Passing It Down

Passing It DownUnderstanding Emerging Stressors and Adaptations in Generational Montana Sheep Ranching Operations through Participant Visual Ethnography

Christopher J. Carter May 2012

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Understanding Emerging Stressors and Adaptations in Generational

Sheep Ranching Operations through Participant Visual Ethnography(PVE)

Christopher J. Carter

Thesis submitted to the faculty of

Montana State University-Bozeman in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

BACHELORS OF SCIENCE

in

Interdisciplinary Studies

Ann Bertagnolli Ph.D

Ilse Mari-Lee Ph. D

Bozeman, MT

Keywords: Participatory Visual Ethnography, Livelihoods, Ranching, Rural Sociology,

Values-Based Planning, Regional Planning, Participant Action Research(PAR).

Revision Date: May 2012

Copyright 2012, Christopher J. Carter

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Understanding Emerging Stressors and Adaptations in Generational Sheep Ranching Operations through

Participant Visual Ethnography(PVE)

Christopher J. Carter

Abstract

Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with sheep ranching families in Sweet Grass county Montana this research explores emerging stressors and adaptations influencing the decision making process of rural emigration. While this research focuses on a uniquely Montana way of life, urbanization, migration and subsequent loss of rural identity are phenomena that are beginning to be recognized and studied through qualitative methodologies. To attempt to describe and explain this phenomena a combination of methodologies including participant visual ethnography including Photovoice and participant video are employed, emerging as the desired method from this community. During fieldwork issues of generational property and social capital transfer, new skilled migrant labor, land management and agricultural subsidy for small scale ranches surfaced as themes that speak directly to debates of food security, urbanization and agrarian identity in the American West. As rural emigration affects societies and economies beyond this Montana community, this USP funded research suggests an integration of participatory action and qualitative research methods into the understanding, planning and policy making of sustainable futures in agriculture and society.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express his appreciation to the sheep ranching families of south -central Montana and the MSU Undergraduate Scholars Research Program for providing the grant that funded this research. He also expresses his appreciation to faculty research advisor Ann Bertagnolli Ph.D for her guidance and support throughout this research Leah Schmalzbauer for her comments and assistance in editing along with the support of his undergraduate thesis committee Dr. Ilse Mari Lee, Robert Arnold Ph.D and Lawrence Carucci Ph.D.

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Introduction

It is no new realization that a globalized world is an urbanized world, however while rural emigration rates grant a brief glimpse at the worlds human migrations to urban places it is important to post the questions why/ and at what cost? As Montana remains largely a rural state with 45% of its population living rurally, issues such as regional education and economic viability of the family owned ranch emerge as keystone points in development and regional economies(U.S. Census). Through ethnographic field work utilizing participatory visual methods in a highland sheep ranching communityin south central Montana, I hope to shed light on some of the new stressors and emerging adaptations at play in family owned small scale ranches as well as on the decision making process of rural emigration. I will address these stressors and adaptations through the spheres of intergenerational communication, global market viability and new skilled migrant labor. I will use the term agricultural capital to represent practiced knowledge and social capital acquired by individuals working with livestock in the ranch and range setting.

In the United States, commercial sheep production consists of two main types of operations: (1) range sheep operations, which consist of relatively large flocks that graze on native or unimproved pasturelands, common in western states and, (2) farm flock operations, characterized by smaller flocks (often less than 50 head) and raised on smaller improved pastures or in feedlots, common in midwestern and eastern states. Sheep production from these operations provides lamb meat and wool and pelts for textiles, as well as other emerging sheep products including milk for cheese and yogurt, purebred sheep for shows, specialty wools, high-quality lighter-weight and younger lambs, and organic and natural lamb and wool products. In the state of Montana sheep production often takes place in small and medium scale farming operations, many of which are family run and operated enterprises andcooperatives. This research focuses on Montana families who operate range sheep operations on 900 – 6400 acre properties growing South African Meat Merino, Ramboullet, Targhee and Suffolk breeds of sheep. This paper aims to identify emerging stressors and adaptations in the social context of family ranching operations that affects social change and rural emigration.

*Note This ethnography hopes to fuse participant and collaborative media into the manuscript. Clips and short films are provided on the accompanying DVD, please use the prompts throughout to reference appropriate media.

Method

In order to address the research questions and concerns posed by the community , this study employs a mix of classic anthropological techniques including participant observation, tape-recorded semi-structured and in-depth interviews alongside participant visual methodologies, namely photovoice and participant video. Fieldwork was carried out with a group of sheep ranching families in Central Montana in periods of one day to two week sessions over the course of two years. Building from Unni Wikan's ethnographic defining notions of ethnography as a method which attends to the multiple, simultaneous, compelling concerns that deal with feeling and thinking about phenomena and to follow those through social settings . She notes that a discovery procedure is needed in ethnography that,

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”seeks out knowledge they deem relevant to their lived experience as the basis on which to frame cultural understandings”(Wikan;1991). In line with this, research was participant in nature, the scope ofthe projects where locally determined, aimed at the social phenomena of family ranches not being passed on to future generation and the social change that was accompanying these developments.

Table 1. Primary Study Participants

PARTICIPANTS LOCATION DESCRIPTION

19 Ranch Family Members

Sweet Grass County, MT 5 Families, 4 Ranches

Halvorsons(Kevin is Mentioned)(9), Lairs(5) Swinson(1),Brecks(2) , 3 individuals.

3 Herders Sweet Grass County, MT 1 Basque Migrant(Pedro)2 Peruvian Migrants(Miguel, Damain)

2 Residents Bozeman, MT Peruvian Born American Citizens

1 County Agent Big Timber, Montana MSU Agricultural Extension Service

From a social science research perspective, participatory visual methodologies and participant action research tools are best situated into the framework of the research itself. As modern frameworks in social science research seek to avoid "extractive" methodologies and strive for a more integrative and action based community “impactful” research model. PAR( Participatory Action Research) which has gained momentum in the field of health research is defined as, ” researchers in partnership with community identifying major issues, concerns and problems, initiating research, observing, and evaluating (including self-evaluation) in a systematic and cyclical pattern” (Minkler and Wallerstein, 2009) .

Additionally, recent ethnography focuses on the nature and significance of sensory understandings and experiences as ways of understanding specific context-dependent experiences not only in other cultures(for example Desjarlais 2003; Geurts 2002) but also in modern western cultures (for example Pink 2004a; Rice 2003) The application of this research framework includes the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, Economics, Medicine ,Geography and possibilities are being explored across other disciplines (Wallerstine, Pg. 4) . As this model is considered a modern ethical form of research, participatory recordings and ethnographic filmmaking provided a platform for collaborative analysis and feedback . Banks notes also that all image production by social researchers in the field, indeed all first-hand social research of any kind, must be collaborative to some extent’ because ‘the researcher’s very presence amongst a group of people is the result of a series of social negotiations’ (2001: 119).

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Table 2. Summary of Field Work

TIME PERIOD

LOCATION DATA COLLECTION ACTIVITIES RESEARCH QUESTIONS

4 MONTHSMAY-AUG 2010

Sweet Grass County, MT

• Reside in Boulder river Valley• Establish Rapport with wool growers

and lamb cooperatives• Discuss pressing issues in need of

addressing with community• Discuss role of cameras and

Ethnographic Filmmaking• Collect initial media recordings • Accompany males to sorting and

culling of sheep

• What are issues that the community sees relevant and important to investigate?

• What role will I take as a filmmaker/anthropologist in this community?

SEPT-DEC 2010

Sweet Grass County, MT

• Audio Interviewing • Bimonthly fieldwork participant

observation

• How will participant cameras andtheir instruction mediate power relationships in this research ?

• How do families work together inthe trailing phase of production?

JAN-APR2011

Sweet Grass County, MT

• Audio Interviewing during lambing season and peak of family collaboration

• Passing It Down Film Recordings• Film Review with families

• What role does intergenerational conversations about ranch property and skill transfer play in passing ranches down?

MAY-SEPT 2011

Olgii Province, Mongolia

Break in Fieldwork

OCT-DEC 2011

Sweet Grass County, MT

• AV recordings and Socio-linguistic analysis with Halvorsen family at pasture with Peruvian Herders

• Visiting Peruvan Herders at Ranch property

• Woolhouse film recordings and interviews

• What new linguistic and power relationships emerge with new skilled herders working on these ranches?

• What role has the wool house played in this community historically in the social landscape?

JAN-MAY 2012

Sweet Grass County, MT

• Film Review with families• Revisions in Written ethnography with

community.

• How can the revision, analysis of this research best be given feedback and become most alighned with the participants in this research?

Today participatory visual methods of research are emerging across the social sciences as prominent means of gathering rich linguistic, social and contextual data. As the field of Anthropology (traditionally visual) seeks to build cumulative and cross-cultural knowledge about humankind, this is contributed to through ethnographic records of contemporary society and culture and by reconstructing their immediate past, particularly during phases of transition and transformation (El Guindi,pg.123). Contemporary participatory visual ethnography and ethnographic filmmaking seek to make visual recordings of cultures (sub-alternate, underrepresented or otherwise). Bound to documentary photographic history and documentary filmmaking conventions of "observational", "direct cinema" and"cinema verite", the coinciding emergence of a visual anthropology and applied visual ethnography has marked an introduction of filmic self-representation of the human experience and an emergence of

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analyzing "film as ethnography" , and a rich source of linguistic, .

While this use of the visual record in qualitative research is integrated into the research process, it reifies the place of subjective-ness in the scientific research place as native people can represent themselves and their communities. As images began to emerge historically as primary documents in thesocial sciences to make a problem or social issue more compelling, fields that utilized ethnographic methods initially took a more positivist schema of empirical evidence (surveys and demographic statistical analysis) in an attempt to be more 'scientific' and ‘objective’. However, today with the emergence in contemporary critical perspective of 'objectivity' and how it is constructed, visual sociologist Jared Packard notes that, “ rather than pushing for an even more 'objective' set of methodologies, researchers have argued just the opposite”. Since there is nothing they can do to completely eliminate subjectivity, they should focus instead on what reflexive approaches taken can be while making sure to identify and account for biases wherever they arise (Packard, Pg. 64). Born from a "crisis of representation", the emergence of readily available digital cameras and the handing over of these cameras to the cultural “ other”, provides a postmodern take on the creation of knowledge. Paired with a research environment more receptive to subjective and participatory record, participatory media capture is now an accepted part of the research process and has come to represent a vital tool that reflects and produces knowledge about culture and community; retaining the power to record the integrity of humans, objects and events in cultural contexts , provide feedback and perspective throughout community based research projects. In the first year of fieldwork the issue of family ranchesnot being passed down and older generations desires to have agricultural practices recorded emerged through statements like the following

"Ranches used to be handed down through the generations, they aren't anymore. They are being sold to outsiders...but there are still families trying to make it work".

(Sweet Grass County Resident, March 2012)

Participant visual ethnography is grounded in representing a sensory-embodied approach to anthropology as it can offer pathways to the other senses and resolve the difficulties anthropologists face in researching and communicating about ‘emotions, time, the body, the senses, gender and individual identity’, by providing ‘a language metaphorically and experientially close to them’.MacDougall notes that the visual has a ‘capacity for metaphor and synaesthesia’ he proposes that‘Much that can be “said” about these matters may best be said in the visual media’ (1997: 287). Through participant documentation, analyzation and dissemination this ethnographic fieldwork explores the ability of media to evoke sensory experience and to explore MacDougall's notion that media can represent more general commonalities of human experience that are not containable in written descriptions(1998:271).

As a process, participatory ethnographic film is not often judged by its end product but rather its process and interplay between researchers and the participant collaborators, and the subjective relationships between and throughout. In collaborative digital video projects with Mayan filmmakers inGuatemala, for example, Carlos Flores reflects on ethnographic knowledge production permeating the shared anthropological environment and that ," shared anthropological enterprises should provide places for self-discovery, and the creative construction of identity: above all they should be processes whereby anthropologist and subject are mutually empowered (Pink, Pg. 222). In noting this, Flores

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hints to the underlying acceptance of open representation of researcher and participant subjective experiences and their interplay throughout the participatory ethnographic process of field work, something that has taken nearly 100 years to develop.During the course of field work recordings were made by family members and skilled migrant workers with provided cameras and footage was reviewed and analyzed with the Throughout this fieldwork period, three ethnographic short films where completed with editorial oversight from the ranches they where made, themes explored included trailing sheep down valley during the first winter snows, the importance of passing down the ranch andthe communities wool house as a cultural landscape. These films where made available online for the community to share at their own discretion with the use of a password.

Routes to understanding other people’s sensory experience are complex, require cultural knowledge, may be difficult to access, and are not always dominated by vision – either in modern western or other cultures. Okely’s, Stoller’s and Geurts’ routes to understanding their informants’ sensory experience and meanings were based on long-term participation in their lives, attempting to access aspects of pre- reflective experience as it is lived as well as the meanings placed on it. Desjarlais (2003) suggests a phenomenological methodology also encompasses spoken narration because ‘the phenomenal and the discursive, life as lived and life as talked about, are like interwoven strands of a braided rope, each complexly involved in the other, in time’ (2003: 6). Films completed included a hybrid of observational/participant footage with audio interviews, this stressed the meeting of life as lived and life as talked about.

In the scope of this research cameras were used by myself and by participants throughout the fieldwork sessions, after recording for a few days or a few months we would sit down, review and discuss our recordings at their homes on a laptop, I would take notes and we would ask questions abouteach others footage, from that some major themes evolved and through these themes the major ethnographic films where decided. Films made were grounded in these issues that the community presented as pressing social issues and the films addressed the methods of herding, intergenerational capital and property transfer and the role of the Wool House as a community icon and it social and agricultural importance as a gathering place .

Findings and Stressors

Place Making, Agricultural Property and Social Capital Across Generations

Beginning with the Homestead Acts of 1907, families, many of whom were comprised of new immigrants from Scandinavia, arrived by railway, and engaged in the breaking of soil and herding of sheep in Sweet Grass county as part of the largest private land grabs of the American West. Endowed with quarter sections of land, 160 acres, these newcomers lived “manifest destiny” through the capitalization of a Western American landscape. They were required to make, “improvements upon the landscape” within ten years in order to keep federally allotted land. This was embodied in the construction of homes, animal pens, outbuildings, fence lines, irrigated fields, bridges and dams. Through this process, individual families' names became embedded into landscape, major terrain features, fence lines and properties indexing a knowledge of who improved the land in relation to the surrounding homestead.

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Keith Basso's work with place-worlds with the western apache brings significant contributions in understanding these notions of place. Every developed place world manifests itself as a possible state of affairs, and whenever these constructions are accepted by other people as credible and convincing. In doing so they enrich the common stock on which everyone can draw to muse on past events, interpret their significance and imagine anew (Basso;1996). These place names were passed through a process of landscape socialization in Lower Deer Creek within families and neighbors .Kevin reflects on this socialized spatial knowledge of named place.

"When someone says Harkhiemer Coulee, you know exactly what and where they are talking about, even if you don't know how to spell it. I just learned it from my dad and the neighbors we worked with I guess. If you think of a place like "Porth Ridge", only a handful of people know where that is".

(Kevin Interview, 5 Dec. 2011)

Not only do these historically embedded place names provide intrinsic and identity value to the landscape, they serve a practical purpose as well in a confusing, variegating maze of highlands coulees,ridge tops, gulches, creeks and heavily timbered areas that often experience intense wind, fog and snowstorms. Names for major and lesser terrain features such as “Harkheimer Coulee”, “Farger Gulch”

, “Shay Gulch”, “Oblige Draw” “Porth Ridge” and the names of homesteads such as the “Divine” or “Kellog Place” play important markers throughout a landscape as methods of communicating relative geography in the practice of highland agricultural practice with grazing livestock (Footage Review Notes-Kevin, 5 Dec. 2011). Most of these features are not included on area topographic maps and were forged through intergenerational communication. Bourdieu's key analytical tools in his attempt to account for the relationship between social constructions and structural forces are those of habitus, economic and cultural capital, and class structure. Based on these he outlines a theory that may be disentangled into two separate claims, one with more general implications than the other.

The general claim relates to Bourdieu's outline of the concept of habitus. This concerns the inter-generational transfer of lifestyles. Reflecting other socialisation theories (see Jenkins, 2002), his argument is that actors internalise the predispositions of their parents or, more generally, those of the social category to which their parents belong. A person's habitus does not represent a deterministic force but rather a structure of predispositions towards specific ways of relating to the social world. Thisimplies schemes of perceptions and, further, schemes for how to react—consciously and unconsciously—to the social world.At the core of agricultural property and social capital exchange is the historical passing down of ranching enterprises amongst males. While the majority of spring work is done as a family, sheep ranching is a family affair centered around an enterprise that can provide for a few families and can cover land interest payments and overhead operations costs. In order to understand theimpetus and desire of the small scale ranch operation to remain in families it is important to explore how rurality exhibits its self both tangibly and in sentiment.

In part, rurality is about physical geography. Place and the organization of space influence daily life

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(Nelson and Hiemstra 2008). Conversely, rurality is a cultural construct in which competing values, expectations, and narratives shape one’s experience (Cloke and Milbourne 1992). Geographers suggest the persistence of an idyll rooted in nostalgia for a simpler, innocent, more authentic time (Hines 2010; Little and Austin 1996). This comes into play in the intrinsic value attached by sheep ranching communities historically to private enterprise, which, in this case retains close associations with the family unit, in order to pass down an enterprise you must know the property, tasks and systems and must retain the constructed value of the demands of ranch life.

These agricultural skills and sentiments of hope for future generations to experience a lifestyle of rurality become core influences in the decision making of keeping ranches in the family. This comes to surface as the elements of sentimentality and ambition come to a head in the generational arena. Generations that have worked to set up or hold onto a ranching operation place fulfillment and actualization in being able to make available the enterprises, as younger generations may retain ambitions to pursue alternate paths, higher education or an urban lifestyle with less manual labor, socialstressors emerge in decision making processes of property and livestock in relationship to a foreseeablechange in the ownership of property and a way of life .

Video 1. Play Passing It Down - https://vimeo.com/23288008

The process of specifying the composition and the timing of the division of assets is usually pro- tracted and legally and financially complex. One common way of transferring assets is by bringing one's offspring into the enterprise in some manner before retirement or death. This is done in sheep ranching families through the male lineage and these arrangements emerged to be fraught with

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difficulty. Coughenour and Kowalski (1977) found that parent and adult child relationships became confused when members of two-generation farm families dealt with each other as co-workers. Role confusion emerged in family and business relationships when families lived and worked closely together (Bennett, 1982; Kohl, 1976). What emerged from fieldwork with one family in particular was a sort of proliferation of aspirations and sentiments for their own role in the ranch , some converse some parallel , a sample is outlined below.

Figure 1. Generational Proliferation

Power roles has been found to interfere with productive farm/ranch management as well as with family relationships(Baden 1988) Present and future generations may also seek a middle ground, maintaining ownership of the ranch as a partial money making venture supplementing with service sector jobs off the ranch. Those fathers for whom it is very important that the enterprise be passed to their offspring appear more concerned about the success of the transfer than about their income they perceive that the enterprise cannot support both families(Baden, 1988).

The Decline of Wool

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During the past 60 years, the number of sheep and lamb in the United States have been declining, a fact that has been attributed to a multitude of forces. Amongst other things the emergence of global markets and a repeal of the Wool Act in 1997 have undoubtedly changed the economic realities of sheep ranching in south central Montana.

Video 2. Play The Woolhouse - https://vimeo.com/33890947

In analyzing stressors it is important to keep in mind the rural context, its activities and constraints. Marotz-Baden and Colvin (1986) found that rural families faced a significantly different mix of stressors than urban families. Rural husbands and wives reported financial and business strains as their primary stressor followed by intra-family strains and work-family transitions and strains. This comes into play when evaluating economic satisfaction in relation to intergenerational decision making where sentimentality of an urban place meets the ambition of younger generations for education and economicmobility. Furthermore the compilation below offers a selection of influencing agents

• Changes in regulations and permits for grazing on public lands and endangered species regulations; • Competition from other meats and other fibers; • Changes in consumer preferences; • Losses from predator kills; • Loss of the National Wool Act and the Incentive Payment programs; • Foreign wool production subsidies; • Competition from imports along with an appreciation of the U.S. dollar against Australian and New Zealand

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currencies in the 1990s; and Concentration in the U.S. packing and feeding industries.

In recent years “Wool Pools” have faced new challenges. Adapting to the requirements of a global market is particularly a problem for wool producers. Tradition- ally, wool producers have pooled wool from growers within a defined geographical area. This has been successful in the past as domestic market diversity allowed wool-buying firms to purchase and profitably utilize or remarket the entire offering by each wool pool. Currently, processors are interested in purchasing the types of wool that meet their current and short-term projected needs. Different processors are interested in purchasing only certain types of wool. Marketing wool from producers with small volumes of wool is clearly at a crossroads.

Figure 2. (National Academy of Science Briefing )

In order to achieve the objective of maximizing wool income for small flock owners, innovative management and marketing strategies must be explored and implemented. Many pools have worked with growers and MSU Agricultural Extension offices and agents to presort their wool into several marketing lines that can be merchandized to different buyers. In order to have adequate volume of woolin any one line, they have been forced to consolidate their efforts with neighboring pools. In 2007 it was estimated that Montana wool pools marketed about 450,000 pounds of wool or about 20% of Montana’s wool clip.(Montana Wool Growers Association, 2010) The emergence of new and alternative markets for sheep products signifies that the industry may be on the brink of a transition from traditional practices and marketing channels to new markets, new technologies, new products, anda new consumer base.

Adaptations

Cooperatives and the New Skilled Migrants

Over the course of field work adaptations to preserve this way of life emerged in the forms of new niche markets for lamb and the hiring of skilled migrant herders from the highlands of Latin America and Spain. Today as agriculture production on the middle-medium scale provides new visions of regional food systems through cooperatives and enterprises sheep ranching operations may have newopportunities and niche markets. Furthermore developments have occurred that have made the sheep

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industry more profitable for some. These developments include the following:

Improvements in production efficiency; Leaner lamb Development of further processing of lamb and new packaging techniques; Decline in Australian and New Zealand sheep numbers; Depreciation of the U.S. dollar; and Emergence of new and niche markets around local, organic and free range food .

Today five families involved in the research are engaged in a new lamb growing and marketing cooperative, Sweet Grass Natural Lamb. They seek direct sale to restaurants , universities and consumers and are funded by a USDA seed grant. The selling point of this cooperative is free range, hormone and antibiotic free lamb that is produced by family run ranches. They operate on a “cooperative by consensus” model and emerged under the Sweet Grass Wool Marketing Association cooperative and have turned their meat sales into a limited liability company (LLC) for legal and grant-finding purposes and have made meat sales available for direct purchase via online marketplace on the cooperatives website.

Figure 3. Montana Natural Lamb Cooperative website

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Video 3. Play Seasonal Migrant Laborers - Essential to the Livelihood of Sheep Ranchers - https://vimeo.com/106592421

To sustain a steady supply of lambs, the families run some lambs with their ewes year round, striving only to maintain the lambs’ weight so they will enter the feedlot at about 90 pounds, regardless of the date. When the lambs enter the feedlot, a value is attributed to each, but producers are not paid until themeat is sold. Yardage and feed costs are removed from the gross profit before the livestock owner receives his or her share. When Rick Searle was asked about the futures of the LLC cooperative, he was optimistic about the example Sweet Grass Natural Lamb, LLC, has set. “We think this model can be good for the sheep industry in Montana and that we all can benefit...we need to have something local that we can depend on.” He commented on the fluctuating economy and market instability, and remarked that the agricultural industry needs to adjust its model to target the trend toward local foods. Movies and books, such as Food Inc. and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, have the potential to negatively impact the agricultural industry, unless the industry is a step ahead in finding local markets and, as one Sweet Grass ranch owner describes it, using “localization to fight globalization”.

Once family owned and operated, ranch properties in the American West today face new a becoming socioculturally, once intergenerational affairs of communicated place names, gender roles and agricultural practices ranches of Sweet Grass county today faces economic constraints and labor shortages in a modern and globalized sheep ranching industry. Today, ranches must hire skilled herdersfrom other highland regions of the world including, central Mexico, Basque country Spain, Bolivia and Peru, to fill the roles of historically local seasonal rangeland herders to stay with sheep during the summer months at pasture. Their experiences from their home regions working and living with animals, experience in variegated mountainous terrain, warding predators and keeping track of animal movement, make them especially valuable as they fill the roles previously fulfilled by regional and

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local seasonal workers. As these skilled migrants hail from Spanish speaking rural regions, many Montana ranches are not prepared linguistically to communicate with the hired help at times of collaboration. Furthermore as migration rates have stagnated during an economic recession, skilled migrant herders retain a unique combination of linguistic and highly specialized agricultural social capital. Skilled herders must employ their agricultural capital to build a sense of trust from ranchers they work for, solidifying their roles as an "accepted" and "skilled" herders with high standards throughaction.

Figure 4.

Damian, Dixie and Casey(Dogs) make their way along the “Porth Ridge”. Without a shared verbal communication of historically constructed place names embedded in the landscape Peruvian herder Damian is left to heavily rely on his mustering or herding ability based in an agricultural capital in a new contextual landscape.

Drawing from Michele Dominy's work with sheep herding communities in the hill stations of New Zealand a few key practices and functions of a herder (Musterer in NZ) emerge. She notes that Mustering includes men's enculturation of innate skill and of experience, "using what my father taught me" of "being a natural musterer" and "knowing how geography works" having a sense of where the land falls, where sheep may hide and how they move, knowing where to stand on visually smooth, but actually complex, grasslands when looking for sheep. At the core of this is lived and highly contextual experience with a keen eye for terrain and referential points on the landscape learned from others, she noted, "you learn as you go...you get used to the terrain" (Dominy, Pg. 159).

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Figure 5. (LtoR) Damian, new hand Martin and Kevin outside the herding trailer that provides shelter for herders tending tothe sheep nearby (off frame right). While Damian can share a verbal code with Kevin in highly specified contextual practice, Miguel who cannot speak English or this mixed code is often left out of interactions when Damian is present.

The context of skilled migrant reception in Montana also presents contextual challenges. Specifically, migrants are met with a weak social-service base and large geographic expanses that are difficult to traverse. In addition, whereas urban migrants have been shown to rely heavily on social networks for survival and well-being (Aguilar et al. 2010; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Menjivar 2000), Montana’s physical and cultural geographies make traditional migrant networks difficult to establish (Schmalzbauer 2009). Furthermore, the ways in which communication of skilled migrant herders agricultural social capital is in many instances becomes non-verbal, embedded and observable in practices with the animals , observed during daily check ins and collaborations such as trailing and bedding sheep. Kevin(Ranch owner) reflects on the hired herders work.

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"I think he does a lot of stuff well, he fences well and he's herdin' he, always knew where the sheep were at and he could get 'em to camp around his trailer and he was really conscientious about predators and makingsure that he didn't loose anything....the herding part in general is where is was really excellent at, in beddin' them right at the trailer and getting them to sleep right at the trailer...there were times when the sheep would be around the trailer. I think he done that with salt, he was able to put out just enough salt that they would always want to come back to the trailer that night for more salt".

(Audio Fieldnotes, 18 Nov. 2011)

Damian employs agricultural capital to build a sense of trust from Kevin, solidifying his role as an "accepted" and "skilled" herder with high standards through action , in doing so Damian remains a valued and recognized worker. As herding engages a critical tension between innate aptitude and skill derived from experience that directs the movement (of herds) on steep land, it also relies on a knowledge of mutual workings of country, stock, and dogs (Dominy, Pg. 173). While mustering is not entirely taught, but rather developed through serving an apprenticeship on property you are guided by your predecessor where the best coulee, ridges, and draws are. As new skilled migrants tend to flocks on belonging to Montana ranches they rely heavily upon a learned eye and tact for maneuvering landscape and a limited knowledge of place names through vague descriptions given by ranchers in often simplified sub register form. In their interactions with ranchers, their linguistic capital can be stratified and dynamic as herders newer to work on Montana ranches may have less linguistic capital than returning herders and they may need to apprentice fellow herders who have developed agricultural and linguistic capital contextual to each ranch. The degree to which a herder can both manage livestock and mediate language exchanges in English and Spanish stratifies their position in relation to the ranch owners employing them.

Like with Miguel I have to be there with him to show him what to do so it takes away from some ofthe other stuff I need to do. Its just way simpler if they could speak a little english. I can talk to him(Damian), he knows enough english that I can talk to him, sometimes we don't get exactly the same meaning, sometimes it may mean just the opposite, but for the most part we can carry on in english.

(Kevin Interview, Nov. 2011)

Underpinning all mediations and language performances between ranch owners and hired migrant herders is a sense of continuing the lineage of a family operated ranch based in sentimental fears of a place their children and grandchildren will never know, as land becomes retired, preserved and sold off,and as skilled hired hands like herders, in tune with the specificities of place and now across languages,become harder to come by. One ranch owner notes the difficulty of finding regional workers with the desire and skill base to employ

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It is hard to find an American worker that would have them skills or be even willing to do it... I'mrequired to offer it to an U.S. worker if someone applies, we have to advertise for the job. If no one applies, then we can try and get a foreign worker. If I got a US worker , thats great because itseasier to explain stuff, especially with Miguel not speaking any english. I'd just as soon have a US worker if he would do the same work for the same pay.

(Kevin Interview, Dec. 2011)

With this in mind the dynamics and mediations of language in this context will continue to be shaped by a need and social importance of a family owned ranch to continue its operation while fulfilling its labor requirements through the employment of internationally based skilled herders through the H-2A visa program. As these relationships are often based on a knowledge of land and a need place the inherent power relationships of Kevin's sheep and land and experience of Peruvians managing that property will continue to be shaped by the need of people that "know sheep" and the retention of a herder with knowledge of specific relative geography and practices of a particular families property andpasturelands.

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Discussion and Conclusions

Harvey Franklin's observation of sheep ranching from the social familial perspective of a sharedenterprise grants insight of the new realities in the generational run sheep ranch operations. He notes," the interpenetration of economic and social issues attached to any discussion of farming introduces an irreducible degree of ambiguity that lends confusion to all analyses...[I] t retains a social importance...because of the inestimable value attached by the community to private enterprise, which, in this case retains close associations with the family unit (Dominy, Pg.183).

Figure 6. With three generations actively engaged on the Halvorsen ranch, rudimentary tasks like sorting sheep in the late summer become a family endeavour. Trevor,age 7, helps sort while his father and grandfather tag sheep. Hired help from the Basque highlands of Spain along with his other grandfather give additional support. Outings like this grant many opportunities to learn the nuances of sorting, and processing sheep. While other forms of agricultural production rely on technologically advanced implements, sheep herding and ranching demands individuals with a skill set learned from experience.

Drawing from this fieldwork it is important to reconsider the lasting ideals and sentiments of keeping family owned and operated ranches in the family and how they greatly effect economic decision making. Further as agricultural social capital is embedded into the socialization process of land and practice the skill sets developed by ranches and new migrant labor alike are highly specialized . The paper concludes with strategies toward improving understanding of rural life in american in an age of urbanization while in four areas: participatory action methods of appraisal and research research, government subsidies for agriculture, new skilled migrant laborers, and policy making. In terms of method, PVE retains the potential to explore and begin to understand social phenomena through

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sensory means, flexible with the people living it. Potential to facilitate a voice for marginalized/liminal groups in a shared research setting.

As regional food sheds, distribution and the viability of medium sized agricultural production is reevaluated in an increasingly urban American West today, it is important to recognize that agriculturalsocial capital can be integrated into regional sustainability rather than migrated to urban locales where individuals will compete, often unprepared, in the service sector. While statistical analysis and surveyscan reveal social realities to begin to grasp the situation of development and rural life, the integration ofqualitative and participatory methods of research can grant a look at the intricacies and nuances of the present and futures of life, economy and food in the American west. Further in the regional development planning and agricultural policy making, including the 2012 Farm Bill. In closing , methods of participant visual ethnography solidify the ability of sensory capture and participant process to record and represent and communicate ethnographic experience with those living a way of life while facilitating a marginalized population to capture and represent themselves though media for social action and political representation . As the world becomes an increasingly urbanized place , knowledge and an examination of a rural identity and agricultural social capital in this Montana locale amidst uncertainty becomes a universal story. In order to plan and develop sustainable futures in society and economy it is important to recognize the lasting value of regional food production and the people who retain the knowledge and means of production.

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