The 2011 Season (Year 3 of ?)

The way the farm season felt sometimes.

I'll start this with the obligatory acknowledgment of it being that time again to reminisce about the past year's farm season. It's that time again.

Our winter months were dominated by our little girl, as we navigated the new terrain of parenthood. When I have a moment to reflect, it's remarkable to me that we somehow know how to take care of a baby, with no prior experience. I suppose it's a lot like our farming adventure. We've done our fair share of research, but so much of what we do, we do without a clue. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. We're raising plants and a kid, but in farming, the season is less than 12 months, then you get to start all over the next year and correct your mistakes. For our child, the season is a lifetime.

Grain and Bean Share Update

We are still taking subscriptions for the 2011 shares. Click here to see the full brochure, get pricing information and even print off a handy sign up sheet that you can send in now with a deposit.

Darling 2011 Grain and Bean Share Customers,

Now that turkey butchering, delivering, and eating is safely behind us, it's now time to turn our focus to your heritage and ancient grains.

It was a season of success and failure (as any season will be). Our Prairie Farro was a great success while our Calais Flint Corn withered without rain. Along with the Prairie Farro, you will receive our Bronze Barley, Sonora Heritage Wheat, and Petite Crimson Lentils.

Currently we are waiting for two of our grains to be cleaned. They should be done sometime near the end of December. Our plan is to make deliveries the first half of January to the following cities: Great Falls, Helena, Bozeman, Missoula, and Whitefish. If you would be willing to host a delivery location in one of those cities, please let us know. 

In the meantime, just to get you excited, at the link below are a few great recipes from Ari Weinzweig, the author of Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating, writing in the Atlantic last year:

Fresh Recipes With an Ancient Grain: 4 Ways to Prepare Farro

And, in a recent post on NPR's food blog, Allison Aubrey includes Farro as part of her "Tips For Three-Course Meals On Less Than $5.00."

Go Farro, go!

Awesome Post and an Article

Here is a great post by my lovely wife about the story of Thanksgiving.

And here is a good article about farming and rural communities. And, it includes a photo of our turkeys.

Post-Thanksgiving Bliss

After traveling nearly 700 miles and delivering 1300 pounds of poultry, we here at Prairie Heritage Farm are thankful to be done, done, and done.


The awesome t-shirt designed by our friends Mandy and Cale.

And yes, it was one helluva mutha plucka.


Nate and Mandy doing their thing.

With the indispensable help of over a dozen intrepid friends, we spent the Saturday and Sunday before Thanksgiving butchering 98 turkeys and 9 geese. No surprise, the temperature went from the 30s and 40s the days before butchering to single digits above and below zero. It makes chilling the turkeys easy, but not wading elbow-deep in the chill tank to dig out a turkey for bagging. To those who helped, a hearty thank-you: Nate and Donna S., Nate M., Byron, Skander, Hannah, Caroline, Sam, Erin, Jill, Clyde, Julie, and Mandy. Skander captured some excellent photos and posted a great blog post about the weekend (warning - every step of the process is illustrated) here.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Prairie Heritage Farm family hit the road with the birds, stopping in 4 cities, setting up at friends' houses, and delivering pasture-raised, organic turkeys to grateful people. This was the first year we were able to meet many of our customers, since we did the delivering ourselves.

We got home late Wednesday and I don't think we've fully recovered yet. It'll be a few months before the next batch of birds arrive in the mail and after we've long forgotten what a November on Prairie Heritage Farm is like.

Here is a good article about the turkeys we raise.

How to Cook Your Heritage Turkey

We're delivering 90-something turkeys to customers across the state in the next few days. If you're one of them (customers, not turkeys) here are some tips on how to prepare that beautiful bird.

Cooking your hertiage bird is a bit different than cooking that old Butterball. First of all, don't overcook it, as one chef said last year on NPR: The bird has already been killed once, don't kill it again.

After the jump, you'll find some of our favorite recipes for your Thanksgiving turkey.