13 minute read
People Place ~ Mint Tradition: Warren Seely
A monthly feature written and photographed by Southwest Washington native and Emmy Award-winning journalist Hal Calbom
Production Notes
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Don’t Romanticize the Family Farm
It’s grown ts own American imagination.
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The Family Farm. From Willa Cather to Willie Nelson, we celebrate it, romanticize it, and worry about its prospects. We disparage it — those poor hicks down on the farm — and doubt it. We watch generation after generation abandon it for the lure of the cities. We predict its demise and doom. And I suggest that amidst all this handwringing and doom-saying we actually do something worse: We so romanticize the Family Farm we lose touch with its reality. Our nostalgia consigns it to the dated past, old times. In fact, our farms and the agriculture industry itself have always been — and continue to be — among the most reliable reflections of where we are and harbingers of where we’re headed. In three decades of Pacific Northwest journalism I’ve gained more insight from farms and farmers than a whole host of city council members. Settle down for a cup of weak coffee in Odessa or Quincy or Clatskanie, as per this month’s P+P, and you’ll cover a whole variety of topics with the denizens there: the state of immigration policy, the value of the dollar, tariff and trade negotiations, the prime rate, imports and exports. And few business persons know like the farmer the delicate dance among our government, our people, and our land and water. Farmers tend to get the bad news first — failed crops, dropping prices, trade wars — and they adjust or they die. Globalization? We sold wheat to Russia at the height of the Cold War. Immigration? Talk to someone growing hops or cherries in the Yakima Valley about this critical issue. Innovation and modernization? Look at the agricultural sector and its transformation from manual labor to a vast complex of machinery, information technology, and sophisticated distribution. Farms and farmers are more than relics of our past. They are signposts and guides to the future.
Freshly Minted: Warren Seely
Move over Mars, Nestlé, and Hershey’s. Gourmet shoppers, searching out the finest artisanal confections, the perfectly-minted chocolate wafer, have made their choice: The best-selling holiday item at Whole Foods Market — the last seven years running — is the Seely’s Mint Patty.
That’s Seely 4th Generation Mint Farm, Clatskanie, Oregon.
Since the mid-seventies mint farms in Oregon have withered from 700 to 20. Wrigley’s, Proctor & Gamble, and Colgate — traditional consumers of peppermint oil — have switched to super-cheap synthetics and gutted the natural oil business.
Yet the unassuming Seely’s, sitting on rich bottomland acreage outside this small Oregon town, is flourishing. Even expanding. To find out how they’re doing it, we climbed aboard a noisy, multi-ton harvesting rig and bummed a ride down the rows of mowed mint.
NICE TO MEET YOU
Warren Seely
HC: What’s this beast called? resides WS: This is a self-propelled forage harvester. Originally designed for silage Clatskanie, Oregon chopping, field corn and grass. It’s real progress for the mint industry, which used manual labor for a long, occupation Mint Farmer from Clatskanie long time. kno n for HC: So these While in college, driving weekends from WSU Pullman to work the r o w s w e ’ r e family farm . going back over, it looks like the mint plants have already been cut?
WS: Yes, this was mowed a couple of days ago. Like cutting hay. We let it dry in rows for a couple of days to get rid of extra moisture, then we come through with the forage harvester. We pick up the mowed plants, chop them into little pieces and air-blow them into the trailer behind us. cont page 18
WS: No, not just the flowers. The entire plant is the peppermint. But what we’re actually harvesting, our end product, is the peppermint oil. And the oil is only in the leaves of the plant. The flowers play a role — if you don’t have enough flowers there might not be the right balance in the oil. It can be bitter without balance.
HC: Do you encourage pollination in the fields? I don’t see any beehives.
WS: Not really. Peppermint and spearmint themselves are not affected at all by pollination. What we’re looking for is plant maturity. There is no particular advantage or disadvantage to having pollinators in the field. The bees may pick up some peppermint oil from the plants and take it back to their hives, and that can be nice for the beekeepers, but has little effect for us. HC: So, actually, you’re in the oil business, not the mint leaf business? WS: Yes, and a lot of people don’t know that. We’re distillers. A lot of our process involves heat, steam and evaporation. Basic chemistry and physics. HC: What happens to the pieces of mint you’ve blown into the back behind us?
WS: Once we’ve filled a trailer, we take the chopped mint product back to our home base. We’ve got a natural gasfired distillery there, that’s the heart of the operation, with three four-hundred horsepower boilers that generate steam.
HC: So that’s all the plumbing out in the backyard?
WS: Yeah. We run the steam in through the bottom of the trailers, and that steam as it rises through the chopped mint in the trailer will vaporize the oil in the leaves. Then as it floats out the top we run that steam mixture — of oil and water — through a set of condensers, and put the separated pure mint oil into barrels.
HC: Looks like an ordinary oil barrel.
WS: Exactly. Except when it’s full of peppermint oil it’s
worth 10 to 15 thousand dollars.
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+ Place There’s so many different skills that go into farming. It’s not just knowing how to use a pitchfork. ” ~ Warren Seely
Warren’s father, Mike Seely, is still an active presence on the farm, running the “value added” side of the business — confections and retail sales — and lending a hand where needed. But the day-to-day operations are solely the province of 27-year-old Warren. Besides a basic love for the land and inbred family loyalty, he’s equipped himself with education: a degree in electrical engineering from Washington State University, plenty of accounting and business administration classes, and even an MBA in the works. Farming at its most basic is still working the land, but today it’s also working the accounts, the technology, and the commodities markets.
WS: There’s so many different skills that go into farming. It’s not just knowing how to use a pitchfork. There’s electronics that we deal with, there’s irrigation specifications, there’s welding and construction, anything you can think of it’s out here on the farm. I got my EE degree specifically to help me out with the farming and the machinery. I want to apply some new technology to the equipment we’re using. I’m especially interested in robotics and artificial intelligence.
HC: And you’re managing people, too. The communications piece?
WS: It’s huge. You need to be able to ensure everybody understands what they’re doing, where they’re doing it, when they’re doing it. It’s the same in m a r k e t i n g . Yo u need to be able to explain your products and explain your processes. You need to be able to tell your story to the consumer.
HC: With so many farms going under, do you feel isolated?
WS: That’s one reason I’m trying to learn how to construct and maintain my own equipment. Out here we’re so
far from a lot of the main growing areas like Hermiston or Salem, that the technology and the dealership support is almost nonexistent. I have to be very self-sufficient. And if I can construct and maintain a lot of my own equipment that’s a huge advantage. HC: Is the family farm dead or dying?
WS: It depends on the operation. It’s very, very difficult to compete on a commodity scale with a small family farm on something like corn, wheat or soy beans. Simply because of the amount of other producers out there. However, if you’re focused on a quality aspect of an operation, if you can build your niche market, focus on your customer base, focus on your quality, I think there’s a very good chance of survival.
HC: Sounds like your own recipe.
WS: That’s been our entire goal, yes.
HC: Is the rest of the family all on board? It’s a legacy but an expectation, too?
WS: Two of my sisters wanted nothing to do with the farm. It’s not for everybody. And I have no problems taking it over. My mom still helps out extensively on the chocolate side. Plus there’s a couple of cousins around that like to come out and play on the equipment!
HC: And your older sister, who we hoped to interview along with you?
WS: That’s Caryn, who’s expecting a baby any minute. She sends her best! She actually raises beef cattle and is looking to expand our operations to include more cattle grazing.
HC: And the land for all this?
WS: We both just co-signed on a lease with Columbia County. She’ll be raising cattle on her half and I’ll be raising peppermint on my half. We’re also just about to close a deal on 817 acres that is for sale here. My sister will buy one half and I will be buying the other.
HC: Is this land, and this weather, special somehow? I know grape growers attend to these things so closely.
cont page 20
~ Albert Einstein
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from page 19
WS: Our warm days and cool nights really help with the flavor profile of the oil. You get in some really hot places like Idaho and you can get some bitterness in the oil. And our soil here is basically river bottom soil. We’re eighteen feet below the river level behind the dikes. And there’s a very high concentration of organic matter in the soil. It’s really more forgiving in terms of how the plant grows. And produces a very smooth profile in the oil.
HC: Did you grow up wanting to be a farmer? Or get a thousand miles away from it?
WS: I’m the fourth generation of our family to raise peppermint. And I’ve always known that I wanted to be a farmer. I just love being out in the field raising crops, running the equipment. Getting my hands dirty.
HC: Would you settle for growing the business a lot and ending up behind a desk?
Hal Calbom is a third generation Longview native who makes his living as a film producer, educator, and writer. He is editor of The Tidewater Reach, Field Guide to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures , recently published by Columbia River Reader Press, and the forthcoming collection of Dispatches from the Discovery Trail, by Michael O. Perry. Reach Hal at hal@halcalbom.com
Farmers have always been entirely more sophisticated than we like to give them credit for. Don’t let the bib overalls fool you. That’s part of a “plead poor and put it in the bank” strategy as old as the cultivated hills. Very few professions have such complex — and potentially risky — relationships with the markets, the government, and the financial system as does this one that claims only to own and work the land. Consider: The major strategic factor in the Seely family’s “old time” success today is embracing a very nouveau concept. They’re “branding” themselves to differentiate from competition and rise to the top of consumer awareness. Besides handmade Seely mint patties at your local store, expect to find Seely hand-pulled candy canes at Christmas and peppermint shakes at your local Burgerville USA.
WS: We’ve diversified o u r m a r k e t i n g to get away from competitive pressure of the traditional mint industry. And that’s c r e a t e d a u n i q u e situation where we actually have demand that is growing.
HC: Where’s that competitive pressure coming from?
WS: In the traditional mint industry the growers would sell their oil in bulk to some of the middlemen who would then blend it and sell it to end users. But you have no way to set your own pricing or assert your own value. And then there’s the introduction of synthetics into the mint market. Many people don’t know the difference. Because they’ve never tasted the difference.
HC: So what is the Seely Mint “Experience?”
WS: The peppermint patties we produce are flavored exclusively with our own oil, so of course we emphasize the quality of the oil. There’s no cutting or adulteration, it’s just 100 percent oil from our farm. And the rest of the ingredients are high quality, from sugar to chocolate and everything in between.
HC: And hand made, so no two alike? Like snowflakes?
WS: Yes sir. Like snowflakes!
Editor’s Note: Interviews are edited for length and condensed for clarity.
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