Peyton Cole was “born, bred and fed” in Chester, Mont. The oldest of four siblings, Cole grew up in the Hi-Line ranching and farming community but describes herself as a town kid.
“I made a lot of poor decisions in high school, like most kids do, getting in trouble drinking and what have you,” said Cole, who at the age of 25 is back in her hometown and spearheading the revival of the community’s harvest festival. It had been more than 30 years since a harvest fest happened in Chester, but with Cole’s leadership, the event was resurrected in 2022 and the rebooted second annual Hi-Line Harvest Fest takes place Sept. 22-23. The event features live music, food and craft vendors, and team competitions, including the return of the town’s beloved bed races and tug-a-war.
It’s quite a pivot from Cole’s stance when she was a teenager who couldn’t wait to leave Chester.
“The harvest festival has helped me redeem myself in my community,” Cole said. “I’m no longer that young and dumb kid that made poor decisions. It’s my way of giving back, instead of just being a cosmic tornado.”
Cole grew up poor in a town rich with agriculture. When she was 8, her mother left, and they remain estranged. Her father struggled to provide for four children, she said, and while her peers were dressed in new clothes and going on skiing trips and traveling, her family barely had a car.
“The harvest festival has helped me redeem myself in my community. I’m no longer that young and dumb kid that made poor decisions. It’s my way of giving back, instead of just being a cosmic tornado.”
Hi-Line Harvest Fest organizer Peyton Cole
“I became pretty jaded growing up,” Cole said. “I couldn’t wait to leave. I hated farming and ranching. I hated Chester, Montana. I wanted to move away and never look back.”
How Cole’s family ended up in Chester is a bit of a clouded history, but her grandparents met during the Vietnam War. Her grandfather, who was a Green Beret, and her grandmother, who is Vietnamese, had two boys, each born during the war in what is now Ho Chi Minh City.
Eventually, Cole’s grandmother, father and uncle left Vietnam and were brought to the U.S. with the help of Dr. Richard Buker and his wife, Jean Buker, who resided in Chester. Cole was one of the last babies delivered by Dr. Buker in 1997 before he retired, and she considers him her great-grandfather.
In 2016, she moved to Missoula and started pursuing UM’s entertainment management program. Though she didn’t complete her degree, she said the program opened doors for her, and she landed her first job in the entertainment industry at the Crown of the Continent Guitar Workshop and Festival in Big Timber.
Cole has been working for festivals and events ever since, taking jobs around the state in security, house management, backstage and production — until COVID-19 hit.
A PIVOT
Like many people, Cole found herself suddenly without work in March of 2020. As the pandemic stretched on and entertainment gatherings were postponed, the situation looked dire. She knew she needed to rethink her profession.
So she moved back home and started working for her best friend Tamara Roos’ family on the Meissner ranch. She’s known the Meissner family her whole life and jumped into the life of a ranch hand. When asked if she came home because she was homesick, Cole replied, “Absolutely not.” The reason she moved back, she said, was to experience the life in Chester that she only saw from afar. “I was a town kid. Living on a farm and ranch was the most magical time in my life.”
Cole worked in the greenhouses and worked cattle, and she cooked and delivered meals for the family and workers during harvest season. She resided in the original ranch house, which was an old Sears kit house delivered on-site more than 100 years ago. In the house hangs a picture of it being brought across the Marias River, where it now sits along the bank.
“It was so beautiful with a screened-in back porch and a rocking chair right next to the river,” Cole said. “I’m very grateful to the family for saying on a whim, ‘Come out and work.’ That was a symbol of them considering me family.”
After harvest season ended, Cole moved to Cut Bank, lived with her sister and — still not able to find work in the entertainment business — started bartending. Things were starting to open up but not enough to put her back to work.
That next season, she was hired by John Wicks, who operates a farm near the Meissner family ranch, where she learned about organic farming and was taught to operate heavy equipment. “It opened my eyes to where our food comes from and why agriculture is so important,” Cole said. “It totally spun my view of this area I grew up in. I no longer resented it. I no longer wanted to leave immediately.”
HARVEST ON THE HI-LINE
With her focus shifted to agriculture but her passion for entertainment remaining, Cole became interested in resurrecting the town’s annual harvest fest, which hadn’t taken place since the mid-1980s. For that first festival in 2022, she approached the Liberty County Community Development Committee and asked for $3,000 to bring the event back. In total, Cole raised $20,000 for that first year’s event.
The LCCDC was formed a decade ago to help bring the community together, said Megan Hedges, co-chair of the committee and owner of Northern Plains Insurance. “People don’t get together like they used to, and that creates a divide in the community. We really wanted to do some fun stuff for kids, and Peyton came to us with the idea to reignite the harvest fest.” Hedges said Cole “blew everyone away, even some people who weren’t sure she could pull it off.”
Hedges, who was born in 1981, grew up in Chester. She recalled attending the harvest fest when she was a kid, participating in the tricycle races and the watermelon-seed spitting contest.
Such community events declined in the 1990s as membership in the Knights of Columbus, Lions Club and Jaycees also declined. Chris Kolstad, who was the chairman of the Chester Jaycees in the 1980s, said once these chapters dissolved, it was difficult to get people involved. Kolstad, 69, has lived on his family’s farm southwest of Chester his whole life. He took over the farm from his parents, Allen and Iva Kolstad, and grows mainly wheat and barley and leases his ranchland.
Bringing back the harvest fest is a labor of love, and Kolstad has supported Cole by sponsoring some of the events and helping fill in the nostalgic gaps about some of the community’s beloved events — like tricycle races and bed races (where a team of four pushes a rider in a cot).
“I never thought it could be done, but by golly, she’s got it going,” Kolstad said. “It takes a lot of work, and everyone is getting so busy with their own families … I’m just surprised it got done. Hat’s off to Payton.”
One of the persistent challenges in holding a festival of this size annually is courting — and keeping — volunteers.
“It’s hard in these smaller communities because there is volunteer burnout, and people don’t get paid and often it’s the same people who show up every time,” Cole said. “I’ve made attempts to include other communities, but I think that is going to take time to incorporate the whole Hi-Line.”
For Kolstad, the joy in a harvest fest is seeing friends and enjoying the festivities. “It’s great for the community,” he said. “We need something to celebrate. In a small town, a lot of times people have to go out of town to enjoy an event, so this is nice to have something that is local.”
Hedges, who farmed for 13 years, said the harvest festival is the culmination of a year’s labor.
“In farming, when harvest is over, it’s the end of the year,” she said. “Harvest festival is a great time to celebrate or drown our sorrows, depending on the year.”
Cole said once the harvest comes, it’s a release. “I wanted there to be an event for people to come together and celebrate that we worked really hard,” she said. “I want us all to relax and listen to music, so we are making all that happen again.”
“We need something to celebrate. In a small town, a lot of times people have to go out of town to enjoy an event, so this is nice to have something that is local.”
Chester resident Chris Kolstad
Cole will move to Austin after the Hi-Line Harvest Fest concludes this month. She’s been hired as a tour manager for two separate bands, the Lowdown Drifters out of Fort Worth and John Baumann of Austin. She will travel with the groups and manage production, hospitality, travel arrangements and schedules. In essence, her job is to make sure the band is rehearsed, formed and fed, she said.
Her plan is to continue the harvest festival, working remotely and traveling to the Hi-Line when she can.
“My plan is to restructure so it can function more in the hands of the community while I’m away,” she said. “But it’s hard enough to get people to help … So I will be making the harvest festival happen one way or another.”
Many of Cole’s friends describe her as “lucky,” which reminds her of advice she once found inside the bottle cap of a Coors Banquet: “Good luck is hard work residue.”
“I can’t believe this is my life,” Cole said. “I don’t know how I got here.”
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This story is published by Montana Free Press as part of the Long Streets Project, which explores Montana’s economy with in-depth reporting. This work is supported in part by a grant from the Greater Montana Foundation, which encourages communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans. Discuss MTFP’s Long Streets work with Lead Reporter Eric Dietrich at edietrich@montanafreepress.org.
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