Montana Land Reliance - Friends of Conservation
Arne & Alice Brosten
“This land is in my blood,” says Arne Brosten. “I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t live here.”
“Arne breaks out in hives at the thought of having to live anywhere else,” says his wife, Alice. “He knows every tree and rock around here.”
The Brosten family has been in the Flathead Valley for nearly a century. Arne’s aunt and uncle came here, near the town of Bigfork, to settle on a homestead that had been partially plowed up. They were joined later by Arne’s father, who came to Montana from Norway in 1928. It was not an easy living, but they persevered.
“It was tough to clear ground here, but the meadows were good for producing hay,” says Arne. “Little by little, we got things under control. We got to where we were making ends meet.”
Like most farmers and ranchers in the Flathead, Arne and Alice have done a variety of things to get by. Arne’s father was a carpenter. For many years, Alice ran the family’s fifty-cow dairy and small cheese factory. Arne spent most of his adult life working for the forest service and gained valuable knowledge that he put to use
on his own property.
“I developed my own forest management plan for this place,” he says. “When you’re managing timber you have to take both the long view and the broad view.”
The long view, explains Arne, because it can take decades to develop the right mix of trees, including non-commercial species. And the broad view because a variety of wildlife species depend on the habitat he has helped to create.
“When we talk about having a healthy stand of timber,” he says, “we’re not just talking about the western larch, and douglas fir, and lodgepole pine. We’re talking about the right balance of browse, and grass, and cover for the critters.”
The Brosten place is home to dozens of species, including elk, moose, whitetail deer, black bears and grizzlies, and, in fall and spring, ducks, geese and swans by the thousands.
“This is their home as much as it is ours,” says Alice. “You have to recognize that if you live in a place like this. Otherwise you’ll tear your hair out every time the elk knock down a fence or the deer or bears help themselves to what you’re trying to grow. Our motto is, ‘Plant a big garden and pray!’”
But while Arne and Alice have created a kind of haven here, development elsewhere in the Flathead Valley has increased tremendously.
“It’s a shock,” says Alice. “I’ve lived in northwest Montana all my life, and I always felt at home wherever I was in the valley. Now, I just don’t feel that way any more. There are roads and houses, and ‘no trespassing’ signs, and hodgepodge here, and hodgepodge there. You can hardly look out and see a bare valley any more. It seems that everybody around us is sub-dividing. And it scared us. And that’s when we started thinking about what we could do.”
The Brostens began to explore the possibility of a conservation easement with the Montana Land Reliance. “The main thing for us,” says Arne, “was finding a way to ensure that the land stay in one piece. We talked to our sons about it, and they were in total agreement that it was good for them because it was good for the land.”
The Brostens worked with MLR over a period of months to make sure the easement addressed all their concerns.
“We went very slowly on this,” says Alice. “We wanted to be sure we understood every detail and how it would impact us. We must have revised the agreement fifteen times before we were satisfied. And the Land Reliance was great. They listened to every single concern we had. The easement doesn’t restrict us in any way as far as timber harvest or farming,” she says. “Basically, we can live here and continue to do exactly what we’ve always done—which is to try and take care of the land.”
“I’ve worked on this place and for this place my whole life,” says Arne. “When I was in Vietnam this is what I was homesick for. I’ve always wanted to live out my life on this land. It’s part of my family, part of my heritage. It’s like it’s a part of me.”