march 2009
Page 2 - Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009
‘Growth Through Agriculture’ program spurs local ag investment WILL MOSS Staff Reporter
Growing anything in the Bitterroot is tough, and apples are no exception. Lee McAlpine, Owner of Montana Cider Works, knows all about it. McAlpine decided in 2001 to begin the process of starting her own cider business after learning the art of cider in courses at Washington State University. “Washington is very interested in promoting apple products and they thought that this would be a good compliment to their growing wine industry,” said McAlpine. “And I just happen to think that the Bitterroot is the perfect opportunity to do the same thing.” So, McAlpine purchased special English cider apple trees from Cornell University which runs a large project apple orchard, and started an orchard up Rye Creek. And while she says that she has struggled somewhat with pests, McAlpine’s cider works has been bobbing along, producing hard cider using a mix of juice from Frost Top Orchard in Corvallis and her own English Cider Apples. But when McAlpine decided that she wanted to expand her business, she knew that she didn’t have the funds to accomplish her goals without taking on a lot of debt. Luckily, she wasn’t the only one who thought that
cider was a good idea. By applying for a grant through the Montana Growth Through Agriculture Program, McAlpine received the money she needed to build facilities and expand her operation. “It was absolutely critical to have that grant to expand the business to be able to operate at the current level,” she said. “Without the grant, it would have taken me many more years to acquire the capital, because I’m bootstrapping it instead of going into debt, so it was really instrumental in being able to launch the business this year.” Created by the 1987 Legislature and offered
through the State of Montana Department of Agriculture, the Montana Growth Through Agriculture Program exists to encourage economic development through innovations in various aspects of agricultural business. According to background documents available on the state of Montana’s Web site “the Montana Growth Through Agriculture program works to strengthen and diversify Montana’s agricultural industry. Through monetary investments in projects, the program establishes public/private sector partnerships that assist in the development of innovative agricultural
products and processes to add value to the agriculture industry, to create new jobs, and to expand small business opportunities.” Qualification considerations listed on the state’s Web site state that “proposals must have practical, near-term application involving new or alternative technologies, practices or organizational arrangements that will stimulate expanded agricultural development, economic activity and employment growth.” The program’s funding is administered by the seven-member Montana Agriculture Development Council. The program will provide up to $50,000 in funding
per round of financing with a maximum investment of $150,000 to applicants who meet the Council’s requirements. Grants are available quarterly with application deadlines due in January, April, July and October. Ravalli County Economic Development Authority Executive Director Julie Foster has worked with a number of local entrepreneurs who have used the Montana Growth Through Agriculture Program to boost or launch their businesses and believes that the funding the program makes available is an important tool in continuing the area’s agricultural heritage. “We’re trying to preserve agriculture in Ravalli County,” Foster said, “which means people need to be able to make a return on their investment.” Which is exactly what Lee McAlpine will be doing with her cider this summer. “We’ll be at the Farmer’s Market in Hamilton until we sell out ... Which I hope is the second day!” For more information on the State of Montana Department of Agriculture’s Montana Growth Through Agriculture Program contact RCEDA Director Julie Foster at 375-9416 or visit agr. mt.gov/business/GTA.asp. Reporter Will Moss can be reached at 363-3300 or wmoss@ravallirepublic.com
Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009 - Page 3
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Page 4 - Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009
Getting an Ag-Education at Grantsdale School SEPP JANNOTTA Staff Reporter
With an agricultural heritage that runs back 150 years to the St. Mary’s grain mill, 4-H naturally has strong ties in the Bitterroot Valley. Each year the Ravalli County Fair bustles with kids and the products of their 4-H labors (the Bitterroot has 440 4-H members and some 140 adult volunteers, according to Ravalli County Extension Agent Katelyn Andersen). But lately, spurred by a growing movement to raise awareness about the benefits of locally grown foods, some of the county’s educators are getting down and dirty about teaching agriculture. At Grantsdale School in Hamilton, the third grade put in a vegetable garden last year. Now the 120-year-old elementary school has chickens for the fourth graders to tend. And Mikeala Burklow, for one, is fired up about learning outside. “My sister and I always say we are going to have a farm when we get older,” Burklow said. Over at the Keystone to Discovery after school program at Westview School, agricultural education has taken an entrepreneurial turn. A group of 4-H kids, under the supervision of Keystone’s director, Ria Overholt, plan to have a go at starting a take-and-bake pizza business. The pizzas would be made with vegetables harvested from the community garden her students will be working, Overholt said, with the cooking going on in the kitchen at Westview. Overholt said the project is being underwritten, in part, by a $1,000 grant from the Montana Farm to School program, a pilot project of Community Food and Agriculture Coalition. Hoping to learn from the pros, fourth-grader J.T. Vineyard called to schedule a tour of the Papa Murphy’s Pizza franchise in Hamilton. There was also to be a meeting with Ravalli County Health Department officials to discuss the rules regarding food preparation. It all started with the garden, Overholt said. “It started as an idea of creating an outdoor classroom,” she said. “Then we realized that they didn’t have an idea about where their food comes from.” Then these 4-H farmers began to
SEPP JANNOTTA – Ravalli Republic
Nick West casts a bit of food for the hens at Grantsdale School in Hamilton. The chickens are part of a push by the school’s educators to promote awareness of farming and how food for the table is produced. ponder what they could sell from their garden. The farmers market was an easy mark. And then pizza? “All these considerations keep growing out of ‘what vegetable from the garden can we use on pizza?’” Overholt said. “And these ideas are coming from third and fourth graders.” At Grantsdale, as the new brood of hens ventured slowly from their hutch – a local kids’ Eagle Scout project – Grantsdale Principal Kathleen Dent said her students had discussed donating the school’s fresh eggs to the Haven House food bank.
Dent said she is thrilled because the school’s agricultural projects have a tendency to really light a fire in certain students. Riley Presswood is one such student. Dent said if there’s work to do out in the school yard, he’s the kid. “I really like doing the outdoors action stuff,” Presswood said. “He just shines when it comes to this stuff,” Dend said of Presswood. “And that’s what we do here, we try and find a way to make these kids shine.” At the very least, the garden and the chickens are a way to connect students to the farming tradition that surrounds
them, Dent said. And she’s not kidding – the school grounds share fence lines with pastures and yards populated with horses, sheep and more chickens. Presswood, Burklow and fellow fourth grader Nick West all agreed that they were proud to come from a school with an agricultural curriculum. If people from the city were to ask, Presswood said he’d tell them straight up. “I’d tell them it’s a good little school,” Presswood said. “There’s a garden and we have chickens. Not very many schools have animals in their schoolyard.”
Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009 - Page 5
Serving Agricultural Producers since 1895
SEPP JANNOTTA – Ravalli Republic
Garrett Passey, a fourth grader at Daly Elementary, shows off the worms he’s helped cultivate at the Keystone to Discovery afterschool program. In an agriculture-focused class taught by Carla Wiencek, the students learned that the worm castings, or manure, are a prized fertilizer.
Contact John Cheetham, VP - Main Bank 224 W. Pinckney, Hamilton • 363-1222 or Bob Thomas, VP - Corvallis Branch Eastside Highway, Corvallis • 961-5200
Page 6 - Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009
Organic Dairy, Lifeline for the Valley
Montana State University Western Agricultural Research Center
WILL MOSS – Ravalli Republic
For 25 years, the dairy at Lifeline Farm has cranked out a growing assortment of locally produced organic cheese, milk and butter JOHN CRAMER Staff Reporter
1 0 2 Ye a r s o f E x c e l l e n c e Field Day 2009 • August 12th Western Agricultural Research Center Department of Research Centers 580 Quast Lane • Corvallis, MT Tel (406) 961-3025 • Fax (406) 961-3026 http://ag.montana.edu/warc
VICTOR – Ernie Harvey was running late. Again. There’s real time and there’s “Ernie time,” the cheesemaker and buttermaker at the Lifeline Community Creamery and Farm Store said jokingly on a recent morning. They were waiting for Harvey to deliver another load of milk from the certified organic Lifeline Farm up the road. When Harvey pulled up, he shrugged at the time. “Things don’t always go on schedule on a farm,” he said. “That’s just the way it is.” Harvey, who started the dairy at Lifeline Farm 25 years ago, may not always glance at his watch, but he’s running ahead of many American farmers who have been battered by a volatile market and the recession. While many agriculture-related
businesses are losing money or going out of business, Lifeline Farm’s dairy has been profitable in recent years and managed to break even last year when it generated $750,000 in revenue. The dairy has continued to gradually expand its facilities and offer more products over the past five years since it opened the only grade-A organic milk bottling plant in Montana. Next up are plans to build a new milking facility within one to two years to take advantage of an increased demand for Lifeline’s milk. The secret to Lifeline Farm’s success, Harvey said, is biodynamic farming, which means staying focused on a wholesome connection to the soil, the animals, the community and the customers. “It’s fulfilling to be part of that local connection,” said Harvey, 55, a former pottery maker and stone
mason turned dairyman who operates Lifeline’s dairy with his wife, Jennifer Holmes. His partners Luci Brieger and Steve Elliott manage Lifeline Produce. “It’s an empowering thing.” At Lifeline Farm west of Victor, Harvey leases 500 acres for his growing herd of 120 Swiss Brown cows, a versatile breed used for dairy and beef. The farm also grows most of its own hay. In downtown Victor, the Lifeline Community Creamery and Farm Store sells its certified organic cheese, milk, butter, beef, pork, sausage and vegetables. The store also sells organic eggs, salsa and other items produced in the Bitterroot Valley. The creamery rekindled a tradition in a valley that once was home to more than 100 dairies producing milk for creameries from Grantsdale to Stevensville.
Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009 - Page 7 The Ravalli County Creamery closed in 1985, leaving the valley without a milk-bottling plant or cheese-making facility until the Lifeline Creamery opened. The valley’s other handful of remaining dairies have their milk processed elsewhere, but that proved too expensive for Harvey’s organic milk, so he opened the 3,000-square-foot creamery as a last-ditch effort to stay in business. He financed the project by selling many of the farm’s breeding heifers and its milk base, which is the right to produce milk in Montana at a certain base price. Each week, Lifeline produces about 1,800 pounds of cheese, more than 900 gallons of milk and 250 pounds of butter. The dairy also sells some of its heifers for revenue. While commercial farmers are being hard hit by the rising fuel, energy and other costs from processing their milk far away, “the demand for locally grown and organic products has come to the forefront and that’s helping us a lot,” Harvey said. Lifeline hasn’t been immune to rising costs. The company’s sales increased 20 percent last year, but it only broke even because of escalating grain prices and other expenses. Lifeline, which employs a dozen people full time and a half dozen part time, “supports the Bitterroot Valley in a very fundamental way,” Harvey said. The company’s value-added, self-sustaining business model nourishes the community’s soul, economy and environment, especially during troubled economic times, he said. “We provide the will forces that give people the stomach to do what they need to do to live,” he WILL MOSS – Ravalli Republic said. “I think a lesson of this recession is to take a step back to local value-added ways and to be less Lifeline Farm dairy founder Ernie Harvey displays some of the reliant” on outside economic forces. “It gives the creamery’s products including new cheese offerings of feta and brie. community a sense of working together.” Lifeline is one of only five grade-A milk bottling plants in the state and the only one bottling organic milk. Lifeline’s milk, which is distributed in the Northwest, is regular pasteurized and not homogenized, so a layer of cream floats to the top, The other organic milk sold in Montana is shipped from Washington, Oregon or California and is usually ultrahigh-temperature pasteurized. About a third of Lifeline’s milk is bottled and the remainder gets made into cheese and butter. Lifeline also is trying out more artisan cheeses in addition to its mozzarella, cheddar, jack and other mainstays. “We don’t have a crystal ball, so we’re just going to keep doing WILL MOSS – Ravalli Republic what we’re doing,” Harvey said. Harvey runs a 40-pound block of mild cheddar through a cheese cutter.
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Page 8 - Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009
Huls Dairy brings methane digester online SEPP JANNOTTA Staff Reporter
CORVALLIS – With the dairy market hitting depths it hasn’t reached in many years, Dan Huls is glad the family farm has built some diversity into its operations. With its methane digester up and running, Huls Farm is not only producing milk, it is directing excess electricity back onto the grid for credit with the utility company and will begin marketing the digester’s by-product liquid and solid fertilizers. “Our milk is still wonderful, but the dairy industry is in tuff straights right now,” Huls said. “It’s just good that all our eggs aren’t in one basket.” As an added bonus, Huls should be able to generate income by marketing the reduction of its greenhouse gases to companies that invest in certified renewable energy projects as part of an increasingly robust carbon economy. When Dan Huls’ great-grandparents Spencer Smith and Inez Huls launched a four-generation legacy in Bitterroot dairy farming in 1908 the valley was a different place. No pavement. Little electricity. For anybody not named Marcus Daly, real estate investment came down to farming apples, sugar beets or stock. It’s safe to say, those pioneers never envisioned the day Huls Farm fired up the methane digester.
“Since my great-grandparents moved here, there’s been cows milked on the Huls Farm every day – never missed a day,” said Dan Huls. “It’s pretty neat when you think about it. But it’s a little different these days.” Different doesn’t really begin to cover it. The methane digester got its first run in early January – a few months past the Huls family centennial anniversary in the valley. And after replacing a balky sensor, the Huls’ $1.2 million investment officially begin turning the farm into a leaner, greener business. The methane digester – a stunningly high-tech process that ultimately brews cow manure into electricity and heat-producing bio gas and leaves a rich, marketready fertilizer as a byproduct – brings the familyoperated farm fully into the green power revolution. The two tank, 60,000 gallon capacity digester is the only one of its kind in agricultural use in Montana, Huls said. The push toward a greener farm is not new here.
For quite a while, the modus operandi at Huls has been to keep as small a footprint as possible. Pesticide and herbicide use are kept to a minimum. The water pumped from the farm’s well is used five times before it is finally written off: first to pre-cool the stored milk, then for watering the cows, then in cleaning the milking parlor, then in preparing the effluent for the methane capture process, and finally it is stored and used for irrigation. The methane digester will produce the bio gas with which the Huls will run the farm’s electricity (excess will be traded or sold back to Ravalli County Electric Cooperative). Sensors and computer readouts relay critical information on temperature, pH levels and gas output. And, perhaps best of all, the capture process reduces the farm’s carbon footprint by reducing its off-gassing of climate-damaging methane (researchers have labeled methane as far more damaging a gas than carbon-dioxide).
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SEPP JANNOTTA – Ravalli Republic
Dan Huls shines a little light into one of two 30,000-gallon tanks that are part of the methane digester operation at his family’s 100-year-old dairy.
Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009 - Page 9 “The environmental benefits go to air quality, water quality and to greenhouse gas emission reduction,� Huls said. Here’s how it works: when cows aren’t riding the carrousel in the milking parlor (they step on, get hooked up, and go for a 10 minute milk-producing circuit), they are in the barn resting and eating and producing manure. Here Huls has installed a mechanical skimmer that removes most of the waste and deposits it in a series of storage pits where it is prepared for the digester. Once the effluent is pumped into the digester tanks, three different groups of bacteria go to work on it in a carefully controlled 106-degree environment. The gas is pulled out under pressure, while the solid and liquids are also separated. The liquid is ready for use and the solid waste is processed once more into an odor-free, dry compost that Huls will bag and sell commercially. The gas is fired into a generator that produces both electricity and the heat needed to keep the digester at the proper temperature. All this is done with a technological array that would give NASA a run for its money. Huls gave a lot of credit to the folks at Utah State University, where the process was developed, Andigen, and Josh Keller at Montana State University-Bozeman, all of whom helped dial in the system. Still, however high tech it has gotten, Huls Farm remains a family operation. The four Huls brothers – Bruce, Tim, Jeff and Dan – are partners in the
SEPP JANNOTTA – Ravalli Republic
Joe Ober works with the dairy cows on the milking carrousel at Huls Farm on Tuesday. farm. Tim’s wife, Trudy, and Bruce’s wife, Pat, are also involved in the everyday business of dairy farming. Tim’s son Aaron and Dan’s son Brody are also on hand. Other kids jump in when they can, typically during the busy summer season of irrigating and harvesting crops of hay, corn and barley. The family has been steadily modernizing the dairy for years, streamlining its efficiency and upgrading barns and other critical infrastructure. At the moment, they run 750 cows on the place, with 260 producing milk at a time. Those producing cows are milked three times a day, giving about 80 pounds of milk each. The dairy’s refrigerated storage tank holds 10,000 gallons. The average crew is about 13 workers, including family members. Most of the feed the cows are given is pro-
duced on the farm’s 600 acres. The farm has already become a touchstone for those interested in how a family-run farm can make a run of it in a corporate farming world. Literary nonfiction author Jared Diamond used Huls Dairy in his book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.� People call and drop by for tours often. Huls said the dairy’s visitor log has around 5,000 names and counting. Dan Huls will be the first to admit that the dairy is working out the kinks. The farm started installing the equipment for methane digestion in July 2007, Huls said. He figures close to a full two years will have elapsed when the process is completely fine tuned, from processing the effluent, to pulling off the bio gas for power, and selling bags of fertilizer at a retailer near you.
“It’s been a long process,� he said. “But we’re closing in.�
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Page 10 - Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009
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CORVALLIS – Jim Miller is tired of mowing. He doesn’t much care for watering his lawn either. And the annual fertilizing chore certainly isn’t one of his favorites. “I have to say that I’m really sorry that I planted the typical water-loving Kentucky bluegrass/ fescue lawn that most of us have,” Miller said. “I thought there had to be a better way.” At the same time, Miller and other researchers at Montana State University’s Western Agricultural Research Station at Corvallis have become very con-
cerned about the spread of invasive cheat grass across the large swaths of the Bitterroot. The invasive weed often pops up following fires or other disturbances on the landscape. Cheat grass is a winter annual, which means it germinates in the fall. That gives it a jumpstart over most of Montana’s native grasses. When spring arrives, cheat grass is among the first plants to start growing. By mid-May, it’s already done its thing and set those little spikeheaded seeds that are such a pain to pick out of your socks. Cheat grass loves heat, drought and fire.
“We’re seeing a lot of all three of those things now days,” Miller said. “We need to look for strategies to find grasses that can outcompete cheat grass.” Miller is a plant pathologist at the research station. For the past few years, he has been monitoring a plot of 20 different grasses that may hold the key to both the perfect Montana backyard and winning the battle against a nasty new invader. The grasses growing within a few steps of his research laboratory are half native species and half prairie grasses that closely resemble the kinds of plants that have fed wildlife and kept a lid on
Ravalli Republic, Salute to Agriculture, March 26, 2009 - Page 11 the Bitterroot’s soil for eons. “We get about 12 inches of rain every year in most parts of the valley,” Miller said. “All of these grasses will do well with 12 inches of precipitation or less.” Quite a number of the grasses growing in Miller’s plot are of the fine bladed variety that are easy on the toes and would make a perfect perch for an afternoon picnic in someone’s backyard. Hard fescue, Sandberg bluegrass, prairie junegrass, Idaho fescue – “if seeded right and maybe supplemented with a little irrigation, all of those will make a very nice lawn that once established, won’t need to be watered all the time,” Miller said. “They look nice here in Montana too. They look natural.” Many of the varieties are naturally low growing – which means less mowing. And if a person needs to leave in the middle of the hottest part of the summer for a spell, they
won’t have to call on their neighbors to make sure their lawn doesn’t burn up. “It might turn a little brown, but as soon as you get home and water it some, most of these grasses will green up again,” he said. For the Bitterroot Valley residents who have an acre or two and don’t really know quite what do about all that space, these native and introduced grasses could be the key. “We’ve had quite a few people from the valley come up and look at our plots,” Miller said. “Some of these grasses only grow a few inches high. They are certainly a vast improvement over an acre or two filled with weeds.” It’s a different kind of challenge for Miller and others worried about the spread of cheat grass over public and private range and forest lands. Irrigation usually isn’t an option in the backcountry. “Seeding in the late fall seems to the best option right
now,” Miller said. “We also have to look at very high seeding rates … it’s going to be a challenge to find ways to give these grasses a chance to get started and compete with cheat grass.” Cheat grass is shallow rooted and it grabs that last bit of winter’s moisture and spring’s first flush. To be able to outcompete the invasive weed, Miller said it will require getting a full complement of different grasses that use have a variety of root depths and other strategies for spreading. For instance, some grasses have roots that spread horizontally and could move laterally into areas infected by cheat grass. “Addressing the cheat grass problem is not going to be easy,” Miller said. “It’s probably the most challenging weed problem that I have ever seen.”
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