Reframing Rural

Reframing Rural Cultivating curiosity and conversation across the urban rural divide through podcast episodes and photographs.

Reframing Rural is a project of Tree Ring Records, LLC © 2020.

05/26/2026

Roughly 300 million acres of agricultural land will change hands in the next two decades as aging farmers retire or pass away.

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 these challenges, lay a wellspring of stories that do not often surface in conventional planning discussions.

🎙️ In Season Four: Succession Stories, Reframing Rural unearths the stories beneath the logistics. From Valier to Ekalaka, Chester to Winnett and Malta, we’ll hear how five Montana farm and ranch families are making tough choices about legacy, livelihood and love of their land.

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts. www.reframingrural.org/season-four

New bonus episode!Sterling Drake is a musician from Philipsburg, Montana, who is using his platform to talk about mental...
05/26/2026

New bonus episode!

Sterling Drake is a musician from Philipsburg, Montana, who is using his platform to talk about mental health in agricultural communities.

I wanted to talk to Sterling this season because farm stress is one of the greatest barriers to farm and ranch succession. Just like volatile commodity markets, unpredictable weather and high input costs, farm stress is part of the job these days. Frankly, it’s a job hazard. Farmers experience high levels of anxiety and depression, and farmer su***de rates are two-to-five times higher than the national average (American Farm Bureau Federation). In an effort to destigmatize the topic and connect people to resources, Sterling is talking about it in his lyrics and on the stage.

Sterling and I met up in May 2025 at Live from the Divide in Bozeman, Montana, just before the first show of his spring tour. We talked about the imposter syndrome he felt starting out as a ranch hand, how he simultaneously built a career as a rancher and a musician, the role of folk music in helping us understand our history, the sonic identity of Montana he is helping to create, and the impact he’s making on the rural mental health crisis.

Listen to our conversation here: https://www.reframingrural.org/season-four-bonus/sterling-drake

Photo by Taylor Hoover.

It’s estimated that over the next 20 years, 1/3 of all farmland will change hands. That’s nearly 300 million acres. Duri...
05/21/2026

It’s estimated that over the next 20 years, 1/3 of all farmland will change hands. That’s nearly 300 million acres. During this transition, land risks leaving families or agriculture all together.

Through our latest season of the podcast, we’re providing examples for how families can navigate succession, while encouraging them to make a plan.

Listen here: https://www.reframingrural.org/season-four-succession

Photo by Conservation Media for World Wildlife Fund.

I am very excited to be hosting a live Reframing Rural podcast recording at Old Salt Co-op’s Old Salt Festival in June! ...
05/07/2026

I am very excited to be hosting a live Reframing Rural podcast recording at Old Salt Co-op’s Old Salt Festival in June! These are photos from the first year my family and I attended in 2024, when my son was just a few months old. Each year I walk away brimming with inspiration. From singing along with favorite folk musicians, to meeting heroes like James Rebanks, appreciating delicious local meat and envisioning a bright future for working lands and ag communities — what Cole Mannix and the Old Salt team are building is really something meaningful.

Join me Friday, June 19 for a live podcast recording featuring two ranching changemakers I am honored to call friends: Amber McDonough Smith and Jaimie Stoltzfus. Separated by hundreds of miles but united by a common vision, Amber and Jaimie have forged an innovative partnership raising calves on the Northern Great Plains and grass-finishing them in the Absaroka Mountains. In our live podcast recording, we’ll explore how Amber and Jaimie broke into the male-dominated industry, how motherhood has shaped them as ranchers and what they’re doing to create a sustainable future for their families and land in the face of Big Ag.

Buy your tickets to Old Salt here: https://www.oldsaltco-op.com/pages/festival-tickets

35mm photos thanks to Andrew Drinnan.

I’m thrilled to be contributing an episode to The Obit Project, a new podcast produced by the Montana Media Lab. The pro...
04/30/2026

I’m thrilled to be contributing an episode to The Obit Project, a new podcast produced by the Montana Media Lab. The project, dreamed up by University of Montana professor and journalist Jule Banville and co-hosted by RadioLab founder Jad Abumrad, seeks to reinvent the traditional form of the obituary by exploring universal truths and legacies.

My episode isn’t even an obituary for a person, but rather, a place — Dagmar, Montana, my hometown in Northeast Montana.

New episodes of the podcast are airing every Sunday on Montana Public Radio and streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you prefer to listen. Keep an eye out for my episode, the final of the season, coming in June!

“Most folks out in this part of the country didn’t want to admit it, preferred to paper over it with prayer or reactiona...
04/25/2026

“Most folks out in this part of the country didn’t want to admit it, preferred to paper over it with prayer or reactionary politics or all the old, worn stories, but everybody could feel the weight of it now, how they had to work against the tilt, the lean, the gravity of this new reality pulling at them as if they were all scrabbling up a steep hill in loose dirt,” writes Joe Wilkins in his novel The Entire Sky. “Rene had come of age in the dirty ‘30s, when the fields failed, the cattle turned bone-skinny in the unforgiving sun, dust sifted under doors and windows, and there was nothing but squirrel stew for supper. Then, like all the other boys and men, he’d tried like hell to get drafted, though his bum leg branded him 4-F – and even so, this world they had now was somehow meaner, sharper. Big and wide and ragged at the edges.”

I met Joe several years ago at a “Layers of Landscape” writing class he taught for Hugo House, and was immediately captivated by his understanding of the impact of place on character, identity and language. We connected over our shared love of Eastern Montana and our work to capture the spirit of this place through the written and recorded word. It was a tremendous joy to record an interview with Joe about his novel, and discuss how the book tackles themes of succession, toxic masculinity, rural mental health and su***de.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.reframingrural.org/season-four-bonus/joe-wilkins

We’re all connected to the land, some are just a few generations removed. Succession keeps that connection. It holds tog...
04/20/2026

We’re all connected to the land, some are just a few generations removed. Succession keeps that connection. It holds together the sinews of time and toil and sustenance.

Succession isn’t just a family retreat with a facilitator, a giant book of procedures, the reading of a will or the distribution of assets. It is a constant, churning process, woven through every decision on a farm and ranch. Every interaction between family members. Even every piece of food we buy at the store.

Succession means life, for all of us. But for families in agriculture, it’s a baton passed down from ancestors made of dreams and best intentions. It’s a wish to keep going, if not forever, then at least for a little while.

Photo by .media courtesy of

New bonus episode! Author Joe Wilkins’ award-winning novel “The Entire Sky” follows a ranch family in eastern Montana na...
04/02/2026

New bonus episode! Author Joe Wilkins’ award-winning novel “The Entire Sky” follows a ranch family in eastern Montana navigating grief, generational change and the uncertain future of their land. Through these fictional characters, the novel offers a different way to think about succession and what happens when transition is delayed or avoided.

In this companion episode to our “Succession” season, Megan sits down with Joe to explore the pressures facing rural communities and how fiction can help us understand them more deeply. Like Megan, Joe also grew up in rural Montana and has since chosen a home elsewhere, but his work is still rooted in the eastern Montana landscape – his “primal place” – where he witnessed how land shapes people and families over time. They also discuss the “tilt,” or forces pressing down on agricultural communities today, and the push-and-pull between leaving and returning home.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Photo courtesy of Joe.

I was honored to have the opportunity to sit down with MTPR’s rural policy reporter Victoria Traxler a few weeks ago to ...
03/24/2026

I was honored to have the opportunity to sit down with MTPR’s rural policy reporter Victoria Traxler a few weeks ago to discuss what I learned about the state of family agriculture while reporting on the latest season of Reframing Rural.

You can listen to the interview on MTPR’s website: https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2026-02-27/ag-producers-are-aging-but-passing-down-the-operation-is-no-easy-chore

Thanks to Victoria and the MTPR team for their interest in the stories we’re telling on the podcast!

As Dena Fritz told us in episode four of Succession Stories, many farmers and ranchers hope to pass on their land to the...
03/18/2026

As Dena Fritz told us in episode four of Succession Stories, many farmers and ranchers hope to pass on their land to the next generation after they’re gone. “That’s the dream,” she said. “Is it a possibility? I hope so. But you just never know with the economy, the way it is, with the rules, how they change all the time. It makes it difficult to give a farm.”

Compared to how previous generations approached succession, today’s farmers and ranchers face a much more complicated reality. “Back in the day,” Dena said, “those first four generations, five generations, just handed down the land. I mean, it just simply handed down to the next generation. This generation that I’m in right now, it didn’t get just handed down. Part of it’s been handed down, but part of it had to be purchased. And so hopefully the next generation will be able just to hand it down again and try and do it in such a way that makes them successful.”

Listen to the Fritz family’s succession story, “The Messy Middle,” to learn how Dena is working hard to set the next generation up for success, in the latest season of Reframing Rural here (or wherever you get your podcasts): https://www.reframingrural.org/season-four/episode-four

Photo courtesy of the Fritz family.

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