Category: News & Announcements

Despite the cancellation of Expo West’s Natural Food Show in March, due to COVID-19,  Bluebird was honored to receive an award for three of our products. Nexty Awards, organized by the NEW HOPE NETWORK  announced on March 25th that three of our products won the Nexty Best New Organic Food Award.  Our Whole Grain Emmer, Whole Grain Einkorn, and  Einka and Lentil Blend received accolades and won the product category for the best new Organic Food Product. Chris McGurrin, of New Hope Network, wrote to us in an email:   “I don’t say this lightly and I don’t say this often – Bluebird is a true exemplification of the NEXTY Awards. To see innovation within the supply chain that offers people clean, delicious, nutritious food while revitalizing soil health, revitalizing agricultural communities, educating consumers on organic agriculture, and changing the narrative on how food should be grown is SO. AMAZING. I do hope others follow suit. Talk about integrity-driven, inspiring, and innovative.”

The New Hope Network writes, “The NEXTY Awards recognize excellence in the natural products industry, elevating impactful brands and products that inspire a healthy, sustainable future for people and the planet. At each Natural Products Expo, New Hope Network recognizes products that stand out within the judging criteria of innovation, inspiration, and integrity.”

Although we are sad that we did not get to receive this award in person at Expo West,  we are quite humbled and encouraged. We hope that the energy and excitement generated from this national award will keep our motivation to build our brand, and deliver the highest quality ancient grain products to our customers.

We are grateful to all of our staff including the”team” of high school and college students that stepped up to the plate to work for Bluebird in March and April. As an essential business Bluebird has been faced with some extraordinary challenges during the COVID-19 lockdown. We have had to rework our systems and put extra safety measures in place to operate efficiently and safely.  It has required extra effort on everyone’s part and we are grateful to our core staff and the students that came in after-hours to help with the extra workload.

Here are some fun photos of just some of our student staff members working hard.

We would like to introduce our new Operations Manager, Easton Brannon.  Easton started working for us at the end of January.  We are grateful for Easton’s organizational skills, team spirit, and the ability to identify and solve problems quickly. She is a wonderful addition to our team.

We have a full-time job opening for a millwright.   This job requires physical labor and the ability to keep track of many fast-moving parts.

Shopping in our online store?  You will find that some of our flour and whole-grain products are out of stock intermittently.   Due to the high retail demand, we are only posting what we can process and mill each week.  All products are still offered to our current Wholesale customers.  We have a limited supply of the following items until September Harvest:  Methow Hard Red Wheat and Heritage Rye Berries, which is why these items are not offered in large volumes. Generally, we are reposting items back in stock by Friday of each week.  Gift boxes are temporarily out of stock.  If you are wanting a steady supply of our products your best bet is to subscribe to one of our 4 to 6 month CSA.  All flour items will be available through our CSA subscription.

Our top seller this month Einkorn Flour! I am so delighted to see this flour finally moving. It is an amazing all-purpose whole-grain pastry flour. Check out some of our wonderful Einkorn flour recipes on our recipe page.

We send good health and well being to our customers and supporters near and far.

Brooke and Sam traveled to San Francisco in January to receive an award from the Good Food Foundation for their Einka and Lentil blend. The awards honored 207 winners from 37 states.  Bluebird’s  Einka and French Lentil blend is made with the ancient grain einkorn and rich, peppery lentil legumes, was a standout in a taste test of more than 40 entries in the grain category from across the country.  The winners were announced at the Herbst Theater in the historic San Francisco War Memorial and performing arts center on Jan. 17th.  Speeches were given by Michael Pollan, author, journalist, and professor who has written extensively on the places where nature and culture intersect, and Alice Waters, author, chef, and owner of the famous Chez Panisse, a Berkeley, California, restaurant known for its organic, locally grown ingredients.

Einka and lentils are a match made in heaven for flavor and cook time.  The toothsome texture lends itself to the perfect starch served for breakfast, lunch, but mostly dinner! Check out our latest baked chicken recipe with Einka and lentils, you’ll love it.

We are delighted to introduce our new operations manager Easton Branam. Easton joins us with extensive experience as senior-level facilities planner.  She brings expertise in workflow optimization and systems planning.  Easton is a military veteran and has worked as a communications officer in the army coordinating complex logistics with military teams. Easton has been at Bluebird for a month now and we feel so grateful to have such a highly qualified person join our team.

March 2nd Brooke Lucy will be traveling with two Bluebird employees Tiffany Scott and CJ Anderson to Expo West Natural Food Show in Anaheim this month.  Although Micky Mouse will be close, Brooke and crew don’t expect to be Micky-mousing-around.  Bluebird will have a booth at the expo thanks to a USDA Value-Added Producer Grant that Bluebird received last fall.  Bluebird will be located in the “certified organic” product hall.  This will be a great opportunity for Bluebird to connect with new and existing buyers and educate people about what we grow and process.  If you plan to be at Expo West this year come see us in booth #2187, Hall B.

Team  C got 2nd place in the “family category” at the Ski to Sun Relay and Marathon sponsored by Methow Trails early this February.  Sam, Brooke, and Bluebird’s packaging coordinator Casey Kutz skied the course in just over 2 hours. We meant to call ourselves “Team Bluebird” but auto-fill had a different plan and spit out…… c. Needless to say, we had fun and particularly enjoyed seeing farmer Sam in his lycra onesie.

As of  December 2019, all of our Bluebird Grain Farm products are certified Kosher. The kosher certification was prompted at the request of our Jewish customers. And we are glad to finally get the certification, many thanks to a USDA Value-Added Grant.  If you purchase our prepackaged items you will not see the certification stamp on the bag anytime soon- all of our bags were pre-printed a year ago and it will take us some time to make this transition. Rest assured, all products are certified Kosher as of December 2019.

As of January 2020, we are out of our Washington heritage rye berries and need to keep what we have left for seed stock.  The good news is that we have sourced similar organic fall rye from a farm in Montana which we will be offering in bulk and pre-package until harvest.

We have T-Shirts by popular request! Check out our assortment of Bluebird Grain Farm T-shirts on our online store.

By Brooke Lucy

We almost missed two months of posting our newsletter. Jeeeeeez….  I don’t know if we have ever missed a month in the last eight years.  Alas, life has caught up with us, no excuses, here are some of the reasons why…

I attended two food shows in the last two months, The Crown Pacific Northwest Food Show and the KeHE Holiday Food show.  Attending food shows is a great way for me to meet customers, share our product with others, and hand out samples while making key connections.  The KeHE show was by far the biggest show we have ever done. I traveled to Chicago with my “horse and pony show” and spent 5 days in downtown Chicago at the famous McCormick City Center on Lake Michigan. Attending the show was the easy part  (once the booth was all set up)compared to the prep that it took to attend a show of this caliber.  We ( our awesome staff and I) spent most of April designing a 10×10 booth and getting all of our stuff in order to ship to Chicago.  We could not be attending these shows without a USDA value-added marketing grant that we received last fall. Many thanks to this important USDA program.

Sam has been working 70 + hours per week after an employee got unexpectedly sick in April and had to leave Bluebird. It was extremely unfortunate that this happened the week that planting started.  Sam had to buck up and finish the planting while running the granary 40 hours a week. The good side of this situation is that the business owner gets an up close and personal look at the business’s inefficiencies.  The bad side….we won’t discuss this here. Needless to say, we have a long laundry list of improvements.

Speaking of improvements we are in the process of doing a feasibility study of moving our granary to a more public location on a 32-acre piece of organic farmland that we purchased in 2017 off of Hwy 20 between Winthrop and Twisp. No, this idea did not come out of Sam’s “couple month’s from hell” but rather a long time vision  that we have had of making Bluebird Grain Farms more accessible to the public with the intent of increasing our processing production to meet current demand,  opportunities for agritourism, and to showcase our vertically integrated farm system. We have been pitching our financials to banks and other local investment networks in hopes that we will have funding in place to break ground in the spring.  We look forward to sharing our vision and dreams as more develops, stay tuned.

One fun experience that Farmer Sam fit in last month was a farm tour hosted by Tilth Farm Alliance and WSU Food System Program. Twenty folks showed up to learn about our organic farming systems.  Sam took folks on a tour through our Einkorn and Emmer fields and granary. Many thanks to Tilth Farm Alliance and WSU for networking and organizing folks.  We look forward to more tours in the future.

Last but not least, our daughter Larkin graduated from high school! Gulp. This celebratory occasion caught us in bouts of tears and fits of joy. The Methow Valley is a very special place to raise a child and the last 18 years with Larkin has been full of wonderful people, experiences, and magical places that have shaped her life.  We are so grateful for our community.  This fall she is off to the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon in Eugene (yay for an awesome liberal town to visit in driving distance with good food)…..another reason to increase production.

Graduation 2019

Larkin in 2003

Here is a shout out to our summer intern Axel Otteson from Seattle Washington, 17 years old. Axel worked with Bluebird for two weeks doing everything from labeling bags, mowing fields to firing up the combine in preparation of harvest. Our neighbors, Jill and Harold Sheely graciously offered to host Axel in their home which allowed him this opportunity. Thank you, Jill and Harold!   It was fun having a young boy around with lots of enthusiasm. Axel was a big help and we look forward to cultivating more opportunities like this in the future.

We were sad to say goodbye to Brad Halm this month, who has been with us for the past four years. Brad came to us initially to work as the millwright. Most recently Brad has been managing sales and marketing along with handling a myriad of other management tasks.  We wish Brad the best as he pursues non-profit management.

Brad’s decision to take a new job has shifted my priorities to come back to Bluebird full time.  Many of you may or may not know that I have been working at our local public school for the past three years as an elementary school counselor. Although I loved my job and felt so honored to be working with young children in such an intense capacity, it became clear to us when Brad stepped down that our business is our first priority and that it was important for me to come back to the helm in managing marketing and sales. There is only so much time in the day.   So, here I am…stumbling through how to get out this newsletter. I am excited to reconnect with customers and look forward to bringing some new energy to the table.

We have also added a new social media coordinator position, daughter Larkin Lucy who is managing and developing content for our social media accounts. It is fun to have the younger generation plug into this important marketing role and nice to have “the kids” interested in the business.

We are quite honored to have received a USDA Value-Added Producer Grant, again thanks to Brad’s hard work. We were awarded a three-year grant to help promote Einkorn sales through product development, marketing, and e-commerce. We are excited about this opportunity and quite frankly a little overwhelmed as we did not anticipate receiving the grant. We will be looking for help in marketing along with e-commerce analytics if you know of anyone send them our way!

May is always a busy month for us at Bluebird, but we have been loving the beautiful wildflowers and steady soil moisture in our fields. Our thoughts go out to those who have been adversely affected by the recent flooding in eastern Okanogan County. Thank you to all who work hard to keep our communities safe during events like these! Here are a few notes on what’s been going on at Bluebird the past few months:

Congratulations to Chef Edouardo Jordan for his James Beard Best New Restaurant 2018 and Best Chef: Northwest awards! Jordan has been a vocal supporter of local, sustainable farmers and we are honored to have our Emmer and Einkorn featured on his menus at Salare and JuneBaby restaurants. If you live in or are visiting Seattle, do not miss the chance to visit these establishments.

Bluebird Grain Farms Einka® Einkorn was featured at the Sunflower Trail Marathon this spring. The amazing Stew Dietz from Dietz Catering created unique and delicious “Sunflower Bowls” with fresh spring greens, roasted chicken, and Bluebird’s Einkorn. What a great way to recover from a race! Stew served over 1,000 of these bowls at the event. If you’d like Dietz Catering to help out at your event in the Methow Valley (they do an amazing job with weddings), you can get in touch here.

We were delighted to have the 8th Graders from Bellevue Christian School stop by to tour our granary. These enterprising students planned and executed their own trip through Okanogan County, all without the aid of smartphones. We were impressed with their thoughtful questions and entrepreneurial spirit. We hope there are some future farmers and business owners in this class!

It’s now “officially” spring and we are excited to get to work on field preparation and planting! The snow is melting out quickly, but fortunately the soil is soaking it right up (we should have good soil moisture for seeding in a few months). It is still too wet to work in the fields so we have another few weeks before things get crazy around here. In the meantime we are enjoying the last few skis of the season and are also lacing up our hiking boots for the lower elevation trails.

In farming news, we are excited to fully utilize our tine weeder this spring. We purchased this unique tool last year and have hopefully worked out all the kinks (we do have a few minor repairs to make before we take it into the fields this year). When it’s working properly, it will allow us to lightly cultivate and clear weeds without disturbing the soil or bringing new weed seeds to the surface. In combination with our no-till seed drill, we are hoping the tine weeder will help us to reduce tillage and tractor time in the fields (good for the soil and keeping our fuel costs down!).

We unfortunately could not attend the annual Farmer-Fisher-Chef Connection (F2C2) event this spring, but we are honored that our Whole Grain Einkorn was featured at this excellent event. Madres Kitchen made an amazing Einkorn Salad With Seasonal Greens with it- wish we could have been there to try it out! Madres is a catering company that does a great job sourcing food from local producers- check them out if you are in need of something delicious for an event.

Bluebird is hiring for a Granary Operator/Millwright. Our current millwright Kevin is moving on to pursue his love of geology with a job in Alaska. Best of luck Kevin, and thanks for all your hard work! If you or anyone you know is interested, you can review the full position description here.

National Sourdough Bread Day is this Sunday, April 1st! To celebrate, we are hosting a photo contest on Instagram. To enter, post your best photo of a sourdough loaf, let us know what Bluebird flour you used, and tag #bluebirdgrainfarms anytime between now and midnight on April 1st. We will pick the winner on Monday, April 2nd and they will receive a $25 gift certificate in our online store.

2018 is trucking along here at Bluebird Grain Farms- we are thankful for a great year of farming in 2017 and are already thinking ahead to working the soil this coming spring! In the meantime, we are  busy cleaning and packaging grains here at the granary and also taking some time to get outside and enjoy the beautiful winter weather. Here are some other news items of note:

We are excited to welcome back our Packaging Room Coordinator Sheah Ellis from maternity leave! Sheah makes sure you all receive your orders in a timely fashion and packed to perfection. She’s also known for her killer baking skills (hopefully you tried out her Einkorn Pumpkin Bread). Stay tuned for more of her delicious recipes in upcoming newsletters. Also, a big thank you to Eric Zytowski for filling in for Sheah over the past 4 months- we appreciate all your time and effort in the granary!

Another big thank-you to everyone who attended our Annual Open House and Granary Tour in December. We had a great time meeting all of you and showing you around our facility! It was great to see some new faces here in the valley. We love visitors, so if you missed the event and want to stop by and say hi, give us a call at 509-996-3526 or email and we’ll make sure someone is available to give you a tour (we are open Monday through Friday, 8:00-4:00). We are excited to announce our new fruit syrup supplier Hidden Acres Orchard. They are a family owned and operated orchard located just north of Spokane in beautiful Green Bluff, WA. If you happen to be traveling nearby, they have great U-pick fruit options throughout the growing season- give them a call at 509-238-2830 for more

information. We are offering their Huckleberry, Marionberry, and Peach Syrups in 16 ounce sizes- all great companions for emmer pancakes or waffles. Our former syrup supplier Bruce Dunlop from Lopez Island Farms has decided to retire- best of luck on your next ventures Bruce!

Brad, Brooke, and Sam have been hard at work over the past two months working on our Value-Added Producer Grant application. This is a great program from the USDA to help farmers who process and package their own crops make improvements in their product development and marketing. We hope to use the grant to help spread the word about our einkorn products. Bluebird Grain Farms was the recipient of a VAPG back in 2008, which really helped us get the business going! We will keep you posted on further developments.

That’s all for now! Enjoy the winter weather and we’ll see you soon.

Best,

The Bluebird Grain Farms Team

Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays here at Bluebird. Coming together with friends and family to express gratitude while sharing delicious food is a vital tradition that we hold dear. It’s especially important to us farmers because it comes just after the major rush in the fields is over and gives us time to reflect on the growing season. While every season has its ups and downs, every year we find ourselves filled with wonder at all that has come together to make Bluebird successful. We give thanks to the soil, our crops, and all of our staff, customers, and friends who help us do what we do.

Sheah Ellis, our Packaging Room Coordinator, had her baby!  A big welcome to Erik Ellis, born September 22nd, 2017.  Congratulations Sheah and Jay! Farmer Sam was a featured speaker at Classroom in Bloom’s Fall Garden Party back in September. Classroom in Bloom promotes school gardening as a way to connect students to their food system, their studies, and their landscape. We love the work they do- they are preparing the next generation of farmers, environmental stewards, and leaders! Bluebird has been helping CiB by plowing and cover cropping the field where their 2018 garden expansion is planned. Stay tuned for more developments.

Our annual Granary Open House and Tour is coming up on Saturday December 9th from 10:00 AM- 1:00 PM (tour at 12:00). Come on up and share a hot drink, meet your local farmers, and learn how we store, clean, mill, and package our organic grains.  You’ll get to see our unique wooden silos that help naturally condition the grain and our cool old-school grain cleaning machinery. We’ll have Bluebird products and our gift baskets for sale if you need to do some last minute holiday shopping. Call 509-996-3526 for directions and to RSVP.

Thanksgiving Photo Contest! Did Bluebird Grain Farms make an appearance on your Thanksgiving table this year? If so we’d love to hear what products you used and what dish you used them in. Post a photo of your dish with the hashtag #bluebirdgrainfarms on either Facebook or Instagram, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a $30 gift certificate for our online store.

If you’re looking to purchase Bluebird products at a retail store close to your home, we just launched a new store locator on our website to help you find one. Just type in your area code and it will give you a selection of nearby stores that carry our products. Keep in mind that not all stores carry all of our products, so call in advance if you’re looking for something specific.

Fall is here, both officially and weather-wise, and we are excited! The cool temperatures have been a welcome relief to the heat of the summer, and the mountains look beautiful with their first dusting of snow. We have a little harvesting left to do at the Big Valley fields, so we’re hoping major precipitation holds off in the valley for a little longer. We are appreciative that the weather has helped slow the spread of the Diamond Creek wildfire, which has been slowly creeping towards the Granary for the past month. It’s still burning, but is much less of a risk now than it was 2 weeks ago. Thank you to all the wildland firefighters who have put enormous effort into keeping our community safe!

Introducing Eric Zytowski! Eric has temporarily joined our team as Packaging Room Coordinator while Sheah is away on maternity leave. He brings with him extensive experience in material development and is an all-around great person- Eric, we’re happy to have you on the team!  Here’s a quick note from Eric:

“In short I can be described as an Iowa boy, greyhound dad and new fulltime resident of the Methow valley after learning about it 20 years ago. They valley is a special place with (usually) clean air for me and folk who understand the simple pleasures such as good food and knowing where it comes from and how it’s grown. I came here after spending my time with companies such as REI in Seattle and Nike in Portland that showed me how to enjoy the outdoors in a healthy, athletic way. I can be found in my off hours at home planning our garden for next year or riding my bicycle around the valley with my wife Val.”

We’re excited to announce that Huckleberry’s Natural Foods Stores will be carrying Bluebird products in their bulk section! We have been  working to find a trusted supplier for our grains in the Spokane area, and they’ve come through for us. If you’re an eastern Washington resident, be sure to check out this excellent grocery chain.

Joshua McFadden, farmer and chef at Ava Gene’s restaurant in Portland, has released a new cookbook that we are excited about: Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables.  There are a lot of vegetable-focused cookbooks out there, but this one really shines- Josh’s culinary skills and love of growing food come through in this inspired, creative work.  Josh has worked with Bluebird’s grains at Ava Genes and the recipe for Farro with Tomatoes, Corn, Mint, Basil and Scallions is awesome! If you love local, wholesome, fresh food, this is a great cookbook to check out.

The heat of summer is on! The rush of spring planting is over and now we’re waiting and watching as the emmer and einkorn head out and start to ripen.  Of course, we’re still busy with irrigation, fertility management, and keeping the granary running, but we do fortunately get a little respite before harvest season begins.  Here’s what else we’ve been up to recently:

Farmer Sam was a featured speaker at Methow Headwaters’ film presentation at the Seattle Patagonia store last week. Keeping open pit mining out of the Methow Valley is a vitally important issue for all of our local Methow Valley businesses that depend on clean water, clean air, and intact wildlife habitat. If you’d like to get involved, check out their website at www.methowheadwaters.org.

Sam also visited with Dr. Steven Jones of WSU’s The Bread Lab over the weekend. The Bread Lab has been pioneering research on wheat and small grain breeding to develop strains that are locally adapted, easy to grow, and delicious!  We’re excited to continue working with this awesome organization to help grow our local Northwest food economy.

We turned in the spring cover crop at Classroom In Bloom this week- this will help build the soil for the new 1/2 acre expansion to their educational garden. We also donated several hundred pounds of organic fertilizer to keep their crops growing strong. Classroom In Bloom takes on the important task of educating children on where their food comes from by getting them outside to grow their own food! We encourage everyone to help out this excellent organization in any way they can.

We are excited to announce that Safeway stores are now carrying a wide range of Bluebird’s products! If you are a Safeway shopper be sure to look for our whole grain emmer farro and dinner blends at their locations. It’s great to see this grocery chain supporting local food and farmers.

Bluebird’s products are being featured as part of Haggen Foods “Be Local, Buy Local” campaign.  If you buy $40 or more of locally produced products, you get a $5 discount at checkout. Thank you to Haggen for supporting local farmers and producers!

Spring is (finally) heating up here in the Methow Valley! We spent April and early May tiptoeing around rainstorms that (mostly) kept our fields a little to wet to work. We were able to plant a little emmer in our Barron fields, but now the sun is out and the race is on to get the remainder of the emmer and all the einkorn in the ground. Spring is always a crazy time for us, but we relish the challenge and are excited to be outside working again.

Farmer Sam has also been busy helping Classroom in Bloom expand their educational garden at Liberty Bell High School.

This awesome non-profit does great work helping children understand where their food comes from and how farming connects us to the land.  Sam tilled up a new plot and sowed a cover crop back in April; the peas have since emerged and are growing well!  He’ll till those in this fall to build organic matter in preparation for growing vegetables next spring.

Earlier this month, Brad attended a Methow Valley farmer/buyer gathering put on by the Methow Conservancy and the WSDA. It was great to connect with old friends at meet some new ones at this event! The local business and farming community here in the valley is incredibly supportive of each other; we are blessed to be a part of it. Thanks to the Conservancy for hosting this event; we look forward to more in the future.

Washington Pass on Highway 20 is now open, so you western Washington residents should come out for a visit. Check out this fascinating video showing some of the techniques that WSDOT uses to clear the highway. The skiing at the pass is excellent, and the wildflowers are amazing down in the valley. We always love visitors so feel free to stop by the granary and say hi.

Sam reports that our new tractor implements are working well.  In particular, our minimum-till seed drill has been allowing us to get seed into the ground with less field prep work. This saves time and tractor fuel, which we are always happy about. It also proved to be useful last fall when we sowed our fall pea cover crop directly into the remaining emmer straw in our Big Valley fields. We are still fine tuning our tine weeder (that we reported to you on last fall).  This implement is used to organically kill weeds after the grain is planted, but proper adjustment and is critical to make sure we don’t damage the crop! We also need dry weather for it to effectively kill the weeds, so the break in the rain will give us an opportunity to test it further over the next few weeks.

Congratulations to The Willows Inn on earning the number 1 spot on the Opinionated About Dining national restaurant list!  The Willows Inn has long been considered one of America’s best restaurants; we’re excited they’ve earned another top honor.  The Willows Inn is a big supporter of Bluebird Grain Farms and uses our Methow Hard Red Wheat Flour regularly in their menu.  If you’re looking for the meal of a lifetime, you should check them out!

Spring is here! Bluebirds are returning and the snow is melting away, so we’re thinking about farming. Before we enter the whirlwind of field preparation and spring planting, we like to take time to reflect and give thanks for our family, friends, and customers. Thank you to everyone who makes Bluebird the amazing business it is! We look forward to another season of stewarding the soil, growing community, and growing delicious food.

We were honored to participate in the annual Bite of the Methow fundraiser for the Winthrop Kiwanis chapter. This excellent event raises money for community projects in the Methow Valley. Thank you to everyone who supported the event this year. We look forward to seeing you there next year!

Brad, our Outreach Coordinator, traveled to Seattle this month for a supplier meeting with the regional team at Whole Foods Market.  Whole Foods has long been a supporter of Bluebird and continues to do a great job offering products from organic farmers and food producers at their stores. If you live outside the Methow Valley and are looking for Bluebird products locally, we urge you to support this forward-thinking retail chain.

We have been receiving many questions from customers about our Split Emmer Farro (Farro Spezzato in Italian), so we wanted to include a note about it here.  Split farro is basically whole farro grains broken in half for a quicker cooking time. This is a very different product than pearled farro. Pearling is the process of shaving the bran off of a whole grain (which removes a significant amount of fiber and nutrients as well) for a quicker cooking time. Split farro’s bran is intact so has the full complement of fiber and nutrients that whole grain farro does. It has a lighter texture than whole farro so is perfectly suited for soups and pilafs. Our split emmer is currently on sale for 15%-25% off; check out our online store for details.

Open pit mining in the Methow Valley? Many of you have heard that a Canadian mining company has sought a permit for exploratory drilling for copper on Flagg Mountain, just a few miles up valley of Bluebird’s organic emmer and einkorn fields. Open pit mining would have disasterous consequences for our water quality here in the valley, which would in turn have disasterous consequences for our business and many other businesses that rely on clean, cold water from the Methow River.  We are very thankful for the work of the Methow Headwaters Campaign on ensuring that such a mine never comes to pass!  The approach they are taking is called a “mineral withdrawal”, in which the Methow headwaters  would legally be removed from consideration for large scale mining via an administrative action by the Forest Service or by legislation from Congress. Sam has put in a lot of time working with these folks over the past year, and you can see him and some of Bluebird’s fields featured in their educational video here. We are also thankful to our Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray for drafting and introducing the necessary legislation to begin the mineral withdrawal.  If you’d like to get involved, visit the Methow Headwaters Campaign’s website for more ways to help, or check out their Instagram or Facebook pages for updates on the campaign. Thank you!