hello welcome to Kate's Ag today i'm at Fairmont Hot Springs to attend the Montana Farmers Union
Women's Conference which is very exciting and i'm here with Rachel, Violet and Alice
hello welcome this is going to be so fun we're so excited and we're really
glad you could join us thank you and it's very important to support women
in agriculture absolutely so that's why we're here we're focusing on all
that in rural communities this weekend so yes yay well thank you yeah thank you
i'm here with Becca Skinner a photographer and writer and tonight's keynote speaker so this is
very exciting thank you yeah absolutely thank you for having me i'm so excited to be here talking
tonight at the Montana Farmers Union Women's Conference i'm going to be talking about my
connection to place through storytelling so starting as a photographer traveling pretty
extensively around the world and then i found my husband who had a farm and i never thought that i
could love one place so much after just traveling i'm talking about farming and how it's so
important to know where our food comes from like we were just talking about yes so important food
fiber feed all of that so important everything starts on a farm that i love that so much because
that's true yeah everything starts on a farm um including our connection to the world around us
right like i think those of you who grew up on a farm yes you knew that you knew where your
food came from but i definitely was not raised connected to my food system and finding that now
in adulthood has been this major source of joy for me when people talk about this urban rural divide
i feel like there's just this big conversation in the middle that's missing yes like when you take
the time to talk to people outside of agriculture and they have the curiosity and bring forth the
the interest in hearing your story or my story or another person's story you know we realize
that we have so much more in common than we might originally think and you also do a lot
of work with National Geographic yeah so i was a grantee from them in 2011 and then i talk about a
few more expeditions that i did through their various branches i'm crossing my fingers that
we get to work with National Geographic and do a farming or agriculture story next that would be
incredible yeah it would be well thank you so much it was a pleasure speaking with you yeah thanks so
much for having me and if you'd like to learn more about Becca Skinner you can visit yeah you
can find me on instagram it's @ Becca Skinner or my website is beccaskinnerphotography.com that's
amazing thank you so much thank you i'm here at the Montana Farmers Union Women's Conference with
Caroline Nelson and Big Sky Caroline on social media and you have the most wonderful platform so
oh thank you could you tell me a little bit about your story yeah so i came out to Montana
on a cattle drive with my mom i was 10 years old and i'm from the east coast i i really had
no background in agriculture whatsoever and that was really the first time that i felt at home and
i just cried the whole way home on the plane and she told me that one day i could come back and
go back to that ranch and work for them and that actually ended up coming true
which was kind of amazing so i started working on that ranch as a ranch hand uh from age 15,
16 and i'm 31 now so i worked for them for a long time eventually went from being a ranch hand to
a rancher myself i started a direct consumer grass-fed lamb and beef company and now we do
all kinds of other stuff we do experiences um and then we have a line of ranch goods too like
soaps and lotions and all kinds of things that's incredible your story is truly inspirational oh
thank you it's been an amazing journey it's so nice to have um to share your story and
and have people be able to relate to that and see the realness of agriculture and ranching and
farming and how important it is absolutely yeah i'm really trying to tell the story
you know i came into ranching with a lot of preconceived ideas about what it was and farming
too because i was had no background in it i had all these assumptions i mean i genuinely thought
that ranchers did not care about the land which is crazy to me now and i was getting you know years
of being involved in the industry i suddenly realized it's like i haven't met one person that
doesn't care about the land yes every single person cares that it works in agriculture
i just couldn't believe how misinformed i had been and i've actually i think a lot of
people assume that if they were to learn about our food system it would be so much worse than
they imagined i had the opposite i was like our food system is so much better than i imagined yes
not that it's perfect and not that there's not things that i would change absolutely
and i'm particularly in the livestock industry so that's where i focus um but i've been amazed
at how much we all have in common and i do try to educate and share my experience with the audience
so that they it can dispel some of their misconceptions and their anxieties and that's
what's so fantastic about it is um most of these operations are just family run and you're really
just trying the best you can for your family and also the community around you so i think sharing
that story is also very important yeah because farmers and ranchers are eating the food they grow
exactly they're not trying to you know make a product that isn't safe and healthy and delicious
we're just doing the best we can yeah and there's definitely the other piece of this is consumers do
have to vote with their dollars you know there's they may criticize certain practices but they
have to understand that that's in the in the name they were also the ones who demanded cheap food
yes and so if we want certain things to be done differently we have to be willing to pay for it
and that's that's tricky so i try and and just show a balanced point of view and
you know i'm a very small producer but i'm also you know respectful of large producers and
these are my neighbors and we have a lot more in common than we don't yes exactly this has been so
wonderful thank you so much thank you for having me if you'd like to follow Caroline what your
social media channels are yeah so we are uh online at Big Sky Caroline on Instagram and tick tock and
online at littlecreekmontana.shop that's amazing thank you so much it's been incredible speaking
with you you too thank you i'm here with Mariah Gladstone owner of Indikitchen which is awesome
and i just did the breakout session at the Montana Farmers Union Women's Conference and learned all
about teas so this is fascinating yeah i think this was a really fun opportunity for people to
learn more about the native plants that already grow around montana learn additional uses for them
how to dry them how to turn them into delicious and healthy beverages within their own homes
without even having to drive to the grocery store so we had a really fun opportunity to make our
own tea blends but also to talk about some of the medicinal benefits of some of these foods
and some of the other uses of some of these plants as well it's absolutely incredible i did raspberry
yarrow and rosehip and so so fantastic it's super fun and i'm glad that people had an opportunity to
take home their own little tea blends and hopefully when they get home to be able
to think of this experience again and to start looking outside at some of the plants that are
growing around their home and perhaps they can make tea blends again with those things
as well that's amazing thank you and what's your background so i founded Indikitchen in order to
teach information about traditional indigenous foods so that's incredible there's of course so
many foods that we have access to that grow indigenously whether they're foraged foods
or whether they're foods that native people have specifically bred for cultivation and
there's so many things that we can learn from not only the patience that it takes to breed
plants over multiple generations but also in these methods of sustainable polyculture planting you
know planting our legumes with our corn and our squash so that we enrich the soil of some of the
nutrients that the other plants are pulling out and that's so important it's so important i think
that it's important to talk about our soil health along with the health of our bodies and then of
course just the health of our communities being able to establish food sovereignty
the ability of our communities to feed ourselves so i love talking about all these things and i
get to do it with this really fun tool of food we get to make fun recipes that's amazing thank
you so much i really appreciate it and it was awesome speaking with you yeah thank you and if
you'd like to learn a little bit more about Mariah you can visit yeah you can find all of my stuff
at indigikkitchen.com or facebook or instagram or youtube at indigikitchen or you can even find tea
blends if you go to splitsundcreations.com awesome thank you the entire part from
the ground up is edible so you can use both the flowers and the herbs to make teas
i'm here with Cheyenne Wilson owner of the Native Cowgirl so that's really incredible
anywhere on the women in agriculture panel so that was so awesome and very inspiring well thank you
so much it was really an honor to be asked to come and speak today and to really be on a panel
with such unique women with so many diverse backgrounds it was just really fun and great
innovators in the agriculture industry definitely i think montana has a lot to be proud of for the
women in agriculture and just all of the things in general that we have going on and i just think
there's a lot of strength there that can be utilized to to grow agriculture in everyone's
minds maybe in montana and beyond as well and what is a little bit of background about you and your
story well i'm a fifth generation cattle rancher born in southeastern montana and i actually left
home after i graduated high school and went out to discover the world and lived in big
cities for almost 10 years and learned a lot about retail management i worked in a trademark law firm
and just i learned a lot about business and how to conduct myself but also really felt that pull back
home to the land so moved back home eventually settled down got married we have a 13 year old son
and being able to take on the family ranch so to speak but yet make it our own has just been
a real blessing we we own our own commercial cow calf operation and we also raise draft cross and
half draft horses oh yes that's amazing yeah super fun and so i started sharing about my
ranch life back in 2013 with my blog the Native Cowgirl and grew an instagram and facebook page
kind of a following about what life is like for a modern day rancher and so just utilizing
different streams of income as well and helping people understand that no matter where you live
you can create extra business for yourself as well as helping other people so yes and there's a way
to go direct consumer with your products which i think is a struggle for a lot of farmers and
ranchers and really connecting with your community and your end consumer yes you have to know what
your your mission is and what your voice is to the world and you're right every single person
has a gift and the world is waiting for that you know you are you know the world is you know open
and huge but you can be that one person in the world that somebody is looking for someone needs
to hear from you or by your product or understand your story a little bit to maybe understand
agriculture a little bit better too so yes yes and what's completely amazing about that is everyone
is so unique and to really find what makes you incredibly unique and then tap into it fully
so that you can become the tourist version of yourself and that's the story people need to hear
it is thank you so much i really appreciate this and it's been wonderful speaking with
you you're welcome and i really enjoy the panel thank you thank you
what i found and what is really really great for each of you in the audience or anyone watching
is that we have the internet at our disposal you have millions and millions and millions of
people out there who know nothing about what we do everyone in here has a different skill set
you have something that you're really really good at that somebody out there needs to hear
and so it really it isn't about making things and selling things it's about telling your story
with the world i'm here with Amanda Nigg of Farm Fit Mama so that's super exciting and
you were a keynote speaker and presenter at the Montana Farmers Union Women's Conference which
is awesome and i really enjoyed your speech it was incredible yes yes i um got approached by them to
talk about physical mental health especially within the agriculture community which is really
cool and then we just did a breakout session on planking that was fun that was really cool
and very enjoyable and challenging actually yes um the biggest thing with physical mental health
is a lot of people try to over complicate it and it's something that can be easily
less complicated and so planking for example is something that anybody can do
anywhere and so it was really cool to talk about that and the benefits of planking and then also go
into the benefits of physical mental health especially in the agriculture community yes
ag i shared this statistic in my presentation this morning but in ag in the last two decades suicidal
rates have increased 40 percent within the agriculture community which is one of the largest
in the whole entire united states um yeah i'm trying to bridge that gap um with something that
i'm very familiar with which is physical health and could you share a little bit more about your
story and farming background really amazing thing is like every single client in my program is ag
so it's it's making that impact and right now i'm working with about 450 ag related individuals so
it's really cool to be a part of that experience that's incredible thank you so much it was a
pleasure speaking with you yeah thanks for asking me all the entrepreneurs making money
in my family are women the men are the farmers the women are the ones putting the food on the table
the stories resonate around the world this is the same story so rural women's entrepreneurship
has a kindred spirit to it so what i i want to share is you're sitting on a fantastic opportunity
for women's entrepreneurship for telling your stories here at this conference and we're also one
of the largest farm organizations that represent the family farm we don't owe anybody any favors
we only represent the members and what's important to them that's a big difference
but when i first started farming Montana raised and processed 70 of our own food
you can go to your local grocery store in your local community and our shelves were full of
mount canada food now my grocery store is closed what about yours and you have to drive
darn near an hour away some two three hours to get our food from a corporate monopoly
and you know in the case of beef and pork we don't even know where that food comes from
that's that's a problem but through education the consumers are paying attention right now
and through education we are able to get through to them
now i'm here with Rachel on the last day of the Montana Farmers Union Women's Conference so that's
super exciting yes we had a wonderful weekend gathering with all sorts of wonderful women
connecting building community and we're really looking forward to
the year ahead with sustaining these relationships and helping people reach their best potential the
best that Montana Farmers Union can so kate what was your favorite part of the Women's
Conference i would have to say the whole event was so amazing so thank you so much for hosting
it but my very favorite part was the women in agriculture panel and all the inspiring
leaders absolutely yeah it was so amazing to hear from these women in different areas of the state
and their different ag operations but also how they're just helping and being part
of their rural communities yes absolutely incredible yes definitely thank you so much
thanks for coming and thanks for being here with us and it was so great again to connect with you
and thank you for watching the video make sure to like and subscribe yes definitely bye