by Tiffany Williams
Jay Hayward saw the signs. He’d been watching a weather app on his phone while working his booth at the Hamilton Farmers Market on Saturday, June 18th, and could tell a severe storm was approaching. Up and down the valley, hail battered roofs, plunked tree branches, and decimated crops. Some residents reported seeing balls of ice an inch in diameter.
As Hayward turned toward his Stevensville farm, he braced himself for an apocalyptic scene.
“It was traumatic for sure,” said Hayward, owner of Fern & Co. “Pretty much all of our mature heads of lettuce were gone. We had broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. Some of them blew up with a direct hit.”
Hayward – whose last name means “keeper of the fields” — begins his long slow toil (12- to 15-hour workdays) in April. Within minutes most of that work was undone by the freak storm. A few miles away, Ashlee Schmaltz, Hayward’s partner and co-owner of Fern & Co., waited for updates. When she understood the extent of the damage, Schmaltz made a post on Instagram that reached hundreds of buyers and growers.
The couple’s Hail Mary pass was to turn the damaged crops into pestos, dressings, and cream cheese spreads they will sell at their new Stevensville shop, The Sour Doe.
Further north in Stevensville at Bleeding Heart Flower Farm, owner Cindy Putnam-Smith assessed the damage to her own farm. A flower subscription service, Bleeding Heart Flower Farm provides weekly bouquets at five locations throughout the Bitterroot and Missoula in addition to providing wholesale arrangements at restaurants and resorts.
“I know I can be dramatic, but it seems fair to say the early season has been pretty brutal,” Putnam-Smith said in an email to subscribers.
She detailed other farming woes — an unusually cool and overcast spring delaying the emergence of certain flowers, an employee with Covid, and a pathogen in the soil that is causing stem collapse in the cosmos and zinnias.
That was before the hail caused her to delay delivery for her Tuesday subscribers.
Smith-Putnam ended her note with a few good natured jokes and a reminder from the white board in her flower studio to “Trust the field. And breathe.” She thanked subscribers for supporting her farm despite the things she can’t control.
As for Hayward, he urged community members to shop with local farmers instead of buying produce from larger grocers. He said the prices are the same, but buying from a farmer keeps money in the local economy and helps neighborhood farm businesses weather unexpected storms.
To purchase the pestos, dressings, and produce at The Sour Doe, visit them at 101 Church St. in Stevensville.