Volume four number four, two thousand eight | winter

From Dirt to Fuel: Montana Farmers

Look to New, Intriguing Crops

Hutterite Colonies Come Together

for Harvest Festival
Does Santa live in Belt?
Robin Selvig: Architect of
a Basketball Dynasty

Stopping by Drummond

Fiction by Pete Fromm

Art by Annick Smith
 A Friendly
Harvest
STORY BY SCOT T MCMILLION
� PHOTOGRAPHY BY DEIRDRE EITEL

The inaugural Hutterite Harvest Festival brings Hi-Line residents

and their Hutterite neighbors together for a day of fun

A Hutterite boy gets a hit during an afternoon softball tournament

during the Harvest Festival in September.
 O ut on the prairie between Malta and Saco, halfway
between the Missouri River and the Canadian border, out
where the hot water bubbles from the ground, a man and his
preacher bent over a horseshoe pit and had a discussion.
The preacher maintained his shoe had fallen close enough
to the pin to score a point. His opponent disagreed, but only
briefly.
“Okay,” he conceded. “We’ll go with the Lord on that one.”
Then they both grinned.
And the horseshoes sailed.
Welcome to the first annual Hutterite Harvest Festival. Take the black pants and
suspenders from the men, take the long dresses and headscarves from the women,
take those things away and the event looked a lot like any other church picnic: a full
day of horseshoes and softball, fried chicken and roast pork, with plenty of beer.
Teenagers flirted. The little kids squabbled some and giggled a lot. The older people
visited, with the men talking crops and rain and the price of gas while the women
spoke of kids and relatives and recipes.
“It’s their day. They get to do what they want,” said Roger Ereaux, who organized the
event as a way for businesses along the Hi-Line
to show their appreciation for their Hutterite
neighbors. “It’s kind of like a fair.”
Ereaux owns the Sleeping Buffalo Hot
Springs, a decidedly down-at-the-heels estab-
lishment that grabbed a flicker of fame in 1999
when folks fried up three tons of beef to make
the world’s biggest hamburger.
But on a breezy Saturday early in Sep-
tember, Ereaux was aiming for a different kind
of attention. I’m not so sure he pulled it off, but
I liked his idea.
With roughly 50 colonies in Montana,
Hutterites are part of the culture and economy
of this state, particularly on the prairies.
Unlike the Amish, who are distant theologi-
cal cousins, Hutterites embrace most practical
aspects of modern technology. They drive, they
use computers, they talk on cell phones. And
they spend a lot of money, buying everything
from insurance to lumber to tractor parts.
As Ereaux explained it to me, the busi-
nesses wanted to give something back to the Clockwise from top right: Carrieann Hofer, 8, from the Loring colony near Harlem keeps an eye
colonies, even if it was just some free swim- on the activites. David Hofer, 16, lines up a toss in a game of horseshoes. He said he enjoyed
ming. looking at the cute girls from the other colonies as well as playing in the horseshoe tournament.
Sharon Hofer discusses balls and strikes with the pitcher during the softball tournament.
So he organized the festival as a way for
Kevin Hover, center, and Matthew Tschetter drove down from Alberta, Canada, to flirt with the
Hi-Line businesses to show their apprecia- girls at the Harvest Festival. Hofer cousins Matthew, 6, and Sophia and Aubrey, 2, from left,
tion. He cadged donations from businesses spend some time outside the bath house of the once grand Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs.

12
 Clockwise: Children were
treated to a full day of
swimming in the hot springs
at the Harvest Festival. An
old Lutheran church sits on the
grounds of Sleeping Buffalo
Hot Springs. Roger Ereaux,
owner of Sleeping Buffalo
Hot Springs for 20 years,
organized the Harvest
Festival as a way for local
businesses to thank the
Hutterites for contributing to
the communities along the Hi-
Line. A variety of vegetables,
eggs and baked goods were
on sale at the festival for
town folk to purchase.

and invited five Hutterite colonies, offering $1,000 in prize
money for competitions in softball, horseshoes and tug-of-war.
(The colonies competed hard, but they decided to split the money
evenly.)
Though the day was pretty disorganized and the rope-
pulling contest never happened, everybody seemed to have a
good time. I know I did. I even made some new friends.
Like most Montanans, I’d seen Hutterites around. They’re
easy to spot, with their distinctive clothing and German accents,
which turn almost every vowel into a dipthong, where words like
“lost” come out as “lowest,” and “hog” comes out “hoe-aag.” But
I never gave them a lot of thought, beyond appreciating the vege-
tables and chickens they sell at roadside stands. They seemed
to me stoic and shy, maybe a little standoffish, but pleasant
enough.
At Sleeping Buffalo, I got a look at how they deal with each
other, in part because there weren’t many people like me hanging
around. I learned that, like people in any group, some of them
cuss when they’re angry. When something sucks, they say it sucks.
Some overdrink. They get competitive when the game is close. They
crack wise: women joke about the helplessness of their husbands
and men joke about Hutterites don’t proselytize. They tend to stick to their own kind.
women drivers. Most And because they are different, Hutterites have been persecuted in
of them don’t swim the past. Founder Jacob Hutter was burned at the stake in 1536, and bigots
too well. Most of shoved his followers from one European country to another until the 1870s,
them vote and follow when they emigrated to the North American prairies.
politics. They pay As pacifists, they won’t serve in the armed forces and, during World War
taxes. I, two Hutterite men died of neglect and abuse in a military prison in Fort
Except for their Leavenworth.
distinctive clothes As late as the 1950s, South Dakota law banned Hutterite colonies from
and accents, they buying more land, and Alberta had a similar law until 1973.
look and act a lot And in 1998, near Shelby, Mont., somebody burned a colony’s barn and
like any other bunch poisoned a well, acts that authorities treated as hate crimes.
of prairie farmers, which is what they are, and there are worse And that’s why I liked Ereaux’s idea of a Hutterite festival, one where
ways to live. everybody is invited.
But Hutterites aren’t the same as most people. Even today, there are plenty of rumors and cheap stereotypes about
They live communally, in colonies based on deep religious Hutterites.
faith, and all major assets belong to the colony. None of them “I don’t even like to speak about it,” said Will Hauk, one of the handful
have much to call their own. Preachers have a lot of authority. of non-Hutterites at the event. He’s been a friend of the East Malta Colony for
Women don’t. Most people leave school when they turn 15 and years, he said, and liked the idea of the festival: It might help bring people
they’re a little leery about the temptations of the world. Family together.
and faith are crucial. Granted, Sleeping Buffalo is a long way from almost everything, and
Not everybody is cut out for this kind of life. The Hutterites watching Hutterites throw horseshoes isn’t everybody’s idea of a good time.
know this. But it might be your best chance to get to know some fellow Montanans.
“It’s the best life for us, but you’ve got to start out when Like everybody else, Hutterites have warts as well as virtues. Some folks are
you’re just this high,” Mike Hofer told me, leveling his palm at nicer than others. Some are better looking. Some are funnier. They run the
knee level. “You couldn’t do it at your age.” gamut.
With the exception of some mission work in Nigeria, the They’re people.

14 M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R LY 15