Downtime in Winter

Gorgeous open-pollinated corn.

I'd just like to say straight up that winter is not a farmer's downtime. At least it's never been for us. It's just a different kind of busy.

This winter, we've been traveling quite a bit. In early January, I flew to Tucson, Arizona to attend the Native Seeds/SEARCH (www.nativeseeds.org/) Grain School, a week-long workshop on all things heritage and ancient grains. It was the inaugural class and a spin-off of their very popular (and very important) Seed School classes.


The Native Seeds/SEARCH Conservation Farm in Patagonia.

Later in January, the whole family drove out to Port Townsend, Washington with a couple of friends to attend the Organic Seed Alliance's (www.seedalliance.org/) Organic Seed Growers Conference. We drove through the worst winter storm the Northwest had seen in quite a while (it even shut down the Seattle airport). But it was well worth the two days of driving 40 miles per hour, white-knuckled and wide-eyed. The 3-day event was full of breakout sessions with plant breeders, farmers, and organic seed advocates.

As you can tell, there was a theme for the month: seeds and breeds. If there is only one thing to take away from both conferences, it is the major importance of a genetically diverse, locally-adapted, resilient, and farmer/citizen-owned seed supply.

I think that we here at Prairie Heritage Farm have understood that since we started, but we have never arranged our work into any focused effort. I take some of that back, since we've been trailing many different varieties of heritage and ancient wheat and barley the past 3 years, with the intent to discover those that grow well here and improve upon them, adapting them to our local conditions. But, I believe our efforts must expand to include other staples (which we've always planned to do) and vegetable crops (which we've never much thought about).

To that end, a small group of Montana growers (ourselves included) have begun a conversation about local seed sovereignty and how we as growers can grow and develop a local seed supply through a network of farmers and gardeners. If anybody is interested, please be sure to get a hold of us: farmer at prairieheritagefarm dot com.


The Native Seeds/SEARCH seed vault.

As our focus of late has been on our heritage grains, we've begun to take steps to empower ourselves with the capability to clean our own grain. As you may or may not recall (here), I picked up this little beauty of a fanning mill at an auction last spring. It was pretty dirty, so I loaded it into the pickup and took it to a car wash where I hosed it down. We are in the process of getting it and other equipment all set up, and hopefully by this spring it will be operational.


The Clipper goes to the car wash.

Earlier this month, we made a big loop through western Montana to deliver our 2nd annual Grain & Seed CSA. We made drops in Great Falls, Helena, Missoula, and Whitefish. We still have a lot to learn about how best to design this CSA, but we have a good group of CSA members who are willing to go along for the ride with us and help us make it better each year.


The truck loaded up with 1500lbs. of grain.

So here's to winter downtime. May it always be filled with good activity.