Montana Seed Show

The annual Montana Seed Show began 68 years ago with a focus on potato seeds, but the event has grown and evolved to feature much more than that.

A walk through the Harlem Hig School gymnasium, where the show was being held last week, could almost give one reason to believe the Seed Show was about everything but seeds.

Vendors and craftsmen from all over Montana come to the annual Seed Show.

Trina Frickel of Havre makes signs. This was her first year appearing at the seed show.

"I sand them down, do the sayings on them, and then I put a varnish on them," she explained.

Her favorite sign, she said, was one that said, "A good friend will come and bail you out of jail, but a true friend will be sitting next to you, saying, 'Damn, that was fun.'"

She was not speaking from experience, she added.

Just feet away from Frickel, in the adjacent corner, sat Roxana Laeupple of Havre and Rose Wollman of Lewistown. The two friends had come together as a "buddy group" to sell their items at the Seed Show.

"I wouldn't be doing crafting if it weren't for her," Laeupple said of Wollman.

Laeupple gave a run-through of who made what. Wollman let her do all the talking.

"I made the baby items - snuggle bunnies, burp rags, blankets, hooded towels- and she made the crocheted items - hats, scrubbies - and choke cherry jellies," Laeupple said. "And her mom does the knitted socks."

"Basically, it's three people represented by two," she added.

This was the third year the women had attended the Seed Show. They do good enough to come back, Laeupple said, adding her favorite item is the one that sells the most.

Jack and Ethel Siemens, a married couple, each take part in the Seed Show.

Jack Siemens is the chairman of the Art Show and said he has been for 26 years. Because he's the chairman, he said, he doesn't normally show his work. But he was happy to point out some of the 18 Montana artists in the show. He mentioned Havre artists like Dale Shulund, Kris Shaw and Linda Warneke, among others.

"They rent those boards for $15 a board, which is - it's the cheapest art show they can ever come to because most of the art shows want a percentage of what the artist sell. We don't," he said. "They keep everything they sell."

If the artists wouldn't sell, they wouldn't come back, Jack Siemens said.

Ethel Siemens is passionate about quilting. She was walking about in a large room full of quilts hanging on display.

"Quilting is therapy," she said. "It's many things. It's enjoyment. It's kind of like art. You are working with colors."

She said she took up quilting when it was trendy, about 30 years ago. She walked through the room of quilts, pointing to different works and telling their stories.

"This is is an old one - this is old material," she said, rubbing a quilt titled "Making due in hard time" with her index and thumb finger.

"Blossom Threads of Two Friends," a brightly-colored quilt, was made by two people. One of the quilters, who was more than 90 years old, started the quilt, but her friend - "who was younger - she's in her 80s," did all the sides, Ethel Siemens said.

"She's not able to do this anymore," Siemens said of the elder quilter. "She can't think to run a machine. But this was a lovely outlet for a number of years. But she's anguished she can't do this anymore, so her girls took this and took it to her friend who finished it for her," she said.

Ethel stopped by an all-blue quilt.

"This is my blue lady, and it's taken me nine years to do this," she said, adding the reason it takes so long is because she works on a lot of different things at different times.

Dallas and Amy Egbert were in the gymnasium, the show room, letting people know about their custom barbecue and passing out succulent pork barbecue samples.

"Everything's homemade," he said, adding that the pig shoulder is sourced out.

"The rubs, the sauces - everything is home blended."

The Egberts own 241 Grill and Tavern in Turner. Dallas said they serve barbecue once a month at the bar.

"We do pulled pork, brisket, ribs - a little bit of everything. Everything's homeblended, nothing's commercial. (For) raw spiced meat, we make our rubs, and then we blend all of our sauces," Dallas Egbert said.

For Egbert, barbecuing was born out of necessity to prevent idleness. His job had taken the Egberts to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they befriended people from Oklahoma and Texas, people who knew barbecue, he said. A company layoff then left him with time, and that's when he started barbecuing.

Later on, the Egberts ended up in Kansas, where they bought a catering trailer after crossing into Arkansas.

After bouncing around all over the country, Egbert said, they are happy to be back on the Hi-Line. And as for the barbecue, he said he has no problems calling it the best in north-central Montana.

"I'll claim it," he said.