Montana agriculture is often associated with cattle, wheat and hay, but organizers of a new festival want people to consider another source of food: the plants, mushrooms and wild game found across the state's landscape.
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The first-ever Feral Feast will bring together foragers, hunters, anglers, chefs and others interested in learning more about harvesting food from the land.
Beth Brennan and Poldi Wieland, two outdoor enthusiasts, organized the festival around the idea of helping people become more connected to the food available in their surroundings.
“Wild food has become if not a weekly, a daily thing in my life,” Wieland said.
Wieland's podcast and YouTube channel, Year of Plenty, focuses on ways people can reconnect with food and traditional food systems.
“Kind of my outlet for exploring those topics around wild food homesteading, traditional food ways,” Wieland said.
Brennan said the idea for a festival grew from a desire to bring those concepts together in an educational setting.
“That's where Feral Feast brings all of this together. It really is based in education, so people can feel confident, can feel self-sufficient, can go back to some of these more traditional ways,” Brennan said.
The organizers also emphasize responsible harvesting and caring for the places where wild food is found.
“Not just taking, but learning about how can I tend this patch so that me and maybe my friends and maybe my children or people in the future can harvest from it,” Wieland said.
The Feral Feast will take place Aug. 22 at North Bridger Bison Ranch in Wilsall. Ranch owner Matt Skoglund is among the speakers.
Brennan said Skoglund will discuss his experience with field harvesting and the questions that come with taking the life of an animal.
The festival will run from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and include cooking classes and seminars covering foraging, conservation and hunting.
“Doing cooking classes, and then we will have seminars around the different topics of foraging, conservation, hunting,” Brennan said.
Organizers say attendees do not need to be experienced hunters or foragers to participate.
“But certainly you don't need to be an expert. You just need to be curious about wild food in general,” Wieland said.
The Feral Feast is scheduled for Aug. 22 at North Bridger Bison Ranch in Wilsall. More information about speakers, the schedule and tickets is available through the festival's website.
