farmers were enjoying banner years and were in a position to manage and maintain the irrigation system themselves, rather than watching the government run it. In 1948 landowners formed a board of directors and made Newell irrigation district headquarters. Today corn and alfalfa dominate the 57,000 irrigated acres, and there are fields of wheat and oats. To the delight of loyal aficionados, the Newell area is also known for honey derived from clover.

Not only is water from the irrigation system the area’s lifeblood, but irrigation has always been central to Newell’s identity. When Black Hills high school athletes say they’re heading north to play the Newell ‘Gators, South Dakotans know the team name doesn’t refer to a big reptile.

Step into TJ’s Cafe and Waterin’ Hole to meet Neil Vollmer and Ken Wetz for coffee, and you’re guaranteed some funny stories and Newell area history. But mostly these men are focused on contemporary life and future opportunities. Vollmer owns an insurance business and is president of the Newell Economic Development Corporation. Wetz, manager of the Butte Electric Cooperative, is a former mayor and state legislator, and along with Vollmer, a driving force behind the development corporation for its entire 15-year history. Thanks to that organization’s volunteer work, Newell got behind a successful effort to re-open its grocery store after it closed for about a year in the 1990s. The group has also recruited industry. Aker Woods Company, a Black Hills company manufacturing items ranging from roof beams to classroom products, needed a milling and cutting site, and Newell got the nod.”It was the quickest community to have a place for us, and the most welcoming,” says owner Alan Aker. The friendly attitude also won over K-J Leathers, which moved into a downtown building to manufacture high-quality chaps, chinks, saddlebags and tack. Rodeo competitors and working cowboys and cowgirls throughout the West know K-J Leather products well.

Newell’s community leaders have aggressively recruited small industry, and the resulting jobs have kept the town’s population stable at about 650, bucking rural trends.

A Newell industry that predates the economic development corporation is Boom Concrete. Founded by Newell native Craig Van Der Boom in 1964, the company earned a reputation for its cement stave silos sold across South Dakota. Now Craig’s son, Troy, runs the company, well respected today for its virtually indestructible picnic tables and rock-exterior restrooms found at South Dakota’s state parks and recreation areas.

Other businesses and services that are key employers include the school district, Butte Electric Cooperative and the irrigation district. Residents have always commuted into Black Hills communities for work, too. Positions at Fort Meade Veterans Administration Hospital, 25 minutes down Highway 79, are especially attractive. Newell’s population is about 650, and Vollmer and Wetz say that figure has held pretty steady over the past 20 years.

Summer visitors pass through town for boating and fishing at the reservoir. There’s little evidence that irrigation boosters 100 years ago saw much potential for recreation on the waters, but it’s been a huge economic boost over the years. People ask for directions to Orman, always the dam’s unofficial and locally preferred name; it refers to a Colorado contractor who got the original bid for the big government project. Officially the name remains Belle Fourche Dam.

Newell has always been able to attract area farmers and ranchers looking to retire in town. Once in a while someone from far away — drawn to Orman for boating, perhaps, or just driving down highways 212 or 79 — decides to make Newell home, too.”They’re people looking for a laid-back way of life and for safety,” Vollmer says.

“What attracts them in the summertime is our green lawns and gardens, and our trees,” adds Wetz.”Because of the irrigation district, we look a little different than some towns in western South Dakota.”

Newell homeowners can access irrigation waters, piped through town, for just $3 a month. One retired rancher told Wetz he spent his whole life”trying to grow grass on the prairie, and now I have to mow the damn stuff.”

One of Newell’s most pleasant amenities is its nine-hole golf course, on the town’s north side. Irrigation waters have been put to creative use; golfers tee off and putt alongside the waters of a small dam. Writing a town history for Newell’s centennial in 2010, Wetz was surprised to learn that golfers have played at that spot since 1910.”We were golfing before we had electricity,” he observes.

Fall is a busy time in Newell, beginning with a Labor Day celebration that’s featured a rodeo the past 55 years. It may be the world’s only rodeo to showcase sheep tipis. As veteran sheep producers know, a tipi in their industry is a tent that shelters a ewe and new lamb in case of bad weather on the prairie, or forces ewe and lamb togetherness when a ewe rejects her lamb. The timed rodeo event involves teams of two people, one who erects the tipi and the other who collects the animals and gets them into the tent.

“We call our rodeo the sheep tipi-ing world’s championship,” Vollmer says.

The Newell Ram Show attracts ranchers from four states. Photo by Greg Latza.

In some ways Labor Day feels like a warm-up for the big Newell Ram Show and Sale, always held the third Friday in September. First organized by community leaders in 1946, the event has succeeded in meeting its original goal: improving sheep flocks in South Dakota and neighboring states by making the best breeding stock available close to home. Consignors show up with high quality stud rams, registered ewes and purebred range rams. Area sheep producers say the show and sale has helped them remain nationally competitive over the years, as they’ve faced fluctuating prices, foreign wool competition and more artificial fibers.

Big as Labor Day and the Ram Show and Sale are, a series of more spontaneous events epitomize Newell. The next time you’re headed to the Hills on Highway 212 and you come upon the town, roll down your windows and sniff the air for pancakes. It’s possible that Newell holds the world’s record for dollars raised per capita by pancakes. Anytime there’s a serious illness or accident involving Newell residents, you can count on the Lions Club to stage a free will donation pancake supper. You can also count on seeing the omnipresent Vollmer and Wetz flipping the cakes. There are big pancake dollars behind a community ambulance, and behind the building that houses the ambulance.

“Those suppers have been happening for years,” Vollmer says,”and people keep coming, responding to whatever need Newell has.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Where’s the Beef?

By Fran Hill

Our farm isn’t home to cattle or hogs. We feed lambs. South Dakota ranks fifth in U.S. sheep production, and my husband is one of those producers. Roughly 10,000 lambs per year are fattened in our feedlot, and a couple of them usually end up in my freezer.

I didn’t always cook with lamb. It wasn’t something that I grew up eating. The first time Hubs brought home a package of ground lamb, he told me to use it as I would hamburger. As I browned it up one evening to make chili, the pungent aroma made it clear that it was not beef. Lamb has a distinctive flavor that is delicious when prepared properly, but chili isn’t really its thing.

Greek-Style Lamb Burgers showcase the unique character of ground lamb. Garlic, shallots, and mint enhance the lamb, and the resulting burgers are mouthwatering. Tzatziki is a creamy traditional topping, along with thinly sliced red onions and tomatoes and crumbled feta cheese. Each bite is delectable.

I will never give up great beef cheeseburgers, but grilled lamb burgers are a summer tradition in our home, and I hope that you give it a try with some outstanding American lamb.

When prepared properly, ground lamb burgers are just as tasty as traditional beef.

Greek-Style Lamb Burgers

2 slices whole grain bread, crusts removed and cubed

2 tablespoons milk

1/4 cup shallots, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon mint, finely chopped

1 teaspoon dried oregano

kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

1 pound ground lamb

olive oil

Preheat grill.

Moisten bread with milk in a bowl.

Mash to form a paste, and combine with shallots, garlic, mint, oregano, salt and pepper; mix well.

Add the ground lamb and carefully combine. Do not over mix, or burgers will be tough.

Form into 4 to 6 burgers patties.

Drizzle patties with olive oil and rub to coat.

Grill patties, about 4 minutes on each side.

Serve on a toasted bun (or in a pita pocket) with crumbled feta, thinly sliced red onion and tomato and tzatziki. (Serves 4-6)

Tzatziki

2 cups sour cream or plain Greek yogurt

1 seedless cucumber, grated and squeezed dry

2 cloves garlic, grated with microplane

2 tablespoons olive oil

kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons fresh mint, finely chopped

Combine all ingredients.

Cover and chill for about an hour for flavors to blend.

Fran Hill has been blogging about food at On My Plate since October of 2006. She, her husband and their three dogs ranch near Colome.

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The Chislic Circle

By Rich Preheim

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2005 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

“A lot of people don’t even ask what the specials are; they just want chislic,” said Melissa Svartoein. Svartoein worked at Papa’s Restaurant in Freeman when she was a student at the University of South Dakota.

Open a map of South Dakota, place the point of a protractor on Freeman, on U.S. Highway 81 a couple of inches north of Yankton, and draw a circle with a radius representing about 30 miles. That is the Chislic Circle, the home of a culinary curiosity.

If you live there —- maybe in Marion or Menno, Parker or Parkston —- you probably are acquainted with chislic, a simple dish of bite-sized chunks of sheep meat on wooden skewers, deep-fat fried or grilled. Other parts of the world may have their kebabs of mutton and other meats, but chislic seems distinctive to southeastern South Dakota.

For decades a mainstay at cafes, bars, fairs and celebrations, it historically has been enhanced only by salt or garlic salt and served with saltines and, if you are so inclined, washed down with a cold beer. Recent years have seen the introduction of chislic in various marinades and with various sauces.

However it’s prepared, chislic sells. Papa’s Restaurant in Freeman serves up to 3,000 chislic sticks a week. Rachel Svartoein, whose grandfather sold chislic at a corner store south of Freeman for many years, provided 1,200 sticks for her high school graduation reception. At Marion’s 125th anniversary, the Jaycees sold 4,000 sticks on the first night. The chislic stand at the Turner County Fair in Parker sold 40,000 in 2004.

Chislic is simply an unquestioned thread in certain community fabrics; yet it remains a mystery meal, its origins unsure. Even theories and myths are difficult to find.”I know there are sheep in other places, so why chislic is popular here and not there, I don’t know,” said Papa’s co-owner Susan Letcher.

Even some sheep producers outside the area know little about chislic.”Ask people in Aberdeen, they’ve never heard of it,” said Bill Aeschlimann, a Hurley farmer who is active in national and regional sheep associations.”Ask people in Rapid City, they don’t have a clue.” Attempts to sell chislic have flopped at the Sturgis bike rally because nobody knew what it was.

Scant historical accounts suggest that chislic was introduced in Freeman at least 100 years ago by Russian immigrant businessman John Hoellwarth. But that’s about all anyone knows.”All I can tell you is my dad tells the story how his father, on a day for celebration would buy a couple of young lambs for 50 cents a piece and make chislic,” said grandson Robert Hoellwarth, a retired physician in Vallejo, Calif.

The Hoellwarths arrived in Hutchinson County in the 1870s from the Crimea of southern Russia, a region where”shashlyk,” cubes of skewered beef, lamb or pork, were grilled over an open fire. Chislic probably evolved from shashlyk, according to Darra Goldstein, editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture and food editor of Russian Life magazine. But she and other food experts are not familiar with the South Dakota version.

Whatever its origin, chislic is a distinguishing feature of southeastern South Dakota. Aeschlimann, who has sold it at the Turner County Fair for 20 years, had his first chislic stand at Hurley’s centennial in 1983.”We knew there would be lots of people coming back,” he said.”And what would they think of from their childhood? Chislic.”

Jake Huber ran a chislic stand in Freeman on summer Saturday nights during the 1930s and’40s, days when farm families came to town for shopping and socializing.”There was such a tremendous amount of people in town on Saturday nights, it didn’t take long to sell out,” said his daughter Nita Engbrecht of Marion.

The whole family prepared the chislic and cleaned up late Saturday night. Engbrecht’s job, which the health department might frown upon today, was collecting the used skewers, which her father fashioned from bamboo.”Those sticks had to be boiled, dried out and used again and again,” she said.

Among Huber’s patrons was Bill Gering, then a teenaged farm boy. But chislic was not new to him. Several farmers owned a threshing machine together, and when harvest was done, everybody gathered to celebrate.”The men figured out who owed who,” Gering said. Then everybody ate chislic and homemade ice cream.

In Freeman, residents bring out-of-town guests to Papa’s to introduce them to chislic.”Most people like it,” Letcher said.”If they’re here a second night, they come back and have it again.” Papa’s serves five varieties: original, barbecue, lemon pepper, garlic and even one marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and soy sauce. But the original recipe remains most popular, Letcher said. But regardless of how it’s cooked, mutton on a stick remains popular in the Chislic Circle.

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A Sheepherder Named Gilfillan

By Paul Hennessey

Archie Gilfillan rented a log cabin in Spearfish which he called “The Shepherd’s Paradise.”

Archie Gilfillan was South Dakota’s sagebrush philosopher. His prairie wit entertained people in the ranching areas of Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and South Dakota through the Great Depression.

He talked at colleges, high schools, livestock conventions and smoky bar rooms, giving neighbors and friends a chuckle or two during hard times. Public speaking seems an unlikely sideline for a man who spent 20 years as a lonely sheepherder in northwest South Dakota.

Perhaps even more ironic, however, is the fact that Gilfillan authored one of the funniest and most introspective works on early 20th century West River life. Sheep: Life on the South Dakota Range remains in print even today. Stories from the book are told and retold, especially in the bar rooms and kitchen tables of Harding County where he spent his sheepherding days.

Archer Gilfillan was born Feb. 25, 1886, in White Earth, Minn., where his father served as an Episcopal missionary. In 1898 the family moved to Washington, D.C., after Archie’s father suffered a nervous and physical breakdown.

During his teenage summers, Archie worked on farms in Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. He grew to like the farm animals, especially sheep. He claimed to have bought a sheep for $3 when he was a youngster and the animal was sold for $6, along with the wool, just one year later. He invested the $6 in three more ewes and sold them for $18.

Years later he wrote,”While I had never been especially good at mathematics, it seemed to me that 100 percent a year was a pretty good return on an investment and that if I could keep it up regularly I ought to be worth quite a bit some day. So I bought as many ewes as I had money for, and left them, supposedly, on shares, with a neighboring farm woman who had a few sheep of her own.”

But the woman mailed him a check for just $10, claiming the pasture bill ate up the rest of his investment.”I learned about women from her,” he wrote.”I was wiped out. But while women are men’s ineradicable weakness, sheep are not; and it was many a year before I again took up the trail of the Golden Hoof.”

He started high school in 1902, two years late because he suffered from typhoid fever and traveled Europe for two years with two aunts while he recovered.

He wore glasses and was short and stout. Sensitive about his height and roly-poly appearance, he avoided sports. An inferiority complex seemed to haunt him all his life, but he maintained a friendly, good-natured personality.

Archie graduated from high school in 1906 as an honor student. He started at Amherst College but transferred to the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with an emphasis in Latin and Greek in 1910. Archie enjoyed debate and excelled in most of his courses.

After graduation he followed his dream west to South Dakota where he worked on a ranch near the Black Hills. Big cattle ranches of the free grass era had just gone out of business and little people with big dreams were arriving to homestead. Archie caught the”free land” bug and decided to homestead in Harding County near Slim Buttes. He raised sheep but never seemed to find the rhythm of buying low and selling high. In three years he gave up ranching and decided to follow in the ministerial footsteps of his father and grandfather.

For three years he attended Western Theological Seminary in Chicago, an Episcopalian institution. On the day before graduation he had a change of heart and dropped out of school to join the Catholic Church.

Gilfillan’s sheepherder’s wagon is now on exhibit at the Dakota Discovery Museum in Mitchell.

Archie returned to Harding County. For two years he herded sheep on ranches with small flocks. In 1916 he hired out to Almon”Al” Dean and herded sheep for him until 1932.

During those 16 years, Gilfillan developed a problem with alcohol. When Dean caught him in a wagon drunk, he moved him to the home ranch to do chores. Such confined quarters were unbearable to Archie and he took another herding job at a neighbor’s ranch in the spring of 1933. He soon retired from the sheep business and rented a log cabin in Spearfish. He named the cabin Shepherd’s Paradise.

He had kept a diary in cipher, a system of secret writing based on a key, for eight years and four months starting in December of 1924 when he was 38. During those years he filled 9,010 pages of standard letter-size paper.

The diary was later transcribed by John Jenson, rare book librarian at the University of Minnesota, after Emily Heilman, Archie’s sister, donated the work to the university.

Gilfillan claimed that he never failed to make a daily entry in his diary but some days are missing. Perhaps the wind grabbed a page occasionally when the sheep wagon door opened. Some of the jottings were reportedly not meant for public consumption because they contained juicy gossip about the pioneering families of the northwest.

Information from the diary filled the pages of his book Sheep, which was published in 1929 by Little and Brown Co. after being rejected by several other publishers. It sold for $2.50. Gilfillan received 10 percent and he voiced the writer’s lament that the publisher gets 80 percent while the writer gets peanuts.

Gilfillan said his first royalty check should have been about $600 but he gave away too many books so the publisher subtracted $200.

In his diary, he was extremely frank about his day-to-day life. His book reveals a sheepherder’s western humor and philosophy that can only be fully appreciated by readers who understands sheep or people.

He never stopped learning, and he devoured books. At one time, he subscribed to 15 magazines and claimed to have a library of 500 books.”Even if a herder does not particularly care for reading, he will be driven to it in self-defense,” he wrote.

Reading was more than a pastime, he quipped.”If the herder on an intensely cold day can get interested in a good story, it will serve to take his mind off his other troubles, such as how much colder his feet will have to get before they crack and break off, and whether the sun is really standing still, or whether that is merely an optical illusion.”

Gilfillan wrote in an earthy, irreverent style. He detested arrogance in writing or talking. In reference to Mary Austin’s book, The Flock, he said that she never used a word in its right meaning if she could distort another to take its place. Of course while writing a book about sheep it would be impossible to avoid profanity. If it answered a question or released pent up frustration, Archie could curse but he never condoned vulgarity in any form.

Sheep was reprinted in 1930, 1936, and 1956 and 1957. Gilfillan complained that he never did find out how many copies were sold in the first two printings. In recent years, it has been reprinted by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

During his years as a sheepherder, Gilfillan suffered many hardships including lightning, cloud bursts, floods, blizzards, rattlesnakes, wolves, coyotes and two-legged camp robbers. Once, as a tornado approached, he was forced to seek shelter in an old well.

Gilfillan had other challenges in life. Card games, especially poker, were his downfall. He liked to socialize and always found an excuse for a drink. Unfortunately, he never seemed to realize that cards and whiskey did not mix. Al Dean let him borrow on future wages to pay off his debts and the Ivy League sheepherder was always overdrawn.

In 1924 Gilfillan gave a talk to the Woolgrowers Association at Helena, Montana. He caught everyone by surprise with an outstanding, well-informed speech he called The Secret Sorrows of a Sheepherder. He never gave his name so he remained unknown for several years in spite of efforts in Montana to identify him.

His three secret sorrows were sheepmen who didn’t know as much about sheep as the herder, cowboys who got all the glory while the sheepherder was looked down upon, and women who wanted to be substitute sheepherders.

He maintained that women were ill-equipped for the occupation.”The truth is that in many respects they are unsuited to the work,” he wrote.”With no more than a discreet allusion to the three quickest means of communication, can you really picture a woman engaging in an occupation which would leave her more or less in the dark with regard to the doings of even her immediate neighbors?”

Language would be an even bigger problem, he thought.”There are frequent occasions in herding when the feelings seethe in the herder’s bosom like white-hot steam in an engine boiler. His anguish finds vent in language that he has picked up at odd times around garages, stables, poker games and from autoists who were changing tires. Women, not having frequented these places, would be at a distinct disadvantage.”

Gilfillan liked women. He just didn’t think they should be sheepherders. But he disdained cowboys.”Is there any intrinsic reason why the man who takes care of cattle should be a romantic, half-mythical figure, while the man who takes care of sheep is either a joke or anathema?” he wrote in Sheep.

Gilfillan argued that the sheepherder was superior to the cowboy because he was his own boss most of the time while the cowboy”may be able to carry more than one day’s orders in his head, but he seldom has the opportunity of proving it.”

In spite of that, he acknowledged that,”every kid in the range country looks forward to the day when he can get hold of hair pants, a ten-gallon hat, a Miles City saddle and a pair of big spurs, and then cultivate a bow-legged walk and hire out to a cattleman.”

Gilfillan gave a commencement address at Buffalo on May 22, 1930, and the graduating seniors enjoyed his sharp, western wit. He quipped,”I have the suspicion that Prof. Chanson has asked me to appear before these graduates to serve as a warning, so that they can see what may happen to them if they do not watch their step and be just a little bit careful.”

The herder-author often referred to himself as a Phi Beta Kappa gone wrong. The Gilfillans were a literary family. Archie’s grandfather wrote The Origin of Sin. He surmised that it was not a commercial success because people are more interested in their daily practice of sin than finding its origin.

Archie’s father, a minister like his grandfather, wrote an unsuccessful book trying to restrain people from seeking what they wanted. S.C. Gilfillan, Archie’s brother, wrote books, too, and his nieces also enjoyed writing.

At Spearfish, Gilfillan became a freelance writer for several South Dakota newspapers but money was scarce. In 1936 he published A Shepherd’s Holiday. It was 52 stories collected from his newspaper articles and published at Custer.

Late in life, he also authored A Goat’s Eye View of the Black Hills, with assistance from longtime friend Hoadley Dean of Rapid City. He retold many legends of the South Dakota mountain towns, adding his personal perspectives and a big dose of his dry humor.

He also explained in the book why he remained a bachelor.”You profess sincere and unbounded admiration for the beauties of the opposite sex and you practically lay your heart at their collective feet; and then you meet some individual who combines the poorer qualities of a mama wildcat and a bitch wolf, with a voice like a buzz saw, the temper of a slapped hornet, and a disposition that would curdle the milk in four adjoining counties. And then you have to revise your opinion of the sex all over again ññ and downward.” In short, he never met a woman he liked who would have him as a husband.

The Great Depression spread across South Dakota before local writers heard about the Federal Writer’s Project (FWP) being promoted by Eleanor Roosevelt. Unemployed writers were hired to interview old-timers, search files and records, collect folklore, and preserve the history, culture and contemporary life of American communities.

The project was considered a work program and no one expected it to produce anything of lasting value. Today, the books and material these men gathered and wrote are valuable treasures. M. Lisle Reese, a talented Montana native, was hired as director of South Dakota’s Federal Writers Project and he hired Gilfillan as his assistant.

He stayed until the project ended in the spring of 1942. For the next seven years he worked at the Black Hills Ordinance Depot at Provo (Igloo). He wrote for the Igloo Magazine, did clerical work and served as librarian. When that job ended in 1949 he moved to Deadwood. In failing health, he lived in retirement.

When Gilfillan retired to Deadwood, he stayed at the Wagner Hotel. He usually sat on a straight back chair and read a book or walked along Deadwood streets, visiting with his neighbors.

While enjoying a walk on December 17, 1955, he dropped to the sidewalk. He had moved on to greener pastures.

Family and friends buried the old sheepherder at Belle Fourche. But Gilfillan’s bad luck continued even in death. They buried him beside two great cowboys, Paul Bernard and Joe LaFlamme.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is revised from the Nov/Dec 1996 issue of South Dakota Magazine. Paul Hennessey was teacher, and also worked as a private investigator on the West Coast. Hennessey knew Archer Gilfillan during the sheepherder’s years at Igloo. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.