by Liz Carlisle
Closer to Canada than it is to the nearest town, the Crabtrees’ dizzyingly diverse farm is cold, windy, and smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. Aside from a few conventional farming neighbors, the only thing around is an abandoned air force base. The shadow of the spooky surveillance radar station doesn’t look like the most auspicious place to launch a bold model for the future of dryland farming. But fortysomethings Doug and Anna have a track record of assiduously avoiding easy roads. Sometimes, the Crabtrees have found themselves navigating life’s potholes out of necessity. If Doug’s family farm hadn’t gone bankrupt in the eighties, he might still be tending one of the largest cash-grain operations in Ohio. On the other hand, he might not. The main reason Doug and Anna are out here seeding the north forty appears to be their sheer stubbornness. Headstrong even for Montana, the Crabtrees share an unflinching commitment to the gold standard of green living.
Unlike cautiously politic Casey Bailey, I quickly learned, Doug and Anna made no apologies about sticking their noses in other people’s business. In her off-farm life, Anna was a sustainable operations director for a federal agency, and she wasn’t afraid to tell managers to change their procurement policies or power down their computers over the weekend. Doug was a veteran organic inspector who had observed and evaluated hundreds of farms and processing facilities throughout the northern plains—candidly.
In fact, it was Doug’s job that had put Dave Oien on the Crabtrees’ radar. As director of the state of Montana’s organic certification program, Doug had been among the first to learn that Timeless Seeds had moved into a new facility in Ulm and was seeking new growers. He and Anna had been talking for years about buying a farm, and they could envision how it might come together—diverse rotations, high-value specialty crops, ecological management. Unfortunately, the farm the Crabtrees saw in their mind’s eye was sort of like the maddeningly elusive picture on top of a puzzle box—upon opening the box, they’d had difficulty finding the right pieces to construct their intended whole. The right land. The right financing. The right markets. Trying to find all these pieces at once was a daunting proposition, and it didn’t help to be organic. But the expansion of Timeless Seeds—a local company that actually wanted to buy the stuff the Crabtrees wanted to grow—was like that key corner piece that made it seem feasible to assemble the rest of the jumble into a workable picture. The Crabtrees took an epic road trip, scouting available land as far north as Alberta and as far east as North Dakota. At long last, in 2009, they closed on two sections of land, twenty-four miles north of Havre. Doug and Anna named their new place Vilicus Farms, after the Latin word for farmer, or rather the other Latin word for farmer. Most Latin textbooks used agricola, which translated to English as “one who labors on the land,” Doug explained. But he and Anna preferred vilicus, which more nearly described their notion of a farmer: One who belonged to the land and was honor bound to care for it.
THE 250-MILE COMMUTE
Sporting Carhartt jeans and two layers of fleece, Anna admired the subtle early-season stirrings of her austere surroundings. Waxing poetic over the smallest signs of life in her sleepy-looking field, she noted a ladybug clinging to a delicate blossom. “Isn’t it beautiful here?” she exclaimed.
I had to laugh. Getting out in nature on the weekends is the big prize for professionals like Anna who land plum jobs in the heart of Big Sky Country. But for reasons her officemates still struggled to fathom, Anna had skipped over the world-class wilderness available just minutes from her desk in Helena and instead invested her upper-middle-class income in the opportunity to drive 250 miles every weekend to “farm camp.” While her friends enjoyed lakeside cabins and mountain ski chalets, Anna delighted in the musty rental where she and Doug had spent all their free time for the past four years. Tall and confident, Anna juggled a farm, a full-time job, and a very active presence on the Timeless Seeds board.
When she’d joined the Timeless board in 2010, Anna had pushed Dave to think beyond the farm to the food system. Could the company improve the sustainability of its products at other points in their life cycle? Where were the bottlenecks in the operation? Could Timeless eliminate them by bringing more capacity in-house? Anna celebrated when the business finally got its first state-of-the-art color sorter in January 2012, thanks to a particularly supportive distributor who financed it. There was a definite whiz-bang factor to this gadget, which used an electric eye to identify off-color lentils and sort them out of the batch with a mighty puff of compressed air. But the color sorter was also an essential component of the Timeless production chain. The truth was, when farmers delivered their Black Belugas to the plant in Ulm, they weren’t all black. Inevitably, some portion of the lentils had split open, revealing their yellow insides—and there was almost always some errant wheat and barley in the batch as well. The chefs who were popularizing Timeless Seeds’ nitrogen-rich legumes as haute cuisine were paying for black lentils, not yellow ones, and they were unlikely to appreciate it if their order contained complimentary wheat and barley seed. So, before shipping its product out to customers, Timeless had to sort out any lentils that weren’t picture-perfect—and anything that wasn’t a lentil.
At first, the company had struggled along with the only machines they could afford—a leased color sorter from Costa Rica and a used model they bought from a friend in Canada—both of which were in constant need of repair. Then they’d gotten a lucky break: A nearby grain plant had installed its own 500,000-dollar color sorter and agreed to work in Timeless product on a fee-for-service basis. But there, to Anna’s consternation, the lentils had languished—sometimes for months. Since the Timeless color-sorting order was such a minor part of the larger processor’s business, it was not a priority, which meant Dave’s entire inventory rested on when—and whether—things at the other facility happened to be slow. So it was a huge relief to both Anna and Dave when Timeless installed a machine of its own, one that actually worked. Now that Timeless had its own color sorter, they could separate Black Belugas from cracked Belugas themselves, whenever they needed to. It seemed like a trivial victory, but with every added measure of self-determination, the lentil underground gained more ability to focus on its mission.
Pulling apart leaves and digging up roots, Anna herded three spirited Jack Russell terriers, matching the nervy dogs’ unflagging energy with her running narrative of observations. The lentil scout’s long blond hair was pulled back in braids, and she was wearing work gloves so she could use every spare moment to pull a few weeds. Accustomed to making things happen, Anna epitomized the expression “hands-on.” Sure, she could earn a comfortable living sitting behind a desk churning out spreadsheets, but she’d rather be driving a tractor and running a grease gun.
Doug Crabtree was even more in love with this place than his wife was. Having spent two decades on other people’s farms—as a tenant, researcher, and organic inspector—he was overjoyed to be tilling ground of his very own. “Overjoyed” was probably a better adjective for Anna than it was for Doug, who spoke in a deliberate Ohio drawl (if, indeed, there is such a thing). The stockier, more staid Crabtree didn’t wear his excitement on his sleeve to quite the extent that his wife did. But the intensity of Anna’s running commentary was reflected in her husband’s piercing gaze. Together, they made an imposing duo.
The Crabtrees’ color-coded field maps and detailed rotation spreadsheet hinted at Doug’s day job: organic certification program manager for the Montana Department of Agriculture. In 1999, a first-term state senator from Big Sandy named Jon Tester had carried a bill to create a state-administered certification program, and Doug had been hired to build and manage it. The veteran organic inspector’s first day in his new Helena office had been a bit of a culture shock—not so much for Doug as for his colleagues. At first, they’d felt right at home with the midwestern farm product, who’d seemed like a regular steak-and-gravy kind of guy. But when the staff hit the break room at noon, Doug had whipped out a meal unlike anything they’d ever seen, ful
l of dubious vegetables and exotic spices. “Nobody steals my lunch, because they don’t know what it is,” Doug told me. “They ask, though, because it smells so good.” A decade later, Doug’s colleagues still weren’t sure what to think of his lunch, but they had to respect his management acumen. Having seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of agricultural record keeping, Doug clearly took pride in Vilicus Farms’ tidy, precise system.
According to the Crabtrees’ map, their farm was divided into sixty-eight strips, separated by pollinator plantings that provided habitat for native bees. Each strip had been seeded according to its cropping history and soil conditions, with the typical sequence proceeding from spring grain to green manure to fall grain to oilseed to edible legume. Since Vilicus Farms averaged a minuscule 11.47 inches of annual precipitation, the Crabtrees’ primary goal with this rotation was to build soil organic matter to better hold precious water. Replenishing nutrients and organic matter came in a close second, hence all the legumes and green manures (preferably less thirsty varieties). As I’d discovered when trying to make cell phone calls from the Crabtrees’ fields, it was quite windy north of Havre, so the crop sequence also served to reduce erosion. Finally, cycling through so many species kept the bugs and the weeds from getting too comfortable. Doug and Anna rattled off several more reasons why it was agronomically advisable to seed this or that crop—saline seep, songbirds, soil carbon—but that was all gravy.
For the 2012 season, the Crabtrees were using sixteen different plants to accomplish this series of lofty objectives, but they’d selected this year’s planting from a staggering twenty-four-crop repertoire identified in their rotation plan. As the document acknowledged, the future of any one of the Crabtrees’ strips could shift according to an ever-fluctuating cast of variables: nitrogen levels, weed pressure, rainfall—and, of course, markets.
POWDERED FLAX AND PROCESSING PEAS
At ten thirty P.M., a Honda hybrid with TIMELSS plates rolled into farm camp. It was Dave Oien—a bit later than expected, but bearing a carton of organic eggs and a fresh batch of granola. Timeless Seeds’ CEO had made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Conrad to conduct the first field visit of the 2012 season and negotiate contracts for the three crops he was buying from Vilicus Farms: emmer, flax, and Black Beluga lentils. Although Anna, Doug, and Dave unanimously voted to save the business conversations for morning, they couldn’t resist launching into a discussion over a late-night snack. The impassioned exchange crystallized the tensions of transitioning from underground movement to aboveground enterprise.
Dave had just returned from a trade show in China, and he was excited about a potential Asian buyer for one of his pulse crops. “I think the pea deal might work out,” he told the Crabtrees, cheerfully.
“What are they using them for?” queried Anna, who always seemed to have a question.
“They’re processing them for nutritional supplements,” Dave responded.
“Is that really the answer? Processing? Is that sustainable?” Anna’s voice quickened and amplified with each word.
But Dave had a question of his own. “What are you eating?” Timeless Seeds’ CEO asked his most tenacious board member.
“Potato chips,” Anna admitted.
“That’s reality,” Dave continued. “Processed food. Ninety percent of the products that we sold to Taiwan—your flax being one of them—were powdered.”
It was near midnight, but Anna could not go gently into the dark realities of the global food system. With a principled resolve that must have reminded Dave of his own forty-three-year-old self, she shot him a look that said, “I didn’t give up my weekends and my life savings to sell powdered flax to Taiwan.” If sufficient local markets for whole foods weren’t readily available, then Anna was determined to create them. She was partnering with a young nutrition professor from Montana State, who had already hatched plans to host a series of three workshops for Montana chefs about the health benefits and culinary potential of organic lentils. Meanwhile, Anna and Doug had worked so hard to develop a relationship with their most supportive chef that the woman had given the Crabtrees the first piece of furniture for their new farmhouse: a baking table. Even farm-to-table wasn’t good enough for the Crabtrees. They were so deep into reciprocal relationships with their buyers that they were literally bringing the table back to the farm.
I thought Dave might roll his eyes at Doug and Anna’s direct-market evangelism, having been there and done that. But he welcomed Anna’s energy, glad that someone other than himself was taking on the lentil underground’s grunt work. Still, Dave hoped to shield this younger version of himself from burnout. “Don’t you get tired sometimes?” he asked Anna, with a knowing smile. Anna didn’t hesitate. “You do what you gotta do to live your dream,” she replied. In this case, what Anna had to do was go to bed, since it was past midnight and the trio had already scheduled a six thirty A.M. contract negotiation. By the time the boys rolled out of bed on Monday morning, Anna had already fired up three burners, infusing farm camp with the smell of garlic and the sizzle of cast-iron skillets.
“CAN’T WE JUST DO A SCHEDULE?”
While Dave munched on a veggie scramble, Doug and Anna laid out the terms they wanted to see in their contract. At a minimum, they wanted to get paid on time for their crop—or count on a guaranteed interest payment if Timeless was behind. Similarly, Doug and Anna hoped to establish a contractually stipulated storage fee that would kick in if Dave missed their agreed-on date for crop delivery. Ideally, the Crabtrees wanted to see the Timeless plant run on a predetermined calendar, so they could plan ahead. “Can’t we just do a schedule?” Anna asked. “Say, this is when all the Belugas come in, pick your month?”
Doug and Anna’s ultimate goal, however, was to get paid based on the number of acres they seeded rather than the pounds of harvested crop they delivered. Although this way of paying farmers was a radically new proposition for wholesale buyers, Anna and Doug pointed out that direct-market consumers had been doing this for decades—through community supported agriculture. Increasingly popular with the local food crowd, CSAs were essentially farm subscriptions, in which the subscriber paid up front for a season of produce and received weekly boxes of whatever the farmer was able to successfully harvest. If individual consumers could afford to share risk with farmers in this way, Doug and Anna reasoned, surely wholesalers and processors could too. The Crabtrees had already negotiated one such contract for their durum wheat—with an organic pasta company. Now they were hoping to do the same for their lentils.
“Frankly, Timeless Seeds is a big reason we decided to do this and do it here in Montana,” Doug told Dave. “We want to see Timeless grow and succeed.”
“But we need a more clear road map and plan,” Anna added, tag-teaming. “Maybe it’s just the engineer in me.”
CREATIVE CAPITAL
Dave liked the idea of buffering his growers from the layered uncertainties of (1) farming (2) specialty (3) organic crops. But the problem was, Timeless Seeds didn’t have enough of a buffer from those uncertainties itself. Because Dave and his three farmer partners had launched the company at a time when organic food was not considered a legitimate business model in Montana, they’d never properly capitalized. Since none of them had money and banks wouldn’t lend to them, they couldn’t set up Timeless Seeds as a formal cooperative, even though they were sharing time, money, and equipment. So the Timeless boys had chartered the business as a Montana C Corporation and raised money from friends who’d chosen more lucrative occupations. Those friends—mostly AERO members—had become shareholders in the new “corporation,” whose dividends consisted of a Christmas package of lentils every few years. In the days before Kickstarter, when the Internet was still in its infancy, crowd-funding depended on being able to locate an actual crowd—the very thing north-central Montana was known for not having.
Still functioning like a young start-up after twenty-five years in business, Timeless Seeds’ biggest handicap was that th
ey didn’t have a line of credit. Operating exclusively on cash flow, the shoestring company’s only option was “pay as you can,” and certain times of the season were leaner than others. Dave hated to see tardy checks and unpredictable delivery schedules stretch farmers’ tight budgets, and he was open to establishing penalties for late payment and delivery. The risk of a CSA-style contract, however, was more than he could absorb. The scale of his growers’ operations—determined to some extent by the scale of the farm economy around them, from which they were never wholly independent—was simply too large in relation to the size of his business. “It would be neat to do what the pasta company does,” Dave said to the Crabtrees, “but you’ve got to have a lot of money to do that. You have to be able to spread it out over lots of growers. It could kill us if a grower got hailed out and we still had to pay them.”
The prospect of a predetermined schedule for cleaning and storing each type of lentil, one variety at a time, posed a similar difficulty. Given Timeless Seeds’ limited operating budget, the company didn’t have enough money to buy ahead on its thirty products—or enough warehouse space to store extra inventory. So Dave attempted to schedule deliveries from growers according to orders from buyers, which were maddeningly hard to predict. Restaurants, in particular, tended to place small, mixed orders, which fluctuated wildly according to food trends and consumer taste. Specialty distributors were just one step up the food chain from restaurants, chasing the same trends—and neither were eager to store extra product in their own warehouses, which were often located in high-rent areas like New York or San Francisco.