Picture-Shy Grizzly Bear Hides Out In Hutterite Colony Cellar

May 18, 2009 · Filed Under Hutterites In The News · 1 Comment 

Story by – By TRAVIS COLEMAN • Tribune Staff Writer • May 17, 2009

A group of Hutterites who cornered a lost, 300-pound grizzly bear in a basement on their new colony outside of Choteau Friday followed that up with the next natural step — snap pictures of the bear.

“They took pictures first and then decided what they could do,” said Mike Madel, a grizzly bear management specialist who responded to the scene. “They found he wasn’t coming out of the basement.”

Perhaps the photo session was justified for historical purposes. Madel said that in his 25 years as a Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks specialist, he hadn’t seen or heard of a series of events like those that unfolded Friday.

The grizzly discovery was made around 8 a.m. by a group of Hutterite men from the Milford Colony who are building the new Elk Creek Colony on open grassland about 3 miles from Elk Creek and Sun River.

The men saw the wandering bear and their border collies began chasing the bear, Madel said.

The bear then scurried around an unfinished apartment on the colony and leapt about 5 feet through a doorway into the building before running into the basement.

That’s when the group of Hutterite men got within 10 to 15 feet from the bear and took pictures, Madel said.

“It was actually pretty cool,” said Teresa Hofer, a member of the Hutterite colony who was cooking for the men at the new colony site. “He was just sitting there like a little teddy bear. He actually was cute.”

Hofer said this was the second time in recent years that the colony encountered a bear. About three years ago, a bear was seen sitting on the front steps of a colony building. The colony’s members didn’t bother the bear and it left sometime later, she said.

The young male bear caught Friday probably didn’t charge at the men because he was intimidated by the amount of people, Madel said. He added that there were about 50 people at the new colony site when authorities arrived.

“They just didn’t realize how dangerous it was,” Madel said, adding that if the bear were older, someone could have been injured or worse.

The pictures taken by the colony member helped authorities plan for immobilizing the bear by allowing them to estimate his weight, Madel said. Three game wardens and three area bear biologists entered the basement and found the grizzly in the dark with his head down. Madel shot the bear in the shoulder with a dart; the animal was immobilized within 15 minutes.

“With all the men there, we grabbed him and carried him upstairs,” Madel said.

The bear was ear tagged fitted with a radio collar before the team loaded him into a culvert trap for relocation.

Madel believes the bear was hibernating somewhere near the upper Sun River drainage or Elk Creek. He may have followed his nose from the Rocky Mountain Front in search of food before getting lost.

“He probably felt a lot safer in the basement,” Madel said.

He added that he hadn’t ever seen a grizzly bear hide in a building before — most run in and out.

If authorities had the time to wait for it, Madel believes the bear would have come out on its own when it was dark, but the Hutterite men normally work around the clock.

The bear, which caused no damage to the building, had no previous nuisance history and its ear tag is expected to drop off in 12 months. The bear was relocated to the Rocky Mountain Front, close to the forest boundary near Big Skunk Creek.

“I honestly believe this bear will stay out of trouble,” Madel said. “I don’t expect him to return back to the colony.”

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Wall Street Journal Article: Hutterite Colony Allows Technology — for Work

September 4, 2007 · Filed Under Hutterite Technology, Hutterites, Hutterites In The News · 37 Comments 

A few months ago I got a call from a reporter at the Wall Street Journal who said that she was interested in writing a story about Hutterites and Technology… Mainly Texting..

We visited several times on the phone and her editors approved her coming to Montana a few Sundays back. We went to the colony where I was raised, and hence the story below was born…

This Story was written by Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal and can be found on the front page of the Tuesday, September 4, 2007 edition.

View The Photos From The Story (Most of the people in the pictures are my family and the first little girl in the first picture (the really cute one:) is my niece ..my lil’ angel Chubba aka. Katrin)

Picture number 5 is good ole pops … My Father… and NO he had no idea he was going to be in the paper. He does not like the idea at all but ah well, there is nothing he can do about it and I apologize to him for any backlash he may have received.

I would like to add that some of the people in this story, are upset with some of the personal information that is shared…. I personally think it is no big deal but unfortunately some people have blown this whole thing out of context. WOW! Big Surprise… lol.. (I know only a select group of people will understand what I mean by that and we will leave it at that)

One more sidenote: To those people who think this story is pointless, please focus your attention on the important things in life and not petty little things like a Hutterite being featured in the Wal Street Journal... Like I told my sis, “You have accomplished something that most people can and will never do in their entire lifetime, (you were on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for Gosh Sakes:) so appreciate your 15 minutes of fame and do not let the dream-stealer’s and naysayers get to you”

——–Here is the story——–

For Montana Sect, Cellphones Send Mixed Message

Hutterite Colony Allows Technology — for Work; Elsie Asks, ‘How r u?’

By ELIZABETH HOLMES
September 4, 2007; Page A1

MARTINSDALE, Mont. — Elsie Wipf lives a simple life, picking vegetables, sewing clothes for her brothers and sisters and butchering chickens. She also goes to church every day and knits slippers in her spare time.

That is, when she isn’t sending her friends text messages, like “btw how r u 2 day.”

The 35-year-old Ms. Wipf, who got her first cellphone three months ago, is a Hutterite. The roughly 49,000 members of the Anabaptist Christian group, living in colonies in the northern U.S. plains and in Canada, are related to the Amish. They strive to live lives built on faith and family. They grow their own food, make their own clothes and shun many practices of the outside world.

But unlike the Amish, who live mostly unplugged, the Hutterites embrace technology — as long as they feel it improves their colonies. Farming equipment is allowed, for instance; TV sets and other entertaining electronic equipment aren’t.

Now that cheap cellphones have come to rural areas, the question is being asked throughout the roughly 470 Hutterite colonies: Are cellphones useful? Answers differ. A colony outside Winnipeg, Manitoba, allows just five cellphones, and they are shared by 126 people. The Warden Colony in Washington bought its combine drivers Bluetooth wireless headsets to talk while tilling the colony’s 25,000 acres.

In Martinsdale, cellphones are dividing families. Ms. Wipf says that she sent more than 150 text messages in the first two days after she got her phone — much to the consternation of her father. His opinion matters greatly: He is the head preacher of the colony. “It’s against our rules,” Ms. Wipf explains.

Hutterites, named after Jacob Hutter, who was burned as a heretic in 1536, had for years banned conventional telephones. Many homes didn’t even have indoor plumbing. But although Hutterites still speak in their own German dialect, their colonies have changed with the introduction of advances like tractors and automobiles.

Cellphones have had a different effect: The array of available devices with different accessories goes against the communal colony dynamic. Features such as cameras and Internet access — which are banned or severely restricted in nearly all colonies — open up a tantalizing window to the outside world.

“They can phone whoever they want,” says a colony elder, “and have somebody pick ‘em up and go places where they shouldn’t go.”

In this 48-year-old colony, 120 miles northwest of Billings, the 141 residents are members of the Lehrerleut branch, the most conservative of the four types of Hutterites. The neutral-colored metal buildings, including four apartment complexes, a church and barns for hogs, chickens, cows and turkeys, dot a small section of the 15,000 acres of hilly farmland. Each of the 29 families got individual land lines for the first time in November.

Cellphones began to appear here nearly a decade ago and have slowly made their way into the hand-sewn pockets of the residents. Between cellphones provided by the colony and those supplied by outsiders, a total count is hard to come by (it’s somewhere between six and 30, depending on whom you ask). Just six of the phones are paid for by the colony; the rest are spirited in by residents.

Paul Wipf, Elsie’s father, carries one of the colony-sanctioned cellphones. He uses it to do business. But Mr. Wipf, 67, says cellphones in his colony have gone “too far.” They can be a distraction and — of great concern — a link to the outside world that makes leaving the colony easier. Mr. Wipf has yet to enforce strict rules on “illegal” cellphones or discipline users, because, he concedes: “I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of them.”

The most obvious threat cellphones pose is to productivity. The sprawling farming operation turns out 19,000 pounds of milk to send every other day to Meadow Gold Dairies and tons of potatoes that it sells each year to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The fear is that more texting will mean less working.

Ms. Wipf carries her cellphone most days as she does her chores. She keeps it out of sight, tucked safely into the folds of her long skirt. Weeding a row of beets by herself in the 11-acre vegetable garden gives her a chance to get in a few text messages.

Over the course of a month, Ms. Wipf sends hundreds of text messages, occasionally exceeding her allotment of 1,000. Alltel Corp. is her service provider. She texts mostly within the colony but also sends messages to friends and family elsewhere. “She’s constantly on the cellphone and not doing what she’s supposed to be doing,” said Mary Wipf, her mother, one Sunday recently. Elsie laughed off the jab as she jumped up to get a glass of water for her brother.

Cellphones also upset a social order that blurs differences between individuals. The Hutterites’ communal lifestyle means everybody owns everything, and nobody owns anything. They wear the same garb, eat together in one dining room and live in cookie-cutter apartments. The colony elders distribute things by family, from handmade furniture to Haagen-Dazs mint chip ice cream.

To pay for cellphones not provided by the colony, Hutterites seek outside help. Ms. Wipf’s cellphone, an LG AX-490, was furnished to her by a brother who left the colony more than a decade ago. Other women tap their ex-Hutterite boyfriends who have left the colony to earn money and live on their own. The beckoning oil fields, where many of the teenage boys go, pay as much as $40 an hour, according to one Hutterite. Typically, they come back to the colony after a few years to get married. Some of their new discretionary income pays for their girlfriends’ cellphones.

The setup allows men to stay in contact with the colony and gives the women a peek at life on the outside. Rita Wipf, a colony resident, has such a boyfriend outside who pays for her cellphone. She sends more than 1,600 text messages a month, including a recent one to her best friend, Elsie Wipf (no relation), that read like a typical young person’s lament: “[It] is so boring here at home.” The 28-year-old believes cellphones are a natural addition to the colony. “As the world changes, we change, too,” she says.

Men in the colony who want cellphones use work connections with non-Hutterites to get them. Several years ago, Mike Kleinsasser, the colony’s electrician, grew tired of standing in line to use the community’s only phone, tucked inside an elder’s house. Mr. Kleinsasser asked an electric-company representative for one — and had a cellphone within a week. “If you’re a businessman, you have to have one,” he says.

For teenage boys, cellphones can be a pathway to life outside the colony. Carnie Wipf, Elsie’s 18-year-old nephew, watched many of his friends take off for the oil fields and, thanks to his cellphone, got blow-by-blow accounts of their adventures going to movies, watching TV and buying clothes. He knew he could have a job waiting for him and that he could make $22.50 an hour — more than five times his monthly allowance in the colony.

So, last April, Carnie Wipf hitched a ride into Billings with other colony members. In town, he split from the group and said he would find his way back. That night, he used his cellphone to call his mother and tell her he had left the colony, with no immediate plans to return. Would he have left without a cellphone? “The honest truth, I’m not sure,” Carnie said.

Carnie, whose late father was a blacksmith at the colony, cuts steel at a local manufacturer and delivers pizza at night. He misses calving and harvesting but finds comfort in his friends, all of whom are ex-Hutterites with cellphones. He uses his cellphone to call his mom every day. “She wants to know, ‘How is life on the outside?’ and I tell her, ‘Going real well.’ ”

But he adds: “The grass is not as green as I figured it would be.”

—————- End of story ——————–

Additional Side Note: As a side note to this story. I pay for 2 of the cells phones that SOME of my family members have. The cell phone my father has is provided by the Colony.

Update 2010: Everything is still pretty much the same.  Cell phones are still a controversial topic in the Lehrerleut Hutterite Colonies.  Why? I cannot speak for that.  Rules are rules:)

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