(gentle music) - [Brandon] These yeast, they have evolved over millennia with the beer making process.

(gentle music) - [Gary] I've never seen anybody able to do anything better than Mother Nature.

(gentle music) - [Erin] The bacteria's everywhe Like, it's on us, it's around us, it's all on the vegetables already.

(gentle music) - [Karl] Mushrooms were that kin last frontier of agriculture, and science in general that just left so much to the imagination.

(gentle music) - [Karl] We complete this nutrient cycle and put stuff back into the soil so that you can grow new plants, create the next generation of food.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] From beetles and bacteria, to worms and fungi, small organisms fuel the creation of unique products across the state.

(gentle music) The following stories explore fermentation, taxidermy, mushrooms, and compost, to showcase Montana businesses that harness the power of natural processes.

This is "Unseen Engines."

(gentle music) - [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.

(gentle music) - [Shawn McDyre] Mushrooms have always fascinated me due to my kind of interest in microbiology, and kinda the way that they are the unseen kind of engine driving a lot of nature, the great decomposers, the internet of the forest.

So my name is Shawn McDyre, along with my wife, Jennifer I'm the owner and operator of Sun Hands Farm here in Kalispell, Montana.

So we grow about five different varieties of oyster mushrooms, lion's mane, black pearl king, which is technically a kind of oyster, chestnut, beech, shiitake, and a few others like pioppini that are kind of just experimental and occasional mushrooms that we grow.

- The general process is, you know, very basic of we have a wood based substrate that has a supplement added to it, which for the most part is usually soy hulls, or it could be rice bran, or wheat bran.

And so those two components are mixed together into bags that are autoclavable, meaning they can withstand high heat, and that's because we sterilize our substrate to then introduce our spawn, which is what inoculates the substrate with the intended species of mushrooms that we wanna grow out on it.

And then from there, we're just waiting until they get big enough to pick.

Kalispell, and the Flathead in general, is just one of the most beautiful places in the country.

It's one of the best places to live, and so we just kinda make our business work around the place that we wanna be.

It's just our family.

It is, we are traditionally a family farm, and so it's me, my wife, Jennifer and then our son Walden, who's three, and our daughter Esme, who's six months Walden loves vegetables, but he's not...

He can name you every vegetable, he doesn't exactly like to eat them, but he can also name you every mushroom which is pretty good for a three year old.

So, he does have some interest in mushrooms, which is promising.

- [Jennifer McDyre] My backgroun actually in medicine but I did go to school for art as well.

So, kind of all over the place.

There's a lot of benefits, and each individual mushroom offers a pretty unique set of benefits.

The most important aspect of the nutritional benefits is the neurogenative benefits that it offers brain health.

- [Shawn McDyre] We're, you know one of the few farms that does mushroom and vegetable production.

I think what makes us unique is we're trying to create as much of a closed loop system as we can, where we're taking the mushroom through its entire life cycle.

And then once, you know, the spent substrate is not useful for fruiting anymore, then we're trying to incorporate that as fertilizer compost into our vegetable production.

The more I've gotten into mushroom production, and learning about mushrooms, the more I just find that there's so much more to learn, and it keeps things interesting, and exciting every day.

(gentle music) You know, one of the things that we take pride in here that makes us a little bit different is we're hyper-focused on quality, you know?

We're allowed to do that because we're so small, you know, we're much smaller than a lot of mushroom farms, but you'll never get mushrooms from us that look ragged and, you know, five days old or anything like that.

We pride ourselves on providing, you know, the freshest, highest quality, you know, product that we can to all of our end-users.

And we are ultimately focused on bringing our mushrooms directly to people, and helping them educate themselves on the benefits of mushrooms, how they can incorporate them into their diets, and just kinda spreading the mushroom love.

(engine revving) - [Jennifer] The big expansion that I'm looking for is to just continue to be engaged with the community.

You know, having families come out to the farm stand, and get things for their family for the week.

And having people come to the farmer's market more regularly and start treating, like, our operation, and all local farms, really, as the supermarket.

You know, us first, then the supermarket.

- [Shawn McDyre] If anything in two years has taught us, is that, you know, the systems that we have now are fragile.

And so we need to promote local food, and we need to find ways to be more, kind of, self sustainable, self-sufficient, and, you know, providing all the things that we need within our community, and not being reliant on outside sources as much.

(gentle music) - [Erin Belmont] Fermentation's form of food preservation.

Like, people have been doing fermentation since people were people.

(gentle music) My name's Erin Belmont, I'm the owner and fermentologist, at House of Ferments.

House of ferments makes sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha mainly.

I like fermenting because it's a blend of science, art, and culture.

I like the science part of it, where, like, you have to understand what's going on in order for things to go well.

You have to, like, be observant, you have to take notes, you have to keep track of things.

But once you understand that process, then you can be really creative, and, like, develop those new recipes, try new things.

(metal rattling) For what we're talking about, fermentation is basically the transformation of food by bacteria and fungi, and the enzymes that they create.

Really, all that I'm doing, is helping to create an environment where the microorganisms that do the work can thrive.

And so bacteria that are friendly to us are the ones that are gonna be there outcompeting anything that would be detrimental.

(bright upbeat music) I think my business is unique because I really try to focus on local.

Local food's really important to me, because I think it's kind of like the backbone of a community.

(bright upbeat music) (cow mooing) - I'm Drew Blankenbaker, you are at Lifeline Produce, and we are a regenerative organic produce farm in the Bitterroot Valley.

Depending on the crop of cabbage, we're always gonna end up with extras.

And House of Ferments is a local food business in the Valley, that we wanted to support.

It's a great outlet for our business to be able to still use that produce.

It's mutually beneficial because those oversized heads of cabbage work really well for a processor like House of Ferments.

She goes, and creates her delicious sauerkraut with our cabbage.

(water splashing) - Chop, salt, pack, weight, is like, kinda like the mantra for kraut making.

Cabbage will come in, gotta get it washed.

Get the cabbage, prepped, chopped, get out whatever salt and spices.

So salt's the main ingredient.

(motor whirring) - I'm making original kraut.

It's green cabbage, and it's spiced with garlic, ginger, and a little bit of cayenne.

So pounding kraut, you know, helps pack it down in there, also helps start releasing all the juices from the cabbage, to help create that brine that you really need.

And then just have to give it time.

Then when it's ready, it all gets packaged into jars, and those get sealed, and labeled, and are ready to go out the door.

Kombucha's a different kind of ferment because it is aerobic.

So, kraut making is anaerobic.

You don't want oxygen, that's why the vegetables are submerge in brine.

And kombucha's different in that it requires oxygen.

So, the scoby is a symbiotic community of bacteria and yeast.

The bacteria and yeast work together to convert the sweet tea, and the yeast converts the sugar, and makes alcohol, and then the bacteria convert that alcohol into ascetic acid, and other organic acids.

Yeah, that's good.

(glass clanking) I love regular kombucha.

A lot of people don't drink regular kombucha, but straight outta the tank is pretty good.

I enjoy eating fermented foods, and drinking fermented beverages, and I see that other people do too.

Like, I see what it kinda does for others.

(metal clanking) - My name is Dan, I'm the chef and owner of Bouilla in Hamilton.

We're a specialty sandwich shop.

We do all of our food from scratch.

I didn't know anything about fermented foods until I met Erin.

She really kind of transmitted her own personal inspiration, and really kind of innervated my passion for fermented food.

Kombucha, we just sell as an option on the drink menu.

And then the kimchi, I believe, is on four different menu items.

We really try to burn through as much kimchi as possible, 'cause it's good.

(bright upbeat music) - I definitely eat fermented foods every single day.

Literally, I put kraut, or kimchi almost on any meal.

So crunchy.

Once people start eating fermented foods, like, their body kinda starts to crave it.

I know that it makes me feel better, and I think that's my hope for others.

I just want people to enjoy eating food that's grown and made right here, and feel good about doing that, and then feel good themselves (chuckles).

(gentle music) (chicken clucking) (bright upbeat music) - I picked up antlers, I've picked up skulls all my life.

My name is Gary, I live here in Florence.

This is my business, Big Sky Beetle Works, museum quality skull and bone cleaning for European-style skull mounts.

We have customers in 43 different states.

I can clean most anything, skeletal, smelly or not, and regardless of age.

I came up with the name, Big Sky Beetle Works.

I licensed it with the state, and then I trademarked the name, and I've been going ever since.

I had never seen the beetles before.

I met the curator of the museum on campus, his name was Dwayne Williams, and he said, "Hey, why don't you work in the lab for us?"

So, I started doing study skins.

And what that is, is they brought little animals in, or big animals from all over the world, and they were skinned out, and the bones were all cleaned with this colony of beetles.

The colony had to go off campus, purchased it, and I moved to Florence in 1994.

It's been going, it's still alive.

(bright upbeat music) Big Sky Beetle Works, this is Gary.

(bright upbeat music) Okay, what are you looking for?

Someone harvests the animal, they bring it to me, and I have to do all the prep work.

Like I said, skin it remove the eyes, the tongue, detach the jaw, takes some meat off the side of the head behind the eyes.

And if it's got antlers, or horns, there's some meat that's down behind where the jaw comes in, and I'll remove the brains.

And then I'll let the beetles clean the rest of it off.

It's in the beetles anywhere between one, and sometimes it takes five, or six days.

It comes out of the beetles, and it goes into a degreasing solution with a little peroxide, little bit of simple green.

What's really nice is when you put the skulls into the sunlight, after you've whitened them, and degreased them, you can still hear 'em fizzing a little bit, and they get really, really white.

This is what I do for a living.

I clean skulls, snakes, lizard, frogs, butterflies, all kinds of amphibians, and reptiles.

The nice thing about beetle cleaning is there is minimal shrinkage, and no distortion.

I use Tacky Glue to put 'em back in.

It's a clear glue when it dries.

That's what happens when you're bringing it in an animal that's falling apart.

It just cleans the skull, it doesn't destroy the bone, it doesn't destroy the sinuses, and it gets a really high quality product.

It's Mother Nature's way of doing it.

(bright upbeat music) You can see the adult beetles, and then the little fuzzy things are the larvae.

And then they'll grow, and then go through eight larval stages.

Once they get through the larval stages, they'll go down into the bedding material, and they'll change into an adult beetle.

(bright upbeat music) One other thing that really I enjoy out of this, is I do school programs.

I've done over 200 school programs.

When I go to these school programs, and I get their books there where the teachers are put together, and every child in the class drew me a picture.

"Whoa, Mr. Beetle man, gosh, I got to see the teeth."

They can look into the eyes, they can look up the nose, they can see how the teeth work.

And getting these letters from kids from all over the country, where I sent skulls is so rewarding, because they're learning by being involved, being able to touch it, and feel it.

And I enjoy what I do.

This is wonderful.

(bright upbeat music) - Getting to see our products go back into the soil, and get used, I think is probably the most rewarding piece for me.

So my name is Karl Johnson, I'm the owner, and one of the operators of Yes Compost.

(bright upbeat music) So I grew up in Vermont.

I didn't get into composting, until I actually lived in California for a little while.

I was in San Francisco, and it was great because, there was a municipal service, that included trash recycling and compost.

And when I moved to Bozeman a number of years ago, I was actually quite surprised that being a, you know, sort of mountain town of outdoor enthusiast, there was no composting going on, but I sort of kept looking into it over the first couple years, and eventually figured out I was gonna be able to do it as a business.

(boot stomping) So using the worms, a lot of people say that it sort of adds about 10 times the nutrient value, and value in a soil system, versus a bulk compost.

So it was a little more complicated of a business model, but more interesting to me.

So that's when I really, with that piece, I really decided I could do this, and be entertained.

Well, there's kinda two types of things.

One, where we're both mostly based here, and doing compost related things, and then the other days where we're just road warriors.

on a traditional, or a typical driving day, driving around, you know, with hundreds of stops, where we're collecting food waste from all those participants.

And then from there, we sort of take the machine, and process all that material.

So, you know, managing the newest piles where we're integrating wood chips, saw dust, all that carbon material to help balance out the nitrogen of the food waste.

We have about five months of different piles that we're still managing on a weekly basis.

We manage those for, yeah, about five months before temperatures drop, and it gets to a point where we can screen that material, and have a finished product.

The last piece for me was actually the vermicomposting.

It just added a little bit more to the business model, you know, managing a herd of thousands of worms, hundreds of thousands of worms.

I would say in our outdoor pile, we have about another 70 to 100 pounds.

It's tough to tell until springtime, when they all start to emerge.

If the worms start to slow down, or we're doing something wrong, it actually has a pretty big impact on their production.

So we're doing our best to monitor things, and try and keep their environments as optimal as possible.

(pump engine revving) You know, we're working with hundreds of households between here and Big Sky, and then about 50 to 60 commercial accounts.

The households are really important to us as a business because we want people at home to not only keep that food waste outta the landfill, but to become familiar with this type of a practice.

The more people we can get involved, the more growth we can see, the more impact we're actually having on the local environments, as well as the mindset of those communities.

It's been real, super-exciting to make it happen, and see it grow.

And honestly, the people that I get to interact with who are also involved in composting have been really great.

You know, it's just a good community of people.

There's some gross parts, you know, as you see that food waste spilling out of these bins, it can be a little unpleasant.

How much time and energy do we spend on cleaning the buckets, the bins?

But certainly, you know, seeing the finished product that comes out of our process, sort of justifies the grungy work that goes into making it.

You know, to have the best customer service possible, and making sure that all of our efforts there are actually worthwhile.

Ultimately the goal is to have everybody composting, so that people, anybody that wants has any interest at all, can participate successfully.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - We're so small batch that, you know, somebody is interested in this kind of weird outlandish beer, and it's like, "We'll do it, you know?

"What's the worst that's gonna happen?

"People don't care for it, "and then it's gone after a little bit, you know?"

(Stacia laughs) My name is Stacia Fuzesy, I'm owner, operator of Golden Triangle Brew Co. My husband is Brandon Roberts, the brewer and other owner of the brewery.

Been up and running since 2019.

Several years ago, I got Brandon a home brew kit, just 'cause he loves science, and we both love beer.

Then we actually owned a landscaping company at the time, and wanted to do something that we were actually passionate about, if we were gonna spend all our time, and energy doing it.

And so we thought, start a brewery, see how it goes.

The people were super-welcoming.

When we first got here, they were excited about, you know, growth of the town, and a brewery, something a little different.

- We are one of Montana's smallest breweries.

So, we kind of designed our brewery to be built around our tap room, and to really, kind of, be here for the community itself.

The history here, the beauty, the community, the river, all were very appealing.

We are obviously within the Golden Triangle region of Montana, here in Fort Benton.

It got its name because it is the number one producer in the United States within a region of winter wheat.

The yeast really is what drives the character of your beer.

We lay down the base.

I mean, we are trying to create the pallet, for the yeast to work its magic on.

It is really more of the artist, than the brewer is.

We get the glory, even though at the end of the day, we're really just janitors ourselves, spending most of our time cleaning things.

You know, it is the yeast that really do most of that interesting work.

(water splashing) I brew on a two barrel system.

You can kinda see some of it behind me.

Your first deal is getting your grain ready.

You know, you're gonna pull your proper malts, and then those are gonna be milled.

(paper rustling) (motor whirring) (grain rustling) After the milling, you're gonna have kind of a strike water, that is going to be heated to a certain temperature, because the key in these stages, right?

Is, kind of, getting a good temperature, and a good pH.

(grain rustling) With the grain, and the water, you're reaching a certain temperature, you're extracting a lot of those sugars.

Those sugars, obviously, are eventually what your yeast is going to chomp through to make beer.

But before that, you're going to then boil it.

(water splashing) Yeah, so today we're brewing up a Mexican chocolate stout.

We add in quite a few heaps of some chocolate malt in this one.

After that process, you're then going to cool it down, as you transfer it over into a fermentation vessel, where you're going to pitch your yeast, where it then goes from what brewers call wort, to then becoming beer.

- We are one of the only breweries in Montana that uses almost about 95% Montana-based ingredients.

Majority of our ingredients come actually from within maybe a 50 mile radius of us.

So we actually will go out to the farmer's field get the grain in the bags.

I think it really adds a little bit more to the experience, when you come in here, and you don't realize that the farmer that you grew up next to is the person that is now supplying the brewery.

(bright upbeat music) So, it's really fun to have that relationship with our farmers.

People can be in here and, you know, we can point out like, "Hey this is the person "that grew our barley for us."

And they are willing to have conversations with people about their farming process.

You know, we live in Montana, there's so many resources, so we wanna utilize it the best we can.

We really tried to blend ourselves into the community.

A lot of people coming in, love to be able to just sit down, and be able to talk to the owners.

The two of us are the ones serving your beer.

(bright upbeat music) - So we often get the question of what's our favorite beer, or different things, which I think is a pretty hard question to answer.

I don't wanna compare 'em directly to children, but, I mean, in essence, are you picking favorites?

Sometimes we are, but oftentimes you don't, you love them all equally, right?

(gentle music) - [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.

(gentle music)