Mountain & Prairie Podcast

This conversation with Helen Rebanks was recorded live and on stage at the 2025 Old Salt Festival, held on the Mannix Family Ranch in Helmville, Montana. If you were there, you know how special the moment was. If you weren’t—well, I’m glad you’re here now. Even though we were on a stage, in front of a crowd, the conversation had the quiet, reflective feel of two friends talking over a kitchen table—fitting, given how much of Helen’s story centers around that most sacred of domestic spaces. Helen is the author of "The Farmer’s Wife: My Life in Days," a beautiful and deeply grounded book about food, family, work, and the often invisible labor that holds it all together. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about the joys and struggles of farm life, raising kids, writing honestly without self-pity, and why the kitchen table might just be the most important place in the world. Helen shares stories from her own life and reads a few powerful passages from the book—including one that could double as the Old Sa