Reframing Rural

09/17/2026

New season of Reframing Rural is coming next year!

This September we will have been reporting (pretty quietly), on our new upcoming season - Season 5: Rural Motherhood - for a full year now! But I started thinking about it in 2023 when I was pregnant with my son Connor and reading books like Matrescence about the emotional, physical, psychological and social transformation of new motherhood. Throughout the whole pregnancy and postpartum period, I couldn’t get my fill of stories and research on motherhood. Now two-and-a-half years into the parenting journey, I am still completely fascinated by women’s experiences navigating maternal healthcare, perinatal mental health, childcare and the stresses of life like running a farm and a family.

This is the most ambitious season we have ever produced. It will be a six-episode season exploring the stressors - and solutions - rural Montana moms experience today.

It takes a lot of resources to produce a documentary-style season like this. This year, we have travelled over 2,000 miles to Dillon, Lolo, Browning, White Sulphur Springs and Plentywood for interviews. To date, we have raised $92,500 from nine incredible supporters: Headwaters Foundation, the Llewellyn Foundation, the Steele-Reese Foundation, Greater Montana Foundation, Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Women’s Foundation of Montana, Red Ants Pants Foundation, Zero to Five Montana and Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies. We still have roughly $15,000 to raise. If you’d like to donate, please check out the Support page on our website.

09/08/2026

Every December I get to lead a rural identity workshop for the Red Ants Pants Foundation life-altering Girls Leadership Program! The program matches eight girls in their junior year of high school with eight mentors. Together they attend three multi-day retreats and develop a community project that fills a gap in the girls’ home community. The alumnae go on to create incredible ripple effects wherever they go, and the Red Ants Pants Foundation organizes opportunities for them to stay connected. Please share with a rural Montana girl who could benefit! Applications close September 13. Apply at: https://www.redantspantsfoundation.org/girls-leadership

09/03/2026

When I started Reframing Rural in 2019, I was a team of one. Now, we are a team of five storytellers, journalists and musicians working together to craft in-depth, narrative-driven podcasts that resist a narrative of rural decline, despair and disinvestment. To be named the best podcast of the year by Best of the West Media Awards, is an acknowledgement of the countless late nights editing, the thousands of miles traveled across the rural West and the invaluable relationships formed with those who've so generously shared their stories with us along the way. So honored to receive this award!

The celebration of our 2026 Best of the West Media Award winners continues — and today’s spotlight is one that will stop you in your tracks. We are proud to honor Reframing Rural by Tree Ring Records LLC as our Blog/Podcast of the Year!
About the Winner: Founded in 2019 by Megan Torgerson — a farmer’s daughter from Dagmar, Montana — Reframing Rural is an award-winning documentary podcast on a mission to challenge mainstream stereotypes about rural places. Through immersive storytelling and in-depth interviews, the podcast explores topics like rural gentrification, mental health in agricultural communities, Tribal food sovereignty, and farm succession — giving voice to people, histories, and cultures that rarely get the spotlight.
The impact is real and far-reaching.
Reframing Rural doesn’t just inform — it moves people to act.
See the full list of 2026 winners here: aafwesternregion.org/2026-best-of-the-west-award-winners
Listen here: www.reframingrural.com
Join us in celebrating the Reframing Rural team at AdWest in Los Angeles on September 24!

08/06/2026

The 15th annual Red Ants Pants Music Festival at the end of last month was the culmination of so many things I love: danching and laughing and waiting out thunderstorms with family, coming together with rural leaders to exchange ideas, communing with strangers who may hold different beliefs and come from different backgrounds, but who share the same passion for live music.

To kick off the festival, I got to share “Mother Range,” the film Zach Altman, Anthony Pavkovich and I made, with festival audiences, followed by an illuminating panel I moderated featuring inspiring rural leaders who’ve received grants from the Red Ants Pants Foundation (will share it on the podcast later this year. The rest of the weekend was spent running into friends, making new friends and revelling in the incredible talent that graced the Red Ants Pants Music Festival stage!

Music opens us up to one another and to all that’s good in the world. The power of music and of gatherings like this well-oiled festival can not be understated! So much gratitude to all the amazing staff and volunteers who made us feel not only welcomed, but loved!

Photos of the panel courtesy of Joe Navas and Kristen Thornton Navas.

07/31/2026

I was thrilled to see The Obit Project was featured by as one of the best podcasts of the year so far. I contributed to the project with an episode about my hometown of Dagmar, Montana, (in-town population: 10). The episode asks: how do you know when a town is dead?

You can find my episode in the Reframing Rural podcast feed, or listen to the whole season of The Obit Project wherever you get your podcasts.

07/21/2026

Most days I’m writing grants, in meetings, reviewing tape, or writing and editing audio, but a few weeks out of the year I get to do the heart of the work: travel to remote places and interview incredible people. This month I made the trip to Browning to interview Tiffany St. Goddard (Tiffany St Goddard) for Reframing Rural’s fifth and forthcoming season “Rural Motherhood.”

We haven’t shared much about the new season yet, but we been began working on it in September! “Rural Motherhood” (coming out around Mother’s Day 2027) will investigate topics from maternity care and childcare deserts, to farm stress and maternal mental health. In Tiffany’s story, we’ll explore how Spirit of the Horse, a camp she founded through her nonprofit Sapoo Horsemanship, is providing Blackfeet girls the opportunity to cultivate life skills and a deeper connection to their cultural heritage through the power of horses.

We connected to Tiffany through Women In Ranching ™. On top of being a rancher and rodeo mom, Tiffany is a co-leader of Women in Ranching’s “Rooted in the Land” program for Indigenous women.

I am so grateful and humbled to get to spend time with Tiffany and to witness the powerful and positive influence she has on Blackfeet youth. I can’t wait to share more about the new season and stories like Tiffany’s that are in the works!

07/17/2026

The West Pasture: a special place on my family’s farm and ranch in eastern Montana that is still intact native grassland. It holds millennia of history, my family’s included.

We recently shared a podcast episode from World Wildlife Fund’s Breaking Nature about the significance of grasslands. Give it a listen at the link in bio.

Video by Renny Eleanor Reinoehl Torgerson

07/09/2026

When I go out and interview people, it’s typically in a private setting like a farmhouse kitchen table or a semi loading up with grain on the edge of a field. But last month we flipped that on its head, conducting a live podcast recording at the Old Salt Festival in Helmville, MT, with Amber Smith and Jaimie Stoltzfus of Jaimie Meat Co. Amber and Jaimie are the ranchers, moms and collaborators who starred in the film “Mother Range” I co-produced with Zach Altman, directed by Anthony Pavkovich, that premiered at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival earlier this year.

The afternoon was made even sweeter by having friends from rural Montana and Minnesota in the audience, including Ashley Hanson, the creative executive officer of Department of Public Transformation, Reframing Rural’s fiscal sponsor!

Curious to know when you can hear the interview with Amber and Jaimie? We’ll air it during our 5th and forthcoming podcast season, “Rural Motherhood,” coming Spring 2027! We can’t wait to share more about the new season we’re cooking up over the coming months!

07/02/2026

Only a small portion of my family’s farm and ranch is native grassland today. I think that’s what makes it so special: it’s rare. Spared from the plow because of its dry and hilly topography, my family’s furthest west pasture holds millennia of history, my family’s included.

Today we’re sharing an episode from our friends at the World Wildlife Fund (World Wildlife Fund) about the significance of grasslands. This episode is from their Nature Breaking podcast and it features a conversation between the show’s host Seth Larson and Martha Kauffman. Martha is based in Montana and has served for twenty years as the vice president of the World Wildlife Fund’s Great Plains program.

Find the episode in our podcast feed.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you do, I encourage you to follow World Wildlife Fund’s show Nature Breaking wherever you get your podcasts.

Video by World Wildlife Fund and Conservation Media®

06/22/2026

For the last year-and-a-half, I’ve been working on an audio obituary for my hometown, Dagmar, Montana (in-town population: 10). The story is for a new podcast from the Montana Media Lab and Montana Public Radio called “The Obit Project.”

I realized after texting the people I interviewed for the story, there’s possibly nothing more nerve-wracking than attempting to tell the story of your hometown in 25 minutes... well, maybe declaring it dead and attempting to write its obituary.

“I hope I did Dagmar justice!” “What about the stories that landed on the cutting room floor?” “What if the people I interviewed hate it?!” I grapple with this internal dialogue with every episode I produce, but the chatter is louder when sharing stories from home.

Still I think this story distills some of the essence of Dagmar, a town that’s suffered from consolidation in the ag industry, but that is not forgotten.

Listen to my episode for The Obit Project, “Obituary for a Small Town,” here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.mtpr.org/arts-life/2026-06-18/obitproject-s01e12