For the first time in its six year run, the Red Ants Pants Music Festival held a block party on Main Street in White Sulphur Springs to announce the 2016 lineup. Hundreds gathered in person while people around the globe viewed a live webcast streaming the news of this year’s lineup which includes Grammy award-winning country legends Wynonna and The Big Noise, global superstars The Mavericks, The Lone Bellow, Hayes Carll, Corb Lund, Montana’s own Mission Mountain Wood Band and a remarkable host of Americana legends and rising stars.

 
“This year’s lineup offers incredible depth and diversity of talent from international stars including Wynonna and the Big Noise and The Mavericks to Montana’s own Mission Mountain Wood Band. Fans are going to hear some of the most unforgettable voices in Americana music today paired with rising stars who might just become their new favorite bands,” said Red Ants Pants Music Festival founder and producer, Sarah Calhoun. “Come connect with good folks and celebrate rural Montana with us this summer.”

 
This is the sixth year of the music festival, which benefits the Red Ants Pants Foundation, a nonprofit organization in support of women's leadership, working farms and ranches, and rural communities. Held in a cow pasture on the Jackson Ranch, and surrounded by the Big Belt, Little Belt, and Castle Mountain ranges, the festival will bring in more than two dozen different artists performing on separate stages. The weekend-long, grassroots, honky-tonkin' music festival brings in millions of dollars to the rural economy. Last year’s festival drew a record 14,000 in attendance.

2016 Red Ants Pants Music Festival Lineup

Full details available at RedAntsPantsMusicFestival-DOT-COM.
 
Wynonna and The Big Noise
The Mavericks * The Lone Bellow
Corb Lund * Hayes Carll
Mission Mountain Wood Band
Ray Wylie Hubbard * Hurray for the Riff Raff
Dar Williams * Shinyribs
The McCrary Sisters * Henry Wagons
Eilen Jewell * Underhill Rose
Laney Jones and the Spirits
Laney Lou and the Bird Dogs * Dead Horses
Balled in Burlap with Square Dance Caller Michelle Carcher
Plus 15 Side Stage Performers!

500 early bird tickets which are now on sale ONLINE ONLY on at the discounted price of $115. We will again be offering 50 VIP weekend passes for $500 each. VIP ticket holders will enjoy an outstanding view of the main stage, shaded seating furnished by The Perch in Bozeman, complimentary refreshments, beer & wine. VIP & early bird tickets will be sold on a first come, first served basis. Full details available at RedAntsPantsMusicFestival-DOT-COM.

Tonight we were also proud to announce our poster competition winner, Jan Elpel out of Bozeman, Montana! Check out her whimsical poster, Crazy Mountain Roundup. She used alcohol ink to get a smooth, colorful finish. Her artwork has focused on drawing and painting portraits in oils for the past 25 years.

Support for the Red Ants Pants Music Festival has a lasting ripple effect, benefiting the Red Ants Pants Foundation, a nonprofit organization in support of women's leadership, working farms and ranches, and rural communities.

Bozeman Celebrates Four Centuries of Shakespeare

April 23, 2016 marks the 400-year anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. In honor of the enduring legacy of his plays and poetry, the city of Bozeman will celebrate with SHAKESPEARE FLASH MOBS. On Saturday 23 April, the words of Shakespeare will erupt all over town: in coffee shops, bookstores, grocery stores, galleries, restaurants, trails, and other locations.

Would you like to be a part of the Shakespeare flash mob? You could recite a soliloquy or a sonnet, sing a Shakespearean song, perform a small scene with your friends, dress up in costumes or stay in your usual clothes…anything Shakespearean, in any public place in or around Bozeman.

The Country Bookshelf will be the Shakespeare Flash-400 headquarters. We’ll be there having refreshments and sharing stories of Shakespearean mobs on this important anniversary.

All ideas welcome! Please contact Gretchen Minton (Gretchen.minton@msu.montana.edu<mailto:Gretchen.minton@msu.montana.edu>) if you are interested.

The city of Bozeman has been ranked number four on a list of the 25 best small college towns in which to live. Bozeman, the home of Montana State University, was the highest-ranked town in Montana on the list.

The rankings were made by Schools.com, an online resource for education information and national education news. Results of the study were also shared by USA Today on the college page of its website.

In its write-up about the rankings, Schools.com recognized that living in a vibrant college town can have a positive impact on a student’s education experience, whether those students are campus-based or taking classes online.

To determine its rankings, researchers looked at 170 cities with populations under 150,000 that are home to at least one four-year college or university, evaluating both economic and quality-of-life factors. Researchers also limited the results to two cities per state, taking only the two highest-ranked to create the final list of 25.

Cities were ranked on:

Percentage of the population ages 18-34
Percentage of the population with a bachelor’s degree
Median annual rent as a percentage of median annual earnings
County employment rate
Percentage of commuters whose average travel time is less than 30 minutes
Walkability
The number of restaurants and bars per 10,000 residents

Of the cities on the list, Bozeman was ranked second for educational attainment, with more than 30 percent of residents having bachelor’s degrees. It also ranked second for restaurants, with more than 14 per 10,000 people.

MSU’s enrollment of more than 15,000 students was mentioned as a demographic perk for its large student population relative to the city population.

Calling Bozeman “a great choice for students who love outdoor recreation,” the study mentions the easy accessibility to ski areas, the miles of hiking and biking trails and the close proximity of Yellowstone National Park as lifestyle perks for students. It also lauds Bozeman’s big-city amenities packaged with small-town charm, and notes that Bozeman has four museums, numerous art galleries, a symphony, a ballet, an opera company and several community theaters.

Helena, home of Carroll College and Helena College, earned the ninth spot on the list.

Other cities on the list include Boulder, Colorado; Burlington, Vermont; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Fargo, North Dakota.

In November, Bozeman was ranked as the fourth best college town by SmartAsset, a financial technology company that aims to provide research to help individuals make big financial decisions.

For more information about the Schools.com rankings, go to http://www.schools.com/articles/25-best-small-college-towns. For more information about Bozeman, go to http://www.montana.edu/about/bozeman/.

The Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture is now accepting proposals for group and solo art exhibits. We have three exhibition venues including the Jessie Wilber, Lobby and Weaver Room Galleries. We are looking for both established and emerging artists of our region in a variety of medias. The Emerson is a non-profit arts and cultural center that showcases traditional and innovative contemporary art forms. We are looking for works to expand the public's appreciation of art and reflect the diversity of community interests. To apply download the exhibit proposal form from our website or email education@theEmerson.org with questions.

ExporTech, a nationally-recognized program that helps small and mid-sized manufacturers take advantage of growth opportunities in global markets, is coming to Montana in April.

Montana companies interested in doing business overseas are encouraged to register for the remaining spots available in this program that gives hands-on training in developing export plans.

ExporTech is the only national program that helps companies develop an export plan. The nine-week program consists of three sessions for no more than eight companies each session. Companies receive group workshops in addition to individual coaching with the aim of developing an export plan ready for implementation by the end of the course.

ExporTech will also help manufacturers magnify the benefits of other export programs they may be involved in and help them get the most out of tradeshows, visits to other countries and trade missions..

On average, participating companies have generated $770,000 in new export sales in the first year, according to data collected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

This program, which begins Wednesday, April 13, is offered by Montana State University’s Montana Manufacturing Extension Center (MMEC), part of the national Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The program is offered in partnership with the U.S. Commercial Service, FedEx, the Small Business Administration, the Montana Department of Commerce and the Montana Chamber of Commerce.

Registration for ExporTech is now open, but space is limited.

Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell will host the three full-day workshop sessions, which will take place on April 13, May 12 and June 14. Registration for the program is $2,500 per company, which allows a company to send three executives to each workshop. Between workshops, companies are paired with an individual coach to help them develop an export plan.

For more information, interested company representatives may contact Jenni West, associate director of MSU’s Montana Manufacturing Extension Center, at (406) 994-3876 or jennifer.west8@montana.edu. To learn more about ExporTech, visit: www.nist.gov/exportech.

The Bozeman Hot Springs opened their new three pools on March 19, 2016 to much fanfare. After a four to five year planning and construction project, that includes state of the art DMX controlled #LED lights, Two fire pits, a stage for Bands, elevated patio areas, and yet to be debuted are two amazing fire walls.

Montana State University has earned a No. 14 ranking among medium-sized schools on the Peace Corps’ 2016 top volunteer-producing colleges and universities list. There are currently 16 MSU students volunteering worldwide.

“The Peace Corps is a unique opportunity for college graduates to put their education into practice and become agents of change in communities around the world,” Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet said. “Today’s graduates understand the importance of intercultural understanding and are raising their hands in record numbers to take on the challenge of international service.”

The Peace Corps, established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, sends Americans abroad to help address the most pressing needs of people around the world, according to information available on its website. Volunteers work with community members at the grassroots level toward sustainable change that lives on long after their service.

Alumni from more than 3,000 colleges and universities nationwide have served in the Peace Corps since the agency’s founding, including 471 alumni from MSU. In 2015, Montana ranked No. 3 among states with the highest number of Peace Corps volunteers per capita, with 4.5 volunteers per 100,000 residents.

View the complete 2016 rankings of the top 25 schools in each undergraduate category here.  

For more information on MSU and the Peace Corps, see http://www.montana.edu/engagement/volunteer/PeaceCorps.html.

The 3rd annual Food Scene Restaurant Guide from Bozeman Magazine is in production now and is set to be released in late May 2016. Last years guide included over 340 Southwest Montana restaurants taken from the bozemanmagazine.com Food + Drink section. Restaurants are listed by category and location in this one of a kind inclusionary guide.

Restaurants and bars interested in advertising please contact Angie at 406-579-5657 or angie @ bozemanmagazine.com, creative deadline is May 1 - don't wait!

Those breakfast potatoes Montana State University students devour on campus, they’re made with potatoes from Whitehall and fried in safflower oil from Big Sandy. Those fancy coffee drinks -- brewed with beans roasted in Whitefish. The dough for Miller Dining Hall’s hand-thrown pizzas (up to 600 in a day), is made from Montana-sourced wheat.

“And as you can imagine, that’s a lot of dough,” said MSU Executive Chef Martin Lewis.

Though he may not have realized it, Lewis was speaking both literally and figuratively.

MSU spent just over $1 million on Montana-produced food products last fiscal year. This year the locally sourced food budget promises to meet or exceed that level, having already exceeded $873,000.

On campus, food is served in three dining halls, 11 retail operations including concessions and at various events by the university’s catering service. In his role as dining hall chef and MSU’s interim Montana-made coordinator, Lewis knows intimately how much of the college’s food is produced within the state -- about one-fifth, in fact.

MSU has been buying some Montana-made products for years -- Wilcoxson’s ice cream and Montana Coffee Traders coffee, for example. But in 2006, the university food services launched an initiative to source as much locally produced food as possible.

“But when we started, it was really hard to source local food,” said Mike Kosevich, general manager of MSU’s dining halls.

For one, many vendors just couldn’t keep up with MSU’s quantity needs. Many small producers, who typically sold their products directly to customers at farmers’ markets or through community-supported agricultural co-ops, weren’t schooled in invoicing, food delivery practices and required licensing.

So MSU staff, including a Montana-made coordinator, began to work individually with vendors to help them jump those hurdles, said Todd Jutila, director of University Food Services. The coordinator helps vendors plan for the university’s needs, making recommendations on what and how much to plant, how many cattle to raise based on MSU’s projected demand and how to raise food for large-scale operations.

“They’ve been our North Star through the whole growth process,” said Garl Germann, owner of Montana Meat Company, “from four years ago when we first pitched selling grass-fed beef to MSU to now.”

But MSU’s orders quickly depleted the McAllister ranch’s beef. So Germann began contacting other area ranchers who used similar cattle-raising practices. After recruiting several, Germann founded Montana Meat Company – a co-op of ranchers who rely on Germann  to process and sell their beef and other meats to a variety of venues from small restaurants and grocers to large-scale organizations like MSU.

MSU also helped arrange to have Germann’s ground beef transported to an existing vendor in Spokane on what would otherwise have been empty trucks. The vendor’s large-scale patty-making machine turned Germann’s beef into hamburger patties that met MSU’s specifications. Last semester, Montana Meat Company sold about 20,000 pounds of beef patties to MSU.

The result: Montana Meat Company grew at a rate that was “anything but normal,” Germann said. He went from being sole proprietor to having 10 employees, thanks, in part, to a recently awarded grant. But without MSU’s help, Montana Meat Company would not be making one-sixth of its revenue from university sales, Germann said.

As MSU’s first dining hall executive chef, Lewis is a driving force behind much of MSU’s drive to use locally sourced food.

The offerings of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables on campus has increased due to the creation of Root Cellar Foods, a Belgrade-based produce distributor that works with several local growers. Before Root Cellar Foods was established, Lewis could choose to buy fresh produce shipped from California or locally grown produce that was frozen or unprocessed. Now he gets the best of both worlds. MSU will likely purchase 20 times more produce from local growers this year than it did last, he added.

Lewis says knowing his vendors personally enables him to develop specific products to fit his recipes, allowing him to be more creative.

“I go out and source products and have relationships with the producers,” he said. “I can’t have a relationship with a large, national vendor and say, ‘I like your chicken breast, but can you customize it to fit my needs?’ It fits the goal of creating better quality food for the customers and it’s a process where everyone wins. The product is better in the end.”

Kristin Blackler, director of the MSU Office of Sustainability, said it makes sense for the university to support local producers, particularly because MSU is home to the College of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the sustainable food and bioenergy systems program and a host of entrepreneurship programs.

“I am proud of the commitment MSU has made to offer more local food in our dining halls,” she said. “It’s exciting to watch the program grow and improve each year.”

Blackler is coordinating MSU’s efforts for the Governor’s Food and Agriculture Summit, set for Friday, Oct. 28, and Saturday, Oct. 29, in MSU’s SUB Ballrooms. The summit will explore the complexity of Montana’s agricultural and food system and develop a roadmap for growing that sector’s economy by creating statewide platforms for networking and mentoring, among other things. For more information, contact Blackler at Kristin.blackler@montana.edu or at 994-6825.

Today’s emerging drug trends in Gallatin County require strong community partnerships to prevent and reduce substance abuse.

Underage drinking continues to be a serious public health concern and remains the number one drug of abuse for Gallatin County youth.  In fact, in 2014, results from the Montana Prevention Needs Assessment Survey of 1,107 students in grades 8, 10 and 12 revealed that 9.9 percent of 8th graders, 31.9 percent of 10th graders, and 52.3percent of 12th graders had used alcohol within the past 30 days.

Recently, those of us involved in preventing substance abuse are seeing an increase in opioid and prescription drug abuse, an influx of overdoses due to synthetic drugs, an increase in recreational marijuana use by youth, an alarming use of electronic cigarette use by youth, and methamphetamine making its way back into our community.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has identified 12 Stakeholder Groups that are vital to any community-level prevention effort.  These include:
1.    Youth
2.    Parents
3.    Businesses
4.    Media
5.    Schools
6.    Youth-serving organizations
7.    Law enforcement
8.    Religious or fraternal organizations
9.    Civic or volunteer groups
10.    Healthcare professionals
11.    State, local, governmental agencies with expertise in substance misuse
12.    Other organizations involved in reducing substance misuse

Effective prevention activities in Gallatin County will require stakeholder groups to focus on reducing risk factors, and strengthening protective factors.  
Risk factors are characteristics of school, community and family environments, and of students and their peer groups:
•    Chaotic home environment
•    Ineffective parenting
•    Little mutual attachment and nurturing
•    Inappropriate, shy, or aggressive classroom behavior
•    Academic failure
•    Low academic aspirations
•    Affiliations with deviant peers
•    Perceived external approval of drug use (peer, family, community)
•    Parental substance abuse or mental illness

Protective factors exert a positive influence and buffer against the negative influence of risk, thus reducing the likelihood that adolescents will engage in problem behaviors.  Protective factors identified through research include:
•    Strong family bonds
•    Parental engagement in child’s life
•    Clear parental expectations and consequences
•    Academic success
•    Strong bonds with pro-social institutions (school, community, church)
•    Conventional norms about drugs and school

The Risk and Protective Factor of Model Prevention is a proven way of reducing substance abuse and its related consequences.  This model is based on the simple premise that to prevent a problem from happening, we need to identify the factors that increase the risk of that problem developing and then find ways to reduce the risks.

The abuse of drugs is not a harmless personal decision: there are real, long-lasting, and devastating outcomes for those who abuse drugs and for their families, friends, and communities.

We encourage all Gallatin County Stakeholder Groups to become 21st Century Partners in Prevention and reach out to new partners in a community-level prevention effort.

Written by Rick Gale & Gary Larson, Community-Coalition On Drug Awareness.