Glendive Hoop House in December

Letter to Senator Baucus re: Harvest Lunch Wekk

November 23, 2009

The Honorable Max Baucus

122 West Towne

Glendive, MT

Dear Senator Baucus,

Last week, the Glendive public schools participated in a “Harvest Lunch Week” in which a local food item was offered each day in the school lunch. The Week was organized by the Local Food and Wellness Committee and Farm-to-Table in Glendive. This is part of a larger effort to get more local, healthy, better quality food into our schools. I am writing to you today to share some responses from the students, teachers and cafeteria workers after eating and serving local food for a week in their schools.

“Harvest Lunch Week” was a huge success by many measures. The “lunch ladies” enjoyed cooking fresher, healthier food and the students noticed a difference and thanked us for it. On Thursday the middle school almost ran out of hot lunch because of unexpected participation rates! The “Harvest Lunch Week” catalyzed community awareness about local food in the schools and increased an awareness of and interest in farm-to-school education generally. It is worth noting that the school spent approximately $700 on local food, which went directly to farmers and producers here in Glendive.

The challenge is this: after labor, administrative, and maintenance costs, the schools spend approximately .25 cents on actual food per child per day. By purchasing one local item a day, the Dawson County school district spent more money on food in a week than it does in a month. Current allocation of funds per child per meal is insufficient to create healthy or delicious meals. We all know that a quarter gets you a big gumball from a machine, and that’s about it.

Senator Baucus, we implore you to read the enclosed letters from future and current voters, from students and parents and mothers and to hear their plea that you advocate to allocate funding in the Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization to:

• increase the reimbursement rate by a $1/child/day, and
• purchase local food at the school level to help us feed our children healthy, fresh and delicious school lunches, and
• strengthen our local economy by investing in local producers and local consumers

Thank you for your attention to this crucial issue.

Sincerely,

Caroline Silver

Farm-to-Table Americorps VISTA

www.farmtotablecoop.com

carolinersilver@gmail.com

Uploaded some photos of my time in Montana.

Summer-Fall Montana 2009

The Belly of the Beast

Sometimes there's so much to say that the thought of writing it down is daunting enough to never write it down. Even though you want to. Even though you have so many visually poignant moments sans camera and the only way to remember them is to write about it so its like taking a picture, maybe even better than a picture. But then the inability to do your own experiences justice with words hangs over you and the beautiful day or the sunrise or that great conversation is just lost.

So that's whats been happening. A slow down in the blog posts has not meant that my life has been slowing or been less interesting. Quite the contrary. I get afraid to write it down because what if it doesn't capture how I really felt at the time? Or what if I can't describe the wonderful, vibrant, smart and fierce group of Montanans that I meant in Des Moines? My words will fall short and I need to accept that because I still would like to share my life and this foodie, farming, dare I say anthropological adventure I'm on with you - my friends and family and accidental readers.

So we went to Iowa. "We" being myself, Jess, Kyra (childhood friend from Bennington who is a VISTA at the Farm to College program in Missoula), Dena Hoff and Bruce Smith. We went to Iowa for the Community Food Security Coalition's 13th annual conference,"From Commodity to Community" ( http://www.foodsecurity.org/)

Des Moines was a 14 hour drive from Glendive. We drove the entire width of North Dakota then the height of South Dakota-Minnesota border, popped into Nebraska because I had never been there I wanted to check it off the old list and then finally into Iowa. Why Des Moines? Mark Winne and Andy Fisher referred to Iowa as "the belly of the beast" - the corn capital of the world and therefore the Big Ag capital as well. The conference was geared towards local food systems; how to create them, promote them, how to help farmers produce sustainably, connect farmers with institutions, how to change the market systems, how to change what people eat, how to change ourselves....

I went to three break out sessions surrounding Farm to School networking and brainstorming and idea generating, the economic reasons for Farm to School with Ken Meter (hopefully coming to Montana soon to help us out!), how to start a Farm to School project and successes and failures. I also went to the CFSC food policy council meeting while Bruce and Dena and Kyra went on farm tours the first day.

What was most phenomenal about this 4 day (yes FOUR days!) conference was the networking and connection building that went on. There were representatives from every facet of the labor force and every state, including Nicaragua, Canada, and Indonesia. There were teachers, lawyers, dieticians, USDA workers, farmers, social activists, policy writers, economists, urban planners, architects, artists, students....I just couldn't believe the diverse group of 600 that came together for this event. Whats more is that it was not only young people. The sustainable food movement sometimes seems as though its just young people, little foodie activists fresh out of college trying to get back to the land etc..what I realized was that there are people who have been at this for a long time. This is not new. Kathy (probably one of the smartest people I've ever met)from National Family Farmers Coaltion as well as my very own Dena have been fighting for farmers' rights since the 70's. They fought for them at the WTO protests in Seattle, Mexico and Korea (?!) and they continue to fight now that its become a more popular thing to fight for. It made me feel good that this movement is in weathered and experienced hands. Mine, are the virgin ones.

Also. There's a real live movement going on here. It's not saddled to the coasts or the cities or the hippies. In Des Moines I saw the full picture; food policy councils have sprouted in every state in the Union, there are thousands of farmer's markets and hundreds of Farm to School programs. This is an urban and a rural movement. This spans generations, race and economic status. And it's really happening - at this conference I shared my hurdles and my problems with people from New Mexico and Boston and Florida - and they shared theres and they all look pretty much the same! Production (and processing), distribution and consumption. These are the problems that local food system advocates and creators are tackling. They are all the same because our adversary is the same...because our enemy is huge and all consuming and all-dominating: its the industrial food system, namely Tyson, Cargill, ConAgra. While this is clearly the problem, it also provides a common force that Americans can unite against. People working to fight this big Ag giant on the east coast are coming up with the same solutions as people fighting Big Ag in Glendive, MT because we you mainstream and homogenize a product and a system, the ability for it to be sustainable and impermeable to attack is slim because of the very fact that it is so huge! We're finding ways to tackle the monster and its happening everywhere in this country and they have legs to stand on.

I wish I could go into meeting Barb from Mt Coffee roasters and Barbara Russmore and Pam Gerwe from AERO - lovely and passionate Montana women who are fighting this good fight - but I need to go to the AERO potluck in Livingston. Been sitting in a coffee shop in Bozeman after the MT Food Policy Council meeting (10 people for the whole state, Bruce is on the board) drinking tea and thinking about how hard it is to fight big corporations. Just know that these women are amazing and are reasons alone for me to continue working in this state.

Dena Hoff has to be mentioned, as always this woman that I have the privledge of working for and eating with most days of the week has surprised and inspired me yet again during this conference. Dena is the farmer representative of the NFFC as well as the North American representative of La Via Campesina. Via Campesina was awarded the Food Sovereignty prize by the Coalition during the conference and Dena gave the acceptance speech (almost a rallying political cry!) and talked about food security and south american farmers and fighting the good fight in front of 600 people. I was so proud of her I teared up. She went on to lead many of the break out sessions during the conference and whenever I mentioned her name at least 6 people would turn around and say they knew her and took notice of who I was because of my connection to her.

There are too many wonderful stories over the last few weeks to keep writing.

Know that the spinach is starting to sprout in my high hoop house, that we have around 6 or 7 crops in for the winter harvest and the Local Food and Wellness Committee is meeting on Monday to eat lunch at the Prison and tour the prison garden.

Life is good and busy and confusing and sad and beautiful. Off to dinner.

Words of advice from one of our readers...!

Hi, Cal,

Just wanted to tell you I read your blog. Sue Orr, the VISTA who works for City Club Missoula (where I am chair of the Trustees) and who is my goddaughter’s mom, turned me on to it. You might remember me from the CBI in Helena. I was born in Glendive (my family lived next to St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church) although we left when I was quite young and I have only been back once as an adult. Your and Jess’s exposure to the people of Eastern Montana is going to change you and frame your view of life forever. You know that and it comes across in your blog. Keep up the good work. At the end of your time there, my bet is the community is going to conclude they were deeply enriched by your presence. Likewise, you are going to conclude you got back more than you gave.

Two things I want to alert you to. You may already be tuned in to them, but it will be worth it to hear of it again from a friendly person across this huge state of ours. First, in your associations with the locals, be on the lookout for someone who hunts agates. Beautiful agates are found in that area and having a ring or pin or earrings or whatever made from an agate you found yourself will be an immediate lifelong attachment to Glendive. People guard their agate sites like fisherman are secret about their favorite trout stream, but I know there is someone who can help you. If you find the agate, you can keep it and have the jewelry made whenever.

The second thing I want to mention is the winter weather. It gets mighty cold and windy in Glendive. Seriously. No, colder than you think. Make sure your home is weatherized, you have good boots, gloves, hats, coats, comforters, etc. If you rely on a vehicle, make sure it is winter weather ready. This January when you are out, amazed a bright sunny day that is -25 degrees, you will remember this. Best wishes to you and Jess,

Geoff Badenoch

Hard Red Spring Wheat and Millet

Alvin in the Millet

Alvin, hard red spring wheat

(It's all combined and harvested now!)

Life has been crazy busy...

currently in Regina (rhymes with 'fun'), CANADA for Rosh Hashanah services, with 4 other VISTAS

went to a drag queen coronation in our hotel, made lots of friends.

Services this morning, bruncheon, supper at the rabbi's house (he's from London, calls himself a spiritual leader)

Combined beans last week, corn is done (been decimated by the 'coons), put up hay...strange to be away from the farm in a big city, no less.

Regina is strangely beautiful. Museums today, shofar tomorrow.

Corn truck

Been pickin corn all week, selling at farmer's markets and gas stations. Exhausted. 

Saturday, the best day of the week

Had a perfect saturday yesterday:

Woke up early to set up the farmer's market - Bruce couldn't be there so we were on our own - I had picked 75lbs of yukon gold and red potatoes from our plot so I was excited to market them. Setting up the market is kind of stressful but completely manageable...there's just a lot of hauling stuff, supplies, food, scales in and out of the PDC. Everything is coming on right now (corn, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, onions) so it was the most successful market yet - tons of people, everyone in a good mood. What really made it was that we finally got some live music! Jess befriended Charlie at the tomato festival, a young newspaper reporter/musician from Indiana - we've been hanging out with him and he was psyched to play at the market. It totally livened up the scene and made it feel really festive...all the vendors were psyched and told us how much they liked having music. 

Met up with Alvin, who was selling his famous sweet corn, at the market. He wanted help with his bean combine and picking apples. He told me I could use his cider press if I picked his whole tree - it was breezy and sunny, perfect apple picking weather so I agreed. I don't think they can grow a lot of fruit out here, as in BIG fruit like apples and plums, berries are no problem but these apples were tiny. It was no Green Mountain orchard but they were still delicious. I picked from a couple hours and then went over to Alvin's cousin Neil's (kraut maker from a couple entries ago) and picked his crab apples. We hung out there for a while, juicing crab apples, looking a maps of Vermont and North Dakota and talking about the east and the west (this happens all the time, people get out maps to see where I am from, then we talk about our country a lot). Despite being a republican, Neil is a really great guy. (Alvin does this funny thing where every time I meet someone he whispers to me their political beliefs, he's like a political gossip queen) I just have never met so many pure, good hearted people - it's like this whole thing about "real america" is actually true! People ARE really nice! Americans DO help their neighbors and drink beer and shoot shit! 

Anyway, then we went out to get Alvin's bean combine out of storage. This combine is just for beans and the beans are coming on so it was time to crank it up. It was stored in some neighbor's shed and in order to get it to start they had to do a ton of mechanic stuff so I took a nap on some giant tractor tires. It was super beautiful out, not too hot, sunny, breezy - I lay on a tractor and fell asleep with the badlands all around me (I knew there was nothing I could contribute to their combine-fixing. Once they got it started up, I drove Alvin's truck back to the house so he could drive the combine. When we both got in I said to him, "Whew that was a big production," he turned to me and kind of laughed and said "That's just a part of farming, ya do this stuff everyday - move equipment, fix stuff, drive it around" I couldn't help but think about a certain ex-boyfriend of mine in that situation - trying to get something to start for an hour, trying to manuever a giant machine out of a garage by making small turns for 30 minutes - he would've been swearing and sweating and frustrated, totally not in control, impatient, and worse; ANGRY - Alvin was patient, calm, he wasn't angry or annoyed that the combine wouldn't start or that it was stuck in a garage, he just did what he had to do to move it. Simple. No short circuit temper involved. And when it was out, he was neither relieved nor emotionally exhausted, he was just glad he could start combining beans soon. Having a farmer's temperment is essential to farming, otherwise you burn out. I never thought about this before until yesterday. I don't know if I have that calmness, that solid quietness inside me. There might be too much fire...too much passion...

When we got back, I fed apples to the pigs and Alvin and Dena invited me to stay for dinner. Dena is a very interesting woman. While Alvin is talkative and fortcoming with any and all information, Dena is quiet and brooding - a very, very smart fiesty firey woman but it comes out in little spurts. They are quite an fascinating pair. I adore them. Dena is a phenomenal cook, I mean really amazing. She makes everything under the sun, relishes, james, cheeses, yogurts, just EVERYTHING. It turns out, you can make everything yourself and Dena does it. Anyway she made halibut that Alvin had caught in Alaska and fried okra and squash and cucumber yogurt salad and licorice icecream and homebrew. These people love food. In every way one can love food. Growing it, raising it, picking and preserving and canning and cooking and eating it. It's so wonderful. 

Alvin gave me some sweet corn for my neighbor Jessica Beacom, and he and Dena INSISTED on giving me jam, eggs, tomatoes, corn and even some Halibut - they kept asking me what else I needed; potatoes? Beets? flour? "Stop you guys, I'm fine! We can only eat so much!" "Oh please, we are looking after your well being"

Stopped at the Beacom's to drop off corn - ended up staying for an hour and half, getting a tour of their beautiful house that they are remodeling, looked at stunning photos of Jessica when she was pregnant with Lily, with Dean (her husband) resting his head on her stomach - they were such romantic, beautiful, loving photos I actually got emotional looking at them. They are such great people - I turned to Jessica and told her that looking at this album made want to have babies and build a house and be domestic, she just smiled.

I made a green tomato cake with raisins and walnuts and a cinnamon cream cheese frosting with toasted coconut flakes. And I won!!! $25 gift certificate to the local grocery store, a certificate and a trophy.

MMM.... beer

Livestock auction and Red Cabbage

Things have been busy busy since Jess and I returned from CBI in Helena. We checked out of CBI a bit early so we could go to the Art walk in Bozeman on the way home...and ended up staying with Rose Marks ! A friend of mine from highschool who has been going to Montana State U in Bozeman for a year. Rose showed us a good time and we ate sushi at Dave's Sushi and it was the first time Jess and I had gone out in a while (not really any restaurants in the Dive..). We saw lots of good and bad art and drank free wine all over town. Bozeman is a kind of upscale place, it turns out. Very funky but a bit yuppie and expensive, Rose said there's a lot of "gearheads" which translates to a lot of young people who only care about hiking, climbing and skiing and live to do those things.

We had a really great time but had to book it back to Glendive for the Dawson County fair! (We picked up 150# of purple hulless barley on the way though) As soon as we got back we were in Fair mode...we ran the Farm-to-Table booth all day saturday until 10:30pm and then again on Sunday until 5:00 pm. Met lots..and I mean LOTS of interesting people. Some whackos too. Got to talk to a variety of locals about farming and local food and what they believe in. Saw my first ranch rodeo. Ate funnel cake and hamburgers. The best part for me was the livestock auction. Do we even have this in VT? Everyone is dressed up for the fair, cowboy hats, cowboy boots, tucked in collared, ironed cowboy shirts...topped off with a giant belt buckle of course...and at the auction an MC stood in the center of a ring and spewed off numbers so fast I couldn't tell what he was saying let alone determine what language he was speaking. I found out that he was selling beef by the pound. "one dolla, dolla fifteen, dolla twenty, SOLD dolla thirtyfi" SO FAST and everyone had these cards that they kept track of what was being sold and how much etc. Pigs, Cows, Lambs. The deal with the livestock auction is that kids from 4H have raised each one of these animals from birth so they bring them out to the ring, walk them around and then the bidding begins - it's a sort of charity because the animals go for way above market price and people bid because they want the animal, they want to support the kid or both - if they don't want the animal they can resell it on the second go around for market price and the kid gets the money either way. It was very cool. Does Bennington even have a county fair???

Jess and I were kind of tired from the fair since we worked all weekend but we had to get ready for our first party at our house on Monday night - Erin, the extension intern, was finishing up her term so we had a combo goodbye barbeque/housewarming party at our place. Jess and I made sushi and she made steak and around 15 of our news friends came by with beer and food and strawberry daquiris and rhubarb wine, homemade vino and peach cobblers...a lot of foodies and their husbands/wives, kids - we felt like such little adults, throwing a bbq in our backyard with everyone sitting around the fire, socializing (not many people were under 30). Our bosses came (it actually feels weird to even call them our bosses but thats what Bruce and Peggy are I suppose) and everyone was just SO helpful, it was like we didn't have to do that much work at all. It's kind of strange the neighborly-ness of everyone. I guess I'm just not used to people being selfless and helpful basic strangers or something..

The party was super fun - we got emails the next day thanking us, so cute - especially from one of our favorite new friends Jessica Beacom, the dietician who we want to be BFF's with us. She's a super cool, foodie mama with an equally cool nurse husband (long red ponytail) and their kid, Lily - they moved here from Alaska and told me and Jess that they were psyched to have some young blood in the food scene here in Glendive...I'm hoping to work with Jessica B on my Eat-In and local food in schools program!

Yesterday I grinded flour and made my first ever radio appearance on the local stations as an advirtiser for the "First annual Glendive Tomato festival" (I was kind of nervous but they let me record it 3 times to get it just right). The Tomato fest is tonight! And Jess is entering a green tomato cake in the tomato contest...

We also made more sauerkraut last night, this time with Alvin's cousins - lovely people - beautiful evening of kraut making, beer drinking, truck bed riding.

Pictured here is: Alvin in the hat, his friend Lisa from Family Farmers coalition, Jess, Alvin's cousin Neil and myself. That wood thing is the cabbage shredder, a very cool invention designed just for kraut. Alvin warned me not to make any "red cabbage" (aka shredding my fingers.)

As a mixture of drool, butter, and juices of every little kernel on the cob trickle down my chin I declare today's lunch the best of all. It consisted of homemade raw vegan sunflower and pumpkin seed pate rolled in romaine leaves with tomatoes. Along with that was fresh sweet corn from alvins (the tomatoes and romaine from alvins as well). Before I get too into this blog I would like to address a couple of things. First off, I aplogize for not writing more. Cal has done a fantastic job and I will attempt to contribute more of my side of things. Secondly, I suck at grammar, spelling, and apostrophies. These are things I don't care about. Ask me to make you a burre blanc that won't break and now were talking (got it.... good.) I have posted a few pictures of things that have been keeping me very busy. Our awesome coffee table that cal haggled for $10 at the flea market, we brought home and i sanded and stained the whole thing. I love that table. The other two pictures are of our newest housemate. He goes by the name, Zappa Wibeaux. He is about 9 months old and was found in an abandoned trailer. He is a chocolate lab (I disagree) sharpe, terrier mix. We love him. Last weekend bruce and I went to helena for a meeting at the department of agriculture in helena. There were about five organizations total including us, all non-profits looking for $$. Actually the five organizations there are the ones that already got money and now just had to let them know how we were planning on using it. Bruce and I had breakfast at this awesome little place in downtown helena called "no sweat". We met his friend and her co-worker who also work for a non-profit. I listened to their conversation about grants and proposals and ate one of the best tofu scrambles i've had yet. After that we went to the dept of ag downtown. I sat there (the youngest by at least 20 years) took notes, and observed. I can't describe how important I felt. One minute working 16 hour days/nights sauteing seafood dishes for 400+ people in a 110 degree kitchen, the next sitting at a table at the dept of ag in the capital of montana talking non profit with a handlful of people that have been doing this their entire life! Oh, life... it's beautiful, always changing, and never dull. The meeting was from 10-2 (actually like 2:20 because this one lady wouldn't shut up about her personal questions). We left there and did a little thrifting. Thrifting: The act of shopping at a thrift store for things you don't really need but pretend you do because its so damn cheap. After that and a horrible trip to petco (which I choose not to discuss) we were on our way back to glendive WITH 500 LBS of FRESH CHERRIES. Don't ask me what happened, but bruce was talking to some lady and all of a sudden we are loading 500lbs of fresh cherries into the van. We got on the road and returned to glendive at around 2am with about 480lbs of fresh cherries, a stomach ache, and heavy eyes. This week has been fairly easy except for raising a puppy. Now me and cal have to leave tomorrow to go back to helena for CBI (which she already explained). I am beggining to loathe the ride to helena. Beautiful...of course it is, but beauty isn't so beautiful when stared at from a car for 7 hours. At least it will give us a chance to get some things we can't get here in the dive. That could be a whole seperate blog entry. How I've always lived in small towns, but have had access to just about anything within 1-2 hours. Here, if you need something, you order it offline, or wait for a trip to helena. Its good though because I don't spend any money when i'm here. Well, I'm getting up early tomorrow to drive to north dakota where our good friend cole is going to watch the pup for me while we're gone. Tonight: one more walk to the park and much needed sleep.

Long Day, "Thumb's Up"

Not sure why, really. Monday morning planning meeting...found out we had to go to Community Building Institute (i.e. more Americorps training) in Helena on thursday-friday. This means we have to leave wednesday night, it's an 8 hour drive. There's this funny thing about the west and the east sides of Montana, it kind of reminds me of how the rest of Vermont feels about Burlington. Burlington is some hippie oasis big city that is not in touch with the rest of the state or really have anything in common with the struggling, blue collar, farmers of the northeast or south. According to eastern Montanans, western montana is filled with the ominous "californians" also known as "dudes" (I learned this from Cole, who taught me about wranglers and dudes and dude wranglers the other night...dudes are tourists, dude wranglers are tourguides) and hippies and rich liberals and everything is "california prices" in the western part of the state...

Now I started talking about this because the west also forgets about the east. I'm in the east. Where there's more sagebrush per square mile than people, cattle or roads..and there's just not a lot going on out here. But "not a lot" is a relative term. Because I did SO much today. And the people I spent time with today were also doing SO MUCH...and it just felt like a lot was going on! What I'm trying to say is...it's totally ridiculous that Jess and I have to travel all the way west for an Americorps training that's barely even a day long, it's just totally biased and inconsiderate and even Americorps doesn't care if we have to drive 400 miles because we're in eastern montana and we don't matter.

So I dealt with getting ready for this CBI thing...which until today I thought we had gotten out of and it turns out we didn't so I had to do a bunch of paperwork answering questions about the progress of our non-profit and the state of our community/community need/deficit and the strategies that Farm-to-Table are implementing in order to deal with food insecurity.

watered potatoes and sweet potatoes.

looked at the fair grounds and saw where our booth is going to be (county fair is this friday-sunday, BIG deal)

got some things ready for Fair. going to try and be back from Helena early-ish friday so we can catch the Dawson county rodeo.

and finally...made it out to Alvins because we had a sauerkraut date and I had been looking forward to it all day. Jess bailed because she wanted to make a fence for OUR NEW PUPPY ZAPPA WIBAUX!!!!!!!! and so I made kraut with Alvin and his friend Bill and Bill's son Ben, we picked cabbages from the garden that were 5lbs each (at least), cut them in half, shredded 30 lbs of cabbage in this special cabbage sauerkraut shredder (specifically for this purpose, ingenious), and then I was in charge of mixing the shredded cabbage and 1 tablespoon of pickling salt for very 2 lbs of cabbage in this huge bin (my arms felt like they had spent too much time in the ocean, you know kind of stingy?). The pickling salt sucks out all the water from the cabbage so the cabbage starts to go limp and water foams all around and pretty soon I was literally up to my elbows in cabbage and cabbage salty foam and then that's it! We pressed it down and put a bag of water on top to seal it off so it could ferment. No water added. No spices or extra salt. Just the pickling salt, cabbage and something to seal it. It will sit for two weeks and then afterwards, Bill and Ben will have 30 lbs of kraut on their hands and God only knows what they're gonna do with it! (I suggested Christmas presents)

Alvin, Bill, Ben and I had a funny conversation while we were krauting (I just made that word up and it's pretty baller)...I told them that my parents hadn't known where Montana was when I moved out here, they literally had to look it up on a map because they didn't believe me when i told them "No, it does not border Colorado and Arizona". Bill was incredulous, perhaps even offended at this "You're parents are educated? Intellectuals you say?!?!" He had this ruddy face, and red hair (!) with a big belly but was clearly built like a cowboy, with boots and wrangler jeans and all and I was a bit scared when I thought I had actually offended him...(he makes saddles for a living, gorgeous saddles, all over his house) but then I asked him what state was south of VT and NH and he had NO IDEA. "Massachusetts! See?! Us east coasters aren't the only ones forgetting about the other half of the country" 

Bill's son had ripped off his thumb roping and Bill insisted he show it to me, where the thumb had been there was now Ben's second toe, sewn on. It was insane.

After kraut making, it was around 6pm and I thought I would grab some lettuce from Alvin's and head home. Oh no. Alvin had other plans. First we drove out to his wheat field and he made me guess how many acres of Spring Wheat he had. (The last time he did this with a hay field I had guessed 5 acres when it was 15...no sense of space and size out here) This time I was generous and guessed 150 acres when it was only 65. Well shit. Imma get better at it, jus gotta stare at sommore wheat fields thas all. We moved irrigation pipe so he could cut clover. Then he taught me how to drive the four wheeler (everyone drives them out here, it's like Thais with their motorcycles except its farmers with their ATVs), very fun and we went and picked some of the first ripe sweet corn of the season, picked lettuce, fixed an irrigation channel on the way home, drank a Heineken (laughed about Erin never drinking a Heineken, ha I love you Erin) and was back on Prospect dr. by 8...whew. 

On the drive home, saw the sun set over alfalfa on highway 10. There are not many things in the world that can make you feel that good.

Out to the field and down to the pasture

The last couple days I learned the ins and outs of Western Trails food and essentially how to operate your own food company. Check.

I mixed flapjack mixes in the measuring room and organized orders for Jess and Bruce's trip to Helena. Western Trails doesn't have a distributor, this means that we rely solely on people volunteering to drop off our products around the state whenever they go west. For five years it has worked because, as I'm learning more and more everyday, Montana is like a small town despite its size. Anyway, Shirley (our elderly volunteer paid by a federal program) and I ground flour and measured out rolled barley flakes and beans and flax seed, sealed bags and stamped sell by dates. Shirley is a wonderful woman, mother of 5, great grandmother of 2, her husband died of asthma in North Dakota 15 years ago - and she is so adorable and funny, really funny - anyway, Jess and I have been enjoying her quite a bit recently.

Today we got up early and picked raspberries at Sue Price's in Savage (so many) and then back in Glendive I mixed bags of rolled barley and flax seed with Shirley (we wear hairnets, labcoats and rubber gloves, it's great). Then Alvin called me to come down to his farm for our tractor driving lesson/onion pulling fest and I told him I had all these raspberries but didn't know what to do with them (seriously so many...jam? pie? wine?). When I got to Alvin's, he had prepared two pie crusts for his wife Dena's Raspbery Cheesecake Cream pie...ohhhhmaannnn. The rest of the afternoon went as follows:

Tractor lesson. (I drove a combination automatic/standard John Deere around Alvin's field, down shifted, up shifted reversed! The whole deal! Alvin is a great teacher and LOVES explaining things in painstaking but necessary detail, very patient and thorough in the way that so many farmers are...detail detail detail - encouraging, safe)

Raspberry mashing.

Onion de-weeding.

Irrigation channel fixing.

Pie making, cream cheese mixing, pie filling

Sheep herding, beer drinking, shit shooting

Bed Sleeping.

read this article in NYTimes today by Michael Pollan

Our weekend; Farmer's Market, Fort Peck

Sailing with our boss in Fort Peck, MT

This is me concentrating really hard on steering the boat (Mike Iba would yell at me when we zigzagged. It felt like home) Mike and Jess in the background. The Ibas (my boss) are wonderful people who invited us to their lakehouse for the weekend.

More steering and chilling

Land ho

Waterskiing at Fort Peck, a little terrified

Then I got the hang of it (Mike and Peggy)

When you waterski, everyone in the boat watches you the whole time. It's embarrassing so I laughed a lot.

Jess didn't waterski. Jess drank beer.

Peggy Iba, my boss, pictured here was at one time the "best skiier on the lake"

Drive up to Fort Peck, baaaadddddlannnndssss and straight roads

Farmer's market

Jess, Cal and Erin at the Farmer's Market

One of my favorite families I've met in Glendive, the Tennants! They make cinnamon buns and fry breads every saturday during the farmer's market and are super involved in foodie stuff here. The kids are awesome.

Jess talking with the Tennants, behind them you can see one of our hoop houses

The Farmer's Market is held right in front of where I work, the Prairie Development Center or PDC - here it is pictured. That's a powerplant next to a wealth of organic food. Let's not talk about it.

Cole Germann, the superintendent's son, came by one night and taught us how to "jitterbug". He trains horses in western North Dakota and sleeps on our couch sometimes. He's taking us shooting soon and said he would teach us how to ride in his free time! Oh, Cole, you cowboy you...(we have the same size feet)

To Mom on Monday night, 10:14 p.m.

very proud of you mom. I think this is most definitely a step in the right direction.

My heart strings were aching to talk to everyone tonight...whats funny is that it hurt so much mostly because I knew exactly what it was like, I knew what jokes were being made and what you were eating and what people were thinking and who was sad and who was drunk...and right now, I don't even know what I am going to do tomorrow! Every day brings something new. And I keep learning abotu myself. it is so strange to discover new things about yourself. and about america. and about humanity in general. but especially about america! i do get sad when i think about my friends and family, it seems unfair to not be able to love what your doing and have everyone you love around you at the same time..but I guess I've just switched places from new york to montana and thats what happens. I, too, am applying to grad school...but more on that later...

I saw Into the Wild over the weekend and it had the most profound, unnerving, anxiety provoking, inspiring, heartwrenching effect on me...have you seen it? I can't stop thinking about it, I cried for almost 40 minutes afterwards, it was so intense for me. If you see it or already have, I would like to know your thoughts on why it affected me so much...I have some ideas but I can't figure it out.

My vegan roomate made me steak tonight that I bought from a family at the farmer's market, it was quite good. I haven't had a meal that wasn't completely sourced by (almost entirely) local food since I've been here...(the exceptions: almond milk, crackers, olive oil, veggie burgers, cheese). Tomorrow the funders come and we have been preparing intensely for their visit to wow the pants off them and give us lots of money...its a really funny balance we are trying to strike with these foundations, we want to show them that we are smart and respectable and have lots of potential but also that we are a poor, struggling, and desperate community that needs their money. How to do both? It's strange...

Anyway, I'm going to bed. I love you and think of you everyday. Really and truly. Eat some kohlrabi for me, it'll make you go nuts.

xo c

P.S. this is what it looks like where I live

Who's Your Farmer?

Jess bought a skateboard off of a 10 yr old kid
(if you want one of these bumper stickers lemme know)

Our 7ft tall boss, Bruce Smith, hoeing potatoes

"Hello irrigation channel"

Planting basil in the hoop house

This is our beautiful farm! (that's me, hoeing peppers)

Western Trails food products (westerntrailsfood.com)

Mostly barley derived foods; barley flour, barley pancake and waffle mix, barley breads...all barley grown in MT. Also, Rustler BBQ sauce is the bomb.

Jess modeling our Farm-to-Table shirts at work

Raspberry crew in Savage, MT
We picked approx 10 lbs that day

As erin winds wildly through the open road of route 16 towards savage, cal and I watch dirt clouding behind us in the rear view mirrors, gripping on to door handles and anything grabbable. Alright, maybe thats a bit dramatic, but it was a little intense. We took off early this morning, out and about by 7:30am headed to savage to pick raspberries. A lady named sue told bruce her raspberry bushes are growing faster than she could pick them, so he sent us to help. Three flats of raspberrys later we are all smiling in a field hyped up on coffee with red stains all over our clothes. We took a mini road trip to sydney when we were done to check out a couple of stores and an agate shop/museum in savage. note: agate is a is a microcrystalline variety of quartz (silica), chiefly chalcedony, characterised by its fineness of grain and brightness of color. They are crazy about them here, finding them, tumbling them, and showing them off. They are in fact beautiful if I do say to myself, and I may just be making a necklace out of one when bruces batch is finished tumbling. It was quite a productive day, and being back at the office in front of the computer I am realizing how exhausted I am. Something huge happened today though. I got a call from our landlord (I've been waiting for this call) and he said I can have a dog! I have been on the phone with the eastern montana humane society waiting to here from my landlord so I can adopt a puppy from them. Not sure exactly which one i'm going to get yet, but something of a black lab/husky or lab/collie mix.... about 1 year old. Its going to be a lot of work and very stressful, tiring, and time consuming but i've been waiting for this for a few years now (a stable/settled lifestyle) so I am ready for it. I didn't tell the landlord about the firepit or the painted walls, but some things its ok to just not mention. The only coffee shop closed at 2pm today and I am literally nodding off. Ohhh, I had my meeting with the dean at dawson community college and a women who is the leader of continuing education at the school yesturday and it went REALLY well. They loved my ideas for a cooking class and want to plan and talk further about getting it up and running. If all goes as planned, by fall I will be teaching a credited semester college class. This is obviously more than I planned to happen by age 22 but hey, i'm ready for anything. The only thing i'm worried about it trying to get a bunch of college kids to listen to a teacher that looks like she could be there little sister. With my fire sign aries attitude, i'm not too concerned though. Well now that i'm back in the office, I should probably get some things done. tonight: mojitos with fresh mint from the garden and celebrating our $145,000 state grant that just went through!!! wooooo community kitchen here I come!

Listening to Jess play my banjo in the kitchen - of course she's never played the banjo before but that doesn't stop her from picking it up and immediately strumming away, clinking plucking dinging in a way I have never been able to even after a year. Some people are just talented.

Monday morning meeting: lasted for over an hour as Bruce, Peggy, Erin, Jess and I gushed ideas and talked about the future and exciting things while we tried to talk about what we were doing for the rest of the week...picking raspberries early tomorrow!

Weeded onions at Alvin's in the morning, the field had been irrigated so at least the weeds were easy to pull up. The onions are in the most serious trouble - last week Bruce said he was just going to "spray em with roundup" and I convinced him to let me weed them instead. Alvin came by and showed me how to set up the irrigation channel for the millet and we moved the irrigation dams and fixed the channels. I like him. a lot. He couldn't help but continue our political gush-session from friday and started in on reagan again

"..aw man, them republicans, they were smart to pick that Reagan, I mean OH BOY he was a poster child"

and then I told him about the Eat-In school lunch campaign I'm going to start (via Josh Viertel, Slow Food because he asked me to and their campaign was missing Montana and he kind of guilted me into it...in the best of ways I'm sure) and Alvin leans over to me and whispers, even though we are in the middle of millet field in the middle of nowhere.."I know who you can talk to on the legislature in town...a little secret, 95% of the courthouse is on OUR side" and he winks. Yes, I really like him.

After lunch I worked on getting together the Eat-In and brainstorming about what it would entail, watered the sweet potatoes at the community garden and weeded the other potatoes and then I started making/painting a huge "welcome" sign for the community garden. It's kind of ugly...yellow and purple...but we have all this free paint in the basement and I just got so excited to use it and and and...

Some exciting things that happened today:

Jess and I got our food stamp cards and we each have about $120 EACH to spend on food a month. omgomgomgomgomomg

I got my health insurance card

I got reimbursed by Americorps AND my first stipend (aka I feel richer than I have in MONTHS)

Jess made me go on a wild goose chase after work today...let's just say we ended up at a pet store/adult entertainment store/head shop in a trailer park. Kind of scary. Definitely smelly.

Peggy, our boss, invited Jess and I to her LAKE HOUSE this friday. omg. We're going. Obviously.

Jess is making fried rice because we were craving chinese food and just couldn't let ourselves do it so we'll see how this vegan version turns out, it'll be no Ollie's but a girl can dream.

Helped run the farmer's market this morning - more vendors than last week but still not many...probably four? Any ideas on how to spice up a farmer's market and make it more exciting? Jess and I are thinking live music...

ran around town doing errands and buying things, exhausted, sunburned (still) sweaty and tired. Going to make mojitos with the mint we picked this morning and carve out a fire pit in the back. We are oober domesticated these days. And now jess wants a puppy....

Note: when working outside all day, wear sunscreen.

I'm an official redneck right now - SO BURNED. Today was long and wonderful. Erin, Tim and I transplanted tomatoes and peppers all morning and then Alvin and Bruce hooked up the irrigation system and turned it on - it was actually a really exciting moment. It's pretty funny to have left the east coast in a rainy cold wet summer to come here to a hot dry and dusty one. The land we are working on has been dry land farmed as long as anyone can remember. That means it's never been irrigated and was probably growing winter wheat or sugar beets. It also means that this is the driest soil I've ever touched and everything immediately dies. When we turned on the water today it was so exhilarating to see our little transplants and crops suddenly swim in water, you could just feel their roots breathing a breath of fresh air and drinking it all up. We dug irrigation channels along our crops for the rest of the afternoon - the potatoes were the longest and took the most amount of time. Jess and I ended up taking off our shoes and running down the potato rows with hoes and digging ditches. Bruce bought us beer and mike's hard lemonade (he drinks it, it's hilarious) because it's friday and it's hot and boring to dig ditches. Because the soil is so dry, nothing lives in it, no worms or creepy crawlies, and also because it's been tilled and farmed for the last 20 years - there's no rocks or animals - so when the water gets in the dirt, we would literally sink almost to our knees between the rows!

I also transplanted basil for me and Jess in the hoop house at the PDC.

At the end of the day we all took off our shoes and drank beer in the irrigation channel. Alvin Hoff came over and invited us back to his place. Jess said it already but...this man is phenomenal. He looks like the farm version of Craig Battle. We hung out with him and toured his gardens for over an hour, got a little drunk on homemade grape wine and talked about Ronald Reagan being the worst president for agriculture. I could have died happy. His wife was also sweet, long blonde hair and off to Kentucky for a family farmers conference with Wendell Berry! Alvin grows way more stuff than he can eat but he won't sell any of it. Instead, he barters it all away. Some homemade brew here, some manual labor there...he asked me to help him with the lambing (they have 250 lambs) this fall (because, as he put it, "women are better with the livestock ya know...") in exchange for some wine and veggies. I obviously agreed.

Jess and I drove back exhausted, sunburned, and completely happy, screaming songs from the oldies station (the only station in Glendive besides Jesus rock) with all the windows open.

life is exactly how it should be.

My teeth are red from homeade rhubarb wine. My skin is the same color, but from the blistering sun. After we left the office we went back to our acres of land at alvins to dig channels and repair the ones that already existed. Cal went back to get the car and I rode back to alvins on his four wheeler with him. Alvin is the first liberal we've met yet, which was a catalyst for an hour long talk of politics. He has a beautiful farm with about 450 acres of land, sheeps, pigs, homeade beer and wine and a heart of gold. He let us pick a weeks supply of greens from his garden, cleaned and bagged it. For the first time in my life I feel like everything is right. It is all exactly how it should be, and it feels so good to be here now.....

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