Old Salt Festival becomes a local tradition

Forty-foot long cinder block cooking pits lined by piles of cherry, pine and oak wood, folk music in the background, kids flying homemade kites and beef quarters seasoning on kitchen tables mark the beginning of the second annual Old Salt Festival.

The festival was the brainchild of Cole Mannix of the Old Salt Co-op in Helena and fifth-generation Montanan from Helmville. Mannix said the Old Salt Festival was designed to bring together local food, local people and agriculture through craftspeople and conversations. Local crafts, kids' activities and musicians rounded out the scene. Over 2,000 people attended the festival over the course of three days, Mannix said.

"We're developing a community of people who care deeply about each other and the rest of the critters who share the landscape," said Mannix while welcoming people to the festival.

This years' motto was "The Land is Kin." In his introductory speech Cooper Hibbert, Old Salt Board president and manager of the Sieben Ranch company, described what that means to Old Salt.

"Our ethos is reflected in Old Salt," Hibbert said. "Land is sacred, it deserves to breathe, the more it breathes, the more it produces. The more it produces the more comes back through the food and the wildlife. We want to honor the sacred connection between land and people."

Center stage at the festival were the cooking pits. Each day featured a different team of cooks with separate feature foods with beef as an ingredient in most dishes. Friday brought back the cooking of Eduardo Garcia and the Montana Mex team from Bozeman.

Friday's fare came in bite size tastes of offal meatballs, made by incorporating organ meats of heart and liver with the beef, tallow fried chips with beef tallow from the meatball, and cow and pork lard from the participating pork. Alongside was a taste of soup de poisson, made with locally sourced Carp harvested at night from Canyon Ferry Reservoir in Helena by the Montana Mex team.

After soup there was Montana-made ice cream with milk from grass-fed cows, enhanced with honey, crumbled dry lavender, calendula flowers and a crunchy oat topping.

"We want to normalize nutrient-dense food," Garcia said. "We're hoping to get the idea into schools. Children fed nutrient-rich food have been shown to learn much better."

On Saturday morning the bell smoker was draped in cabbages, leeks and corn in preparation for smoked veggie and pork tacos prepared by returnees from the restaurant Tournant in Portland, Oregon.

Sunday included seafood delights from Maryland with 5,000 fresh oysters brought by Woodberry Kitchen of Baltimore, Maryland. Woodberry Kitchen owner Spike Gjerde has focused on working with ingredients sourced directly from the hardworking farmers and watermen of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Mannix and Gjerde met at a regenerative agriculture funding conference and saw the similarities in their approaches to local food and prioritizing environmental and community impact. Mannix offered Gjerde a spot at the festival and Gjerde took him up on it.

"One of the things I love about oysters is that they're like beef in that you can raise them in a way that enhances the land and they're incredibly nutritious," Mannix said. "They're a major filter, taking nasty stuff out of the ocean yet one of the most nutritious foods on the planet. I think it's safe to say that this was the most oysters ever eaten in Helmville."

Children's activities were an addition this year supported by funding from the Wilderness Society, the Lincoln Outdoor Club, Swan Valley Connections and the Helena Field School. These groups provided children's arts and crafts, hide and skull identification of local mammals and a daily coloring contest.

"Last year the Wilderness Society was at the festival and noticed lots of kids running around," Nancy Schwalm, with the Lincoln Outdoor Club, said. "The Wilderness Society invited the Helena Field School, who invited us and Swan Valley Connections, so we could share the fun of providing kids' activities this year."

An expansion from last year was the "Land Talk Lounge" across the field from the music stage. Twelve talks throughout the festival covered topics such as ranchers working with wildlife, nutrient cycles with meat and the planet, Indigenous stewardship, open mic sessions and Mountain and Prairie podcast interviews with authors and ranchers on topics such as conservation, the future of regenerative agriculture and family legacies. Mountain and Prairie focuses on conversations with people in the Mountain West, hosted by conservationist Ed Robertson.

Robertson was tasked with bringing in authors, journalists and thought leaders who may not be directly related in agriculture, yet still connected to land stewardship and have deep respect for the land.

"People may come to Old Salt to hear a conversation with Betsy Gaines Quammen, Debra Magpie Earling or Hal Herring," Roberson said. "They're exposed to what's going on and what Old Salt is doing (with local food). The Land Talk Lounge was a user-friendly entry point for people who may be new to agriculture."

Christy Clark, director of the Montana Department of Agriculture, spoke at Old Salt about Montana being an export state.

"We raise more than we can eat in Montana," Clark said. "We want people to know that when they buy a steak from Brazil, they're supporting a farmer in Brazil, not in Montana."

In the 1970s, 70% of the food eaten in Montana was grown in Montana, according to Abundant Montana, a group focused on connecting people to local food systems. Today 3% of the food eaten in Montana is grown in the state.

The crowd in the Land Talk Lounge was interested in how to go forward from the festival. "We can't all be ranchers and farmers," said one listener.

"Humans are wired to connect," Juanita Vero, Missoula County Commissioner, said about her time in the Land Talk Lounge. "I learned a resilience equation that trauma plus awareness and connection leads to resilience. In order to heal anything, we have got to connect."