COVID Quarantine in The Last Best Place
- Aubrey Johnson
- Jul 24, 2023
- 8 min read
In the words of Steve Hartman from CBS News, “Everyone has a story.” This is my covid quarantine story.
Monday, March 16, 2020, was the day our schools in Livingston, MT, along with much of the country, shut down. The previous week I was happy to be back with students after being gone for the ServeMontana Symposium the week before. During my week back at work I was leading taste tests and nutrition lessons and making note of cute kid quotes so I wouldn’t forget them. (One kindergarten student wisely told me, “Let me tell you what's going to happen if you don't eat. You're going to shrivel away.") Then over the weekend, things changed. Everyone was rightfully taking the coronavirus pandemic more seriously, and the country came to a standstill. This included businesses and schools shutting their doors, travel greatly restricted, and non-essential workers were either jobless or had to pivot to conduct business from home. As a FoodCorps service member serving under Farm to School of Park County (F2SPC), the “Grow” and “Eat” pillars of F2SPC’s mission became vital. I was one of the essential workers.
I don’t remember much about that Monday everything stopped. I’m sure I spent time on my work computer checking email and thinking through what was supposed to happen if the week was “normal.” However, I also knew there was more going on behind the scenes. Our school food service director, the district superintendent, and F2SPC’s executive director were in talks to ensure students would continue to be fed when schools were closed. This was a great need that was, thankfully, recognized by organizations and government officials all over the country. Parents that relied on free and reduced-price breakfast and lunch at school for their students were not prepared to feed their children during an unexpected school closure. Livingston School District and F2SPC were gearing up to meet that need.
On Tuesday, the day after schools closed, I showed up at the empty high school to help pack lunch bags with about five food service employees. Meal service shifted a lot during those three months off school. While it started with packaged items like apple slices and Uncrustables that were quicker to bag, Farm to School helped make positive changes in terms of quality, nutrition, and efficiency. A few of us from F2SPC served as extra pairs of hands. I helped make and package food, but there were also a few days, in the beginning, I rode buses driven by the district bus drivers to pass out lunch bags around town at pick-up sites. As a FoodCorps service member, I could not take a job from a paid worker. The problem was there were not enough workers able to come in, so my service was needed and appreciated. Eventually, thanks to a partnership organized that spring by F2SPC’s executive director, nine local restaurants were able to participate in meal service to help feed 500 Livingston students through the end of the school year and into the summer. This alleviated the workload for the understaffed school kitchen, and it helped the restaurants by providing consistent business. It was exciting to be a part of something so vital to the community. (Read about Farm to School’s efforts in their annual report for 2020 and 2021. I was also interviewed about our meal service efforts in May 2020 by Laura Reiley with The Washington Post. Read the full article here.)
During this same time, when I was sharing a house with my Montana family who rented space to the previous FoodCorps service member, the mother of that family was seven months pregnant. As exciting as it was for me to carry out service to my community during a global pandemic, there was also a weight of pressure to ensure I stayed healthy for those in my “covid pod.” There was so much uncertainty in the early days of the pandemic, it was understandable for the family to be concerned about my health, which could impact their health, including the unborn baby. I was still going to work around people (and remember, it wasn’t until April 3 that the CDC issued mask guidance), and the rest of the family was staying home. So on the last day of March, I moved out.
Thankfully, this was a temporary move. I wanted to continue to work, but I also wanted to help ensure the safety of the people who came to be my family over the last few months. I ended up moving into Barb and Dave’s house for April while they were away taking care of Barb’s 90-year-old mother. They wanted to ensure her health and safety, even in a smaller town than Livingston, so it was convenient for them to go stay with her and run her errands so she didn’t have to go out. That left their house empty. A logical move was for me to go stay in their house, which made Barb feel better knowing someone was there. I think we all know the pandemic lasted longer than a month. However, when Barb and Dave felt safe coming back and leaving her mother at the end of April, there were more health and safety precautions in place, and my MT family was happy to have me back home. That one month away, though, was interesting.
My self-imposed quarantine was a lonely one. After living in a house with a family of four for the last few months, it was strange to be alone. I still went to the high school kitchen to help with meal prep some days. One of the scratch-made items was Oatmeal-on-the-Go Bars that were developed by Montana Harvest of the Month.
We included them and the recipe in meal bags as our “Grains” promotional item for April. I went to the schools to make copies of food group worksheets, make-at-home recipes, and plant part coloring pages. I stuffed these, along with the occasional seed packet in bags and folders parents picked up for their students at the high school gymnasium. Then when I was at the schools, it was strange encountering other teachers doing the same thing. Not everyone came at once, which was a good thing to help with social distancing, but it was almost like we were apologetic for being there together. “Oh, sorry! I’m almost done!” Or, “Hey! Good to see you! I’ll be gone in a minute.” Or heaven forbid you forget your mask before the signs were put up at the entry doors. People would cover their nose and mouth with their hand while walking by someone in the hall, “Sorry I forgot my mask! Don’t breathe!” They may say, jokingly, but neither of us really knew the others’ feelings on it.
I, like many others, also became too familiar with Zoom. Farm to School had meetings on the platform. Then on certain days, I’d join a weekly meeting for the kindergarten school, and the next day I’d join a weekly meeting for the 3rd-5th grade school. It was some of the same information that was shared with different people, but, as others probably felt, it was just nice to see people and interact with them, even virtually. The first five to 10 minutes were usually spent with people sharing how they were doing. For the most part, this was a complaint session. The teachers were, understandably, struggling with pivoting from in-person teaching to packets and/ or virtual learning (an option for the older kids, but not the kindergarten students). What I, as a single person, found annoying (and this is probably a “grass is always greener” moment) was the complaints about not being able to get anything done because X, Y, or Z family member was distracting or needed help with their problems. As someone who was living alone at the time, I would have enjoyed having someone else present to distract me. Yes, I was grateful I saw people during the day occasionally, that’s why I was living in the other house - so I could go out to work - but it was definitely quieter in the evenings.
Aside from the staff Zoom meetings, what I really enjoyed was getting invited to join a Zoom meeting with a class of students. I only joined one or two kindergarten class meetings, but they were pure hilarious chaos. Kids were interrupting each other, waving the whole time, and wanting to show their pets. I loved it! I also joined a few more virtual meetings with 3rd-5th graders who understood the protocol a little better. On April 7th my favorite part of my day was joining a Zoom call with one of my 5th grade classes. Since I was learning the technology with everyone else, I was shown how to display everyone's faces at once vs. the scrolling bar on the top, and I compared it to The Brady Bunch. (Hey, it may be "before my time," but I still appreciated the reruns and movies.) "What's that?" asked one of the students. Simpler times, Kid, simpler times.
To combat the quiet evenings, I went on lots of walks and hikes. I would occasionally meet up with my MT family across the street at the river on their nightly walk, and we caught up in the fresh air. But most evenings, I texted them if I could pick up one or both dogs to take on a walk or hike in the valley or down the river walk in town.
It was a short 15-minute drive out of town into the valley where I’d find a trailhead and a gravel road to walk while watching the sunset. Those evenings and weekends when I would go on longer hikes provided the peace I needed. I consider myself blessed to have been in Montana during the pandemic. Not only were there fewer people so there was less congestion, but most people in town were taking the situation seriously, so I felt safe and less likely to get sick. On top of that, I lived in a beautiful setting. When I turned on the news or saw more depressing statistics online, I could escape into the mountains for an hour. I felt grateful for my health and the health of my family and friends, and I was grateful for the fact that I could breathe in fresh air, with a happy dog, in a magical place.
Lastly, when I wasn’t working/ Zooming, hiking, or watching John Krasinski’s “Some Good News,” I spent a lot of my time at Dave and Barb’s baking. On my first night there I broke in the kitchen and the silence by making olive oil brownie cookies. I spent lots of time making Danishes with dough from scratch (and an Instagram story tutorial). I made blondies for the first time with a recipe for brown butter walnut chocolate chip blondies. I made three loaves of sourdough. (Honestly, who wasn’t making sourdough at this time?) And I made cookies, cupcakes, and pizza. The pizza was my second night there. I hadn’t ventured to the grocery store yet and was using the ingredients I brought from the house and ingredients I was told to help myself to at the new house. So, since it’s Montana, I found the freezer stocked with, what else? Game meat. I made a delicious sourdough pizza with ground elk, onion, garlic, marinara sauce, kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and herbs/ spices.
While Ken doesn’t have any pizza recipes that specify elk, he does have recipes that call for sausage. Both work. His recipes include the following: Italian Sausage and Broccoli Rabe Pizza; Fresh Fennel and Italian Sausage Pizza; Collard Greens and Sausage Calzone; Kale, Potato, and Sausage Pockets; and Pane Ripieno (Italian Stuffed Bread). Quarantine or not, all are delicious and worth a try from The Harvest Baker!
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