"This is our first day doing this," said Henry Winnicki, one of three farms involved in this operation. "It's been a great opportunity to meet some folks and to show them what we do."
The operators of this farm chose to go organic and to grow heritage wheats for the same reason, the market.
"We're small and we can't run with the big boys," said Mark Gibeau, another of the operators and the one who mainly spoke to the 25 attendees. "Now we fit into a niche market."
Gibeau figures that them producing an older, and a tad finicky, of a crop has helped them find customers as not a lot of people produce red fife in large quantities and not a lot of people farm organically, so combining the two was a great idea.
The field day gave heritage harvest a chance to show off their work and to explain to people how they do what they do.
It talked about pre and post emergence mechanical weeding, very close row seeding, on farm research, development of tools and equipment that work for organics in this climate as well as a number of other topics that were very informative to everyone present.
"What I can't get over is just how intensely interested people are," said Winnicki. "I think it goes back to people wanting to get in touch with the producer."
The morning began at 9 a.m. with an introduction to the farm, how it got off the ground and how it operates before heading out to see the machines they use to do the work. This was followed by a trip into the first of three fields.
The field the group was standing in was a pasture four years ago, when it was converted into a red fife field.
"This was just big chunks of crunchy stuff," said Gibeau, indicating when they started trying to farm the land.
The next bit of the tour was focused on the farms machinery which helps to create and spread organic fertilizer through the crops. The end of the tour was a trip into two separate fields, the last of which was the largest crop the farm had ever done.
This tour really was an excellent chance for heritage harvest to show off their philosophy of taking the grain from seed all the way through to the baker.
"There seems to be a demand for us," said Gibeau. "We're looking for customers and their looking for us."
The day ended with a chance to chat with Winnicki and Gibeau and the chance to taste some products made with the wheat.
