(bright music) - [James] It takes a whole village plus to keep one small business going.

- [Rob] They say it's not what you know, it's who you know.

And I can totally attest to that.

- [Ernie] There's the appreciation of the community in that they're willing to spend a little more for our product and they really appreciate the product.

- [Melinda] We had to listen and figure out what is God's plan for our lives And this ranch, because that plan is a peaceful, in tune with nature plan.

- [Amber] We wanted to find a way to naturally heal the skin and not have to use all the chemicals that are in products that are found in pharmacies.

- [Shauna] Moccasin making means, honestly, the world to me.

- [Lavonne] We all touch the wool at some point.

- [Emery] Trapping and, you know, the fur industry is one of the key aspects that built America.

- [Narrator] Montana's rich landscapes provide a bounty of animal-based products that fuel local economies and feed the community, explore the craftsmanship and care, bind everything from wool and fur to moccasins and meat.

The following stories showcase hardworking Montanans, turning nature's gifts into sustainable goods.

This is Hoof to Hide, crafting a living from animal products.

This University of Montana School of Journalism production was made possible with production support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans and by the University of Montana.

- I love my work, you know, and I'm not like I want to go to Hawaii and, you know, fish all day or is anything, we have really good fishing here.

(cow mooing) Well, we've been in business since 78 and then we started the dairy in 84 and then we started the creamery in 98, I think.

And it is 2024 right now.

And I'm about to turn 71.

Well, I love farming.

I love our way of farming and really like working with the cows and participating in their whole cycle.

My name is Ernie Harvey.

I am the sole proprietor in terms of sole proprietor of Lifeline Farm.

Variously known as the big cheese, boss, whatever.

This is Sally.

She's a red border collie from Washington.

They're much better than people when it comes to herding.

If you have control of them, you can send them way out in the field.

I can send these guys, you know, half mile out into the field to the end paddock and have 'em bring them in.

And it's a wonderful relationship to have a good dog.

Especially now I don't have a wife, so I need a dog.

No, they're company, you know, really good company.

The difficulties, there are many.

I mean, working with people on this, this scale and always having, I mean, you have to milk twice a day every day.

We have our milk here, which is from the previous two days, and we pump it into the travel tank and take it down to the creamery, unload it into another tank, which then it goes that same day goes into the pasteurizer.

We were actually bottling while we pasteurize 'cause we don't have a big storage unit for holding the pasteurized milk until it's bottled.

It takes us about, let's see, 500 gallons would take us about two hours to bottle and box.

- You know, we have a pretty regular schedule.

Mondays and Thursdays we bottle milk a couple days, a couple other days a week, Tuesday or Wednesday and Friday.

We make cheese generally, but, you know, the whole thing is all about, it's all about the cows and the milk.

We're on their schedule, not the other way around.

It's pretty simple, those bottles, they come down the track and I make sure they get on the machine properly.

I have to watch 'em to make sure they fill up all the way and that the caps get on 'em.

You know, you gotta move fast, you gotta be accurate.

You gotta remember stuff and you just gotta keep up, keep track.

- I have worked here at Lifeline Creamery for five years now.

We bottle three different flavors of milk on those Mondays and Thursdays.

We get our numbers from the Western Montana Growers Co-op.

That's who we distribute through.

And so depending on those numbers, that's how many bottles we prepare.

- We're really producing for the community.

You know, our milk doesn't go that far and our cheese doesn't go that far in general, but it's an advantage in that we are able to go from cow to store shelves in virtually the same day.

The community appreciates that.

- I like the fact that I'm working for a local, small company and I like what Ernie has done here.

Being an organic dairy and making cheese.

It's not too many places like this in the whole country.

- You know, we're at a point with the environment and the global warming and everything that it's really important that people support sustainable systems and food production and in a positive way.

And so I think we're trying to put some models out there and the only way they're gonna work is not through grants, but you actually need community support and for consuming those products and participating in your environment.

- I'll probably be mountain deers when I'm dead or right before I die, I suppose.

My name's Rob Henrekin.

I'm a taxidermist.

I own and operate Mountain Creek Taxidermy.

This is our 35th year in business.

I really loved hunting, I really loved, and then my dad got me into trapping and I just loved messing with the critters.

I think every taxidermist in United States probably could say that they work on more whitetail deer than anything because more people hunt 'em.

So I would say, yeah, I probably do my share of deer, mule deer and whitetail.

I do quite a few elk, like this time of the year, I don't know if I'm gonna get a elk head in here or a deer head or maybe somebody won't, maybe nobody will even stop.

I can work on things like the base for those bears or I might spend the whole day in the back room flushing and salting and prepping skins.

It changes all the time, which is fun because monotony would drive me nuts.

We're still very close to all of our kids.

They're our best friends.

We're fortunate enough to have Jesse and Brandon, her husband and their two little kids.

Gus and Randy live next door to us here.

And then Cole and his wife Kiana, they live up in Condon along Buck Creek.

We get to see 'em pretty often.

Of course, Jesse and Gus and Renny are here about every day.

They poke in here for a little bit and I get to harass them a little.

We have four grandkids.

They are amazing.

We just can't imagine life before grandkids.

- I am Jess Lehl and Rob Henrekin and is my dad.

I think I won the lottery when it comes to dads in general, but the fact that he's got the coolest job ever, I don't know, like I didn't really realize that how great I had it until I got older.

And then to get to see my kids, you know, get to experience it too.

It's like, it makes you realize like just how cool it is.

- Bye Rainy.

- He's got me sometimes I'll help flush things out and if he needs me to tote and fetch, I can do that.

And yeah, if he needs it, I'm available to help.

- The cape gets tagged with one of these plastic tags and then it's punch coded to correspond with that number.

So if the tag gets lost, I still know whose cape it is.

We talk about what position they want it put in, if they want the ears particular way or if they want it turned a particular way.

After a few hours, I'll have the cape flushed and prepped for the salt.

Basically that process is flushing all the meat and membrane off the cape and then putting it in the salt.

And the salt dries and preserves the skin.

Before I quit for the end of the day, I'll re-salt those capes that I had salted the day before and give them a second salting.

And then at that point, the skin is prepped.

I know what the client wants.

The cape will go off to the tannery and it might be at the tannery for a month to five months sometimes.

And at that point I'll usually end up having a form on its way, or I'll have a form picked out to order.

The cape, when I get it back from the tannery, it's dry, it's not, it's very flexible and everything but it's dry.

So I'll rehydrate it before I can work on it again, depending on the mount.

I'd say for a deer takes me about out four or five hours probably to put the skin on the form and get it to the point where I can hang it on the wall.

I'll put an epoxy putty around the eyelids and the nose, sometimes inside the ears.

All the finish work is done that way.

And then I use an airbrush to paint it to recolor basically the epidermal skin around the eyes and the nose pad.

I consider myself an okay taxidermist, but I'm not a very good business person.

I get in here and I want to be physically working on getting these clients' pieces out the door.

I spend a lot of time doing that and very little time trying to manage my money.

Money has never been my biggest driving force.

Happiness is more of my driving force than how much money I make in a year.

People like to save that memory.

It takes 'em back to that moment or that place or a kid's first deer.

It might only be this big, but it's a trophy to them.

I mount more small deer than I mount big deer.

If everything I mounted was Boone and Crockett, I would've been outta business long ago.

(bright music) - [James] I think all small businesses start out this way.

You don't have an expertise, you become an expert at what you do.

You work your butt off and hopefully, you know, get lucky a few times.

This is the color you're thinking about.

I'm the designer of all the fabrics and yarns that we make.

And so I design the clothes and then follow them to Peru and where our manufacturing is done.

- You need that.

That's what you need.

- So we own just a little over 20 acres, but we beg, borrow and steal from our neighbors and do switches.

Give them a bunch of clothing, we can use their pastures or we pay to have their pasture fertilized and we get, you know, thankful for Steve who lives behind us to allow us to graze on his 20 acres and our next door neighbor Bill to graze on his 20 acres.

So when it's all said and done, we have about 80 acres that we rotate on and our core competency is the apparel that you see in our store.

We also have this tourist business, which we have two, sometimes three guides in the middle of the summer doing these tours.

- We have both Huacaya and Suri alpacas here on our farm.

Well, they're both two very inspiring people to me and they really appreciate it.

When you're a person like me who has a desire to learn and they just have so much knowledge and I just love hearing them talk about everything that they're passionate about.

People say that you should think about where you wanna be in five years and I don't want anything to change.

I mean I get to wake up every day, come to a farm where there's alpacas, just these big fluffy, smiley creatures and there's people who are happy about alpacas here and it's just such a unique and energetic environment that I just love and I can't really imagine myself anywhere else right now.

- [James] I used to be a orthopedic surgical PA and I really got tired of fighting the insurance companies.

So I was looking for something else and I wasn't sure what, I knew that I like animals more than people and is there anything with animals that I could do that I don't have to kill the animal and that I could actually make a living at and stay in Montana.

- I was sitting at my desk and he comes walking in with a Costco flyer magazine and it had a fun article just about this little couple, it's gonna live to be a hundred 'cause they had alpacas.

And so at 23, I wrote a business plan with my psychology degree and I went to the bank and we had the enthusiasm and we convinced him.

And so he gave us $150,000 loan.

We bought a truck, a trailer tractor, and eight alpacas.

- So I just started selling and we'd breed and sell, breed and sell.

And every single penny that we made went right back into the business.

- We were just focusing on the alpacas.

And then my sister got pregnant with twins and we thought, wouldn't it be fun to have an alpaca hat for these babies?

We didn't make any textiles at the time.

And so we literally brought two bags of raw fleece down to the farmer's market.

He found somebody to hand spin and then hand knit it.

And those were our first two products.

And from there, 15 years later, 16 years later, we're one of the biggest alpaca textile companies in the nation.

- [James] We're growing at about a 68% growth curve.

And that's not by accident, it's because we have found somebody to help us utilize social media properly on all the platforms that we're on.

That's the big thing, you know, 95% of our sales are online.

- [Sarah] Yeah, so we started off 17 years ago with three products and now we have 450 products.

- My goal is to design products that have as much alpaca in it and as much natural fibers in it with the least, if any plastics in it at all.

Acrylics and spandex and stuff like that.

I get to use my creative side on the apparel.

You know, I actually get to design my own clothes for people to wear.

And when I hear people say how much they like my clothes, I mean, it's great.

Becoming so successful with the online apparel business, you know, it's really a great feeling to do that.

People that are working for us, it's important that we find people who want to be here and find people who take pride in not only the product that we're developing, but also taking care of the animals.

We all take pride in that.

That's really the part that makes me the happiest.

We're providing jobs, we're paying our taxes, we're doing what we can in society.

- So my job is to help them get used to their halters and being tied up.

And then we bring in a team of volunteers and we get them used to walking on a lead, going into scary places like the horse trailer, getting weighed on a wiggly metal scale.

Just anything that might encounter that they might encounter in their adult life.

- The other side of things about the difficulties of this business is when we sell an alpaca, we'll sell between, you know, sometimes 40 a year.

It is really, really hard because the people have to be qualified to take my animals.

I know that sounds crazy, but I won't sell my alpacas to just anybody and have them have a horrible life.

So they kinda have to get qualified.

But on the other hand, you know, I love seeing these people enjoy the alpacas once they purchase 'em and their kids raise, grow up with these alpacas and they just turn into wonderful family animals.

But you know, the truth of the matter is, those alpacas are my kids.

Those alpacas are my family members.

We do our best to take care of 'em in every way that we can.

But at the end of the day, it's a job that I absolutely love doing.

(bright music) - Windrift Hill is an all natural skincare company.

We manufacture all of our products using goat's milk and what our mission is, is to be able to provide skincare products that people can use every single day.

Windrift Hill was founded by my mom in 1999.

It started as a hobby at our farm west of Conrad.

The hobby quickly grew as our business grew into a full-time job.

So Deena is our creator.

She founded the company.

I oversee management of the business.

And then I also do you know, marketing and sales.

My husband Casey, he manages all of our animals.

Nicholas, he is our main soap maker.

Andrea, my sister-in-law, she's literally my right hand.

She runs the office.

I think what makes me the sales superstar is the fact that I believe in the products.

I grew up having skin problems and I grew up struggling.

No matter what it was, whether it was shampoo or soap or lotion, I would have problems.

And when Deena formulated all of the products, it was something I could use and I continually could use and my skin got better.

- I'm Deena Meyer and I'm the founder of the business.

I decided to go into OT just seeing people, whether they were old people, kids, nurses, teachers, they all had like huge skin issues.

And some of them had prescriptions, some of them had cream to put on, but it never seemed to resolve the problem.

And when I was working in that, I kind of thought, hmm, I think I can do a better job just doing it naturally.

I didn't want the nasty stuff that they give you.

I wanted it all to be natural.

So I did the research and I bought my first three goats and started with soap.

- [Amber] The biggest thing that makes 'em unique is the fact that we do use the goat milk.

Goat milk proteins actually are absorbed by the skin.

So when you use the product, you're not only like washing with the soap to cleanse your skin, you're also moisturizing at the same time.

- My name's Casey Vandenacre.

I'm Amber's husband, but I guess out here I'm a head milker and goat take-carer.

A healthy herd produces the best milk.

As far as milking and starting in the morning, we wipe down our girls with a sanitizing wipe, take care of anything that they laid in and stuff like that, that keeps it clean going into the container.

And then once you're done, you know, you wipe 'em down again and then you try to seal their utter.

And what that does is helps them from getting infection or anything else like that.

And also the other thing is, is we don't use any antibiotics while they're milking.

So everything we have is organic.

The goats become pets.

We don't grow 'em to to sell 'em or anything else like that.

All of our girls stay here, you feed 'em as babies, you bring 'em up through production, you know, they're part of a family, you know, that's pretty rewarding in itself.

Without them, we really don't have a business.

- [Amber] And we built the manufacturing facility back in 2018 was when it was completed.

We decided to build the storefront so that people could come see actually where the products were made.

- My name's Nick Hofstad.

I am one of the owners and self-proclaimed soap engineer.

It has four different oils in it.

We weigh 'em out and then we have to heat it to a temperature.

So we add the milk and light to the oils and then it goes on the machine.

But once it gets to a temperature or we call it a trace, I'll add the scent.

And then when I'm done mixing that, I'll add my color.

Once that's done, I pour it into three molds.

And then once it sits overnight, I come in and we cut and put 'em away and then they're supposed to sit back there for six weeks to cure.

- [Amber] The most important part about having our family involved, we're all passionate about it.

We enjoy the animals, we enjoy creating new products and we work together.

You know, when we first started, my mom oversaw everything and then as we started to grow, we realized that one person can't do everything.

As the business has grown, there'll be times where we'll go out to a family dinner and we'll start talking about business and we'll make the decision.

We have five more minutes to discuss business and then it's on to just enjoying each other's company.

When we first started, it was all just family.

But as we've grown, we count on our employees to be part of our team and our family.

- Tyler does our lotion and butters oils.

Now that we have our new machines, Tyler weighs out all the water and it's in one of our big vats.

It gets heated and that goes in to the vat.

Once everything's to temperature and he's adding the water, that's when he adds the milk in and then it has to mix.

And then he lets it cool to a temperature and then he pours half gallons, gallons and then bottles.

And then once the bottles are done, they go on the conveyor production line there and down to the end and then Kena puts 'em away.

- Our whole deal has been, let's make a product that stands the test of time.

My ideal vision for the future is that we can continue to provide the skincare products that we have provided, but also grow our line.

So our future goals is to be able to expand our facility, to make it larger and to, I mean, in all honesty, to be able to employ more people in our community.

We could have moved our business anywhere, but we chose to stay in Conrad because we feel like our farm communities need businesses in them that employ people and employ them for good wages with benefits.

That's what keeps all these small communities going.

There's lots of room for all of us and I wanna see other people be able to build small communities the way that we're trying to build Conrad, whether it's Windrift Hill products or it's some, some other jam or jelly or product that you've bought in your little local community.

Share it with others.

It really makes a difference.

(bright music) - It's made a lot of sense to make my moccasins out of an animal that was so important to my ancestors and so important for the land of Montana.

My name is Shauna White Bear.

I am from the Arikara Hidatsa Nation out in North Dakota.

I've been living in Bozeman, Montana for about 11 years now.

My business is called White Bear Moccasins.

I became an official business in 2020.

I'm the founder, but I do it all.

I'm the president, the CEO, the marketing manager, the shipping manager.

Ultimately I am the artist behind everything.

I worked at a cobbler shop called Carter's Boots and Repair.

I wanted to create something and I had this idea about making a pair of moccasins for this person that I cared a lot about.

I found a beautiful piece of bison hide in the shop and I asked if I could use this piece for my first pair.

And that kind of opened the doors to where I am today.

In 2020, I decided to do it full time.

I became overwhelmed and from there I decided to start recruiting and I had this idea in recruiting Indigenous college students.

I had like, I don't know, four or five girls at the back door ready to make moccasins.

And then that just ignited this whole fire.

I have my moccasin makers.

Mae is my main moccasin maker.

- I did like, you know, like sewing and quilting and things like that.

And I never actually thought I'd be doing this.

Then I got involved with White Bear Moccasins and I was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do.

So it just felt right.

First step is working with the customer.

They need their outlines and then cut them and we have to pre-punch the holes because the leather is so thick that just like stitching it is like getting the needle through that is is a pain sometimes, - [Shauna] It's kind of a nice repetitive movement, which I find very calming and relaxing.

And then after you glue and stitch the sole, from there, we would prep any other details on the moccasin to get it ready for the most important part.

Hand stitching everything.

What I like to do when I hand stitch, either listening to a good podcast, listening to good music, or even watching a show, find a good cozy chair and start hand stitching.

It shouldn't take any longer than two hours, but it depends on the thickness of the leather.

- My favorite part is when they're done because then you get to see like your finished product and you're just like, wow, I did that.

- [Shauna] We use bison.

Bison is our main medium because it's beautiful.

The grainy texture of the hide is so unique.

The second reason it is stronger than cow hide, the soles, the vamp, which is the top part that comes over your toes and the heel around the back, that's all bison leather.

- We incorporate fur from different animals.

We get to add elk teeth 'cause that's such a huge part for like my culture.

Moccs we make are not traditional.

They are more modern and like so that anybody can wear them and appreciate them.

- [Shauna] I grew up in a time where the fast fashion industry was just growing and the excess.

And as a child we go through so much crappy shoes.

And then when I started working at Carter's and learning the fact that you can purchase a good quality leather product and have it for a long time, but you just have to take care of it.

- Like, I hope for people to gain like appreciation, like the appreciation for the art that we're making that's also functional 'cause you can wear them.

It has definitely helped me get more in touch with not just my own culture, but like the cultures of the other tribes.

- My advice to any young Indigenous woman who may be on the rez or off the rez, we're living in a time where Indigenous voices are being uplifted and we are being heard and people are thinking about it.

So it's such a powerful time right now for people to learn a new skill or capitalize on a skill that they have.

So yeah, you may be sitting at home thinking, I can't do it.

And just yes, you can.

Like I fully believe that.

I'm creating this community of artists and makers and mentoring the younger generation and teaching them how to utilize your hands, your creative juices.

I'm not just making moccasins because it's so much more than making moccasins.

(peaceful music) As I go out into the ranch and I look around, I see the healthy animals.

I see nice green grass.

I see the wife is happy, she's content.

The ranch is better today than it was yesterday.

We're building for the future of our children and our grandchildren.

- My husband Adam and I are managing the ranch.

Our business is the Harlow Ranch Bison Company.

Our main product is bison meat and we sell them here from our freezer in the ranch and we sell online and to a couple restaurants and one gift shop.

The ranch has been in the family since 1919.

So my great-grandparents bought the first piece of the ranch.

My grandfather kept it going through the Great Depression and then my dad took over from my grandpa.

So when my grandpa was here living in this house, I was a little kid.

And then when we were in Hawaii, we leased five acres from the neighbor and I raised sheep and goats and sold land to the restaurant where I worked not knowing that was really preparing me for this life.

- Homegrown right here.

- We have both a cow-calf operation and a meat operation.

We have about 50 mother cows right now and they have their babies in April, May and June.

And then those babies are kept for two and a half to three years as bulls or three to four and a half years as heifers.

And then they'll go to butcher.

- What happens if it rains on them?

Where do they go?

- The buffalo?

- Yeah.

- They just take a bath.

We have steaks, burgers, roasts, jerky, snack sticks, bratwursts, everything bison.

So the bulls will have an afro down the front of their face.

By the time they're about two years old.

We do ranch tours and we put people in the back of the truck with a livestock cage and they get to go out into the herd and feed the bison and get to learn all about bison too.

Early on we had to get used to the rollercoaster, you know, oh, this is so great, we're having a baby.

Oh no, that baby didn't make it like, and just, oh the ups and downs of the cycle of nature.

But I really believe that God gives us strength to do what we need to do.

- So herd's there, we bring him up, we walk him to the herd and the herd just looks at him like, who are you?

Where are you from?

And Barney turns around and runs back to us 'cause he's never been in a herd before.

So that was pretty crazy.

Yeah, I always say, yeah, it was the public school kid going up to the private school.

- I'd be lying to say I didn't slightly doubt them all up to them.

- I mean, they proved me wrong by a landslide.

I visited once a year, maybe once every couple years on average.

Every single time I'd come here, everything would change.

Houses have basically been built from scratch, rebuilt fences, miles and miles of fences.

I never imagined that we would have over a hundred head of bison in a herd in our control.

Before when we were on the big island, it was a few animals and a few rabbits.

But now it's like a real ranch that we're running and it's crazy.

- The one value I like that we try to promote is this ranch is a healing place.

'Cause if you're not right, the animal's not right, nothing's gonna go right.

The word in in Hawaii, it's called pono.

Pono means everything is good and that word everything meaning more like a holistic aspect.

- So bison are really very in tune with nature and they're easier to manage because they manage themselves.

Learned a lot of patience for the bison.

When you are working bison in the corral or trying to move 'em in the pasture, you have to have all day, in the corral, especially you push toward them or you know, request something of them.

You ask until it decides it wants to do that.

You can try to fight nature and work your business against it.

You won't win.

Like look at history, you know, and no one has ever succeeded in conquering nature.

The bison actually do better than other livestock in terms of working with nature.

- [Adam] This ranch can provide a product or a sense of healing for anyone who comes here.

It is growing the best organic product for generations to come.

- [Melinda] We seek to honor God and the buffalo and the legacy of the ranch.

It's been 105 years in the family.

I just love being a blip in the middle.

The other half hasn't happened yet.

- Many families try to work a lifetime to leave something for their children or grandchildren.

I'm sure great-great grandpa wanted to leave that legacy of what we are enjoying here today.

So that's what we want to do.

- [Melinda] He's the one that fell off the bridge.

(upbeat music) - I like the fur.

I like the animals, I learned a long time ago.

It's not how much money you make.

You gotta be happy going to work every day.

My name is George Kortum.

I'm 75.

I've been in this business for 50 years.

Started out in trapping and buying fur and selling it.

And it's just expanded into a big fur and a leather business and an antique business.

I was working for the Anaconda Company on the smelter and I started playing poker with three or four other men and they were all trappers and they started talking about fur and I wanted them to teach me how to trap a fox.

And they told me, oh, it's a big secret.

And they wouldn't tell me anything.

I bought a book and I bought some traps and I went out and for two and a half weeks I tried to trap a fox and I finally caught one.

Well, when you go out and buy fur and you go to the trappers and the sales, you're taking a chance buying the fur.

If the market changes and it drops, you can lose a fortune.

I mean, it's like playing poker.

I've been told more than once that I'm the best cat grader in the world, actually.

I kind of haven't trapped for the last, oh, I'd say 10 years because first of all, age was part of it, a little of it.

But mostly it was my business got bigger and bigger and it took more and more of my time.

- I manage this shop.

Down the street, we have another shop and George is usually there managing that one.

He's been a father figure in my life for me.

And he gave me the job and gave me the opportunity.

And I've stuck with him.

We're a staple in Anaconda.

We've been here for 40 years.

We bring a lot of business into the town.

We make all sorts of garments and blankets, hats, gloves, pillows out of all these products.

And we're also a huge wholesale company.

So we sell to other dealers who make the same things or have shops of their own.

If you walked around and you saw what you saw, I doubt you'll see anything like that anywhere else you go.

Careful, this one bites.

Boy, it's never a dull moment.

It's always something new.

That's kind of what I like about it.

- There's no average day of work for me.

Start around beginning of the hunting season until Christmas.

I am out three days a week on the road buying deer and elk hides and then we salt them.

I'm the largest fur buyer west of the Mississippi.

I'll go to a sale, like in Idaho, I might buy a hundred cats and three, 400 coyotes, a couple hundred beaver, a hundred fox, some skunks, whatever.

And I bring them back here and I put 'em in drums with corn grit.

And we clean them, then we grade 'em and lot 'em.

- I grew up around fur handling and trapping and hunting and it's what I love to do.

I moved up here three years ago and seen George's shop and been here ever since.

In Montana here it's, you know, this is what people do.

It's always been kind of that way.

A lot of people that don't much care for George, but George is a pretty good guy.

Never done me wrong.

George is very front and upfront.

- Just to let you know, I could do that about three times faster.

He's awful slow, but I'm paying him.

So that's why he takes his time.

You believe that?

- I'm fleshing out this raccoon.

So we'll flesh all the fat membrane off of it to that under-skin.

So that way when it goes to tan, it'll tan out a lot nicer.

There's always gonna be people that don't agree with it.

It is a necessary thing.

It keeps animal populations in check, keeps disease out of it.

I mean, what's the point of shooting a coyote that's got a great big, beautiful fur on him and then just throw 'em in the ditch and let 'em rot?

- One thing I learned in this business a long time ago when I was hunting and traveling when I was younger and started buying stuff is that you gotta do it right.

You gotta do it legal.

I have a very good reputation with the Montana Fish and Game Department and with the US Fish and Wildlife.

Everything's done the legal way and the right way.

Well, when you're in the antique business and you're in the fur business, it could be everything and anything.

You never know if you're gonna sell a buffalo hide today that somebody wants to lay it on the floor in front of their new summer home in Montana.

And Yellowstone came to my shop two years ago and they had a big budget and they needed things, decoration pieces and they spent a small fortune.

In the last 20 years, people there going out here to visit or go on vacation.

Every one of 'em say so and so said to stop here, you gotta stop in Anaconda.

I just think it takes money to make money, you know, and you gotta spend it.

I've been told many times, you know, you're 75, you should sell it all and you'd have tons of money and you could do anything you wanted.

But I like what I'm doing and what would I do if I sold it all?

I mean, sit in front of a TV and drink beer and watch football and die?

I mean, I ain't doing that yet, I just ain't.

(bright music) - Wool has a life because it came from a living animal.

And that life transfers over into the product that we make.

I own a wool mill.

And usually they go a what?

A wool mill.

We process wool, turn it into roving bats and yarn.

We bought the property in 85 from my in-laws who purchased a 30 foot Winnebago and hit the road.

And prior to that, the 40 acres was part of the original 160 acre homestead that my husband's grandfather homesteaded.

We are the only ones that are still raising any animals on any of the property.

The yarn shop in Bozeman carries some of my yarn sticks.

And then I have a farm, a sheep wagon here, my third sheep wagon that I use for a farm store so people can come out.

I have a website, thewoolmill.com.

I started with sheep and I started with two.

And I always like to say that two turned into too many.

I was sending all of my wool out of state to be processed.

So it was being shipped out, being shipped back.

And the neighbor lady started a wool mill and I thought, great, I'm gonna use it.

So I did use her.

I think she was in business for 14 years and it was time for her to sell the equipment and I worked for her, but I didn't really want the wool mill to leave Montana.

I first worked by myself, which was interesting 'cause a lot of it I had very little experience with.

And the mill is actually set up so that you can see all of the machines running at once.

Also, you know, just a startup business so you don't have money to pay employees.

And finally she said, Lavonne, I'll work for pork.

And we raised some pigs every year.

So I'm like, when can you start?

So she came over and we did a little pork trade and she helped me out.

The wool is actually handled 10 times before it makes it to the carter.

And the carter is the first step in the process really, besides picking the wool.

So we're just using a neutral pH soap.

I use Basic H from Shaklee, which can be then put back out onto the fields after, you know, after everything is washed.

You know, it's not just the sheep and the sheerer, but it's everybody in line and I can name all of those people from start to finish.

I have three part-time employees, so it's grown considerably.

- My name is Turan Albini.

My big thing has been figuring out ways to have as little scrap as possible.

I have taken odds and ends and things like that for making yarns that can be used for making of hats and things like that.

You have to trust your fingers and your eyes, how your ability to feel and to see and to recognize the qualities as yarn changes.

Your hands have an intense amount of knowledge in them.

How do you transfer that to a machine that can't think?

It was a little intimidating at first because it moves kind of fast.

You know, like most things, you do it enough times and it becomes relatively easy.

- We are zero waste wool milk, which is another thing that kind of sets us apart.

All the waste from the carters, the bottom of the carters, all the vegetable matter and that kind of stuff goes into a bag and Becky at the old location picks that up 'cause she has a complete composting system at her house for that.

And then we have a vacuum on the spinning mill.

And that helps us when we're spinning the wool, if it comes apart, it gets sucked into the vacuum.

So we have solar thermal on the west side of the building that helps to heat the water and solar PV on the east side of the building that runs all of the machines for this building as well as the greenhouse.

And the greenhouse holds the picker.

That's a big machine that picks the wool apart and prepares it for the carter.

Between the solar and all of the waste products, I'm pretty, pretty happy what we've done in the last seven years.

Every morning's a fresh morning and I walk in and go, oh yeah, that's what we're doing today.

And figure out what goes in the wash next.

Just keeping all of the literally and figuratively motors running.

It was a long haul to begin with, but here we are.

- [Narrator] This University of Montana School of Journalism production was made possible with production support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans and by the University of Montana.

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