Photographs by Jeanne Leffingwell

Who:                Your Local Area Farmer Neighbors

What:               Tuesday Growers Market

Where:             West End of the Co-op Parking Lot

When:             4:30 to 6:30 p.m. every Tuesday, May through October

forb n: any broad-leaved herbaceous plant that is not a grass, especially one that grows in a prairie or meadow          

(Encarta® World English Dictionary)

In other words, a forb is a wildflower! And you can find some, ready to plant, at the Tuesday Growers’ Market from our new vendor, Thorn Creek Native Seed Farm. You’ll find not only native plants starts, but also an encyclopedia of information about our region’s native grasses and wildflowers, in the person of owner Jacie Jensen. Whether you are considering plants for a large swath of ground, or for a pot or two on your patio, there are more benefits to planting “natives” than you may at first realize.

For example: “A lot of times, people are feeding birds and butterflies,” Jacie explains, “but not ‘sustaining’ them.” Which would mean providing the right plants for the eggs, the larvae, and the whole life cycle. Sometimes only one plant will do. And chances are, Jacie knows what plant that is.

But there is a lot more to this lady than simply a love of wildflowers. After earning an undergraduate degree in personal finance from University of Wisconsin Stout, a job in banking brought her to Boise. She was later transferred to Moscow, where she met her future husband, Wayne, a ’79 UI graduate in agriculture business. Later, she pursued a graduate degree from WSU, and became a Certified Financial Planner. Jacie has worked as an advocate and “resource manager” for elderly clients, and also has traveled all around Idaho with the UI College of Ag, training faculty, extension agents, and food producers to computerize their personal and business finances. This was a time (not really that long ago!) when hardly any farmers even owned computers.

Marriage and motherhood followed. The combination of a wife with this background, a husband who could take an old piece of farm equipment and somehow jerry-rig a needed new one, and an over-riding interest in the sustainability of their own land combined pretty fortuitously for this couple. They now steward several thousand acres of farmland near Genesee.

JenCrops, their main farming operation, has been rotating wheat, lentils, peas and garbanzos, using no-till farming methods for quite a while now. Regarding his transition from “conventional” farming to no-till, Wayne says, “One of my neighbors told me I would go broke when I sold my last plow, and told him I would no longer be plowing any of my land 12 years ago. This year, he bought a no-till drill like the one I use.”

They are members of Shepherds Grain, an inland northwest alliance of progressive family farms dedicated to practicing “sustainable” agriculture. For a good definition of that, visit www.shepherdsgrain.com.

But what has caused them to now devote upwards of 200 acres to wildflowers and native grasses? Don’t they have enough to do?

The biggest reason is soil health. “Taking care of the land, soil and animal life that exists on the land that is entrusted to us” is one very basic goal. It is also the mission of Food Alliance, a nonprofit organization that certifies farms, ranches and food handlers for sustainable agricultural and facility management practices.

Thorn Creek Native Seed Farm is Food Alliance Certified. Their operation is inspected regularly by the Idaho Crop Improvement Association. The seed is both “Blue Tag” and “Yellow Tag Certified” the second of which means “source identified.” This is a very important distinction.

“We do not collect anything from public lands,” Jacie emphasizes. It turns out many seed companies do, and their unsustainable practices are harming both our public lands and our bio-diversity.

“We’re very careful how we collect.” Seed is entirely collected from their ‘seed expansion plots.’ The most intensely planted one is a full acre, row on row, containing 25 different species. Single species are also grown in ‘production fields’ to make many more individual plants. Occasionally, seed is carefully collected from their own spot of remaining native prairie. “We’re extremely mindful of how we do it. We need to sustain our own land.”

I hadn’t really thought much about how this whole process works, but it is very labor intensive. Jacie and Wayne employ one full-time person and additional seasonal help for the seed business. A huge amount of time is spent “rouging,” or walking the fields to spot spray or pull weeds. Another big investment of labor is in the harvesting of the seeds, which is different for each species. One plant may require cutting the stems when the seeds are still inside the pods, followed by careful thrashing of the stalks. Lighter, fluffier seeds are literally vacuumed off the plants in the fields.

Along with three other families, the Jensens have formed Clearwater Seed, a farmer-owned native seed warehouse and blending facility. This allows tighter control over the cleaning and packing processes. This, in turn, insures a lower contaminant level, and a higher quality seed. It’s no wonder to me that Jacie recently received the National Women’s History Month Award for Community Leadership and Public Service through WSU. (Although she didn’t tell me this, I had to sniff it out.)

Jeanne Leffingwell, a local artist, and her dog Pinta, are enjoying planting seeds now, smelling the flowers, and DIGGING!

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Tuesday Growers’ Market

June Produce List

Affinity Farm (Russell Poe and Kelly Kingsland):

salad mix, spinach, carrots, beets, chard, bok choy, lettuce, green onion, radish, green garlic, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, parsley, cilantro, peas.

Avon Eggs/Tourmaline Farms (Kyle Bujnicki):

fresh eggs, pastured chicken, grass-fed beef; pre-orders recommended for chickens and beef.

Debbie’s Flowers (Debbie and George Durrin):

flowers, garden and herb starts, fresh-cut bouquets and hanging baskets.

RavenCroft Farm (Dave and Debi Smith):

asian greens, baby bok choy, arugula, spinach, lettuce, mache, onions, radishes, snow peas, strawberries (limited amount), kale, chard, collard greens.

Thorn Creek Native Seed Farm (Jacie Jensen):

native wildflowers and grasses such as: clarkia, Missouri goldenrod, blanketflower, penstamon, western yarrow, wild hollyhock, wild baby’s breath, western aster, grand collomia, prairie smoke, Oregon sunshine, cinquefoil, showy phlox, Idaho fescue, blue-bunch wheatgrass, blue wild rye.

Backyard Harvest (Amy Grey):

Providing USDA Food Stamps to Shop the Market!