By Chris Clayton, AAEA Board Member
Martha Mintz’s journey in agricultural communications took her back from where she came as Mintz has built an award-winning freelance career and family in Big Sky country.
After a stretch of years seeing her articles earn multiple Writer of the Year and Story of the Year honors, Martha is in her first year on the AAEA – Ag Communicator Network board where she brings some western, open-range perspective to an organization often filled more with voices from the Midwest.
Martha, 38, grew up on a cattle ranch in southeastern Montana near Powderville and attended a one-room country school until seventh-grade when her older sister reached high-school age and the family purchased a house in Miles City for the kids to use while going to school. The family bounced back and forth from weekdays in town and weekends at the ranch. She also grew a small cattle herd because her grandparents would often pay her and her siblings with cattle for helping out on the ranch.
“I still own a couple cows and make it back to the ranch regularly despite now living 3 hours away in Billings, Mont.,” she said.
Martha took a circuitous route to a career in agricultural journalism, starting out college in Wyoming as a pre-vet major, loading up on science classes early on in school. At the end of her first two years of college, Martha was no longer sure about her plans, but friends and others had recognized a strong penchant for agricultural and science writing going back to her days in FFA and 4-H so Martha enrolled in the agricultural communications program at Oklahoma State University where she earned her degree in 2002.
“I went sight-unseen. The first time I went to the campus I rolled up in my car full of stuff and checked in,” she said.”It had to have been 110-degrees, 100% humidity and I wanted to die and turn around and go back to Montana, but I didn’t.”
“I kind of float through life and not sure how I end up the places that I do,” Martha said.
Martha stood out because in her first job out of college she landed with the agricultural public-relations and marketing firm Bader Rutter at the company’s Lincoln, Neb., office. She started as a public-relations writer and worked up to Account Executive. During her five-year stint she worked with Dow AgroSciences, did PR writing for The Range & Pasture Stewardship magazine, worked on some herbicide brand launches before moving to animal-science accounts with Merial. Managing accounts, though, demonstrated to Martha she was happier writing.
“I remember being really, really excited that the job involved travel,” she said. “Now that I’m older I realize that may or may not be a good thing.”
Martha returned to Montana in 2008, planning to take a summer off. It didn’t take long before she started getting emails from magazines such as No-Till Farmer pitching her to write a profile piece. She quickly realized she had accidentally started a freelance career working with editors and other connections built up during her time at Bader Rutter. So began Corral Creek Communications.
Martha explained her favorite part of the job is exploring parts of the countryside where few others set foot on and meeting the people that go with them. “I’m no globe-trotting Steve Werblow (who has been a real mentor to me over the last 10 years) but I’ve climbed grain bins and laid in manure to get the perfect shot, crept up terrifying mountain roads to reach Forest Service grazing allotments, fought a crillo heifer with a matador in a remote adobe ring in Mexico and made many many more fantastic memories doing a job I truly enjoy,” she said.
Martha married her husband, Mike, in 2010 and they have two children: Cooper (5) and Madeline (2). She’s hoping this is the year they’re old enough that Martha can reboot one of her favorite pastimes, skiing, and make it a family affair.
Award Highlights:
2014 AAEA Master Writer, AAEA Writer of the Year and Story of the Year for the Story of a Steak series for High Plains Journal
2015 Runner up Writer of the Year. Story of the Year with a Furrow article on a rancher/dinosaur hunter, “T-Bones and T-Rexes.”
2016 AAEA Writer of the Year