If you are watching the Rose Parade today, you may be surprised (like I was) that there are so many mentions of onion seeds and lentils. If you have questions, I have some answers… some I had to search for, and others I knew.

Why are seeds used on parade floats?

This is a fairly simple answer…. seeds maintain their color, shape, etc so designers like using them to enable the construction crews to get some of the spaces done earlier. They also add great textures! And seeds fit the requirement that all of the decorations be from plants!

This video is low on production but does a great job of showing you how many different flowers and seeds a float may be pulling from. And as you see, the earliest applications are of seeds.

Where do you get onion seeds?

Onion seeds aren’t a very common thing to think about. I mean, we all know about poppy seeds being used on things and a lot of the foods we eat contain seeds (think tomatoes or watermelon unless they are seedless). However onion seeds aren’t something that we tend to be familiar with, that’s in part because you have to let onions keep growing past when you should harvest them to enjoy in recipes. So there are farmers who plant onions for us to eat (like Shay Myers who we interviewed) and farmers who plant specifically for seed, maybe some who do both!

I’ve had the chance to see onion seed production and I had no idea how pretty onions could be or that they flowered. I mean, we are always focused on the bulb that we want to eat! But check these photos out of onion seeds growing.

The plant starts to produce the flowers with a thin protective layer and then the flower petals begin to push through it.

You can see above that some of the flowers are opening. Every flower needs to be pollinated to ultimately produce seeds. It can be bees, flies, etc that help with the pollination.

These flowers are all pollinated. The small, black seeds are inside the flowers, to get them out, you simply shake them. Farmers need seeds that are certain to emerge so seed growers put the onion seeds in warehouses and monitor temperature and humidity after cutting the seed head from the rest of the plant.

Sometimes gardeners have a dedicated area of their garden where they let the plant go to seed as shown in the University of Wisconsin photo above. This video on onion seeds on YouTube walks through the whole process of growing onion seeds, but I’ve cued it to the harvesting part. The seeds are so small, that you want to be sure you can capture them all.

And people sit there and painstakingly glue them into place to make irises on eyes or stripes on bees for the parade floats? Wild!

Lots of Colors of Lentils

The vibrant oranges on so many floats kept drawing eyes, and time and time again, the announcers mentioned lentils. Lentils are often overlooked in lots of ways and the diversity of colors is one. I mean check out just a small selection of colors here.

That orange isn’t the typical lentil used in daal or other lentil soups. Shauna Farver talked with us about the awesomeness that is lentils. The nutrition lentils bring is amazing too but that doesn’t really come into play for parade floats.

Lingering Questions

The thing I wonder, is who contracts for all of those onion seeds? Are they seeds that didn’t meet the farmer quality demands for emergence or something? Are they grown specifically for ornamental uses?

If you have the answers, PLEASE get in touch!

The post Onion seeds & lentils on floats in the Rose Parade? appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

I grew up in a Southern family which included a range of traditions. It’s long been a tradition to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day to set the good luck for the year.

And while the tradition is now deeply Southern, the origins go back much further. The New York Times recently talked to food historians about all of it:

How to Serve Black-Eyed Peas for Luck

If you haven’t eating peas for the holidays, you may be wondering whether the way you eat them matters. I don’t think so. Just go for it!

I immediately think of slow cooked black-eyed peas when I think of New Year’s Day. In my family, the peas are cooked slowly with some pork for seasoning. We usually ate them with a relish made of pickled green tomatoes we call chow-chow. My mom and grandmother would make chow chow each fall as tomatoes were unlikely to ripen. Now you can even get chow chow on Amazon!  (Here’s an affiliate link for one mom and I tried called Tennessee’s Best Old Fashioned Chow Chow. I liked the hot one most even though mom’s homemade was better.)

Here’s a photo from a New Year’s past to show what I mean.

For friends and family in Texas, usually had their black-eyed peas in a dip with tortilla chips. They’d call it Texas Caviar and I’ve had it several times on New Year’s too. I like getting creative with recipes honestly but that one from All Recipes is the kind I would look at as I decide what to add or subtract.

And in the Southeastern U.S. it’s more likely to be Hoppin’ John that has the pork, peas and rice all in one dish.

Learn More about Peas

We’ve done interviews with a couple of people about peas that you may want to call up.

• This year we talked with Priyanka Gupta who’s a plant breeder working with grasspeas in Morocco. Like other peas, it’s a good source of fiber and protein. She talked to us about how improving the plants will make a real difference for the developing world.
• Closer to home, Terren Moore grows purple hull peas and greens in Texas. Purple hull peas are closely related to black-eyed peas but tend to be a bit creamier and don’t have the prominent coloring.

If you aren’t a fan of peas, maybe you should check out some of the other New Year’s foods and traditions. Years ago, my friend Albert (you may remember his episode this summer talking about bitter gourd)  added noodles to the traditions I observe for New Year’s as they bring long life! I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going with rice noodles or a wheat-based pasta yet for this year but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.

The post What’s New Year’s without Black-Eyed Peas for Luck? I’m Not Tempting 2022 appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

In today’s world, people talk about plant-based proteins as a dietary preference, or a way to deliver innovation. But when you think about that, how often does your mind turn to growing a plant-based protein in a desert? How often do you think about subsistence farmers, people who struggle to feed their family the most basic foods because weather strikes hard? That’s both the challenge and the promise we turn to in our latest episode of Grounded by the Farm.

A Few Video Recommendations from Priyanka

As we talked about the work that is being done, Priyanka mentioned some videos and information. We wanted to share those here for those who want to go a bit deeper on plant breeding!

The post Growing A Plant-Based Protein that is Humble Yet Powerful — Convo with Dr. Priyanka Gupta appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

The Farver family has been growing lentils in northeastern Montana for decades. But in the past few years, the family decided to make some changes at Farver Farms, says Shauna Ferguson Farver. First up? Value-added products that let the family sell mixes of some of their favorite recipes including a sweet lentil chili and fudgy lentil brownies.

Shauna talks us through the farm’s progress and helps us understand the various kinds of lentils, tips for cooking them, finding good recipes and provides insight on some of the things farmers take into consideration to reduce the possibility of fire during the busy harvest season.

Shauna Farver (right) with members of the Farver Farms team

What Lentils Look Like in the Field

Links of Interest

Find Shauna & the farm online:

• Get to know Farver Farms
• Shop Farver Farms lentils (meal mixes and snacks)

Shauna and her family also grow crops previously featured on Grounded by the Farm. Check out the episodes on growing wheat and growing barley aka our conversation with a beer farmer.

The website that Shauna mentions as a great source of recipes is Pulses.org. You can sort by type of recipe (breakfast, appetizer, entree, etc), by complexity, type of pulse and more. Some of the peas we mentioned in our episode with Terren Moore talking about purple hull peas.

Lentils.org is a website Canadian farmers fund that also has a lot of great information and recipes.

Tamar Haspel is the Washington Post columnist who is a major advocate for lentils. You can follow her on Twitter at @TamarHaspel.

Raw Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

lentils, grown, recipe, add, people, pulses, harvest, crop, cook, greens, dry, applesauce, dishes, mixes, plant, cut, flavor, farms, farmer, crunchers, growing lentils

SPEAKERS

Farmer Shauna Farver & Janice Person of Grounded by the Farm

Grounded by the Farm  00:02

Food is more than just what’s on our plate. It’s the places where it’s grown. It’s the people who grow it and so much more. Join me, Janice person, your host on Grounded by the Farm every other week as we talk about the foods we love.

Okay, I hope you’re ready for this week’s episode. We are going to extreme north eastern Montana. Just 14 miles from Canada to talk about growing lentils. We’re going to be talking to Shawna Ferguson Farver, she and her husband’s family have Farver farms. And they think growing lentils since the 70s. Although there was a nice little period where they weren’t growing them for a while. She’s gonna talk to us about all of those pieces, but she’s also gonna help people like me, who enjoy lentils when we’re out and about but haven’t figured out exactly how to cook them. I’m a little intimidated. I’m not gonna lie. As she talks about farm, we’re gonna talk a little bit about fire safety, and some things that farmers do around harvest time to make sure that they don’t add to any of the fire problems. So without any further ado, I’m going to start by asking Shawna to help bring us up to speed on what they’ve been doing. My goodness, I have watched your progress over the years. We haven’t talked in person in forever. You guys have been changing it up. What are you doing out there?

Shauna Farver  01:31

So Janice, I think when we met, I had just started the Farver Farms and it was a blog and that’s what it was farmer farms.com. It was a blog just talking about chronicling what we do in agriculture and what that looks like. I experimented with some recipes like some of the other sites, and none of that just seemed quite authentic. It didn’t quite fit for us. And I think part of that is because I I’m a value added girl. from way back, which means you know, adding value to to our crop. And I think that’s where my heart really was. And so eventually this blog morphed into we came up with a retail product and so we added that then we added a production facility in town for those actually we added several we started in a in one spot move to another, and then we added another retail product and then we okay well what I’m

Grounded by the Farm  02:28

gonna I’m gonna slow you down, because you’re saying retail product. So what kind of retail products are you talking about making? How are you adding that value?

Shauna Farver  02:38

Yeah, the first thing we came up with were soup mixes. So we would use the lentils and put them in packaging with some spices and a recipe. You know, a few ingredients that the consumer could buy at the store to add to this to come up with a soup or like we have a spicy lentil chicken salad. A sweet lentil chili Seems like oh, and our baking mixes are fudgy lentil brownies and our lentil lemon bars. So that’s that’s where we started. Those were our original products.

Grounded by the Farm  03:08

Nice. Nice. And I’ve seen some of those. And I’ve tasted some snacks from you guys. You have snacks now, right?

Shauna Farver  03:16

Yeah, so that came later than the lentil crunchers were the next thing that came and we just have one flavor of those right now but we’re getting ready to roll out another flavor here real quickly.

Grounded by the Farm  03:26

And I think for people that listen to this podcast, the idea that you can buy a food that specifically connected back to this farm is is pretty cool. So you now have like a retail store in town.

Shauna Farver  03:39

We have a production facility in town and then we have a retail store which is rolled into a separate club, a restaurant that we bought so we have a mercantile within that restaurant and we have the the mixes and the crunches are available in the mercantile and we also use those on our menu at the restaurant.

Grounded by the Farm  03:58

Yeah. Oh nice. So If somebody is in scoby is it Cody Montana? Yeah, he just happened to be driving along the Canadian border and want to grab a bite to eat. They can come What’s the name of the place? So Farver farms cook house, the cook house. Oh, that sounds good. All right. Is there a bunkhouse nearby if they want to stay?

Shauna Farver  04:22

There will be soon Well, I soon I hope but there but there are there is a bunk house in scoby. There is also that’s an Airbnb. It’s not ours. But a friend of ours has one and then there’s also I think it’s the chicken coop. I think she calls it another gal has another Airbnb here in town. So yeah, those are fun.

Grounded by the Farm  04:39

That’s awesome. Oh, wow. I was just being silly asking about Oh,

Shauna Farver  04:44

yeah, no.

Grounded by the Farm  04:46

So tell me how long have you guys been farming and growing lentils in that part of the world?

Shauna Farver  04:49

So my husband husband grew up farming here and ranching and their family grew lentils in the 70s actually, wow. And yeah, they they had a Really good experience with one one group that was buying their lentils the next group they had a not so great experience and

Grounded by the Farm  05:08

very small business

Shauna Farver  05:10

does and especially when you’re you’re growing your crop that’s new and definitely new to this part of the world. So consequently those their second crop of lentils ended up in bags in the Quonset for 20 some 30 well 20 some years maybe. And yeah, and I mean, they save their their seed so they saved and cool dry storage they ate on them a lot. They had a lot of lentil dishes growing up and and yeah and so then you know, turn around here I Terry’s the year person he could tell you for sure what year but eventually lentils came around again and specifically in this part of the country because they grow so well here. And Terry said Well, I have lentils let’s let’s try those. So we throw them in the ground and tried growing lentils. They did okay and so then we bought some seeds. The next Yeah, we’ve been going strong with him. Since then

Grounded by the Farm  06:02

lintels have a very unique place in the food world. I think I have a friend who’s somebody I know via Twitter at Tamar Haspel. She’s a columnist at the Washington Post. Okay, she is like the biggest lentil advocate on dannette. So there are people who absolutely love lentils and then there are people who are going What do you mean lentils? So it’s a really big spread. What should people who don’t know much about lentils know

Shauna Farver  06:33

if they don’t know much about lentils? They should know that lentil dishes are not all about that one time gnarly lentil soup that you tried somewhere that tastes like wallpaper paste or or glue or something. They actually they’re so versatile and they they adapt themselves to so many different recipes in so many different flavors. You can use them absolutely anywhere. They’re an amazing protein. They, in so many different ways.

Grounded by the Farm  07:03

I think that protein component is a piece that a lot of people in the health side of food, want more people to understand. It’s a really good profile for protein. It doesn’t carry a lot of fat unless you add it to it in the cooking process. Right, right. Right and and it’s fiber

Shauna Farver  07:23

ton of fiber. You have to be careful with them. Yeah. I know. Our little guys. Yep.

Grounded by the Farm  07:28

Yeah, so I’ve heard a lot more people ought to be considering them. When you look at them as a group of you know, what are lentils? They’re a pulse correct.

Shauna Farver  07:39

They are pulse crop.

Grounded by the Farm  07:41

Most people think of their plate as green vegetables, proteins. So this fits as protein but most people think of being like kind of things as vegetables. So

Shauna Farver  07:54

right so pulses are you’re going to find beans also in the pulse category. There are some beans that are pulses. peas are also in the pulse category. So they sort of sit on the fence between that vegetables slash protein area and they provide components of some of all the above they have some great vitamins and nutrients in them. And it depends which pulse you’re talking about. You know, that’s dependent on how much protein which vitamins, which minerals, but they’re just such a really versatile part of the food group pulses, you can even just slide them in anywhere, especially the lentils, they really do take on the flavor of the recipe that you’re using them in. So So I always give the example we use the lentils and our big lentil brownies. And and so you boil them which does take a few of the nutrients out but but not all of them and and then you make sure that they’re really soft and you fold them into these brownies almost like you would applesauce when you’re baking and no one even knows they’re there. In fact, I fit into my

Grounded by the Farm  08:58

daughter’s high school basketball team and they had no clue. Yeah, it’s one of those great ways of getting additional nutrients into diets. It’s so funny. We talked about it in the almond episode about how sometimes children have very particular palates, and they don’t want to eat all the things and you still want to help them get different nutrients. And so it’s a it’s a good fit. So lentils are grown in the US and Canada, right, mainly in this part of the world. But I got to know lentils I would assume away a lot of people do, which is Indian food, or Middle Eastern foods. Right, right. Is that is that kind of where they originated from? I believe so. I,

Shauna Farver  09:44

you know, I actually don’t know where lentils originated from and where the flavor profiles. That’s where I probably first became aware of lentils was in a Middle Eastern Indian dish in that profile, and I think that’s where a lot of people got familiar with them. There. Or like I said in some kind of lentils stew or soup that was you know, yeah, like somebody had lentils in their Quonset throw them into a soup and and they that wasn’t a real popular flavor profile

Grounded by the Farm  10:14

so what’s what are your favorite dishes since you said that one there were some that are really bad. So what’s like a dish that’s like a go to in the farmer house?

Shauna Farver  10:24

That sweet lentil chili and and that’s one that my husband grew up eating. It’s been around forever. So what else in that with

10:31

the lentils?

Shauna Farver  10:32

Yeah, so it’s the lentils and then it’s some flavors that you might not think about adding but there’s some cinnamon and some nutmeg. I forget even right off the top of my head but and then you add a barbecue sauce to it, whatever your favorite barbecue sauce is. And then yeah, it kind of gets all mixed together and put some tomato sauce with it. And then you add meat to it. We usually add some kind of pork it seems like that goes best with it but other people have used lamb Or wild game actually is one that’s been popular with our customers they’ll put wild game with it. Yes this kind of hearty soupy Stewie full of flavor makes the house smell fantastic when you’re cooking it

Grounded by the Farm  11:16

yeah as we get into fall it’s not that cool in my part of the country but I know some people further north or re having a little bit of snow and and really old weather those kind of dishes start as football seasons get really underway and stuff people start thinking hey wait a minute, let me think about some chili and you guys have that available on your site I saw right like you have that already together and so if somebody just wants to give that a shot and and just so they can give it a taste right like so if they haven’t tried lentils before, this is a really easy like, all in one container kind of way to do it. You say we add the lentils helped me understand what kind of lentils you grow and then what kind lentils there are because I have some green lentils in there and I’m still not sure what I’m gonna do with those anytime soon.

Shauna Farver  12:07

Right so our lentils are green lentils, but they’re viceroy is the name of the the seed that we use, but there you’ll also hear them called Small greens. But there are small green lentil, and part of the reason we chose to grow those was a at the time, that’s where we could get a regular commodity market. They were buying the small greens, but be what we found was they cook up much quicker. So really, the the small greens that we use in our mixes are going to take about 30 minutes to put that whole recipe together and have it on the table for your family, which is pretty cool. But then there are also large greens there are there’s a rainbow of colors. There’s purple, there’s black Beluga lentils, which are just little tiny guys, they’re orange and red and all kinds of lentils and they all have a little bit different flavor profile to them. But we found that these Small greens really well, they have a very earthy flavor and they’re gonna pick up anything that you put them with and really, really be complimentary to,

Grounded by the Farm  13:08

to it. I am so excited. I have small green lentils in my cabinet. Yay, I’m gonna have to get busy on that. Here’s a question for you. Let’s just say you’re traveling somewhere like, I don’t know if your family went to Denver, Colorado Springs, or that’s probably not that far off for you guys or and somebody invited you to a potluck, and they said they want you to bring something with lentils, but you didn’t carry your favorite mix with you mix. So what do you look for in the grocery store? How do people pick what kind of lentils to buy?

Shauna Farver  13:44

So I would probably start by going online and finding a recipe. And I think it’s pulses.org. USA pulses have a fantastic set of recipes and there’s also a Twitter account and I would have to look down at I’ll confirm

Grounded by the Farm  14:00

all that and we’ll put it in the show notes to make. Okay, welcome go to exactly to the site. Okay. One of the questions I had was, how do you find recipes that you feel you could trust? And I think that’s right. I mean, there’s so many websites, a lot of them I love but a lot of them I don’t have connections to so how do you find one you can trust this is when you would trust pulses, or I know there’s one lintels, that org that I think the Canadian farmer that’s, yep,

Shauna Farver  14:27

yep. And that’s the other one. Yep. And they have a really great Twitter site.

Grounded by the Farm  14:31

Yeah. So you would go there first and decide what you want to cook or what you want. I would

Shauna Farver  14:36

Yeah, I think I think lentils are one of those things that we don’t inherently know how to cook with or what to do with it. You know, somebody hands you a pound a hamburger. Oh, you know, 1000 things you can do with that pound a hamburger but if someone hands you a bag of lentils or or you want to use a, you know, lentils in a recipe, I think, inherently we don’t. You know, we aren’t all necessarily hardwired to know what to do with those lentils. So yeah, I would look for a recipe first. And they’re going to run the gamut from breakfast cases, to desserts to side dishes to main dishes to all kinds of flavor profiles, you’re going to find them used in so many things. So so once you find those places that have the recipes, yeah, you’re going to find a recipe that looks good and, and then determine which kind of lentil you need for that recipe. Yeah, pick it up at the store,

Grounded by the Farm  15:25

just because not everybody has even purchased lentils, or they found with other dried beans and things along that line. Right? You’ll rarely

Shauna Farver  15:33

find them with the dried beans, and peas.

Grounded by the Farm  15:35

And that’s one of the places I found that lentils and pulses differ from some beans is that they’re harvested when they’re dried down versus things like edamame, May, and soy beans. Those are a heavy oil seed. They don’t write down they’re not rolls. So see I did do some research. Yeah,

Shauna Farver  15:56

you’re dead. You’re right.

Grounded by the Farm  15:58

So that’s a good idea on how to get people started. What’s most likely to go wrong if you haven’t cooked with them before?

Shauna Farver  16:07

So there are some really simple lentil recipes. I mean, they they can, you know, they’re again, they’re one of those things that can be really super simple and you’re just gonna boil them a little bit and toss them in there somewhere you can, you know, get really complicated with them. The biggest thing that’s going to go wrong with lentils is you want to follow the recipe and see how that lentil should be cooked. How done it should be. So for the most part, lentils you’re going to want to cook them identity just like pasta. If you cook them too long, they’re gonna get mushy, which doesn’t really lend itself to most recipes.

Grounded by the Farm  16:41

Oh my god, did you read my notes because my colleague Molly said, How do you keep from getting them too mushy? Because it always goes wrong for her. Yeah. So she says are over cooking.

Shauna Farver  16:53

Over cooking. Yep. So you want to, you know, just like you do with pasta. You want to kind of test it out a little bit once in a while. And it should be you should be able to chew it but it should still be have still have like a little pop to it almost.

Grounded by the Farm  17:06

Usually with lentils, you don’t have a lot of water that you form out of, or do you?

17:11

You know we do and

17:13

it

Shauna Farver  17:14

it depends on the recipe. Okay, so if you’re going to cook the lentils first and add them to the recipe that yeah, it’s just like cooking pasta. If they actually go in to the recipe first and you’re cooking all together then yeah, maybe more like rice But okay, you know, I I was taught to cook by a German grandma who got in there with her fingers a whole bunch and so I’m just always testing them, you know, kind of during the maybe with a spoon depending who I’m serving it to, but

Grounded by the Farm  17:42

obviously at the cook house, people in the kitchen are doing everything according to sanitary saturd

Shauna Farver  17:48

absolutely right. So they’re gonna use a spoon to sample and make sure although they have it pretty well timed out at this point, but but in your own kitchen. Yeah, just get in there and sample it and see you Know where those little guys are at at what At what point they. But be careful Yeah, to make sure they don’t turn to mush.

Grounded by the Farm  18:07

Yeah, cuz that would be a bad day. Right? What other kind of lentils are grown in the US? Like if people want to explore things that are grown here? Are there some that are grown here that aren’t available in other parts of the world or

Shauna Farver  18:21

that we typically do better? I know that in the US there are so many varieties grown so like I said, they’re the small greens. They’re the large greens that are going to be a little bit larger and more flat probably. They’re yellow lentils, they’re purple. There are, I guess, the black belugas? You can get almost anything you want in the US as far as lentils, I think and a lot of them aren’t grown right in the US because farmers have gotten so diverse with their lentil

Grounded by the Farm  18:50

profiles. When do you start planting them? I guess is a good question. And are you busy with harvest right now because this is harvest time for so many us, folks.

Shauna Farver  19:00

We are and especially for us. So here on the northern tier, we run weeks behind people just 60 miles south of us. And we run months behind a lot of other farmers, your pulses, especially your lentils, you’re going to find those grown here in our area and over into Northwest North Dakota. And then you’re going to also find those grown in the police country over in Washington and Idaho. And so those are going to be planted in the spring. Normally, we’re planting in May, sometimes in April, depending on the winter that we’ve had, but usually those are going to get planted in May. And then we harvest ours, end of August 1 to September just kind of depending on whether ours are maybe a little more unique than some we swath ours. So lentils are an indeterminate crop. It means they’re going to continue growing as long as they have cool weather and moisture to keep growing. And you were right before you want to harvest them once they’ve dried down. So there’s two ways to accomplish that. One is going to be what they call desiccation that spraying them to kill them. And the other is swapping the plant and actually just cutting it off and killing the plant so that the lentils will dry down. And so we

Grounded by the Farm  20:11

may have shown some of that when we talked about hay and alfalfa in another episode because you swap hay. So it’s kind of like if somebody let their yard go really tall. When you cut it down. You let it sit there and dry before you get rid of it or something like that. Right, right. And normally with lentils, you would hope that they started drying already, before you cut them or do you kind of real grade.

Shauna Farver  20:36

We cut our screen. Okay, we can, yep, we kind of green a couple of reasons. One, then we can really control when we’re harvesting that crop. We can watch the weather. We can see there’s rain coming, we don’t want to cut them right now because we want to have a dry spell in front of us before we lay those down. We can watch to see if there’s wind coming because once they’ve been swapped, and they’re in this nice little neat row. If we get a big wind, it’ll move that row and make it really hard to come back and pick up. So we swapped them green. But the other thing is fire danger. So, right now there’s, you know, fires raging in the US, if we kept them really green, we significantly cut down the fire danger versus cutting them once they’re dry.

21:20

So, yeah, well,

Shauna Farver  21:22

the reason for that is they are a really low growing crop. So if you’re swatting, you’re having to cut really low to the ground. So that obscure instance of maybe hitting a rock with the header, you know, the piece of machinery that’s cutting that and throwing a spark or something. So yeah, we can’t really green.

Grounded by the Farm  21:38

That’s a really interesting way of having to think about harvesting a crop is wanting to prevent the possibility of additional fires, which, right now, I’d say some people have not thought about what they were doing and how it might involve fires in TMI gas. Yeah. So the idea that you actually Harvest when it’s green, because otherwise you you wait until it’s a little bit cooler than the plant really likes and it starts naturally soon messing the plant.

22:09

Correct.

Grounded by the Farm  22:09

And so what you’re trying to do is lay that plant down so it’s starting to dry. Do you guys have to turn it? Is it like deep foliage that you have to turn like sometimes on hay, you have to turn it once or twice to get it to continue drying down,

Shauna Farver  22:24

not if we catch it at the right time. So then there’s a window there. So you lay it down, and hopefully it will dry then if we if we pick the right time. So we have enough dry days, there was one year there been several years that that we dropped it and we missed the forecast or the forecaster missed the forecast and we had more rain than we anticipated and it just kind of continued and that plant actually then continued. It got back into the ground and when we went to pick it up the plant was actually connected into the ground again. And yeah, it wasn’t Yep, you’re rubbing your forehead. It was a nightmare. And so there’s there’s a narrow window there again you know we get it laid down if it dries down and when there’s enough dry days then no it doesn’t have to be turned.

Grounded by the Farm  23:08

I just tried to imagine so many different things to have to learn as you grow crops What else do you guys grow you grow wheat or other crops we

Shauna Farver  23:17

oh we do. We grow spring wheat we we grow durum which is a variety of wheat that’s used for pasta. We’ve grown barley, we grow hay and alfalfa for cows. We’ve grown flax we’ve grown canola is probably something else I’m missing but he’s we’ve grown dry peas before a

Grounded by the Farm  23:37

little bit above. It’s interesting in that Montana kind of space. I went up a few years ago for a conference and it was the grain growers and I realized it was also the post growers like that all pulled their meeting together and thrown together. I can still remember a gentleman bringing me some chickpeas that he had made a snap he like fries up his chicken He’s put some seasonings and he keeps that in his combine when he’s harvesting so he’s having good nutritious snacks instead of Yeah, that’s what he told me up.

Shauna Farver  24:10

Yep, exactly. Same exact concept with our lentil crunchers.

Grounded by the Farm  24:14

Yeah, I just think that’d be a great snack to give your kids and if you have the individual sizes,

Shauna Farver  24:22

what flavors do you have? Right now? It’s just a signature salty flavor. Yeah. So ours go from the farm over to 45 miles to a neighboring town where they clean them for us. And then we bring them back. And then we actually take them out to Big Sandy where they they’re doing a production for us right now. And that’s four and a half hours one way. We take them out there to get the production done on them. Then we bring them back to our facility to package the larger quantities. Yes, and to package the mixes so

Grounded by the Farm  24:54

so when you talk about taking it out to the other place for production, what are they doing? Are they just cleaning them and things like that sorting out the bad ones from the good

Shauna Farver  25:04

ones. So we take them 45 miles one way and they clean them, it cleans all the seed the weed seed out, it sorts out the bad ones from the good ones, it sorts the wheat or if there’s another volunteer crop that was growing in that field, it sorts that out. They bag it in 50 pound bags, and we bring it back to our production facility. We produce some mixes here we bag the mixes here and then the ones that are going to be lentil crunchers go four and a half hours the other way to a facility where they actually do the boiling and frying for us. Okay, and they package the small one ounce crunchers. We bring bulk back here and packaged to eight and 25 ounce crunchers.

Grounded by the Farm  25:43

Yeah, it’s a lot going on.

Shauna Farver  25:46

It’s a lot going on. And we’re located in a part of the state where there just isn’t a lot of infrastructure for value added food production. So we’ve had to get pretty creative.

Grounded by the Farm  25:55

Well do you use I’m still thinking about those brownies. Right. I have I Chocolate cake in there that a friend brought over. If you wanted to do brownies or something like that, what how do you start that process?

26:09

Yeah, so

Grounded by the Farm  26:12

it’s like the flour or what do you just add

Shauna Farver  26:17

it just add it in. So our brownie recipe, like I said, it’s a lot like cooking with applesauce, if any, anybody out there has ever done that. For us, we boil those lentils. I leave them a little bit chewy so that it’s almost like a monster cookie kind of texture. But yeah, you make the brownie mix, just like normal, and then you, you toss the lentils into it. If you want to mushy so that the kids don’t know they’re there. Then you boil them until they’re pretty soft, and you can wish them they’re more like applesauce. And then, of course, our recipe is made for that and tells you how much oil and how much water to add. But for those home cooks out there, you could do about the same thing and I think the conversion would be pretty Much like like you would with applesauce however, you know, convert that recipe to use applesauce instead of the oil and eggs.

Grounded by the Farm  27:07

That’s really helpful because I know a lot of people have done that kind of thing with cake mixes or whatever over the last few years. So that makes a lot of sense. All right, so I guess those cover the questions I had other than how can people find you so they can like follow up on one if they’re in that part of the world?

Shauna Farver  27:27

You know, we’re even north of highway two. So scoby really is a destination kind of place you have to be trying to get here to get here.

Grounded by the Farm  27:36

Where can people find you online?

Shauna Farver  27:39

Yeah, they can find us at Farver farms calm online and they can find our mixes and our crunchers all there to pick up and when we shipped nationwide, and, and how shipped nationwide and so they can pick them up there and try them at home.

Grounded by the Farm  27:54

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I think people have been cooking a lot more. Mm hmm. And cook a lot more from scratch. But I think people also want the right kind of things that are kind of pre prepared. And things like right. So you know, when you’re thinking about, you know, all the all the sweets and all that kind of stuff, this is a way to get one that’s a little bit different. Or if you’re going to be part of a chili cook off this fall. Yeah. And then a little bit

Shauna Farver  28:22

different rave reviews. And what they’re going to find is they’re going to get a mix that has the the lentils in it, it has the seasoning packet in it, and they’re just going to have to add a few things that they probably have in their kitchen anyway. And it makes it really user friendly. Super easy to try.

Grounded by the Farm  28:40

Well, I really appreciate your joining us and I can guarantee you a couple of orders will be coming in pretty soon. If nothing else, some of my family is going to want to try some of the things you’ve just talked about. But thanks so much,

Shauna Farver  28:53

Jen. It’s we appreciate you having us up.

Grounded by the Farm  28:57

All right. So there you go. As you can tell we Have a lot of links this week. This week’s episode had lots of different things we talked about in terms of website, different topics of discussion we’ve covered previously. So we’re gonna be putting all those links together in the show notes. I hope you guys take time to check that out. You can always catch that in any of the apps that you use for podcasts, or hop over to Grounded by the Farm calm. We put that information as well as some photos and things. So please go ahead and check it out. Another thing as we ask each week, would love to get you to share this with friends that you think may enjoy it, whether that’s in person, whether it’s on social media, I appreciate you guys helping us reach more people who like us really love food, but also are intrigued to find a little bit more out about what happens to it as it’s grown and is coming towards our place. Thanks so much. We’ll be back in two weeks.

The post Getting the Pulse of Growing Lentils appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Texan Terren Moore saw a lot of demand for vegetables locally while in high school and next thing he knew, he was growing purple hull peas in the backyard.

He was just 15 years old then and participating in FFA activities at high school. And although he laughs as he tells us why he signed up for an agricultural class, he admits it turned a different way and lit a spark for him!

His farming start? Growing Purple Hull Peas

Terren started a backyard garden at the age of 15. His dad was growing purple hull peas when Terren was a child, his dad’s job had pulled him another direction. Terren provided the family peas in exchange for his their support and would sell the rest. It wasn’t long til he was expanding to use more land. He’s now nine seasons into the business and investing in capital and improving the farm’s environmental footprint.

During our interview, we talk about how, as a young black man, he is creating multiple income streams for the future. And he explains his business that grew from his family’s love of peas and how education, hands-on experience & customer service make the difference.

And he shares his grandmom’s secret for peas that he could eat everyday for the rest of his life!

You may also enjoy hearing from these other black farmers.

Links Mentioned in the Show

• Episode 122 interview with Lloyd Johnson — The History of Being a Black Farmer, Johnson Family Farm Precede Lincoln’s Presidency 
• Where to find Terren Moore on social media:
  • Instagram Moore.Terren
  • Twitter @MooreTerren
  • Facebook Moore Farms & Insurance
• Where to find Grounded by the Farm on social media:
  • GroundedbytheFarm.com for photos, blog posts, show notes and more
  • Ask the Farmers Facebook Page
  • Groundedbythefarm_ on Instagram
  • Grounded by the Farm on Youtube
  • @groundedbythef on Twitter
• Video of Terren (on Facebook) — Look at Terren’s operation while he was in school

The post Growing Purple Hull Peas, Young Black Farmer Terren Moore Keeps Focus on the Future appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.