The Hand and The Heart is a collection of stories about people who follow their passions to bring something unique and beautiful into this world. I profile craftswomen and men that are driven to create and share their creations with others. These are inspired people living inspiring lives, providing authentic experiences for their friends and neighbors through their approach to craft. I invite you to join me for the journey. Words by Bryan Luukinen
Against the Grain, with Purpose: Red Tail Grains
Standing in a verdant field in Orange County, NC, just as the sun is about to drop behind the hills on a late October evening, life feels full of possibility. Surrounding us, spikes of tender green jut up from the corrugated clay soil. These tender leaves are the next step in a legacy of several heirloom grains with histories diverse and storied, the product of hundreds of years of selective breeding, trade, and happy accidents. I’m here amongst the living history with Danny Cowan and George Allen of Red Tail Grains. These intrepid new farmers have planted 27 acres of rare and heritage grains that will continue to jump up from the Carolina clay and strike onward with their miracles of self preservation.
Danny and George are two of the newest players in an agricultural drama spanning thousands of years and crisscrossing the globe. The grain they’ve sown has improbably landed here from nearly everywhere — Red Fife wheat from Ukraine, Sonoran White wheat from Mexico, Abruzzi Rye from Rome, Italy, and Einkorn, which traces its origins back to Turkey more than 10,000 years ago, among others. Far-flung agricultural products are not unusual in our modern world — take a look at the origin of your coffee next time you get a cup at a local shop — but the difference here is that many of the grains that Danny and George are growing are only here through careful selection, striking coincidence, measured production techniques, and in some cases just blind luck.
On a drizzly spring morning in the port of Glasgow around 1842, a cargo ship from Danzig, Prussia pulled into port and workers began to unload the cargo. Merchants and sailors milled around and finalized orders for all sorts of supplies, among them a special type of red wheat. At the port that day was an associate of Mr. David Fife, who by his friend’s direction picked up a quantity of wheat to send back to the Fife farm in Otonabee, Ontario, Canada. That parcel of wheat was likely winter wheat, with a few seeds of an exceptional spring wheat sprinkled in.
Not knowing that he had received winter wheat, Mr. Fife received the seeds at what seemed late for spring planting, and held the grain over until the next spring when it was sown. When it was planted, only a single kernel germinated for spring, bearing three heads. Those three heads were saved and planted the next year, giving rise to the dominance of Red Fife. But it almost didn’t — at least that’s how the story has it. According to legend, David Fife’s wife rescued the first productive Red Fife stalks from a hungry cow in the family’s fields. Mrs. Fife snatched the precious kernels from the hungry bovine’s chops and those few seeds spawned the continental takeover of Red Fife wheat.
Soon, Red Fife had replaced the incumbent Syrian as the wheat of choice in Canada, and spread widely in the wheat growing areas of Canada. By 1860, Red Fife had crossed the border into the United States and was grown in nineteen states, according to the excellent history of Canadian wheat, written by Stephan Symko. Advances in milling technology and rail transportation further catapulted Red Fife’s spread westward across Canada and eventually throughout North America.
By 1880, Red Fife was widely known as one of the best wheat varieties in the world, and had been the choice of most growers in Canada for 20 years. The grain had achieved its status because of its high productivity and excellent baking and milling properties. The Manitoba Daily Free Press wrote in 1883, “Red Fife wheat is unbeatable.” Red Fife continued its streak of success until approximately the middle of the 20th century, when shorter, higher-yielding wheat varieties took over the market, and Red Fife nearly fell into obscurity.
Fate intervened once again in 1988 in the form of Sharon Rempel, the chief interpreter of The Grist Mill historic site at Keremeos, British Columbia, who decided to collect the varieties of wheat that might have been historically grown at the site. She grew seven historical varieties of what at the site, including Red Fife, as a kind of “Living Museum.” From a single pound of Red Fife wheat in 1988, nearly 100,000 pounds of the grain were harvested in 2007. Seeds of Red Fife eventually found its way into the hands of Danny and George who have sown it and many other heirloom and heritage varieties into the rolling, rust-hued fields of Orange County, NC.
Danny and George haven’t chosen the grains they’re growing by accident, quite the opposite. In fact they see their farming as more than just grain production. The two were called to farming because they felt a pull to do something with a higher purpose.
H&H: How did you get here? Why are you doing this?
George: My girlfriend and I ran a produce farm for a couple of years — we didn’t really live off of it, though. But we met at Oberlin college, where I studied biology and Danny studied environmental science. Danny lived with us, and Danny planted the seed about growing wheat, because he was doing a lot of baking, and still does, and was interested in it. I think what got me going about [farming grain] is that one of the things that’s missing in the local food movement around here is grain. A lot of people have “local meat” and “local bread” but what they put into it aren’t really local inputs. You know, it’s partly a good thing, but it’s missing something, and I thought it would be kind of cool to close that loop a little bit.
And I really like thinking about the whole carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle — it’s what I studied in school — and I think that’s what get’s me excited about growing wheat, is closing that loop. There’s a lot of farming techniques that utilize that and can be improved on.
H&H: So, getting your nutrients from above-ground sources such as cover crops [as opposed to fossil fuels].
George: Yeah, I mean I think we have a lot to learn. You know, there are a lot of people growing organic wheat — I mean, tons of people. But, there’s not that many right here, and there’s a lot to learn, and I feel like being a part of that and trying to figure it out together is better for the world, I guess.
H&H: [laughs] That’s a really good answer. Danny, can you build on that?
Danny: [laughs] Well, George and I used to, when we were living together, and we still do, talk about bigger picture stuff. I studied environmental studies, and George studied biology, so a lot of overlap there. And I remember when we were living together, we used to nerd out about agriculture, dreaming big about the possibility of growing more basic stuff, like the staples of our diet. Because, you can eat only so much broccoli and tomatoes, you know, but what is the bulk of our diet? It’s grain for most people — a lot of times it’s wheat. And legumes too. We’re still figuring out our [crop] rotation, but we’ll be sure to get in plenty of interesting legumes.
Danny: I mean, there’s something about it, it just feels good to grow a staple. I don’t know, it’s exciting. My house was completely filled with grain — you know how satisfying that is? I don’t know, you grew this — you were a part of growing this. It’s satisfying.
George: I just had a daydream the other day about — you know I just bought land down the road and the neighbor is an old dairy farmer. And he still has all the dairy equipment. And I thought, you know, maybe in 50 years we could have bread and butter. I do dream about the staples a lot.
Danny: Oh, yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah, definitely. And we think a lot about how we can farm the most sustainably. The answers are not clear. There are a lot of different ideas people have about how much you should till, how to make your rotations, which kinds of fertilizers to use. There are a lot of ideas about, you know, whether you should be leaving straw on the field, whether to incorporate it, or if you should leave it on top. So, it’s cool to read about what other people are doing, but also to develop our own sense about what the best practices are for our own system.
So, for me personally, I really got into this because I had a small bakery for about a year down in Pittsboro. It was a wood-fired bakery, and I was making a lot of bread, and after having farmed vegetables on other people’s farms for years, and having studied food systems in college it was a great fit. Baking gave me a window into what bakers want — because that’s what I wanted. And so, it was just kind of — I almost just kind of fell into it.
Danny: And we should also mention Abraham Palmer. He’s a baker in Carrboro. His bakery is called Box Turtle Bakery, and he does old style breadmaking. He mills his own grain, he does kind of older, storied grains. And he is a big thinker. He knows a ton, and basically made it possible for us to do what we’re doing. He gave us seed up front, for free, because he acknowledged the risk that we were taking. And, sure enough, our first year, we lost our whole crop. Yeah, that was hard — it was a firm slap in the face. But, we came back the next year and got a bumper crop. Abraham basically said, we need people growing these types of grains around here, and he worked with us to buy our grain and to help keep us going. And he communicated to his customers what we were doing, and they were on board with it, and we felt a lot of support through that experience. Those people that buy his bread, and Abraham as well, they make it possible for us to do what we’re doing. That and a ton of other people, like Rob and Monica Segovia Welsh of Chicken Bridge Bakery, the boys over at Boulted Bread who mill for us, and David Bauer up at Farm and Sparrow Bakery up in the mountains.
Danny and George have found an enthusiastic community of supporters for their venture. From an old-school guy that helped them with seed cleaning, to a nearby farmer that let them use his combine and other equipment, to brewers and bakers that enthusiastically purchased their grain. At every turn, they have met people that not only want them to succeed, but they go out of their way to help Danny and George have what they need to get their admittedly risky venture off the ground.
Several of the grains that Red Tail is growing are landrace varieties, meaning that the grain retains genetic diversity so that it can be adaptable across bio-regions. These landrace varieties are different than modern wheat, and it shows in many ways, including flavor, nutritional value, and not the least of which, yield. Landrace varieties are lower-yielding than conventional varieties, by about half, and may be less resistant to diseases. These lower yields make a big difference when the yields are calculated on an industrial scale. Also, the taller grain falls over more often (something called lodging), and more of the agricultural inputs used to grow it are “lost” at harvest, according to the view of modern conventional farming. However, the taller landrace varieties also produce more biomas, both above and below ground, which helps with carbon sequestration (turning CO2 into biomass) and producing straw as an additional crop that can be used as a mulch or for other purposes such as animal feed.
Modern conventional farming was pushed forward by the Industrial Revolution. Rail transportation connected smaller, regional economies and grain could be shipped across continents using the transcontinental railway. The same railroads opened up the Great Plains, the United States’ “breadbasket.” Once wheat production was widespread and interconnected, changes in milling prolonged the life of flour. Milling had originally been done by stone mill, which created a truly whole grain flour, but the invention of the roller mill changed everything. You can find a deeper discussion of modern wheat and bread in this excellent piece from the New York Times.
Red Tail Grains and hundreds of other small-scale grain farmers, bakers, and bread enthusiasts stand in opposition to the industrialization of grain and the neutering of bread flavor and nutrition. Heirloom grains are packed with flavor, which varies widely from across varieties and species. The sheer variety of grains that George and Danny are working with is impressive — a veritable rainbow of flavors and textures — and small scale bakers, like Boulted Bread in Raleigh, Box Turtle Bakery in Carrboro, Chicken Bridge Bakery, and Farm and Sparrow Bakery, are eager to work those flavors into their bread. In addition, local breweries have begun clamoring for the flavor-packed grains, and Red Tail has supplied grain to Mystery Brewing in Hillsborough and Fonta Flora Brewery in Morganton. Red Tail also plans to buy a grist mill from Fulton Forde, who operates a new, small mill-making business called New American Stone Mills. Once they are operating the mill, Red Tail will be able to offer stone-ground whole and sifted flours.
Below is a partial list of the diverse collection of grains that Red Tail is growing:
-Red Fife wheat: a landrace variety — one of the most popular revival wheats used by American bakers, treasured for its flavor and digestibility.
-Turkey Red wheat: another old, landrace wheat, introduced to the US in the 1870s by Mennonite immigrants. This is another very popular revival wheat in the bread world, for similar reasons as Red Fife.
-Appalachian White wheat: A new variety, bred at NC State to make North Carolina a producer of high protein bread wheats. Historically, NC has grown almost exclusively soft wheats (lower protein, for crackers, noodles, etc.).
-Sonoran White wheat: Wheat with an amazing story. Even more rare than Red Fife and Turkey Red. There is a great piece on the wheat by Slow Food here. This wheat could be considered a grandfather grain to the Green Revolution, and is responsible for the wheat flour tortilla that we all know of as part of Mexican American cuisine. It was revitalized by an awesome organization called Native Seeds/SEARCH.
-Yadkin White wheat: modern soft white variety, grown for many years around these parts. Used more frequently for distilling.
-Sungold spelt: Spelt is a much older grain than wheat, so this takes the cake in terms of old genetics. Very high protein grain, grows very well around here. Has a hull on it, so it makes it difficult to process, but it also keeps the deer away from it. We love this. Bakers and brewers love it too.
-Abruzzi Rye: An heirloom rye that has roots in the South. It’s a Roman variety. Another very popular revival grain among bakers and brewers. Delicious taste! Grows very tall.
-Rhymin Rye: There is not much known about this variety, it is believed to be of German origin. Since it has not been bred for grain production, its genetics have been less messed around with, which is often a good thing for flavor and nutrition. This was actually sold as a cover crop, and Red Tail have had a great response from bakers who love its flavor.
Looking toward the future, Danny and George have a supportive community, new land planted that George is working on clearing more room for grain, and a stable of additional grains that they are in the process of testing. They are learning more each year about sustainable farming techniques and seeking out the technical assistance they need to succeed. They have a captive audience of bakers and brewers, and a community of consumers that are looking for more: more flavor, more nutrition, and a local connection to what they eat and drink. Red Tail Grains and other small-scale, diversified grain farmers are not unlike those fated grains of Red Fife. An improbable, risky journey that led them to put down roots in a new place, where they have the opportunity to not only survive, but to thrive.
