sorry everyone about the sound but I felt that Matthew dropped so many valuable golden seeds I couldn’t not share.

I’m super excited to introduce my featured guest Matthew Broughton from 3 Fiddles Farm.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I guess since this is farm related I’ll give you some history of myself and our farm. In our pre interview you asked me how old I was. I am 4 days away from being 44. Being a farmer is a relatively new career for me.

I came to farming 9 years ago.

My background, is I am the son of a marine that traveled around the US and Europe for most of my childhood without having a home.

When my dad left the marine corps we came to Montana

Went to MSU and studied biological sciences and I got a job after graduation as a research associate  studying

organic cropping systems

organic pesticides

I had never grown a vegetable for food and I had never really had a garden

then I met my wife, when we met she was already in 2007 a professional farmer.

We were married in 2008.

I promptly became an organic farmer

Was your dad from Montana?

My family came to Montana

in the early 1980s late 1970s on a vacation

when he was a young man in the 1960s maybe 50s he came here before he  went into the Marine Corps to become a cowboy. Back then Montana had a lot of Cowboys, instead of trucks and 4 wheelers.

Worked in timber and also worked in Jackson hole

infected with the west

Louis LaMore novels

he had this idealized dream of what Montana was

when he retired from the Marine Corps he bought a little ranchette in the mountains and that’s how we ended up here.

In late ‘80s

move I went to university and studied organic ag.

I went to grad school at MSU and was considering a PHD program but the majority of the places that were applicable for my field of students which was mechanical pesticides

none were in the mountains

Kansas State and Purdue and places where the mountains were badly erased by the glaciers. Decided not to go on and pursue a phD and stayed in Bozeman

I’m a musician

started playing with the Bridger Street boys

The band had enough momentum and business

didn’t leave Bozeman

the short version

how I came to be in Bozeman and how I started farming.

Then is your first experience on your wife’s farm?

My first experience was the first season on our farm

she worked for a big organic farm

when we got married she decided she wanted to be her own boss

started our farm in the first year of our marriage.

We were skeptical of how wise it was to start a business when you’re starting a marriage but my wife and I we work well together.  We powered through the learning curve of her husband being her intern.

I did not know the difference between shell peas, snow peas, snap peas, and beans when we first started.

I grew up in a family that did not have a very intense food culture. We were very much average American food consumers. It was a very enlightening experience who grew up in Minnesota with a mom who was an adamant organic gardener. Her family practiced food preservation and year round  garden food consumption

My family was a weekly grocery shopper

It was a very different experience for me

food culture

I was the ignorant

along for the ride

Now 9 years later, I am an extremely ardent and passionate organic farmer.

Practice homestead arts year round food consumption from our farm

enlightening experience and stuff gain a land connection

You have this degree in biology?

I went to graduate school for etymology but studying big ag not small organic

organic wheat storage and also worked in sugar beet production

Trying to develop organic pesticides in those industries. When I worked at the University we grew plants in a greenhouse but we were growing

pesticidal plants.

Do you think about going back and becoming a teacher?

You know my wife and I have long term plans of taking our farming technique and transitioning it into education. W’ere practicing I guess its own little discipline

stick landscape and soil management

Native cover cropping

nutrient cycle management

that is very much not inline what contemporary organic industry is practicing.

You seem to have a knowledge base, a very scientific background, and you know what it’s like to teach and you’ve been a student of those practices and then you’ve gone out on your own and done this other project with your wife and you seem uniquely positioned to teach this well.

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about going to school and learning what is very different then best practices especially wanting to get your PhD at some point to stay in Montana

Tell us about something that grew well this year.

We’re just in the start of the growing season, just transitioning from spring into our cool season.

It could be from last season or something that grew well this spring like peas…

things that grow well for us on our farm

focus of our production system

lettuces

head lettuce

we also grow lots of crops in our greenhouse

tomatoes and peppers

the tomatoes and peppers are the mean stay of our year round diet

vitamin c consumption for our family and something we put a lot of focus.

You grow those year round in the rocky mountains in Bozeman.

not getting food from out garden but we are eating it all year round.

grow in a short intense season here in the rocking mountains

drying, canning, fermenting and

freezing we are able to eat, my family consumes a year round diet of vegetables and meat off of our farm.

The property is 13 acres

we have a little over 2 acres for vegetables

the raining property

graze

2 beef cows

extensive shelter

various berry

service berry and choke cherry

about 6 acres of grass for grazing

3 acres of trees and brush and berry bushes

Awesome, that sounds lovely but 2 acres sounds like a lot of work for 2 people.

We used to have interns and volunteers and it was too complex of an issue

did some business analysis of effort and reward and decided to change our business model

no outside

we don’t live at our farm

live 12 miles away from our farm

commuting to and from the farm

weather events

coordinating schedules

unsustainable for us to have people work for us

we didn’t change our production scale

we changed our techniques

it is challenging

we’re tillable

15,000 lbs of fresh produce per year

You sell your produce at the farmer’s market

85% of our production is sold across the table at farmer’s market

remaining 15% is for sale is to Red Tractor Pizza

sell a bunch of vegetables

meatball or steak pizza

gamut of vegetables…

I had a farm man pizza! It was so good.

What’s the biggest challenge to the two of you doing it by yourselves?

At this point in farming

9th season

my wife’s 11th season

the biggest challenge

really

financially and psychologically is marketing

To growing food the challenges of farming in Montana while difficult

it’s pretty predictable

your gonna have

• bad weather
• bugs
• weeds

that’s to be expected

when you harvest a bountiful amount of food and needs to be sold immediately and your beholden to the whim of the customer and the whim of the market

If you harvest 200 heads of lettuce and there are only 100 people buying lettuces

I know that seems to be the problem with us either like I was thinking I should take the swiss chard to the market but I didn’t go. You seem to be making it,you show up at the farmer’s market.

So I think what one of the ways we address that challenge of marketing

So over the last nine market seasons there have been lots and lots of opportunities to interact with customers.

When I first started farming and selling I didn’t have this aggressive eco warrior attitude about things.

most people’s that are shoppers are not militant leftists

it became an important part or our marketing key to make the

happy healthy client.

food is great and makes you happy to eat it and it’s so healthy for you

Stop with the message why it’s important to grow

break out of the corporate food system….

My take on things, I have many people who consider environmental and health problems deeply it’s very easy to become passionate and a zealot of what’s going on

as a business owner and as a marketing director for our little business

rapidly became obvious

marketing can’t be intertwined with the activist aspect of what we’re doing because it’s very easy to turn customers away from you by being overly passionate about the activist thing.

I run into that all the time… getting myself in trouble and running my mouth off, especially thinking everyone thinks like I do, and I think this is great for people to know

That’s the extent of our listening online

pretty low-key

tells people where we are and what we grow

basic biographical facts about the farm

considered trying to take the modern approach

extra effort

Facebook saw that as the exposure for a challenge in business when we considering it with the friends of planet natural organic gardening stores

He told me a tale of woe because people were trolling him

kinds of time to manage his Facebook

employees help him

sounded like a rabbit hole we didn’t want to go down as business owners since we were doing direct marketing

didn’t see the digital thing as an important step so we consciously chose not to embrace the digital media.

I think people will be excited to hear that too that don’t want to be digital and that there are other options out there

Is there something you would do different next year or want to try/new?

We’ve been doing varietal trials the whole time at our garden

source our seeds from fabulous

seed purveyors

primarily taste evaluation sometimes we value our crop on productivity but since we are the primary consumers of our food flavor is of upmost concern to us

We trial probably 100 varieties of tomatoes

Every kind of pea and bean that’s available.

all kinds of carrots and beets and cabbage seeds

only have a couple new trials this year

we’re not really trying too many varieties.

One thing we are doing is attempting to grow sweet potatoes

You are I love sweet potatoes.

They are vining nicely right now

I just just acquired a fabulous digging fork industrial grade 2 handled digging fork

challenge of digging

we won’t know till we get close to the fall frost

yield

cold cycles at the start of the spring

our spring crops

our early turnips and spinach

the things we fill the table with at the start of the market season

all bolted.

who get seeds?

most of our seeds are sourced from Baker Creek Heirloom

Fine mowing

nickel seeds

most of them

mainly the smaller

Tell me about something that didn’t work so well this season.

Which activity is your least favorite activity to do in the garden.

Even things that make us uncomfortable we enjoy

We use thistles to mine those minerals. There’s a deep layer of soil and minterals below your crops..

thistles very important for our nutrient cycle system

one of the things that’s unique about our farm

the soil is extremely deep

beaver meadow

parts of our landscape.

when you get into mountain valleys in Montana there are areas that are very flat

every time a beaver makes a dam

mountain builds up the silt

when the water stops flowering the beaver moves

continues to block the water

those ponds and collections of silt

the top soil

somebody dug a pond

IDK

dug a 20foot deep hole

different way then soils that build

on different parts of the landscape

had really deep soil

use thistles

the beavers collect the soil

the minerals

far below for the crops to reach

thistles strategy

the deep layer of soil and mineral below where your crop can reach

thistles to shoot down a gigantic tap root to grow down into the soil

One of the methods we use for nutrient management

• is to allow thistles to grow to maturity
• allow them to be a lush tall thistle
• wait to the end of the thistle’s lifecycle to cut it down.

Just yesterday harvesting thistles that were 3 feet tall and cut them flush at the soil level

So I harvested the tops.

Then we 

then top

our crops with the cut thistle

the thistle rapidly breaks down the stove

releasees it’s minerals at the top of the soil

essentially using thistles to pump nutrients from the bottom to the top of the soil layer

allows us to replenish the top soil

Sorry, it was kind of breaking up. You’re kind of using it as mulch? They’re not going to seed yet?

they haven’t bloomed

They will it’s part of our take on holistic cover crops

What is your favorite activity to do in the garden?

• eating grapes!
• binge on snap peas!
• I guess learn about nature and biology in a natural setting instead of a classroom or in a city.

• Just the strangely satisfying aspect of taking something that is not producing food and turn it into a factory that produce glorious organic food

What is the best gardening advice you have ever received?

Don’t give up, don’t develop an exit plan, it’s a lifestyle choice!

Even if it’s challenging if you see it as a way of life it becomes bearable if you view it as just a business it’s extremely arduous business and there are easier paths to follow os just go for it!

I like that like follow your heart and if you can’t not do it put everything into it!

A favorite tool that you like to use? If you had to move and could only take one tool with you what would it be.

a really good pair of work gloves we buy lots of gloves!

I love gloves and buy a lot of gloves!

This year I found a new model of glove

I believe Wells Lamont

marketed as a waterproof gardening glove

• double dipped
• thistle sticker proof

we were talking about least favorite tasks one of my least favorite tasks is taking gloves off to get thistle out of my fingers

allowing you to work to your full potential

plant without slowing you down

whole glove is dipped and a second dip for the grip area

double layer glove

It’s a little bit hot and swampy but doesn’t get thistly!

another

first tool to take with me

teeny honda micro tiller FG110

9 inch wide micro tiller

should be called a power hoe

same job as a wheel hoe

gas powered

only cultivates the top inch of soil

broadleaf  weeds

delay weeding till later in the cycle

help us keep our organic content up in the soil

nutrient

A favorite recipe you like to cook from the garden?

everything

we grow the garden is fantastic

In addition to being great farmers we work hard at being great cooks!

anything that has pepper with tomatoes

hot peppers

We raise beef cows

our beef is fantastic

Tinga beef is my favorite recipe where it’s slow cooked beef roast that gets pulled and pan fried with hot peppers and oil and tomatoes!

So you pan fry it after it’s been slow cooked in a crock pot or something?

The go to method for us,

• boil a roast in a pan
• braising
• in a pot on the stove top for about 2-3 hours pull apart tender

Then after it’s cooked we pull it apart, season it, pan season!

That’s interesting I pulled out our crock part the other day and made Mike a pork roast for his birthday. I wish I would have known, I was like alright it’s one o’clock I’m putting it on and it’s like it takes 8 hours so he didn’t get to eat it on his birthday?!

A favorite internet resource?

there’s been countless internet searches over the years the place we frequent the most are the seed catalog

seed porn

so I guess it’s basically seed porn

when you read about the variety

different offering from the seed purveyors

When we started our farm we visited all the usual suspects standard books compendium of organic farming knowledge…

We were influenced by the leaders in our field

• Eliot Coleman
• Joel Saletin
• other big names.

one resource that was important

The Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master Gardeners and Farmers,

soil microbiology

soil is alive

what’s the mean players in soil health

how to manage

how to manage fungus and worm life in our soil

the main pillar on which our farm stands is the soil health

once we understand how to feed the worms and our fungus it really changed how we managed our farm.

The Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master Gardeners and Farmers

the main theme of our podcast has definitely been soil health. I just saw this challenge on Facebook to bury your underwear and if you soil is healthy after a few months all that should be left is the elastic (have to be cotton underwear)

 

If you have a business to you have any advice for our listeners about how to sell extra produce or get started in the industry?

One of the things that’s changed a bunch on our farm as it has evolved

as we’ve aged as the farm has matured

smarter not harder

business and in farming

when you are working you feel like if I could just work harder I could accomplish more. Sometimes you have to step back from the problem and find a different way to solve the problem instead of working harder. It’s been really key to survival of the business to find a way to not up your mental and physical input every year. 

balance and comfort and be satisfied with what you do and not feel like your chasing something. 

If somebody’s out there thinking about starting farm like a business it’s really important to find a mentor! Somebody that has solved the puzzles and riddles you’re going to encounter as a farm business. And really try to steal all of that knowledge from that person who had is it!

Even in my small community of farmers a lot of us try to reinvent the wheel

humans have been farming organically for all but 10s of 100s of years

farming organically

sometimes is an effort that doesn’t need to happen! There are solutions that our ancestors have to a lot of our problems we face and now that we have the internet and google there is access to human knowledge a lot of the answers for our problems for farmers and gardeners are there and you just have to find is how to use that for your benefits!

I think the audience will be super inspired! No matter if they are just growing a tomato planet on our windowsill or your a market farmer like you are. We have the personal will to feed everyone on our planet now, the fact that you and your wife just the two of you doing what you are and there are some farmers up here, Jay Cummings and Mandy Gerth, with 3 small children and they are very similar and they started out doing their own work too! Makes me want to say go to your market and seeing how much it takes for my husband to grow just for us, I can’t imagine growing for 100 CSA baskets or even 10 baskets. Then when I talk to people like you I am so inspired. 

Also, I rave about millennials because my guests and a lot of my listeners according to google analytics are millennials and I think people will like to hear that you are not just a young put they can start a little later in life.

I started farming when I was 35

never had a job that wasn’t as demanding as farming

how to transition your production into big enough for the scale of market farmers. 

When we first started I thought things were gonna fall apart

difficult to do all of the work

smarter then harder. The challenges can be overcome by technique and different decision making tools then to work yourself to a nub!

There are other ways to solve the problem then to destroy your body.

For the young farmers that are considering the start that when you approach with the physical mindset of a 20 something or even 30-something it has a very limited timeline how you can work like that. But yet if you work in a system that is not as physically abusive you can do this type of work long into your sunset years…

My husband just turned 64, but definitely, Mandy and Jay own lower valley farm, their goal was to produce the same amount of food with less 20% work. I usually hate that phrase work smarter not harder, because what am I doing but get a mentor do what you can do.

Final question-

if there was one change you would like to see to create a greener world what would it be? For example is there a charity or organization your passionate about or a project you would like to see put into action. What do you feel is the most crucial issue facing our planet in regards to the environment either in your local area or on a national or global scale?

I think  it’s not a charity or movement per say, it’s a discussion point that needs to happen globally. We in North America

when you look at the landscape we live in. We live in a landscape that is inundated with chemical input. 

spray agriculture and weed management is dominated in

It’s not talked about

non-politicized

we unfortunately have to force the topic that the big chemical corporations are selling  nasty chemicals that are being applied to our landscape and it’s not necisarry. 

very well without chemical input

nature is resilient

mechanism for harvesting sun and turning it into plants

changed our discussion about the need for a clean functioning, dynamic diverse landscape it would revolutionize our 

• ag system
• clean up our waterways
• improve the overall health of landscape and people

big long uncomfortable topics something we have to do it’s short sighted of us as a people as a planet to think the only way to extract food from the system is with chemcials. 

rebel against the big corporations that are basically marketing people into applying herbicides and pesticides everywhere.

One of the summary points I wanted to make with you is that as gardeners and farmers that one of the words that we use that people have a negative reaction to is weeds

weeds are a false label. there are only plants. The plants we label as weeds are not our enemies not bad… its a tool that we need to use. We practice a holistic native cover crop cycling system. 

every plant no matter how annoying it is can be beneficial to a food system or farm production.

It’s a tool that is there

how to use it as a benefit of end goal

don’t have a hatred of 

• thistle
• bindweed

What do you do about bindweed, we have a huge crop coming up in our orchard?

it’s a difficult one to manage

tap root that goes down into the soil

gathers

if you can cultivate it effectively you can use it as a nutrient pump to bring nutrients up to the top of the soil. Each challenge of a plant is its own little problem. So IDK, I don’t have a solution for bindweed, but we just continually cultivate and have accepted the fact that it’s present and have designed our system to work in harmony with the weeds then to see them as something that’s tragic or troubling.

Have to make lemonade when life gives us lemons.

Do u have an inspiration tip or quote to help motivate our listeners to reach into that dirt and start their own garden?

There are countless stories of people taking a tiny seed that is a genetic bundle of 

get it wet the right way

takes all of that vast amount of solar energy that is showing down upon us

• tastes fantastic
• visually stunning
• beautiful 
• super good for you to eat
• because fresh organic vegetables are critical to life
• living outside of an ecosystem

The joy of growing food is difficult to quantify in a statement. It’s something that is all encompassing and vital to my life now. The fact that I lived 35 years without having a connection to soil or plants in hindsight Idk how that happens… I fear that there are millions of Americans and billions of humans that have lost that connection of food production. This notion that you live in a landscape that sustains you. That’s something that I would want all humans to reconnect with. 

No matter where you live

in the tropical parts of the world or the northern Rockies we live in.

right approach and techniques to harvest food for small

live even off of a small family garden plot to be able to preserve your food and always have the absolute best tasting most nutritious available to you even in the dark of the winter we can be eating peppers tomatoes turnips and squash and bounty of summer. But have to have right approach on how to preserve it.

I think people are gonna feel so good after this and that they can support their local farmers after this!

The Organic Gardener Podcast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com

If you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us review and hopefully a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here.