Annie's Organic Farmers: Jim & Cyndy Robinson

 

We drove nearly 7 hours from Minneapolis straight west and then north to get to Jim Robinson’s farm in Garrison, North Dakota.   Just when we’d had enough of the drive, the flat landscape rolled itself into gentle swells and the Missouri River began to snake along our side.   This is Lewis and Clark country, with Lake Sakakawea and several state parks.  It is a beautiful place to farm.

 

Jim Robinson grew up in Garrison and farms the land that his great- grandfather pieced together years ago.  He’s a good storyteller, patient with our questions and relaxed enough to endure the risk and change in farming each year.   His deep voice has a nice rhythm to it.   Jim’s wife, Cyndy and their daughter, Suzanna and son, Will, all support the family’s organic farm.  Suzanna is especially interested in organic food.   At fourteen, Will is happy to pick rock and help with farming.

 

The Robinson’s farmland is spread out over 30 miles because in the 1900s they owned the town general mercantile store and sometimes took payment in land.  Piece by piece, they gathered enough to keep the family farming full-time.    

 

Jim understands his land—he is intimately connected to it.  He can tell you about the soil, weeds, and the feel of the land on each piece of property he farms.  Pigeon grass, for example, is a result of soil compaction and he only sees it where the soil is hard and clay bound or where the tractor has driven too much.   Another weed, creeping jenny, is invading in areas where the soil is also compacted and fertility is poor, but he hasn’t got control figured out yet.  He calls it the “Creeping Jenny Conundrum”.

 

Jim has been organic since 1991, and he believes organic methods show compassion for the land and everything around you.  The Garrison area is an especially rich habitat for wildlife since lakes provide plentiful water and food for many animals.  Not long ago, a moose and two of her babies were spotted, and Jim regularly sees coyotes, fox, deer, hawks and rabbits on his farmland.    Jim’s got a degree in Geology, and he told us how the land was formed from glaciers moving down from the north.

 

The 2006 season was the hottest summer on record, and amazingly, Jim’s crops are doing well.  He’s just far north enough that he has gotten harvests while neighbors 60 miles south have bailed their crops for hay instead of grain.   This year Jim is growing durum, oats and field peas.

 

For the past 35 years, Jim has hired Jerome Heimermann to come combine his grains.  Jerome is a weathered and wise farmer from Kansas, who has seen crops flourish and fail across the country as he travels doing custom combine work each season.   The thing that worries him the most is rain.   The picture to the right is of Annie’s staff, Anne and Randy, taking a ride in the combine with Jerome.

 

One tradition that Jim and his family have been participating in for 13 years is the annual North Dakota bicycle tour called CANDISC - “Cycling around North Dakota in Sakakawea Country”.  The bicycle tour is a 7-day, 400+ person athletic and cultural fest that celebrates the Sakakawea area.   For the past four years, Annie’s has donated pasta for the famous pasta feed to fuel the cyclists.  This year, Jim’s daughter, Suzanna rode on part of the tour. 

 

Jim and his family are also restoring his grandfather’s house in downtown Garrison into a bed & breakfast.  Again, it is Jim’s care and concern for the land and family that inspire him for such an undertaking.

 

At the end of our visit, Jim meets us at his grain storage site and shows us how grain is dumped from his trucks into an auger that lifts the grain up into his storage bins.   The photo to your right is of the chaff, (weed seeds, straw, small grain) getting blown out of the good wheat and separated into another truck.  Jim will take the chaff to a local farmer for feed.   The good durum wheat will sit in Jim’s bins until Organic Grain & Milling can take delivery to the mill to turn the durum into semolina flour for pasta.   All told, Jim’s durum wheat travels about 350 miles before it becomes semolina.