• 4-6 Medium Golden Beets, fresh from the garden, 2 tbsp. Olive Oil, 1 Sprig of Rosemary, fresh from garden, Salt and Pepper to Taste

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. After washing dirt from beets, trim greens to 1" above root.
3. Pull rosemary leaves from the stem and lightly chop.
4. In a large bowl, combine beets, olive oil, rosemary and salt and pepper until coated and turn onto baking sheet.
5. Start checking beets around 30 minutes by sticking a fork into the beet to check for doneness, the beet should yield to the fork tines easily. Older, larger beets may take up to an hour to be completely cooked through.
6. Once cooked, allow beets to slightly cool and peel skins from beets, skins should slip of extremely easily.
7. Chop beets into 1 inch cubes and enjoy!

Dean Williamson is the program coordinator for the Sustainable Food and Bioenergy Systems program at Montana State University and the owner/operator of Three Hearts Farm, which is a six-acre organic, diversified vegetable farm located on Love Lane in Bozeman, Montana. Three Hearts Farm markets its vegetables to grocery stores and restaurants and sells directly through the local farmer's markets and through a marketing model called a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture. A CSA sells shares for a season's worth of vegetables to be picked up weekly by the member.

Dean has a PhD in Native American Literature and has taught at Bozeman High School and in the English department at MSU. He came to the Gallatin Valley in 1998 to take a teaching position and also started serving on the Board of Directors at the Food Co-op, a position that he still holds. His passion for land conservation and advocating for replacement farmers (the next generation of farmers) put him in a position to work closely with local growers and the issues that growers in the Gallatin Valley face. He felt that in order to truly understand the plight of local growers and to tackle the bigger issues of organic small scale farmers, he needed to get his hands dirty, thus Three Hearts Farm was born. He remembers his grandmother's one-acre garden from his childhood, and says that his mother was very "into nutrition" and simple vegetable-based dishes were a main-stay at the table of his childhood. Dean is a self-proclaimed "foodie."

Teaching for Dean is his "default mode." He recently took the position of program coordinator for SFBS at MSU and hopes to expand the curriculum to include a Sustainable Farming program at some point in the future. He believes that a "healthy food system is food that is bought as close to the source as possible, by people who are doing the least amount of damage to the land and the food, and using the fewest amounts of inputs (fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, etc.) as possible."

Dean believes the development of a meaningful food culture in our Valley begins when food is used as a celebration. People need to enter into a relationship with food which begins by eating seasonally from a local producer and creating dishes that are simple and wholesome. He believes that we can build community around food and take advantage of the fact that we all have to eat and that our meal times can be a real way for us to connect to place and to each other. Dean believes that the slow food movement, a movement which strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine by eating locally, encompasses much more than how our food is grown, and that it is our renewed spiritual connection to the land and the beauty of nature in action that will begin to change the consciousness of our food culture in the Gallatin Valley.