The Art of Farming Mushrooms We all understand the general idea of fruit and vegetable farming: you take a seed, you plant it into the ground, a plant grows from that seed and produces something edible. But how do you grow mushrooms, which produce microscopic spores...
Spunky Goats Nourish the Local Food System “Food is better when it’s loved and respected in its life.” Joe, the emotionally sensitive guard donkey who watches over the goat herd at Farm 51, receives a spritz of insect repellent to the legs while his owner...
Creating a network of hyper-local food access sites Imagine a city where every person who experiences food insecurity is within walking distance of a site stocked with prepared meals and food ingredients. That’s Missoula Community Free Fridge’s vision. “There’s...
Trellising Tomatoes On a sunny June day Dylan Brady was in Clark Fork Organic’s humid hoop house in Missoula, trellising young tomato plants. He carefully chose the most promising stalks of each plant, chopped off the others, and attached the remaining spindly stems...
Vermicomposting for Healthier Soil in the Gallatin Valley “Worms stitch everything together.” Karl Johnson, the founder and owner of YES Compost, gently pulls his fingers through the top layer of a compost bin at his Belgrade facility, inspecting the...
Regenerative Agriculture in NW Montana I received a text on the Sunday morning I was scheduled to visit Blarney Heights Farm. It had rained all night and was supposed to rain all day, and Brian wanted to make sure I was still up for the trip out there. I pulled...
