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In the Spring Issue and online here:

• Montana’s Cash Cowboy
• Real Ranch Living: Not Everyone is Selling Out
• Essay: The Family Farm, Version 2.0
• Essay: Tracks Across A Landscape
• Have Your Ranch & Develop It, Too
• Design Showcase: The Big and Little of Western Building
• Stuff It: Can Wolf Hunting Help Conserve the Species?
• Traffic Perplexes New Western Communities
• Boise in Its Own Little Bubble
• Revenge of the Resource Economy
• Spotlight North Idaho: On the Agenda: Youth, Growth & Silver
• Spotlight North Idaho: Players of the Panhandle
• Spotlight North Idaho: Coeur d’Alene Tribe Rides the Idaho Boom

[more]

By Robert Struckman, 2-01-08 | comments (23) | email story | print story

 

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

In the fall of 2007, a small portion of an old shipping depot on Missoula’s Westside was scrubbed clean and given a new coat of paint. Volunteers made curtains and built shelves to hold staple items like olive oil, cheese, eggs and recycled toilet paper. New plants by the front steps started to take root, and so too did the new storefront of the Missoula Community Co-op.

Across the country, similar food or grocery cooperatives, better known as co-ops, have become an increasingly popular way for a community to gather around food, especially in the Northeast and the Midwest. Food co-ops can be buying clubs or an actual store, and to shop there, an individual or family pays a membership fee to the co-op and becomes a “member-owner.” The member can then order food through the co-op or shop at the store. Food often comes in bulk amounts, which reduces packaging and cost, and because it is ordered through and often delivered to the co-op, the person who orders the food does not pay shipping costs. The idea is that members will also volunteer their time at the co-op to reduce the costs associated with running a store, and keep costs lower for all members…hence the use of the term “cooperative.” [more]

yoga on and off the mat

26 postures. 105 degrees. 90 minutes. Oh, and it just might “change your life.”

These are some of the trademarks of the L.A.-based Bikram Yoga. Life changing or not, few can argue against the practice’s intensity. Intense heat, intense stretching, intense instruction. (The teacher speaks throughout most of the hour and a half class.) And Lora Gustafson, the new owner of Bikram Missoula, would add that the practice is also intensely purifying.

In our interview, Lora chats about her recent move from Phoenix, this Saturday’s Open House and other aspects of the unique brand of yoga that has garnered her attention for the last eight years. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

Two weeks ago, I reported on the possibility that the FDA would make a decision that cloned meat and milk is safe to eat. This article follows up on that story, after the FDA released their decision January 15th that cloned food is indeed safe to enter our food chain.

This week, Whitefish, Montana’s State Representative Mike Jopek, sent out an email asking constituents to tell him what they think about cloned food. In it, he writes:

"I am looking for input as I truly respect the insight on the best approach. If no approach at all is warrented, (sic) please let me know. I also know many folks are unaware of this debate and may rather I continue to advocate for a more fair tax climate, better state funding of our education system, and clean water and open public lands. But I am a farmer who believes that good food is the foundation to a great health system."

The organic farmer's outreach comes less than a week after the FDA decided that cloned milk and meat are safe to eat. [more]

Savagemama: Notes From a Pregnant Mama

I called my mother yesterday to tell her that Eliza seems to have inherited her lack of volume control.

“She just shouts all the time,” I said. “I wonder where she gets that?” My mother just laughed. I’m pretty sure she was laughing at me. [more]

Stumbling the Walk

Missoula City Code

#12.16.030 Snow and ice to be removed from sidewalks.

A. Every person owning, in charge or control of, or occupying as tenant any building or lot of land within the city which fronts on, abuts, or contains within a public use easement a sidewalk, shall remove and clear away, or cause to be removed and cleared away, snow, ice, slush, mud, or other impediment to safe and convenient foot travel from so much of said sidewalk as is in front of, abuts on, or is contained within said building or lot of land. It is further such person’s duty to prevent accumulation of the same upon such sidewalks.

[more]

Column: Savagemama

I wish I were one of those pregnant women who crave oranges or nuts, that my sweet tooth could be sated with a nice fresh apple or a glass of juice. But I haven’t proven that lucky. While I try, trust me I do, my pregnant body is less of a temple and more of a shrine to the white powdered donut. [more]

"Upcycling"

As the Bozeman City Commission moves ahead with curbside recycling, curiously absent from the list of recyclables is glass. When the Department of Environmental Quality ruled that the Holcim cement plant could no longer use recycled glass as an aggregate in cement, the city began crushing glass and using it as a cover on the landfill – not exactly what Bozeman residents had in mind when they took the time to collect and drop off their glass.

Now, with the landfill closing, even the pseudo-recycling of glass is not an option. The city continues to stockpile glass but without a long-term recycling solution.

In light of all this, Jennifer Pearson got a bright idea: this past summer she bought herself an industrial glass kiln and began giving glass new life. Glass Roots, her new business, uses solar power to melt glass and turn it into an array of bathroom tiles and lighting fixtures. The result is beautiful and, best of all, true recycling. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

Montana’s Senator-Farmer Jon Tester finished up a brief listening tour this week in Billings, where he spoke to the annual meeting of the Mountain States Beet Growers Association of Montana and highlighted the promising points of the Farm Bill. In particular, Tester discussed his provisions to the farm bill, which included assistance to farmers converting to organics. The Senator also worked to keep all Farm Service Agency offices open and called for the implementation of Country of Origin Labeling.

While his listening tour is over for now, (Tester headed back to his farm in Big Sandy this week where he and his family run an 1,800 acre organic farm) winter continues to serve as the talking season for most farmers and ranchers. And during the coldest months, a few agencies will hold similar listening sessions and conferences to hear concerns of those working in agriculture and use those responses to shape farm policy.
[more]

Preserving Eden

Editor's Note: As the City of Bozeman and Gallatin County undertake the monumental tasks of steering growth in the Gallatin Valley and beyond, a renewed responsibility falls on the valley's citizens to become part of the process to ensure their property rights, make their values heard and preserve the economies, community spirit and environmental values that make living here so great. In this ongoing series on NewWest.Net/Bozeman, Susan Duncan begins a new discussion on redefining the relationship between rural and urban. As Duncan explains, the two are mutually dependent.

It’s the $64,000 question. The query everybody wants the answer to: “What can we do to keep this place the ‘Eden’ that it is?”

Want to see a real leader on this issue? Look in the mirror. It is time for each one of us to step up to the plate and lead. [more]