USDA, MSU Extension help
Crooked Bow beef take a bow
he newest addition to
the made-in-Montana
pantry, Crooked Bow
smoked beef strips, had
an impressive debut in
September when it was sold at the
Smithsonian Institution’s new
National Museum of the American
Indian in Washington, D.C. The
museum gift shop’s first consignment
of 200 packages sold out almost
immediately. Crooked Bow’s beef
strips — a very old recipe in a brand
new package — are made of grass-fed
beef raised by Salish, Kootenai and
Pend O’Reille tribal members of the
Flathead Native Agricultural
Cooperative. The beef is handstripped
and seasoned with locally
grown huckleberries and chokecherries,
a touch of apple cider vinegar
and honey, then smoked over alder.
Helping in the development of the
product was a $100,000 Value Added
Producer Grant awarded in 2002 for
working capital for the project by
USDA Rural Development.
The agricultural cooperative is a
result of work done by Joel Clairmont
of the Salish tribe, who is the Montana
State University Extension agent on
the Flathead Reservation. Clairmont
was “the key player” in pulling together
the cooperative, according to Jan
Tusick, a manager with the Mission
Mountain Market Cooperative
Development Center in Ronan. Five
years ago, Clairmont began talking
with the ranchers about ways they
might combine forces and develop
value-added products from what they
produce.
The co-op now has six members,
owns the Crooked Bow brand and its
members raise the beef that is smoked
and turned into strips. Other Flathead
Reservation producers have shown an
interest in joining. The beef strips are
prepared and packaged in Mission
Mountain Market’s licensed commercial
kitchen and certified organic food
processing center. The facility was created
to help area entrepreneurs test,
develop, refine and prepare and market
value-added food products of all kinds.
A nonprofit entity, the market is
also a business incubator that provides
expertise on food-related regulatory
issues and business and cooperative
development, including possibilities
for capitalization. Other MSU faculty
helped develop the product, adapt the
original recipe for commercial production,
and train the people who
prepare the strips in food handling
and food safety. The Crooked Bow
product line is to be enlarged soon
with the addition of a beef stick product.
For more information, contact the
Flathead Native Agricultural Co-op,
(406) 745-7500, ext. 2202.
