Tuesday, December 2, 2014

FOWL LANGUAGE by Lauren Korn

For some reason, I didn’t expect its blood to be warm. More than warm. Its blood was hot, and as it flowed down my hand – the hand that was wrapped around its neck – I was surprised. Hours earlier, I had been the one responsible for submerging this turkey’s already-dead companions in a hot water bath of 160 degrees; and now, being the one to nearly choke it, out of fear that it would struggle itself loose from my grip, being the one to slit – no cut; slit is too shallow of a word – its throat and hold its head while it bled out, while it died, was an altogether different experience.

This year’s Wilderness & Civilization (WC) gang knew, in theory, what was in store for them come November. The WC program directors had more than alluded to our upcoming participation in the Thanksgiving turkey “harvest” at Prairie Heritage Farms, so as a vegetarian, I had had a few months to prepare myself for my role in the harvest on the 21st and 22nd of November.
Prairie Heritage Farms (PHF) is a small farm near Great Falls, Montana on the Fairfield Bench, outside of Power, owned by Jacob and Courtney Cowgill. Hop on over to their website, and you will learn that the farm is family-run and a cultivator of organic vegetables, ancient and heritage wheat, lentils, a variety of other seed crops, and heritage turkeys – these turkeys – which are birds that a) are naturally-mating; b) have long outdoor lifespans; and c) have slow growth rates. One can compare these turkeys to factory- and commercially-farmed birds (which are none of these things) and see that PHF turkeys are happy and raised with care. The PHF website reads, “Our turkeys are more flavorful, juicier and just plain better than the factory-farmed ones you get at the grocery store. They're more expensive, yes, but they're worth it – not only because they're the best turkey[s] you'll ever taste, but also because they're raised with love and care.” This TLC is why PHF has sold every one of their turkeys every year they’ve offered them to the Montana public.
Part One: The Killing Station
The Killing Station is more of an open shed situated between a large, closed barn and familiar amber waves of Eastern Montana pasture. There are two plastic, white buckets on the ground at the left of this shed, which sit directly under two metal cones. In the barn, the stomachs of one hundred and thirty-some turkeys, which were herded from the farm’s open fields a day earlier, are getting lighter and lighter. Because these turkeys are raised outside, they eat the grasses and the bugs that exist there; and because it is easier to process turkeys whose gullets and gizzards are empty of these foods, they are barricaded in the barn a day prior to slaughter.
Enter four students charged with the most physically challenging part of the process: catching the turkeys. Once the first turkey is caught and killed, it is evident that the remaining turkeys are, to some extent, aware of their fate. Cornering them seems to be the way in which most students are able to catch them. Me, though – I’m not able to catch a single one; the feeling of their weight and their frightened stiffness makes me anxious and hesitant, two things you cannot be if catching a live bird is your end goal.
Once caught, they are taken from the barn to the open shed and held upside down, one student containing their legs, another guiding their bodies through the aforementioned metal cones. Their heads are pulled through the smaller, bottom hole, their necks held firmly. With a steady hand, a knife is pressed to their jugular vein.
It takes a turkey somewhere around five minutes to bleed out.
Part Two: The Plucking Station
Once a bird is caught and killed, it is brought around the barn to the Plucking Station, which consists of: a scale on which the bird is weighed (this immediate weight is called its “live weight”); a large tub of scalding-hot water in which the bird is plunged for a minute and half – this bath allows its feathers to be easily pulled and plucked from its body; an automatic turkey plucking machine (what I will call a “turkey spinner”) that does exactly what it sounds like it does – at its best, it completely plucks the feathers from a turkey in a whirlwind of water and extremely fast rubber “fingers” or knobs; and a stainless steel table around which one to four people stand, plucking the remaining hangers on.
Part Three: Necking
Featherless, the turkeys are then carried from the Plucking Station to two large sinks where the necks are removed from the bodies. My participation at these last stations is limited to observation, so I’ve enlisted the help of Jacob Cowgill to explain these processes. (Matt Freeman, a WC student and KBGA college radio personality spent the weekend recording the harvesting process for a radio spot, and I’ve used his audio to paraphrase Jacob’s explanation about this processing stage.)
“You’re going to cut back towards the base of the neck. Here, you’ll find the trachea and the esophagus, held together by a membrane. Peel back the membrane, and you’re going to follow the esophagus to the crop (which is where food is pre-digested), and what you’re going to do is loosen the crop. You’re not going to take it out, you just want to get it loose. The crop is sort of hard to see, but it’s a sack – a thin sack – and it’s fairly tough, but it can break. You want to prevent that; you just want to loosen the membrane from the wall with your fingers. There, at the base of the crop, you’ll find the trachea. Clean up the skin here. Peel the skin off the neck. Cut off the neck. You’re going to save the necks; they’re put back inside the bird before they’re bagged. Finally, you’re going to want to cut off the scent gland. You’ll see some ‘yellow stuff.’ Clear that yellow stuff away.”
Part Four: The Evisceration Station
The turkeys are then transferred to the Evisceration Station, where they are gutted and given a final inspection. Here, any remaining feathers are plucked, and organs are removed and sorted; livers and hearts are saved, to be joined by the necks inside the turkeys before they’re packaged.
Part Five: Post-Processing
The turkeys’ legs are zip-tied together and they’re placed in coolers until they reach a temperature of forty-one degrees (or less). They are then put in a bag, which is placed in hot water in order to seal them. They are then weighed (given a “dead weight”) and transferred to the truck that will deliver them to the Montanans that bought them so many months prior to this weekend.
There is a disconnect in the American food system. Many people are unaware of the production and processing methods that make a delicious Thanksgiving meal possible. So we, as a relatively conscientious group of university students, set out to learn what one of those processes consisted of. While doing so, we made sure to thank those that were “giving” us their bodies; as each throat released hot blood, and while each turkey struggled to survive the Killing Station – in a gesture meant to convey the heavy-hearted emotions most of us were feeling and the respect we had for their lives – we thanked them. We thanked them for being unknowing participants in our food system and thanked them for the transfer of energy from their living bodies into, theoretically, our own. In this sense, the weekend was not only an education in poultry processing and ethically-sound consumption, but it was also an exercise in mindfulness. 
I went into the harvest weekend believing that, should I be able to kill a turkey, I would or should re-evaluate my own consumption, re-think my vegetarianism. As it turned out, however, the weekend was lifestyle-affirming. I am still a vegetarian, but should I ever choose to drift back to my omnivorous self, I know that I will be an educated meat-eater, and I have no doubt that I will be a thankful one. Happy [Belated] Thanksgiving.








William A. Clarks Legacy at Milltown By Cory Hoffman

Weather in Montana can be fickle, and so it can be difficult sometimes to plan ahead for trips outdoors. This was the case when we had planned on touring the superfund complex up the Clark Fork. While we didn’t get to see the Berkley Pit, we did get to concentrate on the down-stream part of the trip, at the Milltown superfund site.
The close proximity to the University made the trip seem even more relevant in a way, knowing that millions of dollars were being spent to clean up a part of the river only a short bike ride from our classroom. Knowing that the cleaning was being done on a river I walk over all the time on my way to class, maybe even to talk about this very ecological disaster.
First we met up with the park manager, Michael Kustudia at the parking area to the Milltown overlook. It turns out that he was very familiar with the area before working here, having grown up just across the highway in Bonner, and spent time at Milltown Reservoir as a kid. This gave him a personal appreciation for the way the dam and reservoir were perceived by the local community.
Michael gave us a history lesson starting with the Salish use of the area. Before the Clark Fork was dammed up, there were large bull trout that migrated up the Blackfoot river all the way from Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho.The confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot was a popular fishing spot for people living in the area hundreds of years ago.
But then of course, “The richest hill on earth” was discovered, in the later part of the nineteenth century, forever changing many parts of western Montana’s landscape including the Clark Fork River. Copper king William A. Clark who owned much of Butte at that time had a lumber mill in Bonner. In order to get power for his mill he built the dam in 1908. Shortly after the completion of the dam, a giant flooding event washed huge amounts of heavy metals from upstream where they eventually settled behind the dam. This caused contamination of the local ground water, and eventually leading to the designation of the sight as a superfund site.
Michael was quick to point out where artificial logs made out of coconut fibers were installed near the bank of the river to plant willows in and stop erosion. He also pointed to a group of willows that had come back on their own, along with some cottonwoods. He said some people had theorized that the seeds had been under the soil for over one hundred years, waiting for their chance at life in an entirely different world than that of their ancestors. The reseeding that was done by park employees was part of what Michael called the three R’s of superfund sites, remediation, restoration, and redevelopment.

            We could look just upstream at where the cottonwoods were already mature, and get a good sense of what the area would look like in the future. Although humans have a knack for disturbing ecosystems, and in the case of the upper Clark Fork, really, really disturb it. It’s good to see that we can put some of these landscapes together again.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Tracking: The Odyssey by Simon Dykstra and Luke Santore

Casey Teaching
Its safe to say that none of us knew what to expect when we learned that we were going on a wildlife tracking field trip. Even more confusion was caused upon learning that our first stop was Walmart. 

We spent the first hour of the day perusing the wrong Walmart for any sign of our teacher. Unfortunately we had not yet learned how to track, so we resorted to direct communication. Once we arrived at the right Walmart (who knew there was two??) our teacher quickly grasped our attention. He lead us past the neighborhood pawn shop and pointed out some stray beer cans. "Signs of the local denizens! We may wake someone up." In classic Wilderness and Civ style, we proceeded to tromp through the underbrush until we reached our destination- the underpass under Reserve. With a four lane highway roaring overhead, we studied the ground at our feet. Most of us had never tracked anything before. Raccoon prints were baby hands and cranes were clear evidence of Big Bird. We never expected to find a major wildlife corridor under a heavily trafficked bridge. By mornings end however, Casey had given us a wealth of tracking knowledge. Enough to go make educated guesses at the MPG Ranch. 

Corey Knoweldging
We pulled up next to an excavator and a half built mini-shed and wandered down into the floodplain that borders Highway 12 and the Bitterroot river. Over the next seven hours, we hiked about a mile and a half and had a great time doing it. Every aspen grove and field was filled with adventure and knowledge. We learned the story of the field mouse a.k.a the vole. Its a tiny thing with big impact. Casey revealed its corridors within the grass. Barely noticeable to the untrained eye. He told us that they are in fact ecosystem engineers on par with beavers (wow!). In the winter they nibble on baby trees just budding out of the ground, effectively stalling forest succession. The effect is a more open and varied habitat more suitable to the likes of Elk and other wildlife. This is but one example of how much Casey had to say about every track or sign we passed. Each one held a bit of history in it. They could tell us how and when an animal moved through. Tracks and signs could also tell us the way in which an animal moves through the forest. This simple bit of info seemed to, as Casey said, develop a more direct and personal, even intimate, relationship with wildlife. It was plain to see that plenty of animals lived inside of Casey considering how he emulated the cambium-gnawing Elk with such precision. 

Beautiful sunset while waiting for certificates

Tracking is often called natural literacy. Not being able to read and write is as much of a hindrance as not being able to read the sign in the landscape around you. We all found a new value in the outdoors that we never knew had existed. Tracking wildlife gives you a unique perspective into their world and behaviors, making them more than just animals who live in the woods. Each sign we observed told a story of the intentions and intelligence of the creature making it. Wether or not we earned certificates in tracking, the knowledge we gained was invaluable. We all walked away with a new appreciation for the life of ecosystems, an impressive feat considering our background in the outdoors. 



Friday, October 31, 2014

A Varied Landscape by Aaron Adamski and Christian Lipscomb

“Here we go again” was the thought that crossed my mind as I met at the UMT Motor Pool with my fellow sleep deprived and greasy Wilderness & Civilization students.  There was no chance to relive the Trixie’s bar experience on this field trip, for we were headed towards the strange lands of Idaho. 
Our instructor, Natalie Dawson, turned onto highway 12 outside of Lolo, MT.  A vehicle full of caffeine fueled college students pleaded our case to make a “quick” stop at Jerry Johnson hot springs.  With a lead foot on the gas and a sarcastic chuckle the Judge simply replied with, “no”.  Accepting the Judge’s decision we turned on the jams and took in the multitude of fall hues that streamed passed the windows like water colors.


A quick stop at Lolo Pass visitor center, and we were soon on our way again.  About 10 miles down the road we made our first stop.  The Devoto Red Cedar Grove is a pocket of old growth forest tucked away in the Clearwater National Forest.  The trees reach maturity around 500 years, while some can grow to be 3000 years old.  The gnarled bark stretches upwards far enough to make your neck ache.  The sunlight struggles to break through the thick canopy while the undergrowth remorselessly competes for it.  This area collects about 90 inches of annual precipitation, which is why this type of vegetation grows this far inland.  The orographic effect of the Bitterroot Mountains from the westerly weather patterns creates a situation that releases the moisture from the saturated clouds as they move farther east.


After collecting all of our observation data for the Devoto Grove, we packed up and hit the road.  We headed back up in elevation to the pass. Lodgepole pines were spread across the landscape at Lolo Pass.  None of them were extremely tall, and there were old scars on the land from clear cutting.  The strong orographic effect cuts the precipitation levels almost in half in a very short distance. This large drop in precipitation changed the vegetation in the area from red cedars to lodgepole pines.  After solving that mystery the Wild & Civ gang was off.

Our next area of inspection was Fort Fizzle.  On the way we drove to the Lolo complex fire and the Judge explained that this area was a cold pocket where the temperatures often drop below freezing because of the low lying area surrounded by mountains.  The majority of the vegetation in the area is ponderosa pines and cottonwoods.  The amount of precipitation at Fort Fizzle is greatly reduced, because the stingy pass wrings out the clouds and leaves no rain for the lower east side of the mountains.  The annual precipitation is 26 inches.  Ponderosa pines grow here because they prefer dry climates and have evolutionarily adapted to fire.  This low lying area that is adjacent to Lolo Creek is a prime habitat for the moisture hungry cottonwoods.  The trees were spread fairly far apart making it easy for the undergrowth to grab sunlight.  Concluding our observations we headed back to the semi-arid Missoula climate. 

Blue Mountain is a large recreation area for the local community.  Miles and miles of trails cut through the grasslands that grow into forested mountain tops.  The lack of trees makes this area a prime recreation area.  The grasses are the major vegetation in the area with a few lonely ponderosa pines scattered throughout.  The precipitation is extremely low at an average of only 16 inches, making it very difficult for larger vegetation to grow.  Thinking back to the Red Cedar Grove it is surreal to see the large change in environment over the small distance of 70 miles. 

Returning to the Motor Pool the Judge released us on parole and another eye opening field trip was in the books.