Claim OwnershipReframing Rural
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Reframing Rural is the award-winning documentary podcast founded in 2019 by writer, Montanan and farmer's daughter, Megan Torgerson. Reframing Rural does the much needed work of challenging stigmas about rural places by introducing listeners to working people, history and culture that don't always get the spotlight. Season 1 transports listeners to Torgerson's rural homeplace, a tight-knit agricultural community on the plains of far Northeast Montana. Season 2 sows hope in the future of the rural West and Heartland through interviews with rural activists, academics, artists and entrepreneurs. Season 3 combines narrative episodes with interviews to probe the status quo of agriculture, explore farm stress and the need for rural mental health care, the familial challenges of farm and ranch succession planning, the Indigenous roots of regenerative agriculture and the threats of rural gentrification and cultural extraction. Season 4 shares the stories of five Montana farm and ranch families navigating the transition to the next generation.
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Megan shares an update from Winnett ACES since her first reporting trip to Winnett, three years ago, then re-airs the season three episode "Winnett ACES: Strengthening Community & Keeping Ranchers on Working Lands." In this story, she visits Winnett, the only town in the least populated county in Montana, where out-of-state absentee land ownership poses a threat to local ranchers. To keep people on the land, preserve the region's intact prairie ecosystem and build a vibrant future for Winnett's main street, the rancher-led nonprofit Winter ACES is furthering economic and environmental sustainability for Petroleum Co. through grassroots community organizing.
From the archives, we bring you Megan's family succession story "Farm Succession in Northeast Montana," the season three story of Megan's dad Russ Torgerson's retirement. In this episode, Megan shares the intimate journey of her family's farm succession, giving listeners an inside look into the emotional, legal and financial factors at play with succession planning. Curious what the next generation of farmers are facing, Megan also interviews the Jorgensens, another farm family from Northeast Montana who is transferring the management of their farm to their son Tanner.
You've heard the stories of succession planning from families around Montana this season, and now you're ready to start thinking about succession planning for your own family's farm or ranch. In this bonus episode, we bring you a two-part, practical roadmap for getting started. In chapter one, we take you to Winnett, where Megan hosted a live panel discussion with succession specialists Dr. Marsha Goetting of MSU Extension, Michael Stolp of AgWest Farm Credit, and CPA Stacie Arntzen. They break down what it really takes to begin a succession plan, sharing guidance on communication, business structures, taxes, trusts, and how to approach transitions both within and beyond the family. In chapter two, American Farmland Trust's Farm Legacy Director Jerry Cosgrove discusses succession through the lens of land protection, conservation easements, and what to do when there's no next generation waiting in the wings. Together, these conversations offer actionable steps for families seeking to secure the future of their operation.
Sig Pugrud's ranch sits on a high bench above Flatwillow Creek, in one of the least-populated counties in the United States. Her family homesteaded in Petroleum County, Montana in 1910, surviving drought, the Dust Bowl, the farm crisis of the 1980s, and generations of economic uncertainty with a combination of grit and creativity. As a child, Sig watched her parents gamble on emerging cattle genetics, hauling 4-H calves as far east as Ohio and Kentucky to stay afloat. Decades later, she would make her own high-stakes decision: taking her family's ground out of production and reseeding it back into grass. The move reduced the land's market value, but rebuilt the ecosystem surrounding it. Sig's story is a rare one in American agriculture. Despite having two brothers, she became the sole successor to her family's ranch at a time when women were rarely seen as rightful heirs. Now in her 60s, she is not only a steward of grasslands, but a pillar of her community — serving as a county commissioner, mentoring younger ranchers, and helping lead Winnett ACES, a nonprofit working to revitalize both land and small town. As she plans the next transition for her ranch, Sig wrestles with the same question that has shaped every generation before her: how to hold the land together long enough for the next dream to take root.
When Jake Fritz moved back home at 19, four generations were trying to make a living off the same acres northwest of Chester, Montana. With no succession plan from the senior generation, Jake's mother Dena and her husband Jim were leasing land from Jake's grandpa and great-grandma, giving away a quarter of their crop while carrying all the operating costs. This episode follows the Fritzes through an era of piecing their farm back together: buying land from relatives, absorbing sudden expenses when Grandpa Errol decided to sell, and slowly shifting authority to Jake. Their story captures what it looks like to work through the "messy middle" of succession to protect the future of a 115-year-old homestead.
In the beaver flats outside Ekalaka, Montana, Ryan and Abbey Bruski are upending convention on their multi-generational ranch. After realizing that their traditional cow-calf model wasn't working for the land or the family, they sold the cows, shifted to custom grazing, and began rebuilding the ranch from the ground up. As the Bruskis implemented regenerative grazing practices, including daily moves, diverse grass mixes, and a focus on soil health, they also confronted the strained succession history that had long cast uncertainty over the ranch. Determined not to repeat the past, Ryan and Abbey paired ecological regeneration with a new approach to family planning, creating clear roles, business structures, and a succession plan designed to give future generations clarity.
When Valier rancher Gene Curry began planning the future of Curry Cattle Company, he approached succession with the same drive that helped him build his operation from a patchwork of leased pastures and foreclosure sales. But when it came time to pass the operation to the next generation, he found himself facing a challenge that demanded something ranch life had never asked of him before: softening his dominant personality and learning to let go. What began as a practical effort to preserve the ranch he'd pieced together over decades, became a personal transformation that asked Gene to rethink how he communicated, led and showed love to his family.
When Howie Hammond learned he might only have months to live, he and his daughter Andrea had to make quick decisions about the future of their family's farm and ranch. In the Milk River Valley of northern Montana, the Hammonds' story shows how one family's health scare catalyzed the difficult conversations about succession that many rural families avoid until it's too late. From urgent meetings with their lawyer and accountant, to long days spent side by side in the field, Howie and Andrea share what it took to move from uncertainty to a plan that keeps the family farm intact.
Curious to know the man behind the deep voice we heard at the beginning of Reframing Rural's Season Four preview? That's cowboy poet, Jim Hamilton. Here he is reading his poem about succession, "The Changing of the Guard."
Aging farmer demographics, rising land values and farm stress are creating a challenging environment for the successful transfer of farms and ranches to the next generation. Behind the legal, financial and familial considerations of farm and ranch transition, lay a wellspring of stories that do not often surface in conventional planning discussions. In Season Four, Reframing Rural will unearth the stories laying beneath the logistics, stories from families navigating complex social and environmental factors as they work to preserve their agricultural way of life.
Megan has come back from maternity leave and is working with Winnett ACES on a new podcast season!
In this final installment of Season 3 "Groundwork," Reframing Rural founder, host and producer, Megan Torgerson speaks with the podcast's audio engineer, Aaron Spieldenner and story editor, Mary Auld about the inspiration behind the season and all the work that goes into producing the show's long-form narrative episodes.
Grace Olmstead is the West's preeminent author on place. In her book "Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We've Left Behind" and in this interview, she speaks to rural outmigration, connection to place, the history of how agriculture was industrialized and the future of agriculture in the West amid suburban sprawl and a call to build more just and resilient regional food systems.
At 21 John Wicks was faced with the decision to stay in college or come home and save his family's farm. Today he is a leader in Montana's organic and regenerative farming movement and an advocate for family farms across the state, serving as the associate director of Montana Farmers Union. Together with his friends Peyton Cole and Paul Neubauer, John is helping further the understanding that the health of our agricultural lands impacts the health of our communities.
Dr. Alison Brennan, MSU Extension's designated mental health specialist, Courtney Brown Kibblewhite with Northern Ag Network and Beyond the Weather, and wellness coach and rancher Lisa Williams discuss mental health resources and stigma around mental health in Montana's rural and agricultural communities. This episode spans data on farm stress, free counseling services for Montana producers and actionable tips for restoring balance and wellbeing to our lives.
In Winnett, the only town in the least populated county in Montana, out-of-state absentee land ownership poses a threat to the future of ranching and the preservation of the region's intact prairie ecosystem. To keep people on the land and build a vibrant future for Winnett's main street, the rancher-led nonprofit Winnett ACES is furthering economic and environmental sustainability for Petroleum Co. through local grassroots organizing.
This bonus episode features a webinar recorded for the Women's Foundation of Montana, June 2022. "Developing Leaders for Montana's Future" was a virtual conversation about the landscape of women's leadership in the state featuring leaders who've advanced opportunities for young rural women, Montana women business owners and students privileged to experience the perspective-shifting adventure of an international exchange. This panel featured Deena Mansour, the executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, Suzi Berget White, the former business development director of Prospera Business Network and Shannon Stober, the lead facilitator of the Red Ants Pants Foundation's Girls Leadership Program.
The convergence of mountain and prairie ecosystems along the Rocky Mountain Front is the awe-inspiring backdrop of the Blackfeet Nation, home of the Amskapi Piikani, or Blackfeet, for time immemorial. Latrice Tatsey, a rancher and cultural land ecologist with Piikani Lodge Health Institute, and Danielle Antelope, a teacher of wild plant medicines and the executive director of FAST Blackfeet, have long braided their lives into the cycles of this wild and tender land. This episode explores their respective food sovereignty initiatives, how they're helping people regain comfortability on the land, thrive in the face of climate change and restore balance to the plant, animal, land and human communities on the Blackfeet Nation.
In this bonus episode from Working Wild U, a podcast by Montana State University Extension and Western Landowners Alliance, hosts Jared Beaver and Alex Few explore how people's values impact how they think about wolves and land use in the West.
The small North Idaho town of Dover has seen the extraction of timber, cheap labor and the natural amenities that draw tourists and second home owners with high-incomes and high-expectations for the luxuries they're accustomed to. What happens to the natural environment and community cohesion when developers build with higher-income-earners and with profits in mind? What happens to locals when they are priced out or culturally displaced? In this immersive episode, host Megan Torgerson brings listeners to the shores of the Pend Oreille River, the center of Kalispel's homeland for 10,000 years, where she interviews longtime residents, local historians and Dr. Ryanne Pilgeram whose book "Pushed Out: Contested Development and Rural Gentrification in the US West" uses Dover as a case study for how corporations cause destruction in order to profit from spaces with abundant natural beauty.
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