Overview Old Salt Festival is three days on a working cattle ranch in Montana's Big Blackfoot River valley over the summer solstice, where the program runs from pasture walks with a hydrologist and working-dog demonstrations to whole-animal cooking over open fire, and the nights end with country and bluegrass on the main stage. It is hosted on the Mannix Family Ranch outside Helmville, and the festival organizes its talks and demonstrations under three pillars: land, wellness and economy. Old Salt Co-op runs it. Ranch families who between them stewarded more than 200,000 acres formed the co-op in Helena in spring 2021, and it sells meat from five member ranches, all harvested and cut at its own facility in Butte. On site The festival runs out of six venues: the Land Talk Lounge tent for panels, poetry and talks, the main stage, the bar, the Cookfire for cooking demonstrations, a General Store for artisans and makers, and a games area for kids and adults, with a Makers Tent and a gathering tent also on the 2026 schedule. Each afternoon the Cookfire hands out free small bites made with co-op meat and produce from Western Montana Growers Co-op. There is no cell service or wifi; the nearest signal is the Copper Queen Bar two miles down the road. It is grizzly country, so food stays locked in cars and a bear mitigation team is on call. Campers pitch tents and park vans on the ranch, with overflow at the Helmville Rodeo Grounds four minutes away. In 2026 Saturday night included the Anvil Launch, in which Sieben Live Stock Co. fires an anvil into the air on black powder. Audience The co-op's 2026 deck puts the crowd at 80% urban and 20% rural, and says they come because these topics keep them up at night. They take part rather than watch: people sign up for the working-dog sessions, livestock first aid, yoga on the ranch, swing dancing lessons before the headliners and an RSVP-only cowboy and cowgirl speed dating hour. Children 12 and under come free. The festival needs more than 350 volunteers to run the cookfire, kitchen and grounds. The weather runs cold, wet and hot in one weekend, with evenings in the 40s. Talent and Influencers Kitchen Dwellers headlined the 2026 Friday and Summer Dean the Saturday, with MILCK, Rob Quist and North Fork Crossing. Zach Ducheneaux, former head of the Farm Service Agency, and Kim Paul of the Blackfeet Nation gave the evening talks, Eduardo Garcia and Andrew Mace cooked at the Cookfire, archaeologist and chef Dr. Bill Schindler ran primitive-technology demonstrations, and Anna Sale interviewed Cole Mannix. Earlier stages carried Nikki Lane and Brennen Leigh; past speakers include Hal Herring, Diana Rodgers, David James Duncan and James and Helen Rebanks. Track record Attendance: 2,600 in 2024, 3,000 in 2025. Outside Magazine named it the No. 2 climate-forward festival in the country, and it has been covered by The New York Times, High Country News, Modern Huntsman and CBS News. Brand presence Sponsorship is built around the program. Three pillar partners each take land, wellness or economy, with category rights inside that pillar and a hand in shaping its sessions. Venue partners put their name on one of the six venues, activation partners attach to a single session, demonstration or musical act - in 2026 the Montana Farmers Union backed the livestock first aid workshop - and community tiers hand out blocks of weekend passes to staff and clients. One storytelling partner presents the 16-plus videos and podcast episodes the festival makes each year. Past partners run from Patagonia Workwear to The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund. Patagonia's Damien Etchaubard: "We are truly at the epicenter of where working lands meet recreational lands in that intersection of folks is really what the Old Salt Festival represents."