blank image Home blank image Site Map blank image Contact Us blank image Search blank image blank image   blank image
Garnet to Cream Gradient Graphic
blank image
About Bates blank image Admissions blank image Academics blank image Campus life blank image Maine/World blank image Alumni life
blank image
blank image Faces at Bates Archive
blank image
blank image
blank image

Story Archive
blank image
Faces at Bates Archive
blank image
BatesNews E-Newsletter Archive
blank image
blank image
Tyler Matsdorf '04 finds a little bit of Montana in Maine

This Faces at Bates profile was posted January 2001

If Tyler Matsdorf '04 found himself a little homesick when he arrived at Bates from Billings, Montana, the problem soon disappeared when he enrolled in Social Problems, an introductory sociology course taught by Victoria Johnson. The course required each student to participate in an internship focused on a social problem. Matsdorf chose farming.

"I found a little piece of Montana right here," he says, referring to State Senator John Nutting's 300-acre dairy farm in Leeds. Matsdorf, an experienced farmhand who is accustomed to cruising a 20,000-plus-acre cattle and horse ranch in Roscoe, Montana, adjusted to his Eastern environs by interning on Nutting's family-owned farm. "It was therapeutic for him," Nutting says, referring to the pleasure of physical farm labor.

On alternate Sundays, Matsdorf handled whatever chores needed to be done on the Nutting property. Chopping and stacking wood, unloading hay, milking or cleaning the 100 Holstein cows, "he pitched right in and did whatever needed to be done," says Nutting, chair of the state's agriculture, conservation, and forestry committee. Despite some obvious differences — Nutting is a lifelong Democrat, while Tyler cites a Republican pedigree — a strong friendship between the two blossomed quickly. "It helped me to get a different perspective on farming, to talk with a farmer from Maine, and especially one who has so much influence," Tyler says.

blank image
blank image blank image
blank image blank image
blank image
faces archive
blank image