My Page: Kate Whittle

Seasonal & Regional Recipes

At last, the season I’ve been dreaming of while wading through snowdrifts is finally here. It’s warm enough to go hiking again! I will be spending most of this summer inhaling the pine-scented air somewhere on a trail in the Bitterroot Valley. All I need is a buddy or two, good boots and some snacks for the trip.

I like to bake hearty biscuits to take on hikes with me, and struck upon these one morning when I had rhubarb to use up. Thanks to my family and friends with rhubarb patches in their gardens, it’s coming out my ears, so I’ve been putting it in everything. The rhubarb’s sweet tang makes a nice flavor contrast with the rich, buttery flavor of these whole wheat biscuits. These bake within the amount of time it takes my friends to wake and dress, so they’re easy to make should the spontaneous hiking mood strike you. Packed with a bit of cheese and an apple, they make the perfect, easy midday lunch.

New West Feature

Old concepts are becoming new again in agriculture. The concept of farmers processing their own commodities died away during the industrialization of agriculture in the mid-20th century, but now is coming back with a name: value-added agriculture.

Food processing was Montana’s biggest employer in the 1930s, and now in the 21st century, members of the agricultural community are trying to make that happen again.

The state’s Growth Through Agriculture program funds value-added agriculture projects large and small. In the last 10 years, more small, locally focused companies have applied for funding assistance, even while state budget cuts have limited the program’s reach.

These days, value-added agriculture in Montana doesn’t have any one face, Agriculture, Marketing and Business Development Bureau Chief Collin Watters said.

Seasonal & Regional Recipes

The other day I received a challenge: make Montana sushi. That is, my mom bought some steak and told me to come up with this for a party. So, first off, full credit goes to her for the idea.

I don’t have much experience making sushi, but I’ve eaten plenty of it. I love a roll of unagi, or eel sushi, but it’s the precise opposite of local and seasonal: everything involved, from the fish to the ginger to the avocado to the chopsticks probably traveled thousands of miles to my plate in the Rockies.

But if you replace the unagi with local steak, and the seaweed nori wrap with a leaf of romaine lettuce picked from your garden, you can get something really tasty, no matter what you want to call it.

I realize this version of sushi would probably make a Japanese chef weep, but hey, beef is to Montana as fish is to Japan. The term “sushi” actually refers to the kind of rice, not to raw meat. My Montana sushi uses the same salty, sweet flavor contrasts and rich umami sensation, which is what we’re going for. And this is stunningly easy: no bamboo mats or extensive time required.

New West Feature

In Montana, home of the setting for “River Runs Through It,” many of the state’s beloved fish don’t technically belong. Rainbow, lake and brook trout are actually non-native species crowding out the increasingly rare natives like the westslope cutthroat. Most invasive species are brought either intentionally or accidentally by humans, and take advantage of a lack of predators to dominate. Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists estimate the westslope cutthroat trout, for instance, lives in about 5 percent of its historic habitat.

FWP officials use a variety of methods to restore native fish species, including poisoning streams, which can be effective but sometimes doesn’t work out quite as planned. In the wake of a poisoning that unintentionally killed more than 1,000 fish last summer, FWP recently announced they’re considering new safeguards to prevent accidental poisonings.

In August 2010, a dose of the poison rotenone meant to travel down about four miles of Cherry Creek—a stream in southwest Montana near the Wyoming border—traveled three times further than expected. Between 1,000 and 1,500 fish went belly-up outside the targeted area, said FWP Fisheries Biologist Pat Clancey, who manages the project.

Seasonal & Regional Recipes

Considering the long winter, I didn’t expect much from the first farmers’ markets of the season in western Montana. I was quite surprised and pleased to find an abundance of green on the tables. I’ve sorely missed that color on my plate.

Luci Brieger, who manages the produce division of Lifeline Farms in Victor, Mont., explained that the great early season crops are partly a result of hoop houses, the smaller versions of greenhouses built with PVC pipe and typically covered in white tenting. “It’s been a great year to have a hoop house since it’s been crazy cold,” Brieger said.

While peaches and cherries get all the glory, Brieger’s just looking forward to the first fresh chard of the year. “Simple pleasures for me,” she said, “Just the first meals of the spring, delicious sweet chard.”

New West Feature

At noon on May 11, Shirley Brown was serving lunch to the volunteers stacking sandbags outside her home. She and her husband live in the isolated northwestern Montana community of Yaak. Her cabin sits about 25 feet from the Yaak River bank, and she’s seen the waters rise two feet in the last week. Another five, and the bank will overflow. She’s been moving her furniture up to the second floor and preparing for the worst.

“We’re not really afraid, just trying to plan ahead,” she said. “Got to leave the rest in God’s hands.” She’s hoping temperatures won’t abruptly spike so the snowmelt won’t happen all at once.

Right now, the Yaak is one of several rivers in the northern Rockies expected to flood within the next few weeks. States from Utah to Washington are bracing for high waters after a particularly snowy winter and unusually cool spring.

The wild weather is thanks to La Niña, explained Robert Nester, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. Cooler ocean temperatures cause more conduction in the equatorial pacific, which changes jet stream patterns. The end result: warmer, drier winters in the southern hemisphere and colder, wetter winters in the northern hemisphere.

New West Feature

The recently concluded legislative session will likely and significantly alter the way Montana manages its population of bison.

Senate Bill 212 and Senate Bill 207 both add regulations for how bison are handled in the state. Gov. Brian Schweitzer sent the bills back to the legislature for amendments and they now await his final approval. The bison-related bills this session were prompted by the long-debated fate of the wild herd in and around Yellowstone National Park. Advocates of the regulations say the bills are necessary as a means to control the spread of brucellosis. Opponents say it’s unnecessary catering to the cattle industry.

Of the bills that passed, bison activists are most concerned about Senate Bill 212, which adds rules to Fish, Wildife and Parks’ management of bison. The new law requires state officials monitor, tag and, if necessary, fence any wild bison that are transported or move into the state. It’s a step backward for people who’d hoped for less regulation on bison, explained Darrell Geist, a habitat coordinator with the activist group the Buffalo Field Campaign.

Senate Bill 212 officially defines bison as a “species in need of management.” While several groups, including FWP and the Montana Department of Livestock, have already operated under that assumption and in accordance with the Interagency Bison Management Plan since 2000, this new legislation essentially gives that plan force of law, said Geist.

New West Feature

Micah Sewell stands among the petal-shaped beds of his garden in a plaid shirt and shorts. Cars whiz by on the street, but behind the wooden fence and fluttering Buddhist prayer flags, the backyard of UM Flat is peaceful and quiet, save for the occasional cluck of a chicken.

The environmental studies grad student lifts up a black irrigation hose to show the water dripping onto pale green garlic shoots. “This system doesn’t waste any water like sprinklers do,” he says.

It’s one of many ingenuities at the UM Flat, which is shorthand for the University of Montana Forum for Living With Appropriate Technologies. For a rotating cast of environmental studies students, it’s their home.

The Flat compound includes two houses and a garage next to the UM campus. Now in its second year of operation, it offers students a unique way to live out their environmental studies internship. “It’s total immersion,” Sewell says.

Seasonal & Regional Recipes

Spring is taking its sweet time to arrive here in Montana. As I write this, wearing my wool socks and a flannel jacket, the mountains overlooking the Missoula valley are still dusted with snow. But some signs of spring are popping up: parks are starting to turn green again and rhubarb is on the shelf at my grocery store.

Rhubarb, which is technically a vegetable, is a big celery-like stalk in form, but very tart, like cranberries, in function. It’s a cool-weather plant, so it’s an excellent early spring gap filler when apples are going out of season and stone fruits aren’t in yet.

The stalks come in have green, pink and red varieties, all of which are tasty when combined with enough sugar, but remember the bitter backlash: the leaves are poisonous. They’ll most likely be trimmed off at the grocery store, though.

I happen to be quite familiar with rhubarb because my mom has made jam with it as long as I can remember. She often grows it in her garden, dices and freezes enough so she can make rhubarb jam throughout the year. I’m particularly fond of spooning rhubarb jam onto pancakes. Following is her recipe, roughly.

New West Feature

Since moving to her home more than 20 years ago, Laveta Killsnight has never drunk her tap water.

“My water’s plum orange,” she says.

Killsnight, a diabetes technician with long, graying hair and a wide grin, lives in Muddy Cluster, a small town on the Northern Cheyenne Indian reservation in southeastern Montana. The reservation, home to about 4,800 people, is dotted with small housing clusters separated by dozens of miles of rolling plains and curving two-lane highway.

Hard water is a problem in much of this territory, but it’s a particular problem on the reservation, which often lacks the equipment and funding to put in better water systems. The tribe’s administration operates on less than $2 million a year, and the money is spread thinly among housing, health and education services.

The Northern Cheyenne tribe is known nationally for its environmentalism and pristine landscape. But for a tribe that fought for and succeeding in getting Class 1 air status—the same air quality standards as a national park—what they don’t always have is good water.