Back on His Foot

Many of you following this blog or, in general, following the Prairie Heritage Farm story know how important it has been for us, and for the farm, to have my Dad so close by.

He's done everything, from fixing our machinery, to helping fashion a greenhouse within a greenhouse, building a brooder for our turkeys to driving a combine more than 30 miles to get our Emmer crop in.

He was a regular fixture on the farm -- sharing his bologna sandwiches, his cream soda, carrot sticks and his vast -- and I mean vast -- knowledge of everything agriculture.

That's just the way my Dad is: He's always there for you when you need him, whether you're his crazy daughter and son-in-law trying to start an organic farm, an old lady with a broken water heater or a stranger stranded on the side of the road.

In so many ways, my Dad embodies everything society romanticizes in a "farmer." Clyde is the ultimate farmer, not because of his ability to grow food or fix machinery, but because of the way he gives -- the way he is as a neighbor and a friend.

Which is why it was no surprise these last few weeks to see the community, the strangers, and the family my Dad has given so selflessly through the years, come out in full force to support him through a trying time.

The first week of December, Dad was burning trash out at my uncle Joe's farm -- the farm my Dad grew up on -- which had recently been sold after Joe's passing. Something in one of the burn barrels exploded and caught my Dad's feet, which were standing in some sort of accelerant -- oil or gas -- on fire. He was able to get one boot and his coveralls off, but the boot on his right foot shrunk up around his ankle. He was able to put himself out and luckily, found his phone nearby to call his girlfriend Toni. Toni rushed him to the emergency room and the doctors there immediately put him (and me) on a plane to Salt Lake City to the University of Utah Burn Trauma Center.

An Anonymous Letter

Dated January 4, 2010:

"Dear Jacob and Courtney,

I hope this letter finds you well. Though we do not know each other formally, I first learned about your farm a while back through the wonderful, ever-bustling young farmer community - and I have since enjoyed keeping up with your blog as you bravely began year one on your farm. As a fellow (landless) young farmer, I am inspired by your story.

As winter fields lay laden with snow, we look diligently forward to the sugars of spring. Enclosed is a little something which will hopefully make these days of winter a bit easier. Find strength in your fellow young farmers, and forge fiercely forward knowing that the good you do each day will find its way back to you.

keep following your bliss.

all the best,
from one greenhorn to another"

That "little something" was a one-hundred dollar bill. Also included was a sticker with a drawing of two hands holding up a fork with the words "Vote with your fork, with your vote, and your life www.thegreenhorns.net". The Greenhorns, for those who don't know, is a vibrant group of people putting together a documentary on new farmers and building a movement at the same time.

If there had been a return address on this letter, this is what I would have put in the mail:

Dear fellow farmer,

This letter does indeed find us well, if not a little stressed about the upcoming season. I certainly appreciate you reaching out to us like this. If only you could have seen the enormous grin of amazement when I opened up and read your letter.

In the few months that we've begun our modest experiment, we've discovered an incredible community of encouragement and support that has only pushed us onward.

As (tentatively) landed farmers, we certainly hope you are able to move on from the landless stage. I can commiserate with the disconnection between what is in your head and what is on the ground. I understand that it is frustrating, but know that your passion trumps most impediments. With all the uncertainty of our situation, that is what I hold on to. Some days, encouragement is hard to find, within ourselves and in our relative isolation in rural Montana. But your letter serves as a reminder that we are part of a larger movement and that we are not alone, and for that we thank you.

If you find yourself in our neck of the prairie, please don't hesitate to stop by and say, 'hello'. We'd love to have you.

With much gratitude,

Jacob and Courtney

The 2009 Season (Year 1 of ?)

It truly has been an exciting ride our first year, with both ups and downs, successes and failures. We entered into this with certain vague expectations, but without experience to back us, mostly uncertainty at how our various enterprises would turn out. What follows is a cursory wrap-up of the 2009 season, the first of what I hope to be many season wrap-ups. Much written here I've covered in earlier posts, but it's worth repeating.

How to Cook Your Heritage Turkey

Thanks to all who helped us process turkeys this weekend -- with special appreciation for Heather, Rick, Nate, Donna, Neva, Mandy, Gina, Eric, Audra, Jill, Vann and Anne. And, many thanks to those of you who delivered or dropped off turkeys for us (Christa and Jason!). Getting these turkeys to table was truly a community effort and a testament to the passion and energy building for a more local food system in Central Montana.

And, we can't thank our customers enough -- especially those of you who bought a Thanksgiving CSA up front, giving us the support and the capital we needed to get 75 turkeys onto Thanksgiving tables this year.

Now, to the fun part. Cooking your hertiage bird is a bit different than cooking that old Butterball. First of all, don't overcook it, as one chef said this morning on NPR: The bird has already been killed once, don't kill it again. After the jump, you'll find some of our favorite recipes for your Thanksgiving bird.

Turkeys!

Sometimes, a word just needs an exclamation point. In my estimation, turkeys! is almost always one of them.

This Friday, Nov. 20 and Saturday Nov. 21, our turkeys meet their fate. We're slaughtering on the farm with a mobile processing unit. The intrepid folks from the Montana Poultry Growers Coop (namely Mark Rehder and Jan and Will Tusick) will be on hand Friday morning at 9 to do a few hours of training on the mobile processing unit as well on poultry processing in general.

Consider yourself invited for either or both days. We'll have a group of friends and family on hand to help with the processing, so if you're squeamish, no worries: There are plenty of things to do, not to mention the need for morale support.

Map to the farm:

View Larger Map


We have 75 turkeys to process, a little less than half of which will go to our Thanksgiving CSA members. The others have been sold direct to diners in Great Falls, Missoula, Helena and Bozeman.

Here is the schedule for picking up your turkeys and CSAs:

Great Falls-area customers:
Between 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21
2509 Upper River Road (Courtney's mother's house. Thanks Mom!)
Map:

View Larger Map

Conrad-area customers:
Between 2-4 Sunday, Nov. 22
504 S. Virginia Street, Conrad (our house)

View Larger Map


Missoula area customers:
Between 4-6 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22
1118 Jackson Street (our friend Jason's house. Thanks Jason!)

View Larger Map



2008 "harvest" day.

Autumn Tasks

This fall has been quite unpredictable. We had some pretty cold temperatures, where the mercury dropped to just above zero. We hustled all turkeys back in the brooder house where they could keep warm better (and eat less to do so). Most of the leaves dropped from the trees, still green, not having the chance to go through their color change. Since that cold snap, we've had more traditional fall weather and this week, it's predicted that the daytime temp may reach nearly 70 degrees.

The turkeys take it in stride, sadly oblivious to a major event for them in two weeks. They're back outside, enjoying this beautiful autumn weather, gobbling and chirping happily.


The garden after disking.

Our good friends Tim and Sarah helped us plant garlic during a warm snap. I got the tractor and the disk on the field to work in some of the crop and weed residue. Unfortunately, I don't have a working tractor with a loader or a working manure spreader, otherwise I would have spread some aged cow manure on the vegetable spot. We did manage to throw down the litter from the brooder, which will add some good organic matter and turkey poop to a small part of the garden.


Planting garlic.


Chucking straw onto the garlic.

Heat and Iron, Hammer to Metal

Last weekend, my brother and I spent a day with my blacksmith friend Jeffrey. While my brother has dabbled a bit in metal work, I have not, and I wanted to get a feel for what it takes to manipulate metal to build useful things for the farm. My dream would be to have a small blacksmithing setup on the farm: a propane forge, an anvil, an air hammer, and a leg vice. There, with my vast amounts of free time, I would build my own gates and latches, hammers, hoes, and other hand tools.




Hand-forged blacksmith hammers and tongs.

This dream is all a part of the larger vision of exploring different crafts, and developing hand skills and a measure of self-sufficiency. I'm not deluded enough to think we could be completely self-sufficient, nor would I want to be. To me, complete self-sufficiency can mean self-ish and would lead to isolation from the surrounding community. At Prairie Heritage Farm, we are striving to build our personal community and be a part of the larger community. An ideal world to me would be community-wide self-sufficiency, where everybody contributes valuable skills and trades. So, not everybody is a home brewer and bicycle mechanic and blacksmith and electrician and carpenter, etc., but rather one person might have a few skills and for those they don't have they call on their neighbor to help them out.

What follows is a series of photos of Jeffrey forging a leaf out of some square stock.


The metal heating up in the forge.


Jeffrey hammering the tip.


Drawing out the end of the stock.


More drawing out.


Shaping the stem.


The beginning of the leaf shape.


The air hammer works the metal out.


Some hand work.


More hand work.


The leaf.


The gate upon which the leaf will eventually be attached.

Winter?

Fresh snow on the Rocky Mountain Front.

Fall in Montana has never been that long - usually at least a couple of weeks. This year, I'm not sure it lasted more than a few hours. The leaves starting turning, then it began to snow and the temperature plummeted. This morning, after a night of temperatures in the low teens, all the green leaves on the trees that didn't have a chance to show off their bright autumn colors, are now blanketing the ground.


Turkeys try their hand at gardening.

The turkeys are as resilient as ever, just eating more to stay warm. I put them on the spent garden to let them work the ground a bit and eat up weed seeds and cabbage and chard leaves. Because it's going to get down to around 4 degrees in the next couple of nights, my lovely wife and I herded the whole bunch from the garden back into the brooder, where they're at least out of the wind and wet. It looks as though it will warm back up a bit, at which time I'll likely herd them all back to the garden for as long as possible before I go over the ground with the tractor (I hope - unless it's too wet or the ground freezes).


Turkeys love chard, but who doesn't?


Shivering turkeys! It's snowing!

Crash and Harvest

As the season wound down, so did my computer. My hard drive gave up the ghost after only 9 months. Warranty replaced it, but not all that data. I don't have any particular attachment to most of what was on the hard drive, but I am quite upset about losing a season's photos and journal entries. I'm both angry at my computer and at myself for not diligently backing up my data. I'm searching for the lesson in all this (like, technology bad, simplify your life, etc.), but unfortunately, I think the lesson is, back up your data.

Despite that setback, the farm rolls on through its 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th frost. The turkeys continue to gobble, and Courtney and I have stored away the potatoes, onions, and winter squash. The emmer has been harvested and sits in the back of the truck in the quonset, safely out of the rain.

Actually, the emmer harvest was emblematic of all the support we've received our first year, especially from our close friends and family. My good neighbor (who picked up my lentils) was unable to slip away from his farm to pick up my emmer with his combine. So I called on my father-in-law Clyde, who does custom cutting for some of his neighbors. Saturday, after our final farmers' market, we met at his place, along with Court's brother, wife, and son. The caravan was as follows: Court in our pickup, Renee in hers, me in Clyde's pickup, flagging for the combine, Clyde in the combine, and Steve in the truck. We all worked to clean out the combine and truck, and it wasn't long before the combine picked up all the swathed emmer, dumped it into the truck and my 15-acre field's season was over.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some data to back up.


Steve and Sam put the truck together and clean it out.


I cleaned out the combine, happy for all the help we had.


And we're off.


The pickup header sweeps the swathed emmer into the machine.


The emmer in the combine bin.


Dumping...


Dumped.

Breaking Bread

White lentils, Painted Mountain Indian corn, heritage spring wheat, whole wheat sourdough bread, and shocks of two varieties of heritage spring wheat grown on the Farm.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the heritage and ancient grains we're growing on Prairie Heritage Farm and how we might market them. It's one thing to simply love growing something, but if this farm business is to be a reality, the other side of the equation is figuring out how to sell what you love to grow.

Since we had a killing frost this past week, our farmers' market table had some room on it. I have been considering baking whole wheat sourdough bread from the grain we're growing on the Farm for quite a while, and so I thought I'd test the waters this past weekend.

I baked 4 loaves of bread, though with store-bought organic Montana wheat since our grain hasn't been harvested or cleaned yet. I offered customers samples and asked them if they liked it, and if they'd ever buy loaves of it in 2010. Most said yes, they liked it, and yes they'd buy loaves. Good enough for me. About 15 minutes before the farmers' market was over, a family came up for a sample and asked if they could buy the display loaf (the prettiest one). Sold. (And so begins my other career as a baker? Anybody want to spot me for a stone grain mill, a floor mixer, a proofing cabinet, and a masonry oven?)

Another idea we have is to sell whole grains at the farmers' market. People could buy lentils or spring wheat, or whatever else we might have, by the pound. A nice addition would be freshly ground flour from our wheat, but then we run into food processing regulations which would require specific infrastructure that we may not be able to afford. We may have to look into it.

Finally, we'd like to create a grain and seed CSA, where after an up front payment in the spring, customers receive 100-200 pounds of grains and seeds in the fall. We would focus on crops and varieties that aren't readily available, such as heirloom dry beans, heritage spring wheats, ancient grains, white lentils, and Indian corn. I tried growing small plots of amaranth, quinoa, and teff, but I have a ways to go before I figure out how to grow them commercially. This idea of a grain CSA is not a new one. I know of programs in California, Canada, and New England, and I'm sure there are others.

The different varieties of ancient and heirloom grains and seeds are numerous, and if we are able to just scratch at the surface of our agricultural heritage, then we maintain the possibility of diverse tastes, all highly nutritious, and we keep our breeds and seeds vital.