Cottage Industries - Montana Style: Covenant Gardens

Beginning in early May, Whitehall can expect to see Amy Martin at the corner of Legion and Division Streets, Thursday through Saturday, her SUV filled with spring veggies and garden plants, ready for planting. Early tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, asparagus, strawberries, and more, each small pot representing years of perfecting regenerative gardening at Covenant Gardens, a demonstration of what true local food and local farm health can look like. There, Tim and Amy Martin have created a place that strives to promote community health and a Farm Friends co-operative program that helps all grow more efficiently and abundantly.

The couple has been in southwest Montana for 22 years and purchased their 10-acre property, all they needed to practice local intensive gardening, in the Waterloo area in 2009, seeing it as an ideal place for them and their nine children to experience life on a local farm. One year later they set out their first batch of asparagus and had their first growing season.

No novices to farming, after they married, the couple had a small roadside market stand in Colorado, but Tim's experience began even earlier.

"I've been doing greenhouses for longer than that, I got my first greenhouse when I was 14 years old as a homeschool project," he said.

"Since then I've built and tinkered with greenhouses off and on for over 30 years, building and custom designing my own for various purposes."

The Martins established Covenant Gardens with the goal of offering an alternative solution to some fundamental problems facing American agriculture, seeing modern farming as the cause of problems regarding ecosystems and modern human health.

"It's no coincidence that degraded soils, chemical pollution, loss of diversity in soil microorganisms and animal habitat coincide with skyrocketing disease problems, health epidemics, and even pandemics like we have all witnessed in the last few years," Tim said. "Those two things are directly related; we can't address one in isolation from the others."

Much of Covenant Garden's success with their plants is due to the soil, which Tim begins building in February, mixing his garden soil, compost, aged manure, and a few amendments, bringing it into the greenhouse to warm up and allow the beneficial microbes to start growing. The plants are grown in live soil in boxes with hundreds of seeds.

Individual plants are then transplanted into color-coded three- to four-inch pots, allowing room for root development; in mid-March early tomatoes and peppers, and in April the big push for the rest. Their inventory is impressive: 11 different types of large tomatoes; cherry, pear, and Roma tomatoes, six sweet peppers, eight hot peppers, tomatillos, cucumbers, squash, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries, and asparagus.

The pots are sold to people who want to grow their own veggies, in Bozeman, Dillon, Butte, Helena, Manhattan, as well as Whitehall.

"Our capacity is 15-20 thousand plants for our markets during spring planting season. We usually sell out completely," he said. "Once all the veggie pots in the greenhouse are sold, we grow summer crops right in the ground there."

Outdoors, two acres of asparagus are big earners for the farm. Perennials, once in the ground a plant can go for 20, 30, or 40 years. The farm produces both purple and green asparagus. Asparagus is harvested and sold daily, guaranteeing the ultimate in freshness. By mid-June, the asparagus harvest is done.

The Martins grow other crops along with the asparagus, avoiding a monoculture. These include onions, pie pumpkins, and a cover crop.

"We leave some rows with very little tillage to plant cover crops that improve the health of soil based on diversity and are good for the worms and microbes. We usually use a multi-species mix, depending on what we're trying to accomplish. The one I'm currently using as a pollinator and soil building mix has 17 species in the mix - clovers, vetch, triticale, brassicas, sunflowers, tillage radishes, etc.," Tim said. "The cover crop stays on all winter long, increases fertility, and provides a barrier, protecting from wind erosion and temperature."

Areas are left for deer to graze, which, along with cows grazing in winter, provide natural fertilizer. These methods describe regenerative agriculture, the integration of animals and plants, cover crops and plants grown for pollinators, and each component building diversity.

The pie pumpkins are one of the farm's largest fall crops, a couple thousand being sold to grocery stores in Bozeman. They, along with tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, green beans, sweet corn, and onions, comprise the fall harvest.

The Martins describe Covenant Gardens as a "family involved" farm, one that fits into their homeschool educational philosophy of "learning by doing" and provides paid work for the children so they can learn the value of work, planning, and entrepreneurship.

"My children, over the years, have been in charge of the daily asparagus harvest and are paid by the pound to prepare the asparagus for market delivery," Tim said. We appreciate the beauty of having the opportunity to have your children at a young age come alongside you to learn together the dynamics of bringing a product from start to finish, and to see the rewards of their efforts not only in money earned but also in acquiring the skills to interact with customers and work through the unexpected circumstances that come along."

The Farm Friends co-operative program invites volunteers to participate on the farm and help expand its regenerative agriculture production as working partners. Some chores require manpower all at one time, so when a specific job needs to be done or the harvest is ready, a workday is set up, word goes out via email and people come. Everyone is welcome to learn about where food comes from, how it's grown, and to enjoy a share of the plants, asparagus, summer veggies, and fall harvest.

Covenant Gardens' webpage is set up with information on all aspects of the farm, including the schedule for plant sales at different markets, calendar of events, and Farm Friends, as well as links to articles on specific subjects related to the farm and growing techniques.

The Martins named their farm, and practice farming, on the concept of a solemn promise. Their hope is for Covenant Gardens to show a different way, a different priority. They measure success in finding a proper place in their natural farm setting to play a beneficial role in health, from the soil level on up, believing that is where health and harvest come from. Not focused on the biggest or most lucrative harvest, they instead work to improve the fertility, health, and sustainability of their crops in the context of nature around us all.

"What we've found, most remarkably, is that when the diversity of life all around us is valued and protected, the harvest abundance comes around full circle to benefit us all on its own," Tim said.

They wish to share that research has shown the enormous therapeutic and healing aspects of gardening and working in the soil.

"If we can help facilitate and encourage that through a simple act of putting one of our plants into the ground, that is all good with me," he said. "We would like to be known for having encouraged you to get out and plant, to slow down and get your hands in the soil, to be in awe of what lives in the soil below and to be fascinated by the life it supports above and to feel blessed to be able to participate in the creation we have been blessed with."

For more information: http://www.covenantgardens.com.