If you’re reading this, you are likely one of the reasons we’ve achieved the holistic goals we set out to accomplish when the farm began in 2012.

At first, we just wanted to make a living and provide other aspiring farmers with a Montana model for producing high-quality organic food that could be replicated.

Now we’re embarking on a new, minimalist style of farming where we grow for CSA members alone — no farmers markets. We’re targeting just the Winter and Spring months; atypical growing months; often referred to as the colder “shoulder-seasons”; cousins to the main “growing season”. We will grow the membership sizes and increase the number of weeks grown in this under-farmed slice of the year!

But before we get into the details of the future farm, it’s important that we sketch out the beautiful, year-round organism of a farm we grew into with help from CSA members, farmers market customers, our families, government agencies, lenders, and our landlords since Barret and Katie joined the farm in 2017.

What does the current iteration of the farm look like on the ground? Why did we dip our toes into the agricultural river of growing food 365 days a year? And why are we jumping back out of that seductive water, radically changing this year-round approach? Well, if you’ve made it this far in this farmer-y essay, we feel obliged to flush out answers to these questions for you!

WHAT THE FARM HAS LOOKED LIKE:

Between 2017 and 2022, this farm has been a boisterous place. There has always been some sort of infrastructure legislation passing the Farmer Senate only to be resoundingly enacted on the land in Stevensville.

Whether it has involved steel or wood beams, underground PVC, underground electric lines, or the creation of new roadways, these projects have made the goals of making a living and feeding our community year-round two sides of the same coin. So much of this infrastructure has received constant use. There’s an acre of greenhouses, where the soil either grows a cover crop or a cash crop all year round. Sometimes these greenhouses are planted three times a year. Then there’s the 20ft x 60ft x 9ft “barn” building that doesn’t go a week without receiving food fit for washing and refrigeration activities. And there’s the greenhouse we grow seedlings in, which acts as a revolving door for 15 successions of lettuce crops alone each year.

In 2017, the four farm owners worked with a handful of volunteers and one employee. By the time of this writing in August 2022, we are joined by 10 employees, each earning wages of $15-$17.50/hour worked. By the time work ends each Friday afternoon, our labors are translated into four to six pallets of vegetables each stacked 7 feet tall; each ready to load onto trucks for supporters in Missoula and Hamilton between May and October. The end of summer market season is a humorous illusion though. Because for the past four years, October meant a gap of just two weeks before the start of the Missoula Valley Winter Farmers Market which runs through the new year.

Other interesting things have developed in the farm workplace. The farm crew puts down hoes and harvest knives in favor of life-vests and beer on our annual rafting trip the past two years during the hottest weeks of the year. The crew gets together monthly for board game nights around a good home-cooked meal. We set 40-hour work-weeks for employees; green-light any vacation time requests that reach our desks with two-weeks advanced notice; and working around farmworker-designed work schedules, we’ve made sure to hire as many employees as it takes to get the job done.

Altogether, this farm feels like a type of Heaven in the making. It’s easy to feel like you’re in Heaven when you’re simply living in Montana. But growing veggies (specifically for the wonderful people we encounter on a weekly basis) has been its own form of Montana heaven. Since 2017, we are proud to have met our definitions for success in our own holistic goals.

WHY THE FARM LOOKS LIKE THIS:

This is obviously a tough question to answer. Katie likes to say, “the reason our farm looks the way it does today has everything to do with our first foray into winter cultivation.” With year-round production came an acceleration, an acceleration of all the other aspects of the business. Most farmers who grow seasonally only get to experience certain aspects of their business for the 6-7 month “main” growing season. These aspects include things like employees, production mistakes, marketing products, cash flow, infrastructure shortcomings, etc. We were experiencing the business and all its challenges 24/7, 365, all while growing and distributing vegetables. And as farmers who practice Kai Zen (a Japanese concept translated roughly as “continuous improvement”), this meant we needed to confront challenges before they were experienced again and again. This led to many things for the farm:

This acceleration produced a lot of things. But at this moment, it’s time to step off the acceleration pedal (just a little) so we can keep bumping along down this farming road well into the future.

After all, in the beginning we weren’t just growing for growth’s sake. We were responded to something magical. In 2017 (our first year of winter growing) we only scratched the surface. That year was characterized by 30 brave Winter CSA members, deliveries to the end of December, and a small handful of crop varieties. But we were so insanely stimulated by the amount of learning involved in harsh-climate crop production. And the reception to our work amongst Winter CSA members was like nothing we’d ever experienced. Keeping plants alive all winter was a risky endeavor that first year. But the way we saw it, we’d put our necks on the line without a ton of experience. And we felt like the plants and people had responded. Naturally, we were hooked!

But how did this newfound winter growing fit into the rest of the farm operations? Initially we looked at winter growing as a small enterprise within the business — something we could just add on top of everything we already did. So instead of operating a seasonal business, we viewed winter growing as a way our farm could grow revenue for more weeks out of the year. Our intention was consistency. Our year-round work would solve a major supply shortage in the local food system — it would help existing and new customers alike eat more local and organic vegetables when they would otherwise turn their diets back to supermarket offerings.

Here was the response amongst the eating community as represented by the size of the Winter CSA since 2017:

We discovered quickly that in order to scale up the size of the Winter CSA to meet this need (and to feed our own addiction to growing winter food), we needed more of everything. We didn’t just need more crops, infrastructure and equipment. The biggest part of expanding the farm was employing a larger crew of people. And as we hired more people, we discovered something wonderful about growing plants 365 days/year.

Contrary to the seasonal jobs on most vegetable farms that typically start in April and end in October, year-round work has no seasonality. Which is nice from a worker perspective, because at the end of October, you don’t need to have the next gig lined up. This realization was a new rationale for winter farming. We began to see year-round production as the key to providing farm employees more reliable jobs.

The other cool thing is that winter work is generally less exhaustive. It’s all about timing and our winter work follows a familiar, reliable pattern:

-wash and pack vegetables in the morning until the sun heats up greenhouses and plants thaw out.

-then migrate out to the warmed greenhouses to harvest until frosts start touching down again at about 4pm.

-then return to the barn buildings to finish packing food for deliveries.

As a result of winter and early spring production, farmworkers have begun to treat our business like other forms of work. It can be counted upon to provide stable incomes. Year-round employment and a steady job isn’t for everyone — many farmworkers, for example, are students who plan to return to school after the big harvests in August. But we’ve started to see many people continue farming for over a year straight, picking up new skills and understandings of the work along the way. This continuity, like the continuity of the farm owners, has translated into a level of consistency that the farm business really thrives on. And we’re convinced that the future, minimalist farm must continue providing year-round work for farmworkers. Luckily for the farm, the growing of storage vegetables like cabbages, potatoes, carrots, and winter squash still require that we manage plants and the landscape all summer long.

WHY STEP BACK FROM YEAR-ROUND FARMING:

The answer, friends, involves a dreamy trip to Idaho in an overheating ‘80s era Ford F-150. Katie and Max were headed over the mountain pass to pick up a new set of implements that would make quicker work of preparing soil at the newly leased 12 acres adjacent to the old farm. Wizard the dog sat in the middle seat of the pickup truck.

It was a wacky journey, beginning at 6pm after the work on the farm was done. On the drive home after picking up the implements, they pulled off the side of the road at 3am to take a nap before getting back on the road so they could return to the farm in time to join the farm crew when they arrived at 6am. Needless to say, this trip was an indication that the farm had grown too big for its britches. Throughout the trip, the two had time to discuss what dropping one of the two farmers markets would do for their quality of life. And how they might “make up” that lost income. This process involved some head scratching and data computation. But the notion of dropping one farmers market led to many side conversations. And by the end of the journey, they were delving deeper into streamlining the operation.

Ever since the trip, the three of us have been consumed by the prospects of Winter and Spring-only farming. Every day is another opportunity to envision what new positive effect the decision to drop the Summer CSA and all farmers markets will have on our lives. It really doesn’t matter how mundane the topic. We simply can’t stop imagining the wonderful shockwaves that shortening our distribution schedule will create on the land, people, and our livelihood.

The farmers markets have rewarded us so well, even through the covid scares of the past few years. It’s our social time for the week and we really treasure connecting with regular customers and meeting wacky tourists.

Not to be outdone, the Summer CSA is a breeze compared to winter growing. Everything grows at such a brisk pace in summer. And it feels so good to take advantage of all that sunlight energy and translate it into many fruits and salads for CSA members. There ain’t nothing like providing food for people year-round. It’s a wonderful feeling.

So why move away from this glorious year-round system?

There are so many reasons, so to keep this brief, we’ve decided to list them:

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD:

Our farm is always evolving. But we’re about to make some of our biggest moves yet in the coming months.

These changes are based on the deep analysis and reflection throughout the past year of our farm, of ourselves, and of the food system we are a part of. So in a nutshell, we are narrowing our focus to our Winter and Spring CSA members.

This means a few things: We will no longer be attending farmers markets after this season concludes in October. Over the next couple years, we plan to grow the Winter and Spring CSA membership, expand our CSA pickup locations, and extend the duration of both CSA programs. This newfound focus will also allow us the time to develop a greater experience for members through a greater variety of veggies, more recipes provisions, more wonky newsletters, and overall more communication about the farm you’re apart of.

And in light of all these changes, we have two calls to action:

#1: A farm name change is in order and we need your help. Hopefully now that you better understand our journey and what we’re envisioning for the future, you’re positioned to help us select the world’s greatest farm name! Check out this poll to cast your vote or suggest an even better name!

#2: We’re confident that this is the right decision given the demand for cold-season produce, but just to make sure, we are asking your help in joining the CSA and spreading the word of its bounty. If you know anyone living in Kalispell or Whitefish, for example, you could let them know about your experience with our farm and that Barret, Katie and Max want to feed them. We are expanding our deliveries to include a pickup at Bias Brewing in Kalispell in October 2022.