Montana Farmers Union Magazine Winter

Winter 2024

Montana Farmers Union Magazine

Agritourism Makes the Farm Itself a Commodity PG 13 Find Local Food in the Winter PG 24 Significantly Reduce Input Costs by Implementing Just One Practice PG 39

Welcome to

Montana Farmers Union Magazine Winter means a welcome time to rest and reflect in anticipation of the next season.

Still, equipment needs to be maintained, bookwork needs to be caught up on, shop projects wait, and animals must be fed and watered.

Much like farm work, the magazine goes through lulls that give us space to plan and then flurries of activity to make deadlines. Also like farm work, there’s always something to do.

Each edition, we ponder what members have shared with us – what you’re excited about, the challenges you need support to face, and your steady work to make dreams reality.

We fill these pages with your stories so you can be inspired by each other, learn from each other, celebrate with each other, and continue to build the Montana Farmers Union community with each other.

In this winter edition, be inspired by work toward food sovereignty and how cooperatives are helping communities face challenges; learn about winter grazing, forcing bulbs, and agritourism efforts in the state; celebrate communities taking strides to remain vibrant; and try out some of the pantry-friendly recipes shared by staff members.

We invite you to connect with the MFU community beyond these pages too through your regional Membership Ambassador or through one of many upcoming events, including MFU’s Women’s Conferences Feb. 2-4 and Feb. 9-11, Book Club, or educational programming available online and in person.

Make sure to sign up for the weekly e-news Boot Up by emailing communications@ montanafarmersunion.com so you don’t miss hearing about exciting scholarship and grant opportunities, educational programming, events and more!

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CONTENTS Winter 2024 WELCOME 2 PRESIDENTS MESSAGE 4 ENCOURAGING CURIOSITY & GROWING CONNECTION 6 CONNECTING CHILD CARE & RESOURCES IN MONTANA 9 SUCCESSION & TRANSFER PLANNING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION 10 SMALL TOWN, BIG HEART 12 AGRITOURISM MAKES THE FARM ITSELF A COMMODITY 13 FARM 2 TABLE 19 WHERE TO FIND LOCAL FOOD IN MONTANA DURING THE WINTER 24 FOOD SAFETY & TRANSPARENCY IS MAKING A COMEBACK 26 GETTING BACK TO MONTANA ROOTS 29 SENTENCE GRANTS CELEBRATE 4-H CLUBS WORK 31 FIELD NOTES 32 INDOOR GARDENING 36 SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE INPUT COSTS BY IMPLEMENTING JUST ONE PRACTICE 38 STOLTZ NAMED NEWEST MFU BOARD MEMBER 42 NEWS FROM THE HILL 43 RURAL WOMEN LEADING AG & OUR COMMUNITIES 45

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Message from

the President

by MFU President Walter Schweitzer Will Downs served MFU as a board member for seven years. In the very classy and responsible way that Will does everything, he informed the board he would be resigning a full year before his term ended, which gave us time to encourage other leaders in his district to run and ensured a smooth transition. Will resigned because he has two pre-school aged children, a growing farming and spraying business, and he serves as chair for the Conservation District in his area. His area experienced devastating flooding in 2022 and the work of distributing federal disaster assistance money for recovery efforts has been and continues to be time consuming. Will may have ended his service on our board, but he said he will always be a member.

The importance of having a strong and vocal organization is more important than ever to serve the family farms and ranches in Montana. Will’s service to family and community will continue, and he is yet another example of the saying: “If you want something done, ask the busiest person in town.”

Interestingly, when Will resigned, one message he wanted to convey was his gratitude to Herb Vasser and John Wendland, two members of MFU who welcomed him when he decided to attend a meeting and encouraged him to become involved. The value of small gestures of kindness, encouragement, and guidance can be the difference between someone like Will Downs attending only one meeting verses becoming engaged through involvement and service. Hopefully, the examples that Herb Vasser and John Wendland embodied are alive and well today, and members feel welcomed and encouraged.

Every board member brings their unique strengths to the board, and although Will had many strengths, he definitely enjoyed policy. He often took a leading role in shaping and drafting our special orders of business, which highlight the policy at the forefront for the year. Serving on a board provides access to the inner workings of an organization, an opportunity to learn and strategize, and gain new perspective. Will enjoyed this, and when my wife served as a lobbyist before I was president, she said Will was one of the board members she depended on the most for direction on various bills.

There are more board openings in MFU’s future. Two members have said they will not run again. One retiring member is in his 80s and has served decades. The other, in addition to farming, has a demanding off-farm engineering job and family and has no time. The election will be next Fall. The requirement for service on the MFU board is that a candidate must be an agriculture producer and an MFU member for three years or more. Board members are compensated with per diem and reimbursement of expenses. If you have interest in serving, it isn’t too early to let me know. And if you’re a member who sees potential in someone, encourage them.

I would encourage any interested member to attend a meeting to get a better feel for what the job entails. Current board members are like Will Downs. They are passionate, motivated, interesting people. Service can be invigorating and informative.

For example, at a recent meeting, in addition to regular business, we heard from a supporter of a Constitutional Initiative and could ask questions and get clarity.

Prior to becoming president of MFU, I had served on several other boards. I served on those boards because they interested me, but when I ran for president, that past service was a valuable resume booster and valuable experience for running meetings.

I had not anticipated ever running for president so certainly didn’t serve to boost a resume, but unless your life is perfectly mapped out, and you have no surprises, board service is also a great resume booster for your future. Will Downs is still a young man, and his resume would be an impressive one that could open future, unknown, opportunities for him. I would not be at all surprised if Will is someday president of MFU, but for now he is focused on raising the next generation of Farmers Union members.

Pictured left: Will Downs and family

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MONTANA FARMERS UNION PO BOX 2447 300 RIVER DRIVE NORTH, STE 1 GREAT FALLS MT 59403 PHONE: (406) 452-6406 1-800-234-4071 FAX: (406) 727-8216 mfu@montanafarmersunion.com www.montanafarmersunion.com Board of Directors: Walter Schweitzer, President Rollie Schlepp, Vice President, Conrad Jan Tusick, Secretary/Treasurer, District 6, Ronan Erik Somerfeld, District 2, Power Jeff Bangs, At-Large Director, District 1 & 2, Inverness Tom Clark, District 1, Fort Benton Brett Dailey, District 4, Jordan Trent Stoltz, District 5, Pompey’s Pillar Ben Peterson, At-Large Director, Judith Gap Sig Rudie, At-Large Director, District 3 & 4, Fairview Sarah Degn, District 3, Sidney

Montana Farmers Union is the oldest & largest family farm organization in the state who represents family farmers & ranchers.

MFU is working for family farms, ranches, rural communities, & supports its members through: strong education programs for both youth and adults, advocating member-driven policies & legislation at the state and federal level, & cooperation through producer-owned co-ops.

MFU Staff: Walter Schweitzer, President Matt Rains, Chief of Staff Jan Johnson, Office Mgr., Assistant Secretary/ Treasurer Kari Kester, Administrative Assistant Rachel Prevost, Government Affairs Director/ Member Svcs.

Matthew Hauk, Education Director Heather Wendell, Communications Director Jasmine Krotkov, Lobbyist Alice Miller, Press Relations Specialist Samantha Ferrat, Membership Ambassador Eleanor Dutton, Membership Ambassador Carissa McNamara, Membership Ambassador Mary Jenni, Membership Ambassador Skylar Williams, Membership Ambassador Jeri Copenhaver, Membership Ambassador Copyright © Montana Farmers Union, 2024 MFU Magazine is the official publication of the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Montana Division.

MFU reserves the right to reject any advertisements.

Membership: $50.00 per year Montana Farmers Union Magazine is published quarterly.

Copy Editor: Alice Miller, Jan Johnson & Heather Wendell 5

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Encouraging Curiosity

Growing Connection

By Alice Miller, MFU Press Relations Specialist

Becca Skinner is shown in the food forest she manages on her Gallatin Gateway subdivision lot.

The tall grass, vines, and ducks surely need corralling at Becca Skinner’s Gallatin Valley subdivision lot.

But those who look closer realize the out-of-place things are perfectly in place in the food forest on the property. The pollinators need the taller grass, the vines will be laden with grapes, and the ducks keep pests at bay.

Among the layers of plants and trees, curiosity is found, along with a little magic.

“I think it’s actually wonderment. It’s like you walk into the garden and there’s a six-foot-tall rhubarb plant, and you’re like how does this exist? And that’s how I feel when I walk through there,” Skinner said. “What is happening in the food forest is wonderful in all senses of the word, but it just feels so different, specifically different in that it makes you curious. It’s a full sensory experience to be in there.”

In the garden, plants are staggered and intermixed, mimicking ecosystems and patterns found in nature. The organized chaos teaches that things can be just right without being the way you thought they would be.

“That is such a beautiful thing to introduce to people, that it doesn’t have to look like you’ve seen it before,” Skinner said.

Skinner herself has well learned the lesson over the past five years.

The National Geographic photographer and rock climber who grew up in Colorado and Wyoming and has a background in social work didn’t see herself settled down managing the day to day of a food forest in Montana.

She worried about being bored when she put down roots after meeting her husband Eduardo Garcia, a celebrity chef who started the garden with a permaculture advisor before she met him. “Her departure and my curiosity met at the same time, and I ended up really falling in love with it.”

Sure, life is slower, but the days are full of tasks to ensure that the food forest, which is comprised of 95% perennial plants and trees, continues to thrive. There’s weeding, mulching, watering, harvesting, preserving, and planning – and implementing – what’s next.

Sometimes what’s next is planning to sheet mulch a bed for weed suppression to then plant with garlic to use in Eduardo’s chef work. Sometimes it’s building whimsical wattle fences to keep the ducks focused on slugs. Sometimes it’s the deep discussions about the best way to honor the natural systems in place while making changes.

The enormity of flexibility a slower pace provides is not lost on Skinner.

When she and one of her coworkers both lost their beloved dogs within months of each other, the women used one of the garden beds to plant a grief garden, working through their sorrow as their hands worked the soil.

“Having the community while working in the garden – about grief specifically – has been a way that I could deal with what was happening in this beautiful, beneficial way,” Skinner said.

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To be clear, slow and intentional does not mean stagnant.

Although she’s been working in the garden about five years, Skinner still remembers the days of wandering through with a notebook to catalogue the plants.

“I could not figure out how to remember everything, but the more I started working in there, the less everything looked all the same and the more it looked like just an incredible ecosystem all working together,” she said.

This fall, she meandered through, introducing the plants, flowers, and trees like old friends with a shared experience.

There’s the grief garden that has helped bring peace. The ducks eat slugs, but also provide joy and laughter to the people working in the garden. Field peas provide food and weed suppression. Bees provide pollination and honey.

For all the planning and constant weeding, nothing is ever the same. Everything is a learning opportunity.

“It’s just such a constant learning curve,” Skinner said. “And I appreciate that in farming there’s some forgiveness for yourself in knowing that it’s going to be another year until you can try something different. I appreciate that scale of learning.”

Through it all, curiosity is a driver, from agreeing to learn and take over managing the garden to considering how to grow it and the curiosity it fosters.

“It just feels so good when it’s being shared, so I think that’s where we’ve gone to. We want to grow wider instead of bigger,” she said, adding she and Eduardo are looking at agritourism opportunities.

Pre-COVID, a youth empowerment group came to help, even getting a chance to cook some of the potatoes they harvested.

“That was really inspiring to us to try and figure out how to work more with the community,” Skinner said.

Sharing feels right and exciting. Encouraging curiosity builds more understanding and ultimately community. Sometimes it’s as simple as sending friends’ kids to pick raspberries for dessert. Other times it takes months of planning.

Soon, she and Eduardo plan to offer chicken butchery classes with a culinary aspect. The project’s been months in the making to ensure people enjoy it but that it also allows room for people to decide it’s not for them while still building appreciation for the work.

“If producers can give consumers a glimpse into it, then I think it opens the door to more interest, which is something I think all of us want,” she said.

She herself didn’t have much connection to food despite volunteering for a farmer in exchange for a CSA box before the food forest. Now, she understands food’s value is measured in time, effort, and love.

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Continued from previous page “The gravity of it feels so much greater, and I think I also feel that when I eat other farmers’ food,” she said.

Others can appreciate that value too – through connection and community that agriculture provides.

“I love the idea of community in agriculture and how they go so hand in hand,” she said, thinking back to her formative years in Wyoming.

“The community was at the heart of what propelled a lot of things forward,” she remembered.

One can’t help but draw a parallel between the harmonious food forest and the interdependence of rural life.

“In rural places the dependence and commitment that most people make when they live in a rural place is that when your neighbor needs help, you try to help them,” Skinner said.

Left: A hollyhock grows in a food forest run by Becca Skinner near Bozeman. In the garden, plants are staggered and intermixed, mimicking ecosystems and patterns found in nature. Center: Chickens also call the subdivision home. Right: Skinner is pictured in her greenhouse, where she grows herbs, peppers, and more vegetables used both personally and in her husband’s chef work.

In a practical sense, community brings wellness day to day by sharing the load, whether that’s the physical or mental load, Skinner said. “I was just breaking my body trying to keep grass and weeds at bay. We were able to bring on a few people, and that has been incredibly helpful and joyous to be in community in there.”

Not having a community is “a surefire way to burn yourself out and your body out. When you can bring in other people, I think there’s a different feeling when you get to work on something when you get to collaborate with someone else.”

Sharing the garden’s produce is only part of the story. The garden also provides inspiration, not the least of which to Skinner, who said she thrives amid beauty. “I hope that it just rolls someone else forward or myself forward into creating more beautiful spaces.”

No matter what brings people to the garden, seeing the wonder on visitors’ faces is the best part, Skinner said. “That is so joyous for me.”

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Connecting Child Care Resources in Montana

By Rhonda Schwenke, Zero to Five Montana’s Program Director, Alex DuBois, Zero to Five Montana’s Policy and Engagement Manager, and Tracy McIntyre, Executive Director Montana Cooperative Development Center

Child care is essential for all residents of Montana, not just parents of young children facing challenges in accessing and affording care. It is important to understand why this issue should concern everyone, regardless of their own parental status. The impact of lack of child care ripples through our communities, although sometimes it may not be obvious.

Forty percent of Montana businesses say they cannot recruit or retain a qualified workforce because of a lack of child care, with almost 70,000 parents reporting they are not fully participating in the labor force due to this same overwhelming problem.

Whether you’re a business owner, parent, child care provider, or long-time resident, a lack of child care isn’t just a family issue; it’s a community one directly impacting the health and prosperity of our localities and state. Child care as an industry faces numerous challenges, and the biggest one is the broken business model it operates on. Many child care providers feel limited in what they can charge families, basing their prices on what families can afford. Unfortunately, this often means that providers struggle to cover their necessary expenses such as rent, utilities, equipment, food, and, most importantly, fair and livable wages for their staff.

This is why Zero to Five Montana’s Child Care Business Connect exists. Born out of a vision to stabilize the child care system while empowering local leaders and residents, Montana Child Care Business Connect is Montana’s statewide hub for child care business development and innovation. Funded by a generous American Rescue Plan Act grant through the Montana Department of Health and Human Services, Connect supports the success of existing child care providers and inspires entrepreneurs, employers, and communities to find solutions to bolster their child care system locally. Connect offers various services to support its vision, including business advising, professional development, and a specific community capacity building program. The community capacity building program offers both individualized technical assistance, as well as the ability for community teams to participate in a cohort with other teams across the state. This program specifically aims to equip communities with the support and resources they need to come together and make an informed decision on how to improve the child care system locally.

If you want to learn more about Montana Child Care Business Connect and how we can support you and/or your community, visit www.childcarebusinessconnect.com.

In addition to the Connect program, Zero to Five Montana also has partnered with the Montana Cooperative Development Center and other partners to identify, develop, and implement innovative approaches to local child care solutions. MCDC worked over the last two years to develop quality cooperative solutions to Montana’s child care crisis.

MCDC has identified several cooperative models that could be key as local communities work to find their own solutions to their child care needs. A completed child care cooperative toolkit is found on MCDC’s website (https:// mcdc.coop/mcdc-resources) and serves as a guideline for communities wanting to build cooperative solutions.

Cooperatives have and will continue to build successful platforms for communities to address their local needs.

Since the early 1900s Montana has benefited from community members coming together to build cooperatives to bring in electricity, find better markets for agricultural commodities and supplies, improve telecommunication services, and provide quality financial management and access through Credit Unions. Today MCDC is working to continue the strong tradition of cooperative development.

With MCDC assistance, communities are exploring cooperatives to address needs in child care, housing, local investment/capital, worker ownership and more. To learn more about how cooperatives could assist your community, visit MCDC at www.mcdc.coop.

The Connect team is passionate about tailoring their services and resources to the needs of individuals and leaders throughout the state interested in being a part of the child care solution. And it doesn’t just start and stop with Connect. We recognize that while the entire state may face similar child care challenges, the most powerful solutions can only be achieved through one avenue – collaboration.

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Succession and Transfer Planning for the Next Generation of Montana Farmers and Ranchers

By Marsha Goetting, MSU Extension Family Economics Specialist and Kaleena Miller, MSU Extension Agent An important goal for Montana farm/ranch family enterprises is to transfer land and business to the next generation. “The process is challenging because it includes a complex web of economic, legal, and family decisions,” says Marsha Goetting, MSU Extension Family Economics Specialist.

“Some families avoid the process completely and die without a will, trust, or any type of transfer plan in place.

Other families confess they started the process but found they did not want to deal with the conflict that arose because of the differences among members about goals, values and feelings about fairness and equity," says Kaleena Miller, Madison-Jefferson County Extension Agent.

The very first question that needs to be addressed in this process is whether the business is profitable enough to be transferred to the next generation. Families may need to consult with their CPA to help them make this evaluation since emotions may get in the way of making this assessment internally.

A colleague in Minnesota found in her studies of families two types of planning: transfer and succession. Transfer planning includes the legal and economic decisions involved in turning over the ownership of the business, land, and other property to the next generation. Succession planning includes the family decisions involved in managing the value and role conflicts that normally arise when families discuss the transfer of farm/ranch business, land, and other property to the next generation. Problems can arise for both the younger and older generations if the transfer and 10

succession processes never begin.

“In my research in Montana members of the younger generations have shared they find it difficult to start a discussion about the farm/ranch transfer and succession processes. They fear older generations may perceive them as being overly interested in their inheritances.

On the other hand, when members of the older generations bring up the topic, younger generations may not be responsive. They do not want to think about their grandparents or parents dying.

Often there is a certain level of denial involved. That denial can be caused by issues that are hard for individuals to discuss, such as change, money, disability, mental incapacity, or death. Every family also has certain issues that bring strong emotions to the surface or are points of disagreement among various family members. Most family members know what these “hot buttons” are and want to avoid confrontations.

Families who have been through the transfer and succession planning processes suggest starting at an individual level.

Next, the issues need to be discussed at the couple level.

Finally, a discussion needs to be held at the family level for each unit in each generation. If Dad feels it’s particularly important that the farm/ranch remain the family’s possession while Mom is ambivalent, this is an issue that Dad and Mom need to come to an agreement about before they begin succession planning with the next generation.

“Having a farm business meeting about transfer and succession planning can be very frustrating if individual members of the units within the generations have not identified what values and goals are really important to them—first individually and then as a family,” emphasized Goetting.

If members within family units reach agreement about their goals before a discussion at the business level, negotiation often goes more smoothly.

Granted, there still may be times of tension or conflicts about differing values and roles in the family business among the generations. But process will be more effective when all parties have an opportunity to identify and express their needs.

“Families who have worked together in a business for years often think they know what the others’ expectations are, but may never have really asked them,” said Miller. For example, what would be each family member’s responses to these questions?

1. Which child(ren) intends to run the farm/ranch or will be involved in the farm/ranch?

2. Will non-farming/non-ranching children have ownership of significant farm/ranch assets currently owned by the parents?

3. What are the feelings of on-ranch/farm family members compared with off-ranch/farm members about the ownership of the business property?

Because of the strong bonds inherent with the heritage, land and lifestyle, generation transfers are more frequent in agriculture than other business.

When people work together as closely and for as many hours as they do in a farm/ranch operation, disagreements are normal; conflicts are normal, too. However, unresolved conflicts can have major impacts on the long-term success and viability of the farm/ranch operation. They certainly can have repercussions on any transfer plan as well.

Preparing farm/ranch family business members for transfer and succession planning is a part of the older generation’s responsibility to the younger generation. The legal and economic aspects of the transfer plan (transfer planning) are important.

Connectedness among the family business members and the working out of future management strategies (succession planning) is also critical to the success of any transfer plan.

MSU Extension has a publication containing worksheets for each member of the older and younger generations designed to help them focus their thoughts and examine their feelings about succession planning issues. “Transferring Your Farm/ Ranch to the Next Generation” is available from your local MSU Extension Office.

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SMALL TOWN

Big Heart

By Alice Miller, MFU Press Relations Specialist The Hi-Line’s reputation for hard living people in stark conditions is exactly what makes it so special, and what organizers of the Hi-Line Harvest Festival in Chester want to celebrate.

“I want to showcase and show off where I come from because it is a very special place,” said Peyton Cole, who organizes the Hi-Line Harvest Festival.

The two-day event is an opportunity to celebrate each other and the lifeblood of the town’s economy – agriculture.

The event also celebrates the generous spirit of area residents.

Although Cole spearheads the two-day event full of music, activities, and vendors, the community fills in with their talents and time.

“When I ask people to help, the smallest amount matters,” Cole said, adding people have really invested themselves in the event.

People appreciate that the festival celebrates all aspects of their community, from schools to businesses to agriculture to families.

The festival has something for everyone. It’s fun to watch kids build core memories and friendships just like the adults enjoy a shared experience and just like she remembers enjoying community events as a child, Cole said.

“People were like, ‘Holy cow, we didn’t know we needed this,’” Cole said about the reaction after the first festival two years ago.

“They are planning a community-wide conversation in early 2024 to find out what other things the community wants to see happen,” Mastel said.

Other events planned by Reimaging Rural communities include a welcoming event for newcomers in Forsyth, a community connection event in Cut Bank to connect newcomers to existing community organizations, and the Fossil Fun Fest in Rudyard.

The events all have something in common – people stepping up to do something fun and meaningful in their communities.

“It seems like communities plan events for a stated goal like bringing people together or welcoming newcomers, but the results of the gatherings extend beyond the initial goal,” Mastel said.

“Organizers express surprise and delight by the response to the events, and it energizes them and inspires them to take on additional projects,” she added.

Cole said she hopes the Hi-Line festival serves as a reminder of how important small gestures, and gifts of time, and consistent connection are.

People in Chester are a lot like the landscape – hardworking and providing for each other in big and small ways throughout the year, she said.

“I think the festival is a reminder to have pride in where you come from regardless of how hard it is to live there,” Cole said.

Chester isn’t the only community turning to events for connection.

Montana is known for its family farms and ranches and the rural communities where they live. Those rural communities are full of big hearts, dedicated to creating and sustaining thriving places for people to enjoy generations to come.

Tara Mastel, who works with MSU Extension, said communities across the state are choosing to hold festivals or other community gatherings after they participate in Reimagining Rural, a program through Extension aimed at inspiring and motivating volunteers in rural communities.

Montana Farmers Union and Reimagining Rural are two groups working alongside those rural residents. MFU works through education, legislation and cooperation to ensure rural communities are here for the next generation, while Reimagining Rural (through Montana State University Extension) works to inspire and motivate volunteers in rural communities.

For example, Worden's Beef, Beets and Barley began as a way to bring people together to create a sense of community. It has been successful in its goal and in inspiring more community members to become involved.

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Learn more about Reimagining Rural and how to get involved at www.montana.edu/extension/communitydevelopment/reimaginerural.html, or join MFU today at www.montanafarmersunion.com.

Agritourism Makes the Farm Itself a Commodity

By Sherry Devlin

Tamara Robertson’s daughter Cedar stops to smell the flowers grown at Wandering Acres.

Photo by Lauren Kluver Photography

The magnitude of change Tamara Robertson was proposing hit hard when her dad asked his first, quiet question: “Where does the combine fit into all of this?”

And she heard herself reply: “We probably aren’t going to need it anymore.”

In 2020, the extended Haines-Robertson family embarked on a new chapter in their lives on 600 acres of farmland outside of Forsyth. The fourth-generation Haines Ranch became Wandering Acres, a rapidly growing agritourism business that raises and designs flowers for weddings and bouquets.

The family continues to run a small cow/calf operation on the same ground pioneered by their grandfathers, employing modern technologies to improve herd health, adjust grazing rotations to sustain the land, and reduce stress on the animals.

On Tuesdays, they sell and deliver beef to their neighbors.

Traditionally, the Haines Ranch was a spring wheat, winter wheat, and cattle operation. Then Tamara Robertson and her husband and children moved back home to take care of her mom, who passed away in 2017. The Robertsons stayed on, taking jobs in Forsyth and Colstrip, and helping her dad, Ralph Haines Jr., run the farm.

“We had to sit down and decide, how is this ranch and farm life going to look for us?” Tamara said. Ralph Haines always worked a full-time job in town and a second shift on the farm. “We really weren’t willing to work a 9 to 5 and come home and work another 9 to 5,” Tamara said. “But we all wanted to maintain our family’s agricultural tradition.”

Tamara’s dad was ready to hand over management of the farm, if the Robertsons wanted to stay. Tamara and husband Jesse came up with a bold plan. “We decided to get rid of all the spring wheat and winter wheat, and bring in a new crop closer to home,” Tamara said. A neighbor would lease the 600 acres of production farmland for a rotation of alfalfa, barley, and peas.

Then the Robertsons would plant one acre of commercial flowers close to the farmhouse, and Tamara would start a new cut-flower business. She would design and deliver fresh flowers for weddings, weekly bouquets to nearby businesses that bought a growing-season subscription, and would host occasional Wander and Graze nights on the farm. Eventually, they would add a wedding venue.

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Continued from previous page The plan is working. Tamara’s husband still works at Colstrip.

She is the farm manager, running the day-to-day operation and meeting the children’s school bus every afternoon.

“We have enhanced our farm by using today’s technology and yesterday’s common sense to raise quality livestock, beautiful flowers and a growing sense of community around our products,” she said.

Tamara’s Wandering Acres Flower Farm is a shining star in Montana’s burgeoning agritourism industry. She’s proud and happy to share the story; her grandfathers would be too.

Agritourism’s Long History Visiting farms to celebrate the harvest or to experience a rural lifestyle goes way back and to faraway places. Spain and Italy have long promoted their commercial vineyards, lavender yards and olive groves as tourist destinations.

Visitors dine on locally grown food and drink, stay in the area, and shop in nearby towns. Some regions have become so well-known for their wines or cheeses that they’ve protected the names from use by other producers.

Think Champagne and Cognac in France, or Asiago and Gorgonzola in Italy.

In the United States, 19th century travelers often stayed overnight in outbuildings at farms, sometimes trading a day’s work for meals or lodging. Rail and then automobile travel brought urban families to the countryside, eager to experience the more relaxed and pastoral rural lifestyle.

Beginning in the late 1800s, the American West added a new twist on agritourism – although the term had yet to be invented. Some working cattle operations added dude ranches to their business model, attracting wealthy Easterners and Europeans for hunting or sightseeing adventures. By the 1920s, dude ranches were a major tourist attraction in the Rocky Mountain West, selling a slice of life that many imagined but few experienced.

Still, agritourism is a relatively new term, widely misunderstood and largely undefined. A 2018 study by researchers at Oregon State, Rutgers, the University of Vermont and others lamented the confusion surrounding agritourism and its value to farms, ranches, and agricultural communities.

Using a series of concentric circles to create an “agritourism wheel,” the researchers suggested a wide-ranging definition, but invited debate. They wrote: “There is some agreement that agritourism refers to farming-related activities carried out on a working farm or other agricultural settings for entertainment or education purposes.” The controversy, they said, begins when you attempt to define the boundaries and characteristics of agritourism – the setting, types of experiences, and authenticity.

Should strolling through a farmers market be considered agritourism? Is eating a locally sourced steak at a restaurant part of the picture? How about a wedding held on a ranch?

Must agritourism occur only on a working farm?

What is Agritourism?

At Montana State University, Dr. Shannon Arnold is wrestling with those very questions as she and a team of agritourism fellows – a dozen Montana farmers who have diversified their operations to include education, entertainment or outdoor recreation – attempt to define and support agritourism in the Big Sky State.

“Clearly, the core activities are those connected to production agriculture: a corn maze, a U-pick orchard or garden, farm stands, school tours and summer camps,” Arnold said, referring to the 2018 research report. “The peripheral activities lack that direct connection but are important to many agritourism efforts: a wedding or concert venue, a fishing or hunting outfitter.”

Definitions are critical, Arnold explained. What is – and isn’t

Montana Tourism fellows pose outside of Yellowstone Jewel Resort in Miles City in 2023.

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– considered agritourism can affect a producer’s ability to purchase liability insurance for their operation or to apply for tax credits, grant funding or possibly state bed tax/ tourism monies.

Even without a widely accepted definition, though, agritourism is increasing in Montana, according to Arnold, who in 2022 secured a state Department of Agriculture grant to start an agritourism fellowship program to move the industry forward. The fellows and selected experts will present their findings and discuss possible next steps, including formation of an agritourism association, during a May 3, 2024 conference in Bozeman.

According to 2017 census data, about 1,700 of Montana’s 27,048 farms offer agritourism opportunities. That’s 6.5 percent. “There’s so much room for growth,” Arnold said.

“It will be interesting to see how those numbers have changed when we get the most current census. In states that track agritourism more closely, the numbers have been increasing. Post-Covid, the public is traveling and there’s lots of interest in visiting farms and ranches. People Chase, L. C., Stewart, M., Schilling, B., Smith, B., & Walk, M. (2018). Agritourism: want to see where their food comes from; they want to Toward a Conceptual Framework for Industry Analysis. Journal of Agriculture, experience an agricultural lifestyle.”

And they want to see Montana.

After 15 years in agricultural Extension and education at MSU, Arnold is particularly interested in the educational aspects of agritourism. “We have a public that has less and less contact with the farming system,” she said. “All these people who are moving to Montana from urban areas, we can help them understand what agriculture is all about and what agriculture contributes to our communities.”

“I am really excited about the future of agritourism,” Arnold said. “There has been some very positive movement since 2018 with different initiatives at the state level. I moderated a panel on agritourism at the governor’s last tourism conference, and we’re planning another one for the next conference. We’ve been on Montana Ag Live and at several Extension and community events.

Sanders County just hosted the first county workshop on agritourism, and 30 or 40 people attended. There’s more funding being talked about, and more discussions about legislation, both at the state and federal levels.”

Arnold and others have compiled an extensive online resource at montanaagritourism.com, with business resources, advice from experts, Abundant Montana’s directory of agritourism producers, and a list of agencies and associations eager to help farm families add agritourism to their business plan.

MFU’s Support of Agritourism Montana Farmers Union supports the growth of agritourism statewide and the myriad opportunities it presents Montana’s farm and ranch families, said Rachel Prevost, membership services and government affairs director for the organization.

Food Systems, and Community Development, 8(1), 13–19. https://doi. org/10.5304/jafscd.2018.081.016

“We are excited that agritourism could be a diverse incomegenerating stream for our state’s agricultural producers and an opportunity that could help farm families continue working their land,” she said. “The educational aspect of agritourism is also very exciting.”

At its most recent state convention, MFU enhanced a 2017 policy statement supporting agritourism and added a second statement. Those policies say the organization will: “Support the expansion of both income-generating and educational agritourism opportunities for Montana producers and their products.” (2017) “Support a state program providing reliable information about liability and safety issues surrounding agritourism.” (2023) Prevost said she strongly supports the upcoming agritourism conference at MSU and its detailed look at the liability insurance issue. A program or association is needed that can provide accurate information and resources for agritourism producers – or for traditional operations interested in diversification, she said.

“Producers need to know they have liability protection, that they don’t put their operations at risk by inviting visitors onto the farm,” Prevost said. “We need to work with the insurance industry and get them on board, and then provide those resources to our agricultural producers.”

Agritourism as a Natural Extension Carissa McNamara has seen what happens when communities lose their connection with agriculture. She and her husband, Continued on next page 15

Continued from previous page

Pictured above: Wild Horse Lavender Farm

Bruce, started out in Utah as traditional farmers raising cows, alfalfa and cutting horses.

Bruce’s family farm was pushed out by construction of Interstate 15. “Then we were pushed out of our farm,” Carissa said. “We weren’t far from Park City, and the growth there just made it impossible. So we moved a little further out, and the same thing happened again. The I-15 expansion came along, and the county surveyor’s measuring tape landed about 35 feet into our front room.”

Once again on the move, the McNamara family put a priority on finding a place “where agriculture and rural communities were cared about and cherished. And that came down to Montana and Alaska,” Carissa said. Alaska’s growing season was too short, so their search narrowed to Montana. They wound up on land outside of Plains. But still, they felt the need for change. They wanted a new crop that would draw people out to the farm.

“How about lavender?” Carissa suggested one afternoon at the kitchen table.

“I don’t know anything about lavender,” Bruce said. “How does it grow?”

“I have no idea.”

Carissa did the research, and the family went to work.

The result: “Lavender has been wildly successful, both as a production crop and as community outreach,” she said.

The McNamaras still produce livestock and hay, but their Wild Horse Lavender operation brings folks to the farm for tours, cuttings, special events like distillations, and shopping.

The tour takes about two hours and includes the family’s 5 acres of lavender, gardens, berries and orchards, and the riparian area provided by a creek that runs down the middle of the property. “No one goes home empty handed,” Carissa said. “You’re picking as you go.”

Carissa is one of Montana Farmers Union’s statewide ambassadors and one of the 12 agritourism fellows recruited 16

by Dr. Arnold at Montana State. She believes in agritourism as a way to diversify and increase the profitability of family farms, but also to educate non-farm folks – consumers – about where their food comes from and what it takes to produce vegetables or livestock … or lavender.

“As farmers, we have to start educating people and getting them as passionate about agriculture as we are, or these farms will go under concrete,” McNamara said. “There is a preservation element of agritourism.”

Growing Agritourism Farms need help in making the transition from traditional agriculture to traditional-plus-agritourism. Carissa and the other fellows believe they can help. Their goal, at the May 3 agritourism conference, is to create a statewide organization that is a landing place for resources and an advocate for the industry.

“People have been doing agritourism in Montana for years,” Carissa said. “But we haven’t had an organizational effort before. People need that resource. They need help.” At the recent workshop in Sanders County, three producers said they were dropped by their insurance company because agritourism wasn’t recognized as a business. Now what? they asked.

“You don’t find this in states that have a well-organized agritourism industry and organization,” Carissa said. “In places like Vermont, Texas, Oklahoma, insurers don’t even blink when an agritourism operator walks in the door. They just write the policy.”

At May’s conference, one panel will feature insurance representatives and other liability experts as well as producers, in an attempt to solve the insurance dilemma.

“People practicing agritourism want to know they’re covered if something unexpected happens on their property,” Carissa said. “We need coverage, and we need it at a cost that’s feasible. We can’t put our land and business at risk.”

How Co-ops are Solving Challenges

In Forsyth, Tamara Robertson initially found support for her family’s change at the Montana Cut Flower Association, where growers/ designers share ideas and even swap flowers during wedding season.

By Tracy McIntyre MCDC Director

“The cut-flower movement is huge,” she said. “There is a small, but growing group of cut-flower farmers in Montana who are trying to let people know that we are here. Brides don’t have to look out of state or even out of country for their flowers.”

Tamara does it all: grows the flowers, meets with the brides to plan their floral array, cuts and designs the flowers, and delivers the finished product fresh to the wedding venue. Already, she has weddings booked in Red Lodge, Billings, and one in Wyoming for 2024.

Dr. Arnold’s agritourism fellowship program came along, just at the right moment, and Tamara is among the dozen folks who have toured other operations over the past year and are planning May’s statewide conference. “The fellowship program has been a real blessing for us, and I’m hoping for Montana,” she said. “Our leading industries are agriculture and tourism, so it’s a no-brainer to put them together.”

People come to pick raspberries, tomatoes, lavender and more at Wild Horse Lavender in Plains.

Montana Agritourism Conference “Building Agritourism from the Ground Up: Inviting You to the Table” Date: May 3, 2024 Time: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Location: Montana State University Registration: Opens in February 2024 What to Expect This conference will bring together industry leaders and professionals from various backgrounds in tourism, agriculture, education, agritourism, agribusinesses, community development and government to engage in insightful discussions, learn from experts and network with peers.

Topics will include • Agritourism Business Management • Marketing and Communication Strategies • Funding Opportunities in Agritourism • State Agritourism Initiatives • Adding Value to Your Business • Understanding Your Visitors • Public Engagement with Agritourism • Meet Agritourism Producers Why Attend • Gain valuable insights from expert speakers in various areas related to agritourism • Network with professionals and experts in your field.

• Stay updated on the latest industry trends and innovations.

• Collaborate and share your experiences with peers.

Registration Registration will open in February 2024 Stay Connected To stay updated on conference developments, speaker announcements, and other news, visit our website at https://www.montanaagritourism.com/events-2-1 If you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at: Shannon.arnold@montana.edu.

The Haines family farm remains intact and thriving. Tamara’s brother visits and helps with the operation when time allows. Her dad is happily retired. And hundreds of folks are coming to the farm and learning about the importance of Montana agriculture.

So far, the Wander and Graze nights have mostly attracted locals, but Tamara hopes to get word out to a wider audience in the months and years to come, eventually attracting tourists passing through en route to Yellowstone Park. Her five-year plan includes renovating a house on the property as a wedding venue surrounded by flower gardens, with space for guests to park their RVs or pitch their tents.

Her most notable guest to date? Gov. Greg Gianforte dropped by Wandering Acres as part of his 56-county tour of Montana. He put on one of Tamara’s aprons and ventured into the flower garden to cut a bouquet.

After the garden tour, Tamara was able to interview the governor for the first episode of her agribusiness podcast, “Farming Entrepreneurs TV.” The governor gave Wandering Acres and agribusiness a resounding endorsement. “It’s great to see the innovation here,” Gianforte said. “For entrepreneurs in any industry, but especially in ag, the No. 1 thing is to innovate and to try new things. It’s really critical.”

“The Montana brand right now, globally, is red hot,” he said. “People want to experience Montana. Let’s combine agriculture and tourism to give them a taste of what it means to live and work in Montana.

What you’re doing with Wandering Acres, it’s really important.”

Agritourism is “just another form of value-added agriculture,” Gianforte said. “That’s been the No. 1 priority for us at the Department of Agriculture since I’ve come in. That can include adding value to our commodities before we ship them out of state, whether it’s turning grain into pasta or beef into jerky or steaks.

But it can also be taking the tremendous commodities that we produce and adding a personal experience to it. And that’s really agritourism.”

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FARM TABLE I spent my formative years on the East Coast, where there are lots of old tree limbs near power lines. So the idea of preparing for short stints of having to make do while the power is out was nothing new to me. However, living on the prairie in North Central Montana has taken it to a whole new level.

When the storm clears and the power is back on, the grocery store is still 30 minutes away (on clear roads), and sometimes I just don’t have time or the willpower to go.

Through many times of starting a recipe and having to scrap it entirely because of a lack of critical ingredients, I have learned to have substitutes for the basics in the pantry. And lots of dry goods. We raise pulses, so there are containers of lentils and chickpeas. Our freezer also is stocked with the fruits our and our generous neighbors’ labors.

Even so, when I went to make Ambassador Carissa McNamara’s roasted squash soup, I had to make substitutions. I didn’t have raw cashews, or nutritional yeast, sage or shallots. So I threw in cream and roasted a whole bulb of garlic. Luckily, thyme was still alive in my flower beds, and I tossed in an eye-ball measured teaspoon of paprika. The soup was, somehow, still delicious. I can only imagine how good the actual recipe would be, but I’ll probably never know, because raw cashews aren’t something I normally use.

The point is, even when prepared, creativity is the best substitute! This edition’s recipes beg to be altered and varied based on what’s in your pantry. You grew acorn squash instead of butternut, use it in the soup! You prefer white cheddar to brie on your grilled cheese, go for it! You have a lamb shank, add it to the pot of beans! You need gluten-free flour, sub it! Whatever you have, whatever sounds good, have fun and make these recipes yours!

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Roasted Squash Soup

Submitted by MFU Ambassador Carissa McNamara Serves 6 ½ small butternut squash, halved vertically, and seeded Extra-virgin olive oil 2 shallots, coarsely chopped (½ C) 3 garlic cloves, unpeeled ¾ C water ½ C raw cashews 1 tbs nutritional yeast (optional) 1 tbs balsamic vinegar 10 fresh sage leaves 1 tbs fresh thyme, plus a few leaves for garnish Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper Preheat the oven to 425°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Drizzle the squash with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place cut-side down on the baking sheet. Wrap the shallot and garlic cloves in foil with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt and place on the baking sheet. Roast for 30 minutes or until the squash is soft.

Scoop 1 cup of the squash flesh and transfer to a blender with the shallot, peeled garlic, water, cashews, 2 tablespoons olive oil, nutritional yeast, vinegar, sage, thyme, ¾ teaspoon salt, and several grinds of black pepper. Blend until creamy.

Season with ¼ to ½ teaspoon salt. Top with freshly ground black pepper and a few thyme leaves.

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English Cottage Loaf Submitted by Jasmine Krotkov

2 tbs honey ½ C warm water 1 ½ tbs dry yeast 3 ¾ C whole wheat flour 1 tsp salt 1 ¼ C Warm water

Bread Bowl (any pottery bowl big enough to accommodate the risen dough, taller than it is wide, and with an open top so you can pop the bread out of the bowl) Note: If you don’t have the right size pottery bowl, any baking or bread dish will work. For a twist, add your favorite herbs and garlic or some buckwheat.

Stir honey and ½ cup warm water together. Mix in yeast and let stand a few minutes until mixture looks foamy.

In a bowl, mix flour, salt and yeast mixture. Slowly add remaining 1 ¼ cup warm water and stir until the dough is loose and sticky.

Grease the “bread bowl” and add dough. Let it rise about 45 minutes.

Bake 50 minutes at 400°F Remove from bowl and cool on rack.

Ham and Beans

Submitted by MFU Ambassador Mary Jenni French Mirepoix or Holy Trinity (any mixture of onion, carrot, celery, pepper) Butter ½ stick Ham (Bone In Ham, left over ham, ham steak or a large pile of deli ham) Beans (1 pkg dry or a couple cans)s A couple of handfuls of cubed, skin on potatoes (red or golden) 1 pkg frozen Okra About any bean will do, however, I prefer butter and lima beans.The quantity depends on how large of a batch you wish to make. If you have dried beans, they will need to soak overnight. If you are using canned beans, just drain and rinse. And if you are fortunate enough to have fresh beans from a southern Farmers Market, they are the best and are easy.

In a large pot, sauté vegetables in butter. Add ham bone, ham hock, or whatever ham you have on hand, and beans. Fill with water until ingredients in pot are covered. Cook covered for a couple of hours at a low simmer.

Check occasionally and stir. After 2-3 hours or when you can't wait any longer, add potatoes and okra. Cook until potatoes are done.The okra will make it thicken. However, if you want it thicker, use a little cornstarch/water slurry to thicken to your liking. Season with salt and pepper. To serve, I like to add some kind of hot sauce for an added kick. It's super yummy with cornbread.

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Grilled Pear & Brie Sandwiches Makes 4

2 pears, thinly sliced Brie Cheese, small wheel Bread of choice 1 onion, caramelized Slice onion and slowly cook in a frying pan with butter until caramelized.

Butter bread. Layer pear, brie and onions. Grill until golden.

Mac and Cheese Submitted by MFU Ambassador Mary Jenni 16 oz pasta (something small like macaroni) 1 tbs olive oil 10 tbs butter 1/3 cup flour 3 cup Whole Milk 1 cup Heavy Cream 6 cupshredded cheese (I prefer mainly cheddar and then throw in whatever else is in the frig. Something tangy/ sharp is a nice contrast like Gruyere, Swiss, Pepperjack, Parm, even a little blue) Secret Ingredient: 4-6 oz Cream Cheese 1 ½ cup Panko or bread crumbs or cracker crushed or potato chips ¼ cup shredded Parmesan ¼ tsp smoked paprika, cajun seasoning, chipotle, or something zippy Cook pasta 1 minute short of being al dente. Drain. Put in a large bowl and drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil to If you are using cream cheese, add around 4-6 ounces coat thoroughly. here and whisk until smooth. Add 2 cups of cheese and whisk until smooth. Add 2 more cups of cheese and Preheat oven to 350°F whisk until smooth. (Note, 4 cups of cheese have been used. Keep 2 cups for assembly.) Sauce will be thick. Pour In a small bowl, combine the panko, ¼ cup parmesan, the cheese sauce into the pasta and mix.

4 tablespoons melted butter and smoked paprika. Set aside.

Grease a large baking dish. Pour half the mac and cheese into the greased baking dish.Top with 2 cups of shredded Melt 6 tablespoons butter in a large pot on medium cheese then add the remaining pasta. Use the small bowl heat. Whisk in flour and cook until bubbly and golden. of panko as the topping and sprinkle over the pasta.

Gradually whisk in milk and cream until it's smooth.

Continue cooking until bubbles are on the surface then Bake for 30 minutes. Serve immediately. cook and whisk for 2 more minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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Fruit Cobbler 4 cups fruit (if using frozen fruit, thaw) 1 cup sugar 1 cup flour 1 egg 6 tbs butter, melted Pour fruit into 9x9 baking dish. (Try 2 cups rhubarb, 2 cups berries for the fruit.

Or use up any fruit about to spoil in your fridge.) In bowl, use a fork to mash together flour, sugar, and egg until the mixture is a grain-like consistency. Sprinkle evenly over fruit.

Using a spoon, drizzle the melted butter over the flour mixture.

Bake at 350°F for 30-45 minutes.

Serve with whipped cream or ice cream as desired.

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Where to Find Local Food in Montana During the Winter

By Emilee Wood Abundant Montana Communications Coordinator

Although the days are shorter, and the temperatures are colder, there are still many ways to source local food and eat seasonally throughout the Montana winter.

Winter Farmers Markets While some farmers markets continue year-round, other markets keep their summer and winter markets separate. During the cooler months, a good portion of what’s offered at markets are storage crops, harvested earlier in the season, such as carrots, beets, turnips, potatoes, onions, and garlic. Other options include some cool weather crops, such as broccoli, kale, lettuces, and other dark leafy greens.Year round, you can find producers offering pea shoots and other sprouts, eggs, dairy products, grain products, legumes, mushrooms, many different types of meat, and value-added products (such as pickles, jams, and baked goods).

• Bozeman Winter Market | Gallatin Valley Fairgrounds Exhibit Building 4 | Sept-May | bozemanwinterfarmersmarket.com • Missoula Valley Winter Market | Southgate Mall Events Concourse | Nov 11 - April 20 | instagram.com/missoulavalleywintermarket • Butte Winter Farmers Market | Butte Plaza Mall | Nov - April | facebook.com/buttewinterfarmersmarket Winter Market Ronan | Boys & Girls Club Gymnasium Ronan | Sundays Oct 29- Jan 28 | instagram.com/wintermarketronan Winter CSAs Buying a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share not only supports your local farmer but contributes to the economic health of your community.

These subscription-style programs offer weekly “boxes” of fresh produce, dairy, meats, and other products, tailored to seasonal availability. Shares tend to sell out fast, so make sure not to wait to long to purchase one!

• Winter Kissed Farm | Stevensville | Year Round | missoulagrainandvegetable.com • Gallatin Valley Botanical | Bozeman | Summer Produce, Winter Produce, Whole Farm | gallatinvalleybotanical.com/csa • Amalthea | Belgrade | Summer and Winter Produce and Dairy | amaltheiadairy.com/winter-2023-csa • SweetRoot Farm | Hamilton | Summer and Winter Produce | sweetroot. farm/winter-membership-2023-24

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In Person Stores There’s no shortage of Montana storefronts with an emphasis on locally grown and produced foods. Markets are a great place to find your favorite value-added products, dairy, and meats, as well as local produce when available.

• Farm-To-Table | Glendive | Storefront | farmtotablecoop.com • Woods Rose Market | Livingston | Online and Storefront | woodsrosemarket.com • 2J’s Fresh Market | Great Falls | Online and Storefront | 2jsfreshmarket.com • Hi-Line Market | Malta | Storefront • The Farmers’ Stand | Whitefish | Storefront | thefarmersstand.com

Pick Up and Delivery Services If you’re unable to make it to a physical market, there are many businesses around Montana who carry the mission of sourcing local food for you. In addition to in person stores, Montana local food enthusiasts can browse online and order from local food delivery and pick up services. While the businesses listed below specialize in procuring and distributing local food, there are many other businesses throughout the state with online stores.

• Root Cellar Foods | Online | Pick Up and Delivery | Bozeman, Belgrade | rootcellarfoods.localfoodmarketplace.com • RegenMarket | Online | Delivery and Shipped | Big Sky, Bozeman | regenmarket.com • Yellowstone Valley Food Hub | Online | Pick Up | Billings | yvfoodhub.com • Ohara Commons | Online | Pick Up | Hamilton | oharacommonslocalfoodsmarket.localfoodmarketplace.com/Index Still looking?

Abundant Montana is Montana’s go-to resource for local food. Use the extensive online Find Food and Farms Map (abundantmontana.com/search) to find all of the local food sources listed above, as well as many other farms, ranches, and food businesses throughout the state.

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Food Safety

& Transparency is

Making a Comeback A renewed trend that relies on collaboration at the grassroots level

By Holly Stoltz

There’s no doubt that throughout most of the last century, we have lost the intimate connection with our food, the people who produce it, and its overall safety and security. But there is a renewed interest on the rise forcing companies to shift how they do business.

In a post pandemic era, one of most widely observed trends throughout the food supply chain is the increased consumer demand for more transparency regarding the foods they eat. Consumers are concerned with how to protect themselves from pathogens such as viruses that can potentially cause foodborne illnesses. And they want to go beyond the label at the grocery store to better understand the entire process from farm to plate.

This shift is a welcome change, but it does cause complications throughout the supply chain, especially at the farm level. But thankfully there is also renewed energy amongst local groups who want to help and try to fix what has taken decades to unravel.

Regional Cooperation with Local Success For many Western Montana producers, the desire to expand their production and sell into larger markets was a cumbersome and expensive endeavor that caused many small to medium-sized operations to hesitate to scale up their businesses. That is until a group of influential organizations formed a partnership to make the process more efficient and far less expensive.

But to fully understand how this incredible network of influential partners formed to cut the red tape, decrease the cost of scaling, and allow producers to feed their local communities safely, we need first to meet the players.

Northwest Food Hub Network GroupGAP Technical Assistance Provider Lindsay Gilmour conducts an on-farm food safety assessment with Santos Guadarrama of Royal Produce located in Royal City, Washington.

26

Montana Farmers Union Montana Farmers Union is part of a broader food safety project that spans the entire country. National Farmers Union formed the Local Food Safety Collaborative, an FDA-funded initiative to provide local food producers

with training, education, and technical assistance. As part of this program, NFU distributes funds to state chapters, one of which is Montana Farmers Union.

So, with Montana Farmers Union’s financial support, Mission West set out to find the missing link – the resource that could turn the tides for many local producers.

Montana Farmers Union then distributes these yearly funds according to where they feel the largest resource gap exists.

At the onset, MFU knew the most important needs of this region were tribal food sovereignty and regional food hub networking.

Northwest Food Hub Network is Born

“If we’re going to be successful as producers, we need to grow food that is local, organic, and sustainably raised,” Jan Tusick, Montana Farmers Union Board Member, explained.

“We know where our food comes from, it’s safe, and these are attributes of what we can do to be competitive.”

Mission West Community Development Partners Mission West, a food and agriculture center that provides direct technical assistance and economic development opportunities, was a perfect fit for the LFSC funds. With Tusick, who also is executive director at Mission West, at the helm, this group knew the needs of local producers and had a direct relationship with many growers throughout the region.

“Mission West recognized a long time ago that for our producers to be successful, we have to prepare them for the market and what consumers want. And food safety is one of those things,” Tusick said.

To better prepare their producers and teach them the importance of food safety and what it could mean to their consumers and their bottom line, the duo began collaborating on ways to help. Both entities strive to economically help at the grassroots level, whether it be cooperative development or food safety.

“Farmers Union was the key,” Tusick explained. “They had the network of producers; their base is farmers and ranchers. Through that partnership, they can reach, engage, and partner with numerous levels of farmers and ranchers at the grassroots level. They recognize the importance of giving producers the tools, whether it be for cooperative development, food safety, or suicide prevention. And that’s what Farmers Union is all about.”

In 2021, Mission West was awarded a USDA Regional Food Systems Partnership Program Grant that was the “kickstart” to the Northwest Food Hub Network, a collaboration between Western Montana Growers Cooperative (Missoula), Linc Foods (Spokane, Washington), and Puget Sound Food Hub (Mount Vernon, Washington). This network aims to help the 250-plus member farms get a foothold in institutional and wholesale markets and support inventory trading and resource sharing that may not have the volume or variety to compete alone.

But, according to Charlie Michel, Northwest Food Hub Network’s Program Manager, one very significant component of gaining access to these markets is food safety certification.

A More Seamless & Less Expensive Way To Get Certified It is no secret that most foodborne illnesses, like E. Coli, Salmonella, and Listeria, originate at the farm level. Because of this statistic, most retailers and food service buyers require a third-party USDA Good Agricultural Practices Program certification. Even though this certification does not guarantee the food is free of contamination, it does confirm actions are being taken at the farm level to reduce the risk of these outbreaks.

“This is going to be market-motivated,” Tusick said. “The markets are asking for a GAP audit, and it’s going to become the norm down the road because of the liability behind people getting sick and the buyers not wanting the liability.”

Typically, if a farm wants to sell to a larger buyer, that buyer will ask for some verification that they are doing everything correctly in terms of their on-farm food safety management.

This process includes reviewing the producer’s farm safety plan, observing how they harvest, and packaging the product for consumption.

Continued on next page

Map of NWFHB Food Hubs and Farms

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Continued from previous page However, historically, GAP certification has been out of reach for many small and mid-size farms to sell into larger markets because of the cost.

“The challenge is that it’s very, very expensive,” Michel explained. “If a farm wants to get that certification, they’re looking at $1,000 plus. And there’s all these hoops to jump through. Not to mention the complexity of figuring out how to go about keeping all the records needed and building out a food safety plan to train workers.”

Through the LFSC grant, Mission West has helped producers address these challenges by partnering with the Local Food Safety Collaborative to support producers in preparing for GroupGAP food safety certification. GroupGAP is a way for a farm or food hub to achieve food safety certification as part of a group rather than individually working with a certification provider.

Teaming up with Fresh Systems, a collaborative food safety certification consulting agency of around sixty farms across several states, has made this process far less expensive and relatively painless. Almost a decade ago, the USDA rolled out the “GroupGAP” program that allows for a self-organized way to go through the audit process. Fresh Systems has been involved in this program since its conception in 2014 and has developed a Quality Management Program. This program, along with a representative sample of farms within the group, is audited by the USDA every year.

Through Fresh Systems, Mission West has trained a team of internal auditors who have started doing

Northwest Food Hub Network GroupGAP Technical Assistance Provider Lindsay Gilmour conducts an on-farm food safety assessment with Julie Pavlock of Foothill Farm in St. Ignatius.

outreach throughout the region. Now farms that want to become GAP certified have localized help and technical assistance to make it happen.

The Mission West auditors work with each producer to develop a farm safety plan and help them navigate the certification process. Documentation is then funneled through Fresh Systems’ QMS program to verify they have met all the standards.

Now, producers only have to pay a membership to Fresh Systems to keep their certification current. However, to sweeten the pot even more, there are reimbursement opportunities through the USDA Food Safety Certification for Specialty Crops Program, and Mission West Auditors provide their services at no cost.

“It completely eliminates the barriers,” said Michel. “It’s a huge deal for growers, particularly trying to break into those grocery store and institutional markets. We’ve gotten a lot of great uptake, and a lot of people are very glad to have this all happening in a more collaborative and seamless fashion in a cost-effective way.”

Room for Expansion Michel, a former employee of National Farmers Union, and Tusick both see the need to expand this program to central and eastern Montana and bring more food hubs together throughout the state. In fact, as part of Michel’s new role, he facilitates the Local Food For Local Families, a collaborative project led by Hopa Mountain and a group of organizations working on food access and food system development to do just that.

“These collaborations are key to building a food safety program for our small-scale farmers,” Tusick remarked. “Not only is it beneficial to them and opens up new market opportunities, but it also provides consumers peace of mind that they are buying food that is safe and healthy. It’s a program that’s near and dear to my heart and one that is imperative to ensure a safe and transparent supply chain for years to come.”

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Getting Back to Montana Roots A unique collaboration of tribal and non-tribal members supplying tribal communities and their elders with safe, local produce

By Holly Stoltz Even before Montana Farmers Union prioritized the need for tribal food sovereignty as one of the main needs of our state, Mission West’s Jan Tusick, in collaboration with key tribal members, was exploring possibilities that today have become the center of a remarkable success story.

Mission West, through the Local Food Safety Collaborative grant from National Farmers Union, works with the Northwest Food Hub Network and Western Montana Growers Cooperative to provide on-farm food safety education and resources to producers throughout the northwest region, a service that otherwise would not be readily available. And throughout her twenty-five-year career with the economic development group located in the Flathead, Tusick has always worked with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. With leadership from Salish Kootenai College Extension Agent Virgil Dupuis, Mission West has partnered on numerous local food system projects, including on-farm safety.

Dupuis, an avid gardener, has worked for years to establish gardens in various communities throughout the reservation, having varied degrees of success with volunteers. In the fall of 2020, Virgil was approached by Greg DuMontier of Indian Commerce Campsite and Fred Billings, co-founder of Garden for LIFE, to initiate what was then called Victory Gardens in three tribal communities in collaboration with Terrance Ashley (Tribal Forestry) and Casey Lundsford (Lake County FFA).

Unforeseen enthusiasm from Dana Hewankorn from Elmo, now Director of Tribal Food Sovereignty Distribution, initiated GfL in a fourth community, Elmo. In 2023, four more communities were added, and the small-scale gardens, with their volunteers, started cranking out the produce.

By season’s end, more than 18,000 pounds of fresh local organic produce had been grown, harvested, and distributed from what collectively was only 1.75 acres of planted space.

Billings, formerly a large-scale organic farmer from Texas with a passion for teaching people to grow food and values that build family and community in the garden, began helping the tribal community. The Garden for LIFE curriculum isn’t new, Fred has been teaching the course in a variety of settings, domestic and international, since he developed it in 1994.

“It was incredible” Tusick reflected. “These gardens started becoming really successful, producing a lot of food.

In addition to what participants took home, the gardens prioritized feeding elders, supplying food banks, and sharing with the tribal community.”

According to Billings, referred to by the participants as Farmer Fred, “The gardens are really part of a larger initiative to diversify local agricultural economies and prepare the next generation to steward the land in both regenerative and redemptive ways.”

As the garden’s productivity grew, Dupuis became increasingly curious about how to bring food safety training into the program but never felt his gardens were ready to go through the process. So, as a steppingstone to an onfarm food safety plan, he reached out to Mission West to put on a small workshop with the college. Charlie Michel, with the Northwest Food Hub Network, and a fellow organic on-farm auditor conducted the informal training at the SKC Extension Garden for LIFE, renamed after working with Fred. They discussed best practices as they meandered through the rows, discussing compost applications and postharvest washing and handling. By the end of the day, even Farmer Fred, a skeptic of anything remotely associated with regulation, was impressed with the program. In fact, the workshop is already in the plans for next year.

Continued on next page 29

Continued from previous page As the volume of produce will likely continue to increase and will undoubtedly need to find wider distribution, food safety and ultimately GAP certification, USDA’s Good Agricultural Practices Program, will become more important to instill confidence in the benefactors about their food’s safety.

“After last year’s workshop, Virgil was encouraged. He thinks that there’s something here that we can build on, and Fred is definitely excited,” Tusick said. “I think we might start being able to do some real tangible planning work with them. And at the end of the day, that would be our goal, to help these guys put together on-farm food safety plans.”

Although GAP certification is voluntary at this level, Tusick emphasized why it is so important. “It’s really important to understand food safety from the ground up, because it all begins with the on-farm practices during growth and harvest.

This is why we have always dedicated ourselves to working with farmers. They don’t have to do this, but we have found that most growers would like to understand the various aspects of how they can really produce safe food.”

The bottom line is that having an on-farm food safety plan or going a step further and getting GAP certified is no different than being certified organic or non-GMO verified. In the end, it is reassurance for the growers and consumers that what they are producing or eating is truly healthy and safe.

Dupuis and Garden for LIFE are beginning to realize the goal of someday supplying produce food boxes to every elder house on the reservation, with plenty more left over for the rest of the communities to enjoy. It will not an easy feat, but knowing that this vulnerable population is eating safe, healthy food straight from their own backyard should give those involved a feeling of comfort and pride.

Volunteers work in a community garden. Their work is part of a collaboration that is feeding tribal members fresh, local food.

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Sentence Grants Celebrate 4-H Clubs’ Work

BY CINDY PALMER

A new mini-grant program with a total of $10,000 available from Montana Farmers Union bolstered Montana 4-H club projects this past year, with applications now open for another $10,000 in funding in 2024.

targets, and archery cases.

The process was simple to encourage clubs to apply by submitting a sentence about how they would use $100.

The Silver Sage Club of Judith Gap decorated bicycles and helmets with reflective tape to keep riders safe, and other clubs put on farm safety education days.

Varied requests poured in for assistance with everything from barn tools to logo wear to healthier snacks to county fair requests to covering the costs of educational programs.

Mission Valley Ranch Hands 4-H Club’s sentence was exceptionally creative: “Our barn tools we share because we care; returned they’re not, so we’re distraught and could use some cash to replenish our stash.”

County fair needs requested ranged from livestock shower supplies to weight scales. Some needs were specific: cages for rabbits, shears for sheep, chicks for new members and barn gate repairs. Other requests were general: building maintenance, supplies or entry expenses. The Humble B’s of Billings wanted to purchase coffee gift cards to give to the adult volunteers helping at the fair. The Rowdy Ropers of Kalispell wanted an educational clinic on multi-species carcass evaluations.

Some clubs needed supplies, including logo wear, banners and signs. Clearly there is club pride. Multiple clubs wanted help purchasing awards for honored leaders and members.

A quarter of all requests were from clubs wanting to help their community. Multiple clubs did cemetery upkeep or community flowers. Holidays are made special by 4-H clubs that did Easter Egg Hunts,Valentines to Veterans and elderly and May Day baskets for long term care residents.

Clubs gave care packages to cancer patients and backpacks to foster kids. They assisted families with childcare, did day camps, and donated to food banks and helped grow community gardens.

One creative proposal read: “The Community Hustler’s Club would like to purchase dog agility equipment so people can train their dogs. The dog agility course will be set up near the local farmers market in summer.”

Money for safety was often requested. Numerous clubs wanted money for hunter safety in the form of ammunition,

As the Broadus Sharp Shooters wrote, “We would like to keep our aim on target.”

Some clubs were practical, using money to raise more money by buying an item to raffle or using it to open a checking account and buy checks. The Ruby Roots of Twin Bridges wants membership affordable for all so helped some members pay fees. Good governance was important to a club working to perfect parliamentary procedure. Other practical requests were for rent of meeting spaces or arenas for riding, robotics, or large animal showmanship clinics.

Still more clubs wanted to celebrate, asking for things like snacks and pizza. The Tumbling Tumbleweeds of Baker wanted “meat” for achievement night. Numerous clubs want to go bowling and have a shared experience because they think “good relationships with other members is important.”

Other outings requested were a movie night, a barn dance, murder mystery night, and cross-country skiing.

As the Richest Club on Earth (yes … Butte) put it, “We want to celebrate our hard work and success.”

MFU was happy to celebrate 4-H and enthusiastically exceeded our $10,000 budget for these worthwhile projects.

Grant recipients had the opportunity for an additional $50 if they publicly thanked MFU for the $100 Sentence Grant.

MFU offered the additional funds because an important part of receiving a grant is giving credit the funding organization.

Publicly talking about the project is also an opportunity to share your work with the community.

MFU will continue the successful Sentence Grant program in 2024, with applications now open and another $10,000 in funding available. Let your local 4-H club know about this project and have them contact our office or your local ambassador for an application so as many clubs as possible can take advantage of this opportunity. Clubs can connect with their local ambassador at https://montanafarmersunion. com/education/scholarships-grants/.

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Field Notes FLATHEAD Let’s make 2024 the year of engagement!

By the time you read this, 2023 is in the rearview mirror, and what a year it was.

Every hour spent off our own farm serving the MFU membership was a highlight and a privilege. Thank you. We continue to learn so much from you all!

Those moments spent with you invigorate me still, and scribbled quotes from you are taped in prominent spots to inspire me when I most need it.

the days get too long (which is always), or I start to get whiney (which my husband would tease is always), or the work gets too hard (which is … well, you get the point), I will remember why we do what we do. Because it’s what our grandparents would have us be doing, and because this life, that we are deeply in love with, is in our hands to be preserved.

Also on my desk are our favorite farm-isms used by our 11 year-old son: “We’re here anyway, so let’s be all in,” and “Let’s un-hard this.”

I must be honest, “Let’s un-hard this,” has gotten us out of more impeded thinking than you can imagine.

In closing, I want to express gratitude.

Some of my favorite quotes from National Farmers Union Women’s Conference were: “If you don’t have a seat at the table, invest in a folding chair.” “Dance in your own wisdom,” and “You don’t need someone’s approval to know that it is important.”

Thank you for showing up for events, even when it’s not convenient.Your active engagement with each other ensures the future of our small family farms and rural communities.

Thank you for being willing to take on leadership positions.

It’s crucial.

I cannot put into words how rejuvenating it is to share in the camaraderie of amazing agricultural women from across the United States. I hope someday you will all apply to attend National Farmers Union Women’s Conference, and I hope to see you at one of our upcoming state women’s conferences in February. When we take the time to be together, we are growing soul culture, and promoting soul resiliency, no different than how we steward the land.

The theme of last year’s national women’s conference was “Preserving the Future of Family Agriculture.” I printed out that statement and taped it to my desk, so that when

Thank you for putting an arm around youth and sharing generational culture.

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Thank you for bringing your value and investing your time and energy.

Thank you for preserving a future for family farmers.

Your engagement truly makes a difference.

Ambassador Carissa McNamara - Flathead

EASTERN MT I forgot that Winter officially begins December 21 this year. Which means, technically, I should not have taken my Fall decorations down yet. Winter is SUPPOSED to end on March 19 … but when has it ever stopped snowing mid-March? I understand the science behind the seasons, but that does not make the three months of winter go by any more quickly. Or, should I say, the five months, because November and April are the true book ends.

The dark and cold of winter is a necessary resting time, but it does leave one alone with their thoughts.

One project that is gaining momentum for me is coordinating with local EMS services and MSU Extension to put on Farm Safety trainings for each of my counties. I want to host a training in each of my 12 counties before April 1. The goal of these trainings is to provide producers with basic first-aid techniques to perform while waiting for ambulance services to arrive. Possible topics would include stroke and heart attacks, concussion and open wound care, and exposure to pesticides. In the future, I hope to expand the training to mental health and crisis intervention.

I hope and pray that everyone can stay safe this winter – both physically and mentally. The darkness and isolation that the season brings can sometimes be overwhelming. Please know that there are people who can help you – Beyond the Weather is a free resource that can “provide access to free counseling services for Montana farmers and ranchers. Appointments can occur either in-person or online through video meetings.” The online web address is: beyondtheweather.com.

You can also call or text 988 for their suicide and crisis lifeline.

We need to look out for each other. Especially when bad weather and long distances make it difficult to be together. We also need to be able to ask for help. Montana Farmers Union is working to support family farms, ranches, and rural communities in as many ways as possible. Mental and physical health are no exception.

God bless you and your family this holiday season and have a wonderful start to 2024!

Ambassador Eleanor Dutton - Eastern MT Continued on next page 33

Continued from previous page

GALLATIN Greetings and Happy New Year from a rambling and traveling fellow rancher! I am grateful for multiple travel opportunities last year that not only increased my cultural knowledge and perspectives but also were important learning and networking occasions to further advocate for the cattle industry. My travels led me across Montana as well as Denver, Washington, D.C., Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Fort Worth, Texas. Expanding my experience and knowledge on issues affecting the cattle industry and family farmers is motivating albeit infuriating at times, eye-opening and invokes convictions.

Granted, there are other ways to educate and expose oneself to industry issues like reading articles, discussions with your neighbor, and virtual learning to name a few, but being at the event, in the thick of it with others who have similar and differing perspectives, I believe holds the most value. I will say that it is a sacrifice to leave my husband and our ranch. As many ranchers know that guilty feeling, I contend it’s completely worth it. Knowledge and experience are invaluable – it molds and shapes us to be better, do better and make a difference. Gathering information fuels conviction and confidence, both of which prove to be vital for advocating for the work that we do and the legacies of family farming and ranching.

Knowledge and experience are wasted if not shared, implemented, or used. When I’m intrigued by a topic, it excites me to learn even more about it and follow the topic or issue more closely. In doing this, the topic or issue stays at the forefront in my mind, then easily finds its way into conversation with friends, family, and other members. I encourage you in this brand-new year to attend that workshop or rancher roundtable or conference, then write an article for a local or regional newspaper or magazine about the event or what was enlightening. Discuss your experience with anyone and everyone. Practice and implement that new idea or product you learned about, then report how it went and what you thought. Understand and expand even more on a certain concept with research and then divulge this new realization.

Best wishes for the new year!

Ambassador Samantha Ferrat - Gallatin

GOLDEN TRIANGLE Change was my word throughout 2023, from trying to step up to the legacy of past camp directors to planning my first state convention as an event coordinator, all while trying to create connections with nonmembers and members in the Golden Triangle.

Farmers Union is a leader in making change. We see that through Colorado passing right to repair legislation. We see that in our members being some of the first to try new practices or technologies on their places. We even see that at our state convention with the election and the bringing on of new leadership.

Change is ever-present in everything we do, and in this change of year and season, I am looking at change not as an obstacle but welcoming it.

This looks several different ways, including welcoming innovative ideas from members on ways that Montana Farmers Union can help their communities. I look forward to continuing to make changes in our summer camp and bringing agriculture to the forefront of the camp curriculum. I am most excited to continue event planning and having member events in the Golden Triangle region during this season of change. Events help our members and nonmembers see and understand the value of being in Montana Farmers Union and having their voice heard. I look forward to growing connections with different organizations to give our members the best opportunities that we can.

Change must be welcomed by others, not just me.

In this season of change, what can you do to make a change?

Is it picking up a new workout routine or hobby? Is it trying a new technology? Going to an educational offering, volunteering in your community, or mentoring a beginning farmer or rancher? There are many ways, big and small, to make changes for yourself and your community. I implore you to welcome changes going into this new season and to not look at things as “we’ve always done it this way” but to look at it as “why not try it this way.” I ask you not to think of changes as hurdles any longer, and, by the end of next year, you will say change was your word!

Ambassador Jeri Copenhaver - Golden Triangle 34

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CENTRAL MT Montanans quip that we have two seasons:Winter and Road Construction. Gearing up for Winter is a drastic shift for me and many in agriculture.

Like everyone else in Montana, there are the standard things we all do.The lawn furniture is stored, the garden hose is put away, the furnace is turned on (in August), the winter wardrobe is hauled out, and the ice scraper and emergency kit are put back into the vehicle.

We also begin to indulge in hot beverages like spiced cider or warm soup to stay cozy.The freezing weather can be harsh, so skincare products become more routine.The amount of darkness increases, so engaging in activities like reading or indoor hobbies helps during this winter hibernation. And, people who own livestock begin feeding.This is where my gears begin to grind.

Feeding livestock in the winter is like owning a dairy cow because, like milking, it cannot be skipped. And the dark, cold, winter months are the best time to leave the ranch. “How to make the best of not leaving,” I ask myself every year.This time, making the best of it includes Montana Farmers Union.There are a lot of things that MFU offers to keep the winter blues at bay.

Each year I challenge myself with learning a new culinary skill. Since I love to cook, I set a goal to teach myself something new in the kitchen such as making Thai or Indian food or pasta from scratch. In this magazine, you will find recipes, so I challenge you to give them a shot. If you want to take this to a next level, feel free to email me for more recipe ideas. I love to talk about food and would be happy to share my vast collection of recipes.

Montana Farmers Union Book Club is starting its fourth book.The previous three have been interesting and informative, and I am excited to read the new one and participate in the Zoom discussion. Sign up for the book club. Montana Farmers Union will even send you a free book if you sign up early.

If a faraway destination is not on your horizon, a trip to town is a cheaper and easier ticket. Every Ambassador works hard to organize events in each region. Read the weekly online Boot Up, the monthly Grassroots edition, this magazine, or contact your local Ambassador directly to find out what events are near you. Hanging out with like-minded folks is certainly more fun than sitting in a middle seat on a cramped plane!

Ambassador Mary Jenni - Central MT

YELLOWSTONE BIGHORN Hello and Happy New Year, Folks!

I hope everyone has enjoyed their holidays and is ready for everything the new year has in store for us!

Since the last update we’ve had our annual convention in Great Falls that went amazing (yay!). Getting to meet so many members from all over the state is always such a treat. One of the things that we got to touch on during convention was our ambassador hopes and goals for our regions. I’ve decided to focus a bit more on the Farm to School aspect in Yellowstone County and try and fine tune it using Hardin Public Schools as a shining example of how public schools can work with family farmers and ranchers to feed the next generation and show the love and care that goes into putting food into their bellies. So far in the Billings area, none out of 33 schools (22 Elementary Schools, 6 Middle Schools & 5 High Schools) are participating in a farm to school program and my aim is to bring at least one of each category into a new Farm to School program by the end of 2024. The Billings Food Coalition brought together by AERO has been a great way to try and get this process started. This program is still in the workshop stage so we’ll be getting all the bugs out before we start the ball rolling.

Some recent events I’ve been to locally have been the Northern Plains Resource Council Annual Meeting and the Montana Association of Conservation Districts Annual Convention, where we had our MFU booths setup, and I even ran into a few members who came up to say hi!

Don’t forget to reach out and let me know what you’d like to see in our regions!

Best wishes, and here’s to the new year!

Ambassador Skylar Williams - Yellowstone Bighorn 35

Indoor Gardening

By Jasmine Krotkov

Forcing Bulbs

The most important time to water your houseplants is when they’re still alive. Bulbs, on the other hand, are less picky. In their dormant state, they need no water; just damp coolness. When they burst forth in your spring garden, they can flourish on rain and melting snow. They can also flourish inside your house, all winter long, if you play the role of nature.

With a little extra attention, you can grow many bulbs indoors. While paperwhites and amaryllis are ready to plant and grow, all other bulbs must be cooled for a time to fulfill their winter dormancy requirements before they will flower. This cooling process is often called “forcing” and is intended to mimic the action of nature outdoors.

Planting

Place a layer of stones or other coarse material in the bottom of a pot, set the bulbs in root side down, then fill the container with fine stones, sand, or light potting mix until the bulbs are about two-thirds covered. The bulbs already contain all the nutrients needed to bloom once, and too rich a soil may cause them to rot. Water up to the base of the bulbs.

Cooling

After watering, cover the pot with plastic, punch a few holes for air, and place in the fridge (this works well because the temperature is consistent, just be sure to keep the bulbs away from fruit). Or place them in a garage, unheated basement, or other dark place at 35-40°F. The bulbs will not be hurt by light frost but will be harmed by heat or a hard freeze.

The bulbs are ready when you can see roots at the bottom of the pot, and leaf tips are beginning to emerge. Bring the bulbs into a cool area (50-65°F) with plenty of indirect light to encourage leaf growth. Too much heat at this point will cause premature flowering; do not place near radiators or wood stoves. Keep the soil moist, but do not overwater.

When 3-5” of leaf growth has appeared, bring the pots into direct light to encourage flowering. Once blooms have appeared, remove pots from direct sun to keep blooms from fading quickly.

Plant forced bulbs out in the garden in spring, or let them go dormant in their pots and plant them in fall. They will not force well a second time. The bulbs may not blossom until the 2nd spring after they were planted outdoors.

Bulb genus Anemone, Crocus, Chionodoxa, Galanthus, Leucojum, Scilla Iris reticulata, Muscari, short Narcissus Hyacinthus. tall Narcissus, Tulipa 36

weeks of cooling 8-12

indirect light 1-3

10-14 12-16

2-3 2-4

Growing Vegetables Indoors

You can also grow vegetables indoors, including lettuces, arugula, spinach, kale, carrots, radishes, beet greens, tomatoes and more. Producing giant cabbage or an ear of corn would be an indoor garden feat, so don’t believe what you read online. Just stick with the proven easy-growers and you’ll be enjoying salads from home in no time.

What you’ll need •

• •

•

•

• •

You will need extra lighting, but basic shop lights can do the trick for cool-season , quick-growing greens. Rig the lights 10-12” above the containers.

Containers with drainage holes and saucers or drip trays Sterile potting soil - avoid anything with extras like fertilizer or ‘watering pearls’ or other such nonsense. Just stick with a mix based on peat and perlite.

Fertilizer - avoid chemical fertilizers, since they turn to salt when wet, and the salt builds up in the pots. Stick with organic, pelletized fertilizers.

Humidity- 40-50% will do. If your house is dry, you can spritz plain water over the plants, or put a saucer of water in front of the fan.

Water - used distilled water if yours is hard or heavy in salts.

Air circulation - use an electric fan to help prevent mold and fungus, and to assist pollination.

Plants to try

Lettuces and Salad Greens.

As they grow, cut the outer leaves, and let the inner leaves grow for the next harvest.

Arugula Chard

Kale Leafy lettuce

Spinach

Microgreens, Sprouts and Shoots

Sprouts are germinated seeds. You eat the seed, root, stem and underdeveloped leaves.

Microgreens are planted and grown in soil, and are the edible seedlings of herbs, vegetables or flowers.They are larger than sprouts and smaller than baby salad greens.

Amaranth Broccoli Flax Parsley

Arugula Cabbage Kale Radish

Basil Beet Chia Chives Lentils Mustard Wheatgrass

Grow peas for the pea shoots (the tender stems and leaves of a pea plant) or grow peas to maturity by building a trellis for them to grow up.

Grow garlic greens for the leafy stem that sprouts from garlic cloves. Used like onion scallions, they offer a gentle garlic flavor to soups, stews, scrambled eggs and anything else you can think of.

Once you get your seeds started, be sure to check their progress at least daily. Make sure the soil is moist, not damp or dry, and look for signs of stress or pests.

If you see whiteflies or aphids, use an insecticidal soap spray right away. Be sure to spray the undersides of the leaves, where the insects hide, and spray twice a day to stop the insect population from exploding into ungovernability. You can also try releasing beneficial insects, but unless you know what you’re doing, it can be an expensive round of trial-and-error.

If you get an unmanageable insect problem, don’t be afraid to throw away the plants and soil and try again!

Seeds are cheap. and you’re doing this for fun, right?

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Significantly Reduce Input Implementing Bar none, feeding hay is the highest direct cost in a livestock operation. And with the turbulent and unreliable commodity markets, reducing inputs is a viable way to safeguard yourself and your family’s livelihood. But is it right for you?

Meet Bryan Mannix, a 5th-generation rancher and Montana Farmer’s Union member whose family has been fine-tuning the art of winter grazing for close to 25 years.

Located in Helmville, the Mannix Brothers Ranch is owned and operated by a patriarch of two generations. Fourth-generation brothers David, Randy, and Brent, along with their wives Peggy, Mo, and Stacey, and fifth-generation sons Neil, Bryan, and Logan. Governed by a board of directors, the family manages diversified ranching enterprises, including cow-calf, stockers, timber entity, direct-to-consumer grassfinished beef program, and a recently-opened restaurant.

The Mannix brothers, like most Montana ranchers, calved in March, but, after attending a Ranching for Profit class, slowly started moving their dates back for two reasons: to calve more in sync with nature and to be able to financially benefit from decreased winter feeding costs.

“They started shifting that model from calving earlier and feeding more hay,” Bryan reflected, “to grazing longer, less inputs, calving a little later, and missing some of those storms.”

When the brothers started dabbling in winter grazing, it was a journey of ups and downs and wrongs and rights. But the key was learning from their mistakes, acknowledging that sometimes you might just need a little help, and realizing that winter grazing can be accomplished anywhere – even in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

What is Winter Grazing?

The USDA defines winter grazing or stockpiling feed as allowing standing forage to accumulate for grazing at a later period, often for fall and winter grazing after dormancy. But how producers stockpile feed can look very different. Some highly motivated operations intensive graze standing forage in small paddocks, moving every day and supplementing only when needed. Others bale graze on the native stockpiled range and utilize snow for water or swath graze on irrigated fields. The options are plentiful, and none are wrong or right.

What producers need to understand before diving in is what works for some may not work for others.

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Costs by Just One Practice

Invaluable tips from a serial Montana winter grazer

By Holly Stoltz

Know Your Context

Adding More Tools to their Winter Grazing Toolbox

If you’ve ever been in conversations with ranchers who use winter grazing as a tool and those who don’t, almost inevitably, someone will say, “Well, it won’t work where I live.” A true yet false statement. True, because yes, not all winter grazing techniques will work in all climates and terrains. False, because it doesn’t matter where you live, you can adopt some form of winter grazing techniques if you know and understand your context.

After the cattle leave the mountain pasture, they head down to a swamp area that was previously never utilized for grazing. In the spring and summer, the swamp was a wet, soggy mess that screamed cattle loss. Today, depending on the weather and nutritional value of the swamp grass, this once unusable area offers the perfect transition for the cattle.

“These principles can be applied in most places, but how you apply those principles is going to look very different everywhere,” Bryan said. “In any practice, you have to know your context, which is anything from your labor, your finances, and your environment and resources within that environment. Are you grazing native grasses? Do they have as much nutrition as somebody else's? What's your genetics?

What class of livestock are you raising?”

Context even down to your weather and wildlife populations matters. If you are in a windy area, maybe leaving swaths for grazing isn’t your best option. Or if you live in an area with large elk populations, maybe you can’t leave a week’s worth of bales in a field to bale graze.

What Works for The Mannix Ranch The Mannixes start their winter grazing program shortly after weaning. The cow’s first stop is a mountain pasture where the grass gets deferred every year. “It’s lower to medium mountain country,” Bryan explained. “It’s not super high, but it’s still mountain country where it's pretty hard to break up into smaller areas with limited water.”

However, under the right circumstances, cattle can survive on snow. “Every year is different. Some years, you’re using snow for water,” Bryan added. “With a lot of our winter grazing, we don’t actually run out of feed. We run into either decreasing body condition or weather.”

Bryan agreed that cattle can thrive on snow as a water source. However, in an area like theirs, and many throughout Montana, where the wind blows off the mountains and adds a crusted layer, you have to monitor the snow’s condition constantly.

For many years, this was Mannix’s extent of winter grazing until they implemented other practices and incorporated pieces of land that were otherwise useless.

However, nothing is ever black and white in the livestock industry. What the family found out was if they grazed the swamp grass when there was some snow and cold weather, the nutritional value and palatability of the grass increased.

Supplementing with alfalfa hay every two to three days as needed helped them utilize this largest section of winter grazing acreage.

“It has to do something with the molecules that makes that grass less sharp and breaks it down, making it more palatable so you can actually go in there and graze it,” Bryan explained. “It seems like when it’s just cold and no snow, they don’t eat it very well, but as soon as you get a little bit of snow and some cold, it’s good to go.”

The other tool Mannixes added was swath grazing. After grazing the swamps, the cows move onto stockpiled pasture and then to the swathed fields, where they utilize electric fences to make two to three-day moves. These fields were once hayed, but because they were hard to manage and in a high water table area, it made sense to transition them to swath grazing. However, Bryan admits there is definitely a time and a place for swath grazing.

“With swath grazing, you have to consider what your other options are for that ground,” Bryan advised. “You're going to have to run your own numbers. For example, anywhere we could go in and get that fall regraze on short lush feed, we do. That's just a little too valuable not to get. So, if we left the swath graze there, you basically wouldn't be getting that second graze out of it.”

Advice From a Winter Grazer Know Yourself Bryan was more than happy to share some insights he has learned throughout the years. One of those is to know yourself. If you tend to be a person who “jumps in with both feet” or tends to “act now and ask for forgiveness later,” then you may want to reflect a bit longer on how your decision may affect your animals and your bottom line.

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Continued from previous page “If you're the type of guy that can take big risks, have a big wreck, learn from it, and still keep going forward, you'll probably get somewhere faster, but it's going to be much more painful,” Bryan said.

Don’t Give Up Because Something Didn’t Work the First Time He also believes winter grazing takes many ranchers out of their comfort zones. But knowing you’re going to have some failure from the onset will help your psyche to continue forward. And plan ahead. This is not something you can implement tomorrow when you haven’t thought through your grazing plans for the prior summer. Try and plan at least a year in advance to start winter grazing.

“Make a plan and then be very ready to abandon that plan.

It's a fine line in ranching to know whether you should keep pushing forward or chicken out because sometimes when you chicken out, you never go back,” he said.

Start Small and Preferably In Good Market Years He also suggested you start small. Maybe it’s cutting back on your hay consumption and grazing a small pasture but keeping that hay as a buffer. If it worked, then next year, expand your experiment. As fellow winter grazer Cooper Hibbard from Sieben Live Stock always says, “Fail hard, fail fast, fail forward.” Remember, it’s not failing if you learn from your mistakes.

Bryan advised ranchers to make these changes when the prices are good. “Consider making the changes you want when things are good because when things aren't good, you're not going to be able to make them.”

Seek an Outside Point-of-View You don’t have to hire a professional to visit your operation necessarily, but some outside eyes make a world of difference. Even if it’s your neighbor or person you met at a conference, they may see something that you can’t, whether that be pasture utilization, animal body condition, or profitability analysis. Take it from Bryan: When scoring the body condition of an animal in winter, the heavy coat can put a kink in your judgment. This is where a fresh set of eyes can be very helpful.

“The more that people can try new things and push the limits of their box, the better off they'll be. And finding those people that are doing things you want to do and learning from their mistakes to curb your own can be a big advantage,” he said.

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Know Your Animals Limits Bryan stressed the importance of knowing which animals they can push a little harder and which they can’t. “People need to consider how much your cows can afford to lose before they have to calve, raise the calf, and get rebred. If you're calving in February, you can't really afford to lose much body condition in December. If you're calving a little bit later in the spring, you can afford to lose because they'll pick up some of that body condition later.”

A mistake the Mannix’s have made over the years is pushing the wrong class of animal too hard. A weaned calf needs more nutrition than a dry cow, as does a breeding heifer. Or if you’re grass-finishing animals, you don’t want to lose the gain you’ve put on them over the summer.

Observe and Adapt One of the most important aspects of winter grazing is observing your animal’s behavior and catching the warning signs before it’s too late. What's the animal’s demeanor? Are they standing around? Are they grazing? Do they bed down or constantly walk the pasture? What's their body condition?

What does their manure look like?

You always have to observe and be willing to adapt your grazing according to the animal’s behavior. That said, one paradigm shift that winter grazers need to remember is, “Your cows are your employees; the more that they can work for you, the farther your dollar is going to go,” Bryan said.

Just make sure that work is in the best interest of the animal.

Is Winter Grazing Right for You? Winter grazing can work for everyone in every place.

However, that doesn’t mean that every practice is appropriate for every ranch. As spoken by a serial winter grazer, “Maybe the reason you've been doing something the same way for 50 years is because it's the best way on your ranch to do it. But a lot of things have changed – our environments have changed, cattle genetics have changed.

So, don't be afraid to revisit something if it didn't work one time,” Bryan said. “And constantly be willing to push that envelope because I think that's how you're going not only maintain but get ahead. Just experiment and keep an open mind.”

And remember, know your context, know yourself, start small, and ask for help.

“Don’t be afraid to give up something good for something that could be great,” he encouraged.

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Stoltz Newest MFU Board Member

By Alice Miller, MFU Press Relations Specialist

While some familiar faces remain on Montana Farmers Union Board of Directors after elections during the grassroots organization’s Annual Convention, there’s also a new face.

Trent Stoltz (Pompeys Pillar) was elected to a first term on the board representing District 5. Will Downs did not run for reelection.

Brett Dailey (Jordan, District 4), Jeff Bangs (Inverness, at large District 1&2), and Walter Schweitzer (Geyser, President) were reelected to their posts.

Board members play an active role in the organization and its programs, as well as in the Montana Farmers Union Foundation’s work.

MFU’s dedication to the triangle of education, cooperation, and legislation benefits rural communities, farmers, and ranchers, making the decision to run and easy one, Stoltz said.

“I just think over the past 40 years it has been really tough to make a living in ag, and it’s not getting any easier. Montana Farmers Union is a group that’s willing to fight for producers of every size,” Stoltz said.

As a fourth-generation rancher, Stolz said he loves working with animals.

“I just went home after college and started doing it and enjoyed it and stayed,” Stoltz said about his return to his family’s homestead.

Nearly two years ago, Stoltz and his wife of 27 years, Holly, sold the longtime family place and now are near Pompeys Pillar, where they run yearlings and cow/calf pairs and produce hay.

“It’s been a good move. We like the new area. People are nice – it’s still Montana. It’s all been a really positive deal,” Stoltz said.

Stoltz’s son Austin ranches alongside him, and Stoltz said he hopes his other son Cameron will return one day as well. He and Holly also have a daughter, Jordan.

Montana Farmers Union Board of Directors pose for a photo during MFU’s Annual Convention held in October. Elections were held during convention, with Trent Stoltz (left) being elected to the board for the first time.

Also pictured (from left) are MFU Vice President Rollie Schlepp, board member Jeff Bangs, MFU President Walter Schweitzer, board member Jan Tusick, associate board member John Wicks, outgoing board member Will Downs, board member Ben Peterson, and associate board member Mark Siderius. Not pictured are board members Sig Rudie, Sarah Degn, Erik Somerfeld, Tom Clark, and Brett Dailey.

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For his sons and himself to ranch together, the ranch must be profitable enough. Investing in real estate for a steady off-farm income, taking advantage of educational opportunities, and embracing new technologies like Vence are ways his family has adapted to make their operation more profitable.

Montana Farmers Union is working to make sure families like his can have profitable operations, as well as thriving rural communities in which to live, Stoltz said.

MFU is an organization that’s tackling corporate monopolies and consolidation and working for more transparent markets – things that will make his operation stronger, he said.

“I’m excited to try to help an organization that’s trying to help me that will in the end allow us to have both boys home and a more fulfilling, profitable place,” he added.

Stoltz said he looks forward to bringing his experience and his willingness to try new things into his new role on the MFU board.

“My top strength would be thinking outside of the box. We do things quite differently than other people. We’re very adaptable,” he said.

Ultimately, he wants his kids and other young producers to make a profit farming and ranching and sees serving on MFU’s board as a way to help.

“More than even my desire to pass it on, that’s the main reason I want to be successful and have a strong succession plan – because ranching’s what both my boys want to do,” Stoltz said.

Learn more about MFU’s board and its district seats at www. montanafarmersunion.com.

News From The Hill

FROM SENATOR JON TESTER

Jon Tester, U.S. Senator

Just last month, my wife Sharla and I butchered our annual beef and filled our freezer(s) for the winter. As someone who grew up working in my family’s custom butcher shop, and operated it myself for many years, this tradition is a good reminder of just how special it is to be a part of Montana agriculture.

I don’t have to tell you that Montana beef is the best in the world – but it doesn’t hurt to remind you that our small and medium sized meat processors are critical to the success of Montana’s ag economy.

While I might only fire up our meat grinder once or twice a year, there’s a growing number of independent meat processors across the state that are helping to keep the tradition of Montana family ranching alive – and a lot of that is due to the Montana Farmers Union, and our collective work to strengthen local processing here in the Treasure State.

For too long we’ve seen the big packers eat up more and more of the industry, forcing ranchers to take lower prices at the farmgate, and forcing consumers to pay higher prices at the grocery store. In fact, just four meatpackers control upwards of 84% of the market – and they’re working to control more of the market each year.

In the past few years we’ve seen MFU use resources from my American Rescue Plan Act to help create things like the Montana Premium Processing Co-Op in Havre, which is bringing better margins and prices to producers and consumers on the Hi-Line.

We’ve also seen MFU take steps to expand meat processing capacity in places like Columbia Falls, where producers are working to form a cooperative and bring the same benefits to the northwestern part of the state.

When you can take your beef down the road to get processed and then sold back in-state to your neighbors – we all win. Ranchers receive a fairer price, and consumers pay a lower cost for premium product.

So while MFU works to increase processing capacity across the state, I’m going to keep working in Washington to hold the big packers accountable with things like my Meat Packer Special Investigator Act, which will finally put some teeth into the Packers and Stockyards Act. If we’re able to boost local, independent processing in Montana while simultaneously holding the big packers accountable for potential price fixing and collusion – then Montana’s small and medium family producers will continue to thrive in the 21st century.

I’m proud to support MFU’s work in the Treasure State, and I continue to appreciate your support in the Senate.

Together we’ll ensure that Montana’s ag economy stays strong.

That’s why the work being done by Montana Farmers Union to support local, independent meat processors is so critical.

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News From The Hill Continued...

Steve Daines, U.S. Senator

FROM SENATOR STEVE DAINES As we step into 2024, I wish you and your family a prosperous new year full of rich blessings and good health. With each start of a new year, I like to pause and reflect on how blessed we are to call the Treasure State our home. We live in the greatest state in the greatest nation in the world and it’s important we work together to ensure it stays that way.

I know 2023 was a difficult year due to soaring inflation and more regulation coming from Washington, D.C. Everywhere I go in Montana, folks are all too familiar with the high cost of everything from gas to groceries, and for our farming and ranching communities this also means high input costs that threaten already thin profit margins. I know from talking with many of you that this inflationary turmoil hits really close to home. That’s why I’m doing all I can to stop the runaway spending that caused it and pass pro-growth policies that will help grow our ag economy.

The United States Department of Agriculture recently rolled out Emergency Relief Program funding for losses in 2022 reflecting a revised funding allocation mechanism that has ag producers expressing concerns over the reduced efficacy of the program. I am pushing

back on this change because farmers who faced natural disasters in the year 2022 will see much smaller ERP payments than expected, sparking apprehension among ag producers about how to best plan for the future.

In the wake of natural disasters, ag producers need assurance that they will receive fair ERP compensation to continue maintaining their livelihood. The U.S. Government Accountability Office needs to take a close look at the USDA’s ERP rollout to ensure Montanans who qualify for this assistance receive sufficient support.

In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced its final rule to provide federal protection to the North American wolverine as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. While it is important to preserve Montana’s unique biodiversity, this decision was largely based upon hypothetical climate modeling and projections that continue to exhibit inaccuracies.

In fact, a study conducted by the National Park Service suggests that Montana has the largest wolverine population in the lower 48 states. I will continue to push back against rules and regulations that follow a political agenda and ignore the science.

Thank you for your tireless work across the State of Montana to support an industry that is so critical to our state and nation. Food security is national security, and I will keep using my voice in the United States Senate to ensure big government stays out of the way of Montanans’ ability to get their jobs done.

Scan the QR code to learn more about what is going on at the National level in policy and procedure!

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Rural Women – Leading in Ag & Our Communities

By Rachel Prevost Member Services & Government Affairs Director Montana Farmers Union Earlier this year, you may have noticed the launch of MFU’s new “Ladies Who Ag” local programming and gatherings. These gatherings and educational opportunities are looking to bring rural and agricultural women together, bringing new energy, community, and a welcoming space to learn and ask questions. When it comes to agriculture, women in agriculture account for 36% of producers in the United States, according to the USDA. We are seeing more and more women returning to family farms, buying farmland, and getting into the family farm industry.

Support for women working in agriculture is key and something that is at the core of Montana Farmers Union’s mission to support and advocate for family farmers, ranchers, and rural communities.

Recently, MFU took 14 members to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for National Farmers Union’s Women’s Conference. There, we all were able to partake in community building with other rural and urban women who work in agriculture. From wellness to the nitty gritty of farm finance and taxes, the conference included valuable programming and networking that will benefit all the attendees on their operations back home.

“The NFU Women’s Conference brings together dedicated women with a shared love for agriculture,” said Tammy Copenhaver, MFU member, rancher, and an NFU Beginning Farmer Institute participant.

“The program, rich in inspiration and education, skillfully intertwines diverse backgrounds and stories, all driven by a common commitment to agriculture. Whether nurturing the land or championing impactful policies, the attendees are active change-makers.”

Learning to share stories, and how we can grow as producers was an important takeaway.

“I had such a great experience and learned how our heritages are important, telling our stories, looking forward and how we can improve on our past,” said Heather Siderius, MFU member and founding board member of the Glacier Processing Cooperative. “Preservation of past experiences and traditions shape who we are and how to become better.”

Another critical takeaway is how rural women have a lot of power, and together, we can harness it to create meaningful change.

“Through the conference but especially as I listened to the panel of Indigenous ladies speak, I thought back to a comment from Sarah Vogel during Book Club that constantly is in my head: ‘Rural women need to work together to create change,’” said MFU Ambassador and direct to consumer producer Mary Jenni. “Our Montana Farmers Union staff and members are on the right track with supporting ag and each other – we just need to keep on doing what we are doing.”

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Continued from previous page Through connecting with women nationwide to learn – and even within our own Montana group – we see how strong the energy and drive can be when women in agriculture bring ideas to the table.

“My fellow cohort from Montana never cease to amaze me the more I get to know and spend time with them,” said Carah Ronan, MFU member and commercial cut flower farmer. “The ideas that were cultivated in conversation and the inspired action from time spent together at the conference will surely shape the future of Montana farming moving forward. I cannot wait to see what continues to evolve from this valuable time spent together.”

As we continue to learn and grow together as rural women in agriculture in Montana and across the nation, Montana Farmers Union looks forward to the 2024 Montana Farmers Union Women’s Conferences – Feb. 2-4 in Miles City and Feb. 9-11 at Fairmont Hot Springs. From storytelling and local food, to land leasing and goal setting, our Women’s Conferences will bring meaningful education and community to attendees who are able to join us. Register soon, as space is limited, and you don’t want to miss out on these amazing conferences. Join us,as we gather to learn, network, and harness the energy that can change and benefit the landscape of rural communities and family farm agriculture for generations to come.

With MFU’s Ladies Who Ag programming, our upcoming Women’s Conferences, and future National Women’s Conferences, we can further uplift the voices of women in agriculture, come together to make meaningful change, and share our stories.

Montana Farmers Union Members enjoy National Women’s Conference in New Mexico

Join Montana Farmers Union Today

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Magazine Contributors Winter 2024 Kaleena Miller is a Madison-Jefferson County Extension Agent.

Holly Stoltz continues her family’s ag legacy through their ranch in Pompeys Pillar.Various other pursuits, including owning a newspaper, have led to her combining her flair for writing and her heart for conservation in her current work as Communications Manager at Western Sustainability Exchange to ensure Montana ranchers can preserve their legacies.

Sherry Devlin worked as a newspaper journalist for 40 years, the last 30 years of which were as a reporter and editor for the Missoulian newspaper in Missoula. Since retiring from the newspaper seven years ago, she has worked as a freelance writer and editor, and enjoyed hiking Montana's mountains, floating the rivers and tending tomatoes, artichokes, peppers and rhubarb with her granddaughter.

Emilee Wood is a writer working as the communications coordinator for Abundant Montana. She can often be found with her hands in the dirt, or sharing homegrown food and flowers with the people she loves.

Tracy McIntyre is a Eureka native who understands the importance of economic development in Montana’s communities.

She is currently executive director of the Montana Cooperative Development Center.

Marsha Goetting is a MSU Extension Family Economics Specialist.

Rhonda Schwenke has always had a passion for working with children and has worked in many aspects of early childhood throughout her career, ranging from almost every role in center care, working in an inter-generational program housed on a nursing home campus, as a lead professional development specialist for a child care resource and referral agency, and throughout more than 11 years with DPHHS Early Childhood Services Bureau.

Rhonda is passionate about the work of MT Child Care Business Connect and supporting the early childhood industry to enhance strong business practices and business sustainability.

Alex DuBois, a dedicated advocate for young children, discovered her passion for early education years ago. After obtaining her degree in Early Childhood Education and gaining valuable experience in various professional positions, she now focuses on improving the early childhood system through advocacy, collaboration, and community-led solutions.

Jasmine Krotkov is a lobbyist with Montana Farmers Union, former representative in the Montana Legislature, and master gardener who studied Argo Ecology in college. When she isn’t advocating for family farmers, rancher, and rural communities, she spends time on her permaculture homestead.

Rachel Prevost is the Membership Services and Government Affairs Director at Montana Farmers Union. Prevost grew up on her family’s farm and ranch in Northeastern Montana and was a 10-year member of 4-H and 5-year member of Montana FFA. Prevost studied Political Science, Communication Studies, and Public Relations for her undergraduate degrees and cares deeply about the vitality of our rural communities and the sustainability of family farms for generations to come.

Alice Miller is a press relations specialist with Montana Farmers Union. Originally from the East Coast, she roamed The West as a newspaper reporter before settling down on her husband’s Hi-Line family farm and ranch.

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