Jean Pocha of Helmville started as the community reporter for the Ovando/Helmville area in February.
Jean Pocha with her two-year-old cow Lillian. Lillian was about 40 pounds when she was born. The Pochas took the orphan calf into their home for nearly a week to keep her warm and fed. She drank from a bottle, wore diapers and followed the dogs around with duct tape on her hooves for traction. Once she was strong enough, the Pochas moved her out to the barn with the goats. She lived in their barnyard until last summer when she was turned out with the other heifers to get bred. Last December when the other heifers moved to a pasture near their house, Lillian showed up grazing along the driveway. The second time she got through the fence and came home, Pocha figured she wanted to live in their barnyard. She was there for a while and then rejoined the herd for a day before going through several fences to get back home. "Going through fences is not a desired trait in cows, but she obviously wanted to be here," Pocha said and laughed. "I go out every morning and give her a handful of grain and brush her. She waits at the gate for me but doesn't care that much about the grain. She just wants the attention."
HELMVILLE - "I think supporting and encouraging the life and activities in our communities helps them to be stronger and to be more vibrant," said Jean Pocha, the Seeley Swan Pathfinder's newest reporter. "It is my hope to be a part of that."
Pocha has lived in Helmville for more than 31 years. She looks forward to developing interesting stories that capture the happenings and people of the Ovando and Helmville communities.
Since a young girl, Pocha said she has always taken notes and been a recordkeeper. She liked writing in school and started journaling. In her adult life she wrote articles for clubs and newsletters for churches.
Photography was something Pocha learned at a young age as she carried her father's camera bag as he documented their family travels. She always thought he was crazy when he would turn the car around and go back to capture a picture of the light on the river.
"I thought, oh my goodness, when I get out of this house I'm never taking another picture," Pocha said. "But it didn't last because I would see the light on the river or the light on a horse and I started carrying a little camera around all the time taking pictures."
In the mid-1980s, Pocha attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for animal science after learning she could work with horses, something she loved.
"My folks wanted me to go to college in the worst way and I really had no purpose for it," Pocha said. "I started reading about these colleges that had horses. I thought, hey, this will be good. Satisfy my folks and take classes for horses and keep my grade point average up."
One of her professors was college roommates with Louis "Louie" Vero who worked at the E Bar L Ranch in Greenough, Montana. When she asked him if he knew of any summer work that he felt would fit, it only took him a day to ask her if she wanted to move to Montana for the summer.
"I'd been to Montana - 15 miles of forest and mountains and a river," Pocha said, recalling she'd driven Highway 20 from West Yellowstone to Rexburg, Idaho. "It sounds perfect."
In 1984, Pocha moved to Montana for the summer and worked in the corrals at the E Bar L. She returned every summer until she graduated in 1987. She decided to move to the Blackfoot Valley because she loved the mountains, the community and the way she was treated like extended family. She worked for the E Bar L until 1989.
In 1990, she married her ranching husband John and moved to Helmville. She drove school bus for Helmville and the high school bus to Drummond on and off for nearly five years before she stayed home to raise her children. She loved taking them to a weekly community playgroup, doing outdoor activities with them and vegetable gardening.
In the mid-1990s she was recruited to write gardening articles for the "Rocky Mountain Gardener." She wrote for the magazine for three years until they quit publishing. She now enjoys nature journaling.
When the part time reporter position was advertised in the Pathfinder, Pocha thought it would be a great opportunity to add more structure to her writing and share her photography. She enjoys the communities and the area and she wants to represent it well through developing interesting stories.
In her first by-line with the Pathfinder, "Small gym resonates with big players" she enjoyed piecing together the history of the Helmville Community Center as part of the story about the 55th annual Helmville Community Center Basketball tournament.
"That made it more rich for [the community] and I learned more about the community at the same time," Pocha said. "I hope that being available, people will feel free to bring things up. I want to represent everyone fairly and honestly."
In her free time Pocha enjoys hiking, gardening, drawing, nature journaling, family time with her husband, two daughters, son and five and half month old grandson, caring for her cow, chickens, dogs and barn cats and watching the birds visit her bird feeder.
"I just like watching everything that is going on around me," Pocha said. "The newspaper stuff is just going to help me extend it to the social fabric."
Reader Comments(0)