The Sandpoint Eater: Colony culture

By Marcia Pilgeram
Reader Columnist

A couple of weeks ago, I gathered a couple of my grands for our summer call of duty to  Silverwood. While sitting on a bench waiting for them to complete another circuit on the Ferris wheel, I found myself beside a mother and her two young daughters, who were also waiting for family members.

By their modest dresses and beautifully braided hair, I recognized them as Hutterites. I complimented the girls on their braids, and when I mentioned to their mother that I had once spent time working on a Hutterite colony in Montana, her face lit up. Questions poured out as naturally as if we’d known one another for years. Before long, my mind had traveled back more than four decades to the eastern Montana Highline.

At the time, I worked for the Montana Department of Livestock on the state’s Brucellosis Eradication Program. Our four-person team traveled from ranch to ranch testing cattle herds, and one of those herds belonged to a Hutterite colony. I was the only woman on our crew, and my presence presented a few cultural challenges for everyone involved.

Hutterites, descendants of the Anabaptist movement that began in 16th-century Europe, trace their beliefs to the teachings of Jakob Hutter, from whom they take their name. Persecuted for their commitment to adult baptism, communal living and pacifism, they migrated across Europe before eventually settling in North America in the late 1800s. Today, most Hutterite colonies are found across Montana, the Dakotas and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where they continue to live communally, sharing work, property and meals while preserving many traditions that have remained mostly unchanged for generations.

Meals on the colony reflected their orderly way of life. The women and older daughters prepared and served the food, while the men ate first around long wooden tables. Only after the men had finished did the women and children sit down to eat.

Our crew needed to return to work as soon as lunch was over, which created a dilemma. My supervisor’s simple solution was for me to eat alone in the small trailer where we had set up our laboratory equipment. I took no offense. I understood I was a guest in their community, and respecting their customs seemed the obvious thing to do.

Then, after a couple of days, my boss came to me with big news. The colony’s preacher (he’s like the CEO) had decided I could join our crew in the men’s dining area. Apparently, I was as much a curiosity to them as they were to me. The women often exchanged amused glances and quiet giggles as they served me alongside the men, but everyone treated me with kindness and respect.

There remained, however, a distinct dividing line at day’s end.

While the men gathered in the preacher’s home to enjoy conversation over homemade dandelion wine, I was welcomed into the company of the women and older daughters. Those late afternoons became some of my favorite memories. The ladies shared the practical details of colony life and, in return, peppered me with questions about the outside world. We compared recipes, talked about our families, laughed over misunderstandings. Believe it or not, we discovered we had many things in common.

Those ranch visits continued for several months, and each time we prepared for our drive back to Helena, someone would quietly press a gift into my hands. Sometimes it was a jar of homegrown poppy seeds. Other weeks it might be a pair of beautifully hand-knit slippers or a loaf cake still fragrant from the oven.

Whenever I admired something, they shared the recipe or the knitting pattern. My mother learned to knit those slippers from the pattern they gave me and, over the next two decades, she made dozens of pairs for family and friends.

Meeting the Hutterite family at Silverwood reminded me what a privilege those months had been. Few outsiders ever experience colony life from the inside — I’m still grateful for the shared meals at their communal table, witnessing traditions firsthand and discovering genuine hospitality 

One of my strongest memories from those Montana days was the poppy seed bread that always accompanied me home. Carefully wrapped in waxed paper, tucked inside a brown paper bag, it rarely survived the drive back to Helena. The temptation of that still-warm, fragrant loaf was too much. I’d find myself breaking off “just one more piece” until there was little left by the time I reached home.

So, after leaving Silverwood, I made one more stop before heading home. I pulled into Yoke’s; bought a container of poppy seeds; and, the next morning, baked a loaf using the recipe shared with me all those years ago.

The aroma filling my kitchen carried me straight back to that colony on the Montana Highline. One bite confirmed what memory had promised. It tasted exactly as it had 40 years earlier: warm, tender, lightly sweet and filled with the unmistakable crunch of poppy seeds.

Sometimes the shortest conversations open the longest memories. A chance meeting on a park bench became a reminder that while cultures may differ, kindness, curiosity and generosity have a way of bridging every distance. Some gifts last far longer than a loaf of bread or a pair of knitted slippers. They become the stories we carry with us, waiting for the right moment — and the right strangers — to bring them home. I hope you enjoy this recipe that’s near and dear to my heart, once again.

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Traditional Hutterite poppy seed loaf

This recipe is from the ’70s and extract was often used in place of fresh juice or zest. Though glaze is popular today, this rich butter loaf, with its tender crumb and nutty poppy seeds, doesn’t need any adornment. Yield: two loaves.