This morning I ventured out for my last farm field trip. It was an early start and I had a news crew in tow. I was contacted by the school of journalism this past week and they wanted to do a 30 second segment for the local morning news broadcast. The school of journalism began doing small stories on “Greening UM” last year to promote the sustainability initiatives on campus. How it works is the group of media students pitch story ideas in class and one idea gets picked and as a class they cooperatively work on putting together the segment. So this week they picked the Feastival/Farm to College program! For the segment, the students doing the story wanted some footage of the farms and farmers involved in the event so I told them they could tag along. I had scheduled my first trip to Travis and Sasha Greenwalt’s, Hilltop Haven Farm, in Missoula. It was probably the worst day to do a field trip, especially when you have $1000 equipment tagging along, but harvest doesn’t stop for weather. So we all headed up the farm, which is up Butler Creek, just outside of town. It was so beautiful. I had never been to that area of town, which is just past the airport. The road just winds through this narrow valley and you are totally in the country just 10 minutes outside of town.
So I met Travis in the pouring rain–seriously I don’t think I have seen it rain this hard ever in Missoula. He gave me a tour of their little farm. We will be serving their snow peas at the event. They grow peas and saskatoon berries, which are a cultivated june berry, for the growers co-op. Travis grew up in Washington where his family worked in agriculture. So when him and Sasha inherited land from Sasha’s family they knew they wanted to start a small agricultural operation. They called the Western Montana Growers Co-op to find where the need was and were told that the co-op could use peas and that’s what they planted. The farm is still new, just two years old, and pretty small, but it fills a gap in the co-op, which is always welcome. As Travis and I talked, the camera crew filmed. They captured us picking snow peas for the event together in the rain. Cute! Travis was a great sport, but he kept remarking that their farm was not a good example of the co-op’s farms because they are so small, not as diverse, and farming is not their primary income source. I assured him that it is good to see all angles of the co-op. Also, it is great to see people interested in growing a few produce items utilizing the co-op.
We finished up our tour of Hilltop Haven and I said my goodbyes to Travis and the camera crew. Travis said he will be attending the event. So I will see him next week…so close!
From Hilltop Haven I headed north, again to my favorite valley: Moiese. The rain did not let up. I stopped by Joel Carlson’s, Thunderhead Gardens, and helped/photographed harvest of sweet 100 tomatoes and thyme for the event. It was a quick visit because I had a busy schedule ahead of me. Just down the road, I stopped in at Lowdown Farm and found Kristi Johnson out in the fields harvesting for market. She said she had already harvested the heirloom tomatoes, but there was basil to harvest. So we headed into the greenhouse to harvest some basil for the event. Onward again, I drove down the road to Nicole and Cale’s, Ploughshare Farm. They were done withe the harvest for the morning and Nicole was packing up the car to go to the co-op central cooler. I did get some photos of the bagged “UM Event” produce items. They were going up to Mission Mountain to be chopped and cut for the day. Nicole was in a rush because she had forgotten something, but I hung out with Cale for a bit and we chatted about how delicious this meal is going to be. He told me they just got their invitations and he said, “Just looking at the menu made his mouth water”. I headed out from there and made my last farm stop of the day at Julie Pavlock’s, Foothill Farm, in St. Ignatius. I hadn’t seen Julie is quite sometime so it was nice to reconnect and see how the season was going. She said the season had been rough with so much rain and cold, but like everyone else, she rolled with the weather like every farmer must. It is out of her control. She was running late that day so I got to be there for the harvesting of all our crops (cippolini onions, tomatoes, and fennel).
After Foothill, I followed the food north, to Ronan. The food was headed to Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center to be processed before it is delivered to us at the Food Zoo. A processing machine hadn’t come in so everything was being done by hand, some hundreds of pounds of vegetables peeled and chopped. Karl said everything was going to plan. They let me try one of the dried apricots from Moss Farm. So good! Food is coming together!
