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Te inaugural Hutterite Harvest Festival brings Hi-Line residents

and their Hutterite neighbors together for a day of fun

STORY BY SCOTT MCMILL ION PHOTOGRAPHY BY DEIRDRE E ITEL

A FriendlyHarvest

A Hutterite boy gets a hit during an afternoon softball tournament

during the Harvest Festival in September.

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ut on the prairie between Malta and Saco, halfway

between the Missouri River and the Canadian border, out

where the hot water bubbles from the ground, a man and his

preacher bent over a horseshoe pit and had a discussion.

The preacher maintained his shoe had fal len close enough

to the pin to score a point. His opponent disagreed, but only

briefly.

Okay, he conceded. Well go with the Lord on that one.Then they both grinned.

And the horseshoes sailed.

Welcome to t he first annual Hutterite Harvest Festival. Take the black pants and

suspenders from the men, take the long dresses and headscarves from the women,

take those things away and the event looked a lot l ike any other church picnic: a full

day of horseshoes and softball, fried chicken and roast pork, with plenty of beer.

Teenagers flirted. The little kids squabbled some and giggled a lot. The older people

visited, with the men talking crops and rain and the price of gas while the women

spoke of kids and relatives and recipes.

Its their day. They get to do what they want, said Roger Ereaux, who organized the

event as a way for businesses along the Hi-Line

to show their appreciation for their Hutterite

neighbors. Its kind of like a fai r.

Ereaux owns the Sleeping Buffalo Hot

Springs, a decidedly down-at-the-heels estab-

lishment that grabbed a flicker of fame in 1999

when folks fried up three tons of beef to makethe worlds biggest hamburger.

But on a breezy Saturday early in Sep-

tember, Ereaux was aiming for a different kind

of attention. Im not so sure he pulled it off, but

I liked his idea.

With roughly 50 colonies in Montana,

Hutterites are part of the culture and economy

of this state, particularly on the prairies.

Unlike the Amish, who are distant theologi-

cal cousins, Hutterites embrace most practical

aspects of modern technology. They drive, they

use computers, they talk on cell phones. And

they spend a lot of money, buying everything

from insurance to lumber to tractor parts.

As Ereaux explained it to me, the busi-

nesses wanted to give something back to the

colonies, even if it was just some free swim-

ming.So he organized the festival as a way for

Hi-Line businesses to show their apprecia-

tion. He cadged donations from businesses

O

Clockwise from top right: Carrieann Hofer, 8, from the Loring colony near Harlem keeps an eye

on the activites. David Hofer, 16, lines up a toss in a game of horseshoes. He said he enjoyed

looking at the cute girls from the other colonies as well as playing in the horseshoe tournament.Sharon Hofer discusses balls and strikes with the pitcher during the softball tournament.

Kevin Hover, center, and Matthew Tschetter drove down from Alberta, Canada, to flirt with the

girls at the Harvest Festival. Hofer cousins Matthew, 6, and Sophia and Aubrey, 2, from left,

spend some time outside the bath house of the once grand Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs.

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and invited five Hutterite colonies, offering $1,000 in prize

money for competitions in softball, horseshoes and tug-of-war.

(The colonies competed hard, but t hey decided to split the money

evenly.)

Though the day was pretty disorganized and the rope-

pulling contest never happened, everybody seemed to have a

good time. I know I did. I even made some new friends.

Like most Montanans, Id seen Hutterites around. Theyre

easy to spot, with their distinctive clothing and German accents,

which turn almost every vowel into a dipthong, where words like

lost come out as lowest, and hog comes out hoe-aag. But

I never gave them a lot of thought, beyond appreciating the vege-

tables and chickens they sell at roadside stands. They seemed

to me stoic and shy, maybe a little standoffish, but pleasant

enough.

At Sleeping Buffalo, I got a look at how they deal with each

other, in part because there werent many people like me hanging

around. I learned that, like people in any group, some of themcuss when theyre angry. When something sucks, they say it sucks.

Some overdrink. They get competitive when the game is close. They

crack wise: women joke about the helplessness of their husbands

and men joke about

women drivers. Most

of them dont swim

too well. Most of

them vote and follow

politics. They pay

taxes.

Except for their

distinctive clothes

and accents, they

look and act a lot

like any other bunch

of prairie farmers, which is what they are, and there are worse

ways to live.

But Hutterites arent the same as most people.

They live communally, in colonies based on deep religious

faith, and all major assets belong to the colony. None of them

have much to call their own. Preachers have a lot of authority.

Women dont. Most people leave school when they turn 15 and

theyre a little leery about the temptations of the world. Family

and faith are crucial.

Not everybody is cut out for this kind of life. The Hutterites

know this.

Its the best life for us, but youve got to start out whenyoure just this high, Mike Hofer told me, leveling his palm at

knee level. You couldnt do it at your age.

With the exception of some mission work in Nigeria, the

Clockwise: Children were

treated to a full day of

swimming in the hot springs

at the Harvest Festival. An

old Lutheran church sits on the

grounds of Sleeping Buffalo

Hot Springs. Roger Ereaux,

owner of Sleeping Buffalo

Hot Springs for 20 years,

organized the Harvest

Festival as a way for local

businesses to thank the

Hutterites for contributing to

the communities along the Hi-

Line. A variety of vegetables,

eggs and baked goods were

on sale at the festival fortown folk to purchase.

Hutterites dont proselytize. They tend to stick to their own kind.

And because they are different, Hutterites have been persecuted in

the past. Founder Jacob Hutter was burned at the stake in 1536, and bigots

shoved his followers from one European country to another until the 1870s,

when they emigrated to the North American prairies.

As pacifists, they wont serve in the armed forces and, during World War

I, two Hutterite men died of neglect and abuse in a military prison in Fort

Leavenworth.

As late as the 1950s, South Dakota law banned Hutterite colonies from

buying more land, and Alberta had a similar law until 1973.

And in 1998 , near Shelby, Mont., somebody burned a colonys barn and

poisoned a well, acts that authorities treated as hate crimes.

And thats why I liked Ereauxs idea of a Hutterite festival, one where

everybody is invited.

Even today, there are plenty of rumors and cheap stereotypes about

Hutterites.

I dont even like to speak about it, said Will Hauk, one of the handful

of non-Hutterites at the event. Hes been a friend of the East Malt a Colony for

years, he said, and liked the idea of the festival: It might help bring people

together.

Granted, Sleeping Buffalo is a long way from almost everything, and

watching Hutterites throw horseshoes isnt everybodys idea of a good time.

But it might be your best chance to get to know some fellow Montanans.

Like everybody else, Hutterites have warts as well as virtues. Some folks arenicer than others. Some are better looking. Some are funnier. They run the

gamut.

Theyre people.