Angie and Kaitlyn Campbell need our help

The weather and road conditions in Granite County, Montana on voting day November 8, 2022 were not ideal but also not uncommon for the time of year. Surely not bad enough to keep Angie and Kaitlyn Campbell from making the drive from their home at Moon River Ranch in Clinton, Montana, to their polling place in Drummond, Montana. Unfortunately, they never got the opportunity to cast their votes. Just shy of the Drummond exit, their truck hit a patch of ice, sending them tumbling down interstate 90.

My name is Donna Katen, and I had the opportunity to get to know Angie and Kaitlyn (mother and daughter) over the summer of 2022 while working at Moon River Ranch’s CSA garden for Angie’s

brother and sister-in-law.

Angie and Kaitlyn live together on the ranch and have been building and running a meat subscription program called Old Medicine Ranch for the last three years. They raise and sell hormone-free beef, pigs, sheep, goats and rabbits to their local community through farmers markets and local pick-ups.

Angie’s Mom and Dad, Roger and Lisa, also live on the ranch and tend to a 60+ herd of aging Arabian horses left to them from the previous generation. I have never met a family with a greater work ethic. They pride themselves on being 6th generation ranchers and farmers and work diligently to carry on the family legacy. They are an ask for little but give a lot kind of people.

An accident such as this one has been nothing less than devastating to this family. Angie sustained horrific head injuries when her truck’s cab collapsed, nearly scalping her. She received 45 staples in her head and two arteries tied off but not before losing vast amounts of her blood volume. She has multiple fractures in her spine and a broken neck; C6 and C7 were ruptured, and all ligaments are gone. She is finding it difficult to eat because her throat and windpipe were moved to allow her neck to be fused by doctors in the ICU. Her daughter sustained traumatic injuries to her arm and right side, which makes it difficult at best to help her mom let alone tend to the livestock. (Kaitlyn runs the Montana German Shepard Rescue and has been dealing with severe nerve pain issues since surgery at 16.)

Immediately after the accident, the family rallied to help with the livestock. “Mom and Dad have been a great help, but a crash course in ranching is not going to cut it, especially during calving and in addition to their other ranch responsibilities.” The family is being forced to sell off most of the livestock to help pay for medical bills and transportation to get to doctors because there is just not enough workforce to take care of them during the Montana winter weather.

Yesterday I received a text message from Angie asking me if I would be interested in buying some

exer

cise equipment from her to help with “medical expenses.” This broke my heart, knowing how difficult this text must have been to send. Although I am not in the market for exercise equipment, I was moved to ask if there was anything else I could do to help. Angie expressed that she had thought about initiating a Go-Fund-Me page but was having trouble with it due to also suffering from a post-concussion

disorder on top of everything else. I knew at once that this is how I could help. She accepted my offer, and here we are now.

My hope is that this story resonates deep within our community and that you can find it in your hearts to donate to Angie and Kaitlyn’s recovery. Any monies collected will go directly to medical and living expenses until these two can get up and running again. From what I am told, this could be quite a long time. It isn't easy to know what the future will bring, but they hope to rebuild their meat subscription program and continue providing their community with local meat. This does not surprise me in the least!