GUTS! Internship by Ashley Perry

This semester I got to work with GUTS!, a program though YWCA in Missoula. GUTS! is a non-profit organization that stands for “Girls Using Their Strengths.”  This unique leadership and empowerment program is designed by and for young women.  The program encourages young women to explore their personal values and discover their strengths through wilderness adventures in the summer and during after-school groups. 

During my semester, I helped with the planning for the summer adventure trips.  These trips give girls a unique experience to increase self-confidence, hone individual strengths and cultivate their appreciation for the natural world in an environment free from societal pressures.  My main focus was on the Youth Leadership Training Trip, a new addition to the program this summer.  This trip offers leadership training and an opportunity to help lead younger GUTS! trips this summer.  This trip consists of four days backpacking in the Bitterroot, to complete additional leadership training.  I also helped with the other summer trips which include, Girls on Wheels Bike Adventure, Wild Horse Island Adventure, Pintler Backpacking Adventure and Bitterroot Adventure.  All of these trips give the girls such a unique experience, to explore Montana. The trips also include different service projects around Montana like garden harvesting, meals on wheels, helping at AniMeals, and a service project with Five Valleys Land Trust. 

Before working with GUTS! I had no idea how much time goes into all the details of trips like these.  We had to get permits for each area, scout the trails, go over applications, make thousands of phone calls and do lots of research.  It was hard work, but I always loved going in and finding more activities for the girls to do during their amazing week.  It is really special to be a part of a program that gives girls such a unique experience, that is important to have in their lives.  GUTS! offers families scholarships for the different trips and are reasonably priced for an unforgettable experience. 

GUTS! after school program offers girls a safe environment to be them-selves and further their confidence as a young lady.  

I worked with six fourth grade girls that always came in the door with huge smiles on their face, excited for GUTS!.  This was something I looked forward to every week, as the girls warmed my heart with their ideas and willing-ness to make a difference in the community.  My co-leader and I mentioned doing a service project to our group, and before we could finish explaining it they were already making signs and planning it out. The girls planned a bake and jewelry sale for a local the animal shelter in Missoula.  We spent a couple weeks making posters and jewelry for the fundraiser in September.  Every week we do a variety of activities for the girls about different topics that may come up in elementary school.  Their favorite activities consisted of a variety of skits and making up GUTS! raps that are absolutely adorable and beyond creative.  The power these young ladies have as leaders is remarkable at such a young age.  Every girl should have the opportunity to be involved in something similar to GUTS!.  It is important that we continue to fund these programs to keep our youth engaged, empowered and the aware of the world of opportunities around them. 

 

Internship with Senator Tester's Office by Rebecca Boslough

During my semester long immersion into the Wilderness and Civilization program, I found myself encompassed by the wildness of the Bob Marshall, humbled by the kindness and knowledge of our many hosts and guest speakers, and enthralled by excursions with my adventurous peers. When it came time to choose an internship for the final component of the program, I was inspired by Laurie Yung’s Wildland Conservation Policy and Governance class.

Professor Yung introduced us to different environmental laws and policies in U.S., leading me to take Professor Nie’s Natural Resource Law and Policy Class as well as pursue an internship at Senator Tester’s Missoula Office. Tester is the Senate's only active farmer and a strong advocate for Montana’s outdoor heritage, authoring the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act and sponsoring the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act.

    I have learned the ropes quickly during my first two weeks at Senator Tester’s office. The staff is friendly and intelligent, and my supervisor, Becky, has already taught me how to work with constituents and handle casework. As the semester progressed, I began working with Tester’s natural resources staffer for Montana. Natural resources casework can involve resolving issues that constituents have with land management agencies, working with agencies to solve local problems, and informing and educating people about Tester’s stances on conservation and natural resource issues in Montana and around the United States.

    My first week on the job I had the opportunity to meet Stephanie Schriock. Schriock is Tester’s former Chief of staff; the current president of EMILY’s List, an organization dedicated to recruiting Democratic women to run for elected office; and a personal hero of mine. I was also able to sit in on meeting between the Missoula City Council and Senator Tester.

    My position at Senator Tester’s office is giving me valuable insight into how congressional offices operate and the significant role our delegates can play in land management and policy. This summer, I will continue to work for Senator Tester as part of the Truman Summer Institute Program in Washington, D.C.

UM Dining Gardens by Kelsey McMullen

The University of Montana (UM) Dining Garden internship offers a behind-the-scenes look at the University of Montana dining hall food production process. Sounds exciting, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want to hang out in the Food Zoo kitchen all day and watch the chefs cook… Luckily, the garden internship allows for plenty of work in the greenhouse, the two gardens on campus, and the aquaponics system.

The UM Dining Garden program is an affiliate of the Farm to College program. The Farm to College program works closely with the UM Dining Services to source food from local farmers and ranchers. The opportunity to provide organic, local, and sustainably harvested food is a rarity in the realm of mass food production. The UM Dining Services leads the nation with their environmentally and local-conscious food vendors. The garden manager, Natasha Hegmann recently attended the national Farm to Cafeteria Conference and returned especially proud of the University of Montana and the progress in sustainable food sourcing compared to other universities at the conference. She commented that our gardens, food vendors, and our relationship with the supervisors in the dining department far exceed other universities.

As an intern, my tasks include: harvesting, seeding, and cleaning microgreens from the aquaponics system every week, planting and transplanting vegetables for the spring/summer crops, attending the weekly UM Dining Service meetings, garden maintenance, organizing an event for Earth Week, and composting coffee grounds from The Market and coco coir from the weekly harvest. There were aspects of this internship that were unlike anything I have done before. I have had three years of experience working in a plant nursery while I was in high school so; I was familiar with planting, transplanting, and garden care. But, providing crops for chefs and observing the food purchasing process (especially on that large of a scale) was all new to me.

Because of the short growing season in Western Montana, most of the fruits and vegetables from the greenhouse and the gardens are ready for harvest during the summer time so, Food Zoo partons do not see the bulk of the harvest during the school year. However, the aquaponics system allows mircogreens (radish shoots), to be grown year-round. An aquaponics system is a combination of aquaculture (farmed fish, i.e. tilapia) and hydroponics (plants grown in medium other than soil, i.e. radish shoots grown in coco coir). Waste from the tilapia supplies nutrients for the microgreens. We harvest about 10 lbs of microgreens every week and those microgreens are put in the salad bar line and offered as an option every day in the Food Zoo.

            Attending the UM Dining Service meetings and observing the conversations about local foods was a real eye opener for me. Sourcing local food requires a dedicated working relationship between the supplier and the buyer. Every week, the discussion was: what is in season, and what is not in season? Which cut of beef can we use? How can we utilize more cuts to make orders easier for the rancher? The chefs and administrators in the dining department work incredibly hard and have personal relationships with local food suppliers to eat locally, seasonally, and provide the same opportunity for the students to do so as well. It was encouraging to see how receptive the professionals in the Dining Service program were to student suggestions and student group campaigns geared toward eating and sourcing locally.

My favorite part of interning with the Gardens is learning of the SOMAT machine. The SOMAT machine dehydrates all of the food waste from the Food Zoo into a confined, sterile pulp. Food waste matter is reduced by 93 percent. A truckload of waste fits in our 5 gallon green compost bucket! We use the SOMAT in our compost on campus. This is waste that would have otherwise been hauled off by the truckload to a landfill. Instead, we use it to regenerate and provide growing matter for our garden. Because of this machine, the Food Zoo does not produce any food waste.

This spring semester was geared toward planning events for a big Earth Week (April 21-25^th) celebration. We kicked off Earth week by giving out yellow onion starts at the Sustainaganza event in the UC. The next day, two interns, Lizzie and Ashley, gave lectures on native pollinators of Montana and how to grow mushrooms in a greenhouse. On Wednesday, we had our Bike Blender on the oval. This mechanism is a special blender designed to rotate as the back bike wheel rotates. One spin around the oval and you have made yourself a smoothie! Our final event was the van painting party (which was my project). We have had a lot of comments in the suggestion box asking if we compost or urging us to compost. So, in an effort to spread the word of our composting, I made a design to paint our compost van. We send a lot of our compost to the PEAS farm as we do not yet have the facilities to accommodate all of the coffee grounds from The Market and the SOMAT from the Food Zoo, thus, we need the van for transport. Inclement weather has staggered our painting days but, we have one side done and it looks great!

The UM Dining Gardens internship has provided me with great insight as a how-to implement sustainable food practices on a large scale. These relationships and practices can be applied to the Missoula public schools, hospitals, restaurants and other large facilities to significantly reduce waste and utilize local food options. Often times, the organic or local option is immediately dismissed as being too expensive or less convenient than bulk suppliers, but the UM Dining Service is proof that quality outweighed quantity and it is an achievable and rewarding process.

I am elated that the University of Montana offers the opportunity to receive credit for internship hours. I have completed two credit-eligible internships and have learned more about applicable field skills, communicative skills, hard labor, organizing people/events/paper work, and networking than I have in all of my college courses in the classroom. An internship allowed me to network in my field and community which was an immense benefit to me because I work 21-30 hours a week and find that I do not have the time outside of the classroom to attend as many community events as I would like but, receiving credit for the internship, and therefore, making it a part of my school schedule, gave my position credibility and allowed me privileges that I would not have had as a volunteer. With my two internships, I have worked with and alongside people of power within the Missoula community and my field, and I believe my employability increased significantly.

LIFELINE PRODUCE! By Ellie Duncan

On April 14th I moved to Victor, MT to begin a 6-month apprenticeship 

at Lifeline Produce. Life Line is a family run small scale organic 

farm. Steve Elliot, Luci Bridger and their kids run and live on the 

farm.  They sell vegetables and eggs at various locations including 

the ‘XXX’ farmers market (Look for me there in May!) the Good Food 

Store, the Food Co-op, the Western Montana Grower’s Co-op, Orange 

Street, and a couple others.

From where I am currently writing this in my tiny cottage, my closest 

neighbors are about 15 cows and a couple of calves. When I open by 

door they stare at me with classic cow blankness.  While Steve and 

Luci do not raise cows to sell for meat or dairy, they have a small 

herd of cattle which they raise in order to utilize their foraging of 

the grasses, their meat for their own use, and of course-- their 

manure for fertilization.

The soil in this valley is very striated, and varies from mile to 

mile. This means there are a lot of soil fertilization practices which 

are essential to a bountiful season of crops. As Wendell Berry says, 

bad land makes great farmers.  Steve and Luci rotate their crops and 

plant cover crops in order to give the soil a rest and fix nitrogen 

and other nutrients.

I begin each day at the farm crawling down from the loft of my one-

room cottage, making tea and eating breakfast while looking out the 

window west at the incoming weather.  Then I go and help to feed the 

sheep and the chickens with Luci.

The 18 ewes (female sheep) are about half way through lambing now. The 

8 ewes which have not lambed are so hugely pregnant their bellies sag 

and they don’t walk as much as waddle around.  I have not witnessed a 

birth yet, but have missed several by only a few minutes.  A ewe has 1 

to 4 lambs. When the lambs are born they seem like they are 80 

percent legs and I watch with apprehension as they attempt to stand 

for the first time, wobbling and shivering with such vulnerability.  

After they are born we coat their umbilical chord in iodine to prevent 

infection, feed the mamma yew a bucket of water and molasses (to give 

her some quick energy after her labor!) and make sure that the lambs 

are able to nurse. It is crucial for them to get milk in the first 

hour of their lives.

After a day or so when they have gained a bit more strength and aren’t 

so unruly on their hooves, we tag their ear, dock the female’s tales 

and elastrate the males. Elastration is a bloodless alternative to 

castrating using elastic bands which cut off circulation to the 

testicles and after a few days they fall off. We use the same method 

with the female’s tales. This may seem graphic or cruel, but it is a 

reality for sheep keeping!

So far we have lost 3 lambs. It has not been clear what their cause of 

death has been, sometimes they are just so small and weak that they 

get trampled or squashed by the other yews.  The rest of the lambs are 

looking vigorous and healthy. They run around the field, wiggle their 

tails and play with each other like they are in a Disney cartoon. Keeping 

sheep is no fairy tale however. Elastration is one reminder to you 

that if this was Disney, it would be a lot more like Katie Kinney’s 

rendition from our art class!

The majority of work at Lifeline this time of year is green house 

work. This means, seeding, transplanting, watering, and labeling 

plants for sale. There is also weeding in the hoop house, thinning 

spinach and beets, and preparing the beds for plants. It gets really 

hot in the hoop house during these warm spring days so I have recently 

started swimming in the beautiful pond, which is used for irrigation, 

hockey in the winter and swimming in the summer.

A almost entirely new area of learning for me is the more technical 

and mechanical aspects of farming. Steve has been teaching me about 

how irrigation, water pumps, and tractors function. The other day I 

spent more than 3 hours on the tractor using an attachment called the 

spader. The tractor moves very slowly when spading a field and is 

incredibly loud. After a while it puts me in quite a meditative state, 

and when I get off the tractor the world feels wobbly and clear. I 

feel gratified and empowered by this kind of work, and feel pleased 

with how it defies gender stereotypes!

During our backpacking trek last fall we had multiple conversations 

about how hard physical work makes so many simple things so much more 

gratifying-- like a pair of dry socks, or mac and cheese for dinner, 

or pausing for a moment by a creek when you are filtering water. This 

sort of activity teaches us so much about simplicity and gratitude and 

their interconnection. I have found that farm work has a very similar 

effect.  There is wonderful contentment to be found in a perfectly 

placed ray of sunlight in the morning in the cool green house, or 

eating spinach thinnings, or getting to sit down on a bench swing at 

the end of the day with a few purring farm cats.  I am elated to find 

not just an activity, but a lifestyle which allows you to maintain 

appreciation for simple pleasures.

As many of you know I dropped the majority of my classes (besides 

Wilderness and Civ.) in order to move out to Lifeline and begin this 

apprenticeship. I was feeling uninspired and unmotivated with school, 

and I realized that this academic institution is a  privilege which we 

should not be dragging our asses through. It is so important to 

remember that we are responsible for the choices we make, the 

activities we choose, the people we surround ourselves with and the 

places where we locate ourselves. We are frighteningly free.  If we 

can keep a hold on that reality even half of the time, perhaps we will 

be encouraged to dig deeper, ask more questions, work up a sweat, and 

immerse ourselves in our imperfectly complex and beauteous surroundings.

Come visit me at Lifeline if you want to get your hands in the dirt 

for a day!