Venison Chislic

Venison Chislic

Author: Prairie Public January 17, 2026 Duration: 4:12
It’s the best week of the year for our two dogs when I’m breaking down quarters of venison in the kitchen. It’s good for their keepers, too, for as with many prairie households, venison becomes our primary protein in winter. We have a great variety of venison dishes, some of which are time-consuming, but when we want something quick and simple, with ties to the traditional culinary culture of the region, there’s an easy answer: chislic.

The written essays of historian Tom Isern, long enjoyed in regional newspapers, find a new voice in the Plains Folk podcast from Prairie Public. This isn't a sweeping historical documentary, but a series of intimate, thoughtful commentaries rooted in the everyday rhythms and deep memories of the North Dakota plains. Each episode feels like a conversation with a neighbor who has spent a lifetime observing and cherishing the details that define a place-the shared meal of a fall supper, the weathered boards of a homestead, the collective energy of a barn dance. The podcast moves beyond geography to explore the intangible character of the region, asking what it means to live and persist here. Listening, you'll hear stories that connect the past to the present, finding the extraordinary within the ordinary landscape. It’s a quiet celebration of the patterns, traditions, and people that shape this particular corner of the world, offering a gentle reminder that a sense of place is built from countless small, enduring things. The Plains Folk podcast provides a regular moment of reflection on the culture and society of the plains, one carefully crafted story at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 35

Plains Folk
Podcast Episodes
The Plains I Love [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:12
So I think the main reason my friends in McIntosh County invited me down to speak at their chokecherry festival this year was that a few years ago, I wrote a little ballad called “The Chokecherry Song.”
Chokecherry Adventures [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 5:03
I’ve been describing the community culture of berry-picking that emerged during the 1880s, focusing first on juneberries and then on chokecherries. Wagon caravans carried townsfolk, particularly young people, into the co…
Young Folks Are Busy Picking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:22
Our unfortunately named native black charry, the chokecherry, has become a festive feature of life on the northern plains. In recent years the Grafton Farmers Market and the McIntosh County Heritage Center have initiated…
America 250 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:27
There’s a sense across the country that we have made a dog’s breakfast of the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of American independence. I don’t wish to sugar-coat past developments, but I remember 1976 pretty well—perha…
The Dakotas [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:16
Not a native of the Flickertail State, nevertheless, in the course of decades, I have acquired a complex of defensive sensitivities about it. Phrases like “Flyover Country” and “Buffalo Commons” stir the little hairs on…
Our Ability to See Places [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:51
In my mail appears a thoughtful gift, a book, inscribed to me by one of the authors: The Missouri: America’s Longest River, edited by Jon K. Lauck and published by the Center for Western Studies, Augustana University. Th…
Homesteading Virtues [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:36
It says something about me as a historian that I am preoccupied with the origins of things. I mean, I seldom just launch into an abstract investigation into something in the past from which I am disconnected. I begin wit…
Cowboys and Indians [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:49
A half-century ago—actually, a little more than that—I charted my course as a professional historian by choosing to specialize in Western Americana. Keep in mind, I was studying at a western land grant university that ha…
Tractors on the Wrong Road [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:51
I know I used to have one, but it’s disappeared, along with the cause it celebrated—one of those old black-mesh American Agriculture ball caps. I thought about it this week as I was working up, for a historical journal,…
The Chapeau de Morès [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:36
In sublime overview of the valley of the Little Missouri River, in the Badlands of North Dakota, stands a simple but elegant residence from the 1880s known as the Chateau de Morès. As a historian, I have a little bit of…