Lentil Underground

by Liz Carlisle

  “FARMING IS A PROFESSION”

  I’d first met this indefatigable couple in their home in Helena on a snowy Memorial Day weekend in 2012, the only time off they’d had since January. The foul weather had prevented the Crabtrees from driving up to their farm, which had been a relief to Anna but a source of anxiety for Doug. “You know those webcams some people have to keep tabs on their kids?” Anna said. “We need to get Doug one of those for our crops.” Doug was online doing the next best thing: farm research. While Anna and I ate breakfast, Doug tried to ascertain how to make John Deere planters seed sunflowers.

  This was the next institution the Crabtrees wanted to tackle: the implement dealer. “We don’t want this great big equipment,” Anna explained. “We’re working with this one-size-fits-all industry, but the key to sustainability is that it has to fit your place.” Frustrated with the direction of modern equipment manufacturing, Anna and Doug were forever hunting down older, smaller machines and modifying them to suit their unique farm system.

  Russ Salisbury had explained this equipment issue to me too, I told Anna, seizing the opportunity to share some juicy tidbits from my research. As I’d walked through Russ’s impressive stockpile of used and unused machinery, the ex-mechanic had pointed out several of his improvised contraptions. “Barley’s simple,” Russ had told me. “Everything works for wheat and barley, because that’s what it’s made for.” But since Russ wanted to undersow clover and alfalfa into his barley, he’d had to experimentally remodel seeding drills year after year until he hit on something that worked. Bud Barta had made his own seeder too, I discovered, as had Farm Improvement Club program manager Nancy Matheson. I got the sense that for these stalwart AERO members, such DIY gadgetry was more than a necessity; it was a point of pride. While flipping through the fall 1997 issue of the Sun Times, I’d spotted a picture of Russ next to a science fair–esque contraption, which he was gleefully contributing to the organization’s live auction. “From last year’s generator to this year’s garden seeder,” the photo was captioned.

  Anna listened politely as I recounted these stories, but her vision of making do was a little different. Instead of a jerry-rigged generator, she wanted an iPhone app and a spreadsheet.

  I’d never had the gall to ask Anna directly, but I had a pretty good hunch she’d been a straight-A student all through high school, college, her master’s, and her PhD. She moved in circles where it was simply expected that offices would come stocked with snazzy monitors, homes with high-speed Internet and low-flow toilets. Anna worked just as hard as her colleagues did and took her job just as seriously. So she got frustrated with the assumption that choosing to farm was a de facto vow of poverty. As much as not getting the loan, that’s what had really irked the Crabtrees at the bank. Farm Credit Services had raised an eyebrow at their living expenses, which included insurance, retirement savings, and the house payment on their place in Helena. The second-career farmers didn’t see why they should have to defend their middle-class standard of living, but they knew the problem was bigger than one stingy loan officer.

  “I think farming is a profession and you should be compensated as a professional, but that’s a hard argument to make not only to financers but to other farmers,” Doug said, looking up from his laptop. “There’s an assumption in the ag community that you’re supposed to struggle for the first forty years until you get the land paid for, and then you get to coast—apparently into retirement if you live long enough—by extracting enough rent from the next generation so that they’re sure to struggle the way you did. At some point, there’s got to be a better way.”

  Anna and Doug didn’t think citizens’ groups were enough to change this vicious cycle of rural debt. Although the Crabtrees belonged to the Alternative Energy Resources Organization, Doug was encouraging his fellow AERO growers to join the Organic Trade Association too. Instead of Farm Improvement Clubs funded by 800 dollars in philanthropic capital, Doug envisioned an OTA-supported organic “checkoff” program, modeled after those for agricultural commodities. If just a few cents of each retail organic purchase were siphoned into a dedicated account, he calculated for me, such a checkoff could support 30 million dollars for research and promotion. These were the kind of numbers you needed to make a difference, the Crabtrees felt.

  “NONE OF THOSE GUYS EVER TALKED ABOUT RATIOS”

  While an underground existence held a certain romance for folks like Russ Salisbury, the Crabtrees wanted to see their approach go mainstream. As we discussed financing and equipment, it became clear that Doug and Anna’s goal was to propel Timeless from movement to enterprise. They wanted to scale up to the point that their stewardship could make a consequential impact. They wanted a decent income. And they wanted what Dave and Sharon had never had: a normal life.

  “Dave is a great guy,” Anna told me, “but he’s got a degree in religious studies and this is not about making money for him. Whereas, for Doug and I, this is a business that supports us making money and living a good life.”

  On second thought, Anna wondered if she’d been too harsh and asked if I found her analysis unfair. But Dave had already told me much the same thing when I’d visited with him three weeks earlier in his own kitchen.

  “I’m a religious studies major,” Dave had said. “When I tell the bank what we pay our growers, they say this or that ratio isn’t high enough for a commercial loan. I don’t even know what they mean. These loan officers were business majors; they went to school for that. I did Heidegger and Black Elk. None of those guys ever talked about ratios.”

  Although Anna’s inner engineer and Doug’s inner ag economist routinely clashed with Dave’s inner Zen master, the boyish old-timer was just as grateful for the Crabtrees’ advice as he was for his accountant wife. Jostling back and forth between big ideas and little details, the unlikely allies worked out ways to go against the grain without sacrificing their livelihoods. Still, the Crabtrees weren’t sure Dave had ever really moved beyond a black medic lens on the universe, a perspective so radically bottom-up that no one could say with certainty which seeds were going to germinate, or when. “Dave’s idea of change is that you’re still this little thing and others pick up on your idea and move with it,” Doug told me. “Our idea of change is that you are the one that does it and scales it up.”

  GRAD SCHOOL FOR FARMERS

  While they wrestled with Dave over the operational logic of Timeless Seeds, Anna and Doug were also working on their own strategy for scaling up the lentil underground: an incubator program for new growers. The structured three-to five-year apprenticeship would function like a professional master’s or doctoral degree for beginning farmers, who would complete a series of courses and a capstone project, just like budding executives and engineers. Such an incubator could double as a “Rodale of the Northern Plains” for diversified farming systems science, inspired by the famous organic research facility in Pennsylvania. The Crabtrees even imagined converting the abandoned village surrounding the surveillance radar station into student dorms. A serious incubator program, they explained to Dave, could potentially solve a lot of the problems they’d been talking about.

  To begin with, the Crabtrees’ “Rodale of the Northern Plains” could address at least a piece of the research problem. Doug and Anna had supported the efforts of several other Timeless farmers to raise money through a nonprofit Organic Advisory and Education Council, but that group, much like the early AERO Ag Task Force, had been focused mostly on lobbying Montana State University researchers to study low-input systems, rather than commissioning or conducting its own studies. For once, the Crabtrees wanted to see their values steer the discourse. They were sick of tugging at a big ship that was anchored in an entirely different mooring.

  Germinating a like-minded circle of farmers could also solve some of their equipment woes, Doug and Anna reasoned. Once their numbers reached a critical mass, these farmers could invest in a fleet of custom machines and share with one another. Such resources migh
t even be managed by a formal cooperative, which could go a long way toward solving the financing problem. “It would be so much easier to be a beginning farmer if you could go down the road even fifty miles and trade work with another one or share equipment,” Doug said, wistfully. “But we’re the only ones within two hundred miles doing what we’re doing. Sometimes I feel like I’m on an island.”

  Doug and Anna were philosophically committed to organics, and they’d built both a farm and a business that manifested their vision. But there was a fourth step to conversion: building a supportive community. As Doug and Anna’s litany of frustrations made clear, even a solid group of collaborative farmers wouldn’t be enough. The Crabtrees needed allies across the food system—from their seed suppliers to their grocery store to their creditors. They had made some headway with a few institutions directly connected to their business, but their ambitious model remained frustratingly separate from the fabric of everyday life in Havre. The Crabtrees’ crops were putting down roots, but Doug and Anna still felt like outsiders.

  Having endured several years as the laughingstock of Conrad, Dave Oien empathized with Doug and Anna’s loneliness. He knew how hard it was to get to the point where you could refer to yourself and your farm without having to resort to the adjective “alternative.” This final phase of conversion was so slow, in fact, that Dave was still working on it himself. As he gradually built up his business, he recruited prospective growers according to three criteria. They had to be good farmers. They had to be good businesspeople. But they also had to be good ambassadors.

  I followed Dave thirty-five miles south from Doug and Anna’s place, so I could tag along for another field visit. When we stopped off to grab lunch in Havre, Dave pointed out a few odd features of the local grocery store. They had started carrying organic produce. And local grass-fed beef. In fact, I noticed, the IGA supermarket was having trouble keeping up with demand for these new products, many of which were out of stock. When I asked why this meat-and-potatoes town had seemingly rediscovered kale as the forgotten element of some culinary holy trinity, Dave chuckled, telling me that Havre’s residents were, in fact, picking this stuff up at church. But not from their pastor. The gospel of good food was the dedicated lay ministry of Jody and Crystal Manuel, a pair of independently minded conservatives who homeschooled their six kids, volunteered regularly with their fellow parishioners, and grew organic lentils on a 4,000-acre spread seven miles south of town. “I love this family,” Dave divulged, as though he was letting me in on a secret. “They’re not what anyone expects.”

  12

  THE GOSPEL OF LENTILS

  Sporting a pale-blue T-shirt, soiled jeans, and a dirt-stained Timeless cap, Jody Manuel spoke at about one-fourth the pace of Anna Jones-Crabtree. When he talked, that was. Given the option, Jody preferred to listen and observe instead. The taciturn rancher’s hat shaded his entire face from the solstice sunlight, since his gaze nearly always pointed slightly down. Hoping to trick Jody into looking up for a moment, I remarked on the incredible views stretching out in all directions from his grandfather’s homestead, which was every bit as spectacular as the county park it abutted. “Yeah, this is a pretty awesome place to go to work every day,” Jody said reverently, as I gawked at the Bear Paw Mountains.

  Before Dave Oien showed up in his life, Jody had found more time to look around, because he’d had only one job: handling cows. Jody’s main interest in his family’s place had always been the cattle, so he’d let his brother-in-law raise conventional wheat on the family’s crop acreage. But when Jody’s health-conscious wife, Crystal, started researching organics, the prospect of cultivating a more diverse array of plants had piqued the rancher’s interest in farming for the first time.

  The Manuels had started their foray into organic farming slowly, attending a 2007 trade association gathering in Great Falls to meet others who had taken the plunge. The Montana Organic Association conference had included a tour of the Timeless facility in Ulm, but Jody had been too shy to introduce himself to Dave at the time. Instead, he’d gone back to Havre and started doing his homework, gradually putting together a plan for transitioning his family’s conventional wheat operation. On a sleepy January day in 2010, Jody had been paging through the MOA newsletter, when an advertisement got his attention. “Wanted: Ten Good Farmers,” the spot read, followed by a list of desired attributes: “Commitment to Soil Health. Focus on Quality. Dedication to Crop Rotations.” At the bottom of the ad, next to the Timeless Seeds logo, was Dave Oien’s phone number. Jody decided he was ready, and he jumped in with both feet. By the time I tagged along with Dave for his June 2012 field visits, the Manuels were well into their second season of lentil farming, and they’d started growing emmer for Timeless as well.

  The first thing Jody showed Dave was the field where he was experimenting with a “cover crop cocktail”: a mix of vetch, red clover, ryegrass, flax, turnips, and radishes that he’d seeded in two waves in late April and mid-May. “Cover crop cocktail” was a flashy rebrand for soil-building intercrops, Dave explained to me, somewhat amused to hear from Jody that Montana State had recently sponsored a field day to promote the practice to conventional growers. Jody’s version of this “cocktail” included both legumes (the vetch and clover, for nitrogen) and deep-penetrating root crops (the turnips and radishes, which performed a gentle version of tillage). The mix had cost 20 dollars an acre to seed, Jody estimated, but he thought it was worth it. “I think this cover cropping is—I can’t think of anything that’s going to be more beneficial,” he told Dave. “I don’t really think that I’m doing it primarily to benefit the land, because I am in business to earn a living, but at the same time I know that it’s improving the soil.”

  Much as he had done at the Crabtrees’, Dave moved swiftly from Jody’s soil-building crops to Timeless Seeds’ crowning edible: Black Belugas. Jody had ended up planting his lentils a little later than he wanted to this year, he explained to his buyer apologetically. Facing a serious bindweed problem in a field he was tilling for the first time, Jody had borrowed a sturdy tractor attachment from the Crabtrees to plow it down. He’d eventually succeeded in eradicating the weeds, but in the process, he’d sidelined his tractor—the same one he needed to plant lentils. Seeding day had had to wait on the mechanic.

  BLACK BELUGAS AND BIBLE STORIES

  I was happy to see that Jody had managed to get his Black Belugas in the ground before the season got away from him. When I’d first met the Manuels, four weeks earlier, the tractor had still been sitting idle in the field, and Jody was obviously concerned. And yet, I noted, he was also remarkably calm. I’d climbed into Jody’s bright-red, three-quarter-ton Dodge Ram, expecting a swashbuckling roller-coaster ride of a ranch tour. There were miles of private mountain roads ahead of us, stunning snow-covered mountains behind us, and the man at the wheel was a God-fearing conservative. The scene had all the makings of a mud-slinging truck commercial, except that the driver refused to exceed fifteen miles an hour. The road was still mucky from the Memorial Day snow, Jody explained, expertly balancing a Holy Bible on his console, so he had to be careful not to get stuck. When we’d finished the first leg of our tour, Jody invited me to share lunch with his family. He sat down, took off his hat, and offered a simple blessing, giving thanks for the gifts of food, rain, and good health.

  Crystal Manuel had prepared a four-course, farm-to-table lunch, complete with Black Beluga lentil soup. Describing her South Asian–inspired Desi dressing as she herded her four youngest children to the dining room, Crystal channeled the pride of an elite restaurateur without the slightest trace of preciousness. This had to be the nicest meal anybody ever ate at a table with crayons on it, I remarked. Crystal laughed. It was the middle of the school day, she explained. The Manuels were homeschooling all six of their children through the eighth grade, and the four pupils who joined us for lunch—Sawyer, Taliya, Teague, and six-month-old Shayna—were all current enrollees at Crystal Manuel elementary. Teenagers Sa
rah and Tristan had recently graduated from their mom’s classroom and were finishing up their freshman and sophomore years at Havre High.

  As I savored the tangy aftertaste of Crystal’s soup, her four charges efficiently cleaned their plates, focused intently on the prize of recess. Eleven-year-old Sawyer was the first to finish, and the garage door banged shut as he dashed off to ride his four-wheeler. Four-year-old Teague was next: He wanted to show me his Bible story computer game. Once Teague and I had finished helping a slightly pixelated Queen Esther choose a dessert for her important dinner with King Artaxerxes, Crystal joined us in the Manuels’ loft/classroom, offering it to me as guest quarters for the night. His computer time up, Teague ran off to draw pictures with his older sister Taliya, and I stayed for a few minutes to visit with Crystal about the elaborate meal she had prepared. It turned out that her training was in nutrition, and a major reason the Manuels had jumped into organics was Crystal’s interest in health and wellness. In fact, she’d had her sixth child at home in a bathtub, grounds for serious street cred among the most rarefied natural health circles of San Francisco or Los Angeles. My jaw dropped as Crystal nonchalantly told the story. She had booked a midwife from Great Falls in advance, but once Crystal’s water broke, things had moved along rather quickly. When the Manuels realized the midwife couldn’t possibly make the 120-mile journey in time for the birth, Jody had delivered their youngest daughter, Shayna, himself.

  Jody, I gathered, was not an easy character to typify. Given that he had recently run for county commissioner as a libertarian Republican, I was surprised at how highly he spoke of Doug and Anna Jones-Crabtree, who worked for the government and socialized with Helena’s staunchest Democrats. If Jody knew about his neighbors’ liberal leanings, though, he wasn’t concerned. Grateful to the Crabtrees for lending him a plow to deal with his bindweed, he was already talking to them about pooling seed orders, to cut down on hauling expenses. Even the ancient words the two families had chosen to express the idea at the heart of their farms bore a curious resemblance. While the Crabtrees had named their farm Vilicus, Latin for “steward of the land,” the Manuels introduced me to the term sozo, an Ancient Greek word used in the New Testament. While sozo was typically translated as “salvation,” Jody explained, he and Crystal were particularly fond of its extended definition: “to heal, preserve, and make whole.”