This story by Liberty Darr was first published in The Other Paper on Dec. 5
Getting down to the nitty-gritty is about getting down to the root of it all and for the Nitty Gritty Grain Co. team, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for the last 16 years: growing grain.
Grains are arguably the basis for it all — from flour to cornmeal — and without them, it’s likely the things we love to eat most would not — or could not — exist at all.
Golden strands tossing freely against a Green Mountain backdrop fill the expansive farm property on Lake Road in Charlotte. For the Kenyon family, the dancing wheat signifies home. But for Vermont, it signifies something much greater: the resurgence of a local grain industry.
The Kenyons have been farming for centuries in the Champlain Valley. The family started farming in the Shelburne area in the 1770s, and some harrowing lore has it an ancestor was even killed over some type of grain crop debacle.
Growing grain is literally in their blood.
Tom Kenyon, the brain — and grit — behind Nitty Gritty Grain Co. is the seventh generation of these farmers. His certified organic farm, Aurora Farm, had been growing grains and selling the yield to the commodity market since the 1980s. But as time passed, a question lingered: Why is it customary to ask where our meat and vegetables are grown, but not ask the same of grain? In fact, at the time, it was nearly impossible to buy Vermont-grown flour in the grocery store.
That question posed by a neighbor planted the seed for what would later be known as Nitty Gritty Grain Co., which launched in 2008 with the help of a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant.
“Essentially, it was a way to bring the local identity back to the grain,” David Kenyon, eighth generation on the farm and son of Tom, said. “Because previously, we were just selling it to the commodity market where it gets lost in a massive stream of identity-less grain.”
The company has since grown to include its products on local grocery store shelves — including Healthy Living in South Burlington, City Market in Burlington and Shelburne Grocery — and in bakeries and restaurants across the state.
While Nitty Gritty Grain Co. is one of several grain producers scattered across the state, according to a 2015 University of Vermont article, in the 1880s Vermont was dubbed the “breadbasket of New England” because of its high wheat production. However, by the turn of the century, and as colonial America expanded west, the crop largely disappeared from the Northeast and with it the knowledge and infrastructure needed to produce these crops.
“Historically, this was kind of like the breadbasket,” David Kenyon said. “But in more contemporary times, there’s not a lot of people that grow grain in Vermont. There are a lot more large dairy farms that are growing soybeans and corn for feed now.”
Part of the problem, he said, is that the climate and soil found in the state are simply not conducive to growing grains, especially with catastrophic floods that climate experts predict will only intensify in coming years. And for growing grain, wet conditions can be far worse than dry.
Kenyon explained that the soil found in the areas surrounding the farm is wide-ranging, from beautiful soil to the “heaviest clay you’ve ever seen.”
“The last two years have just been awful,” he said. “That’s probably our biggest challenge, the amount of rain we’ve had in the last few years.”
While Charlotte was hammered with more than five inches of rain during July, the farm itself didn’t experience much irreversible harm, but one variety of wheat they were growing at the time failed to pass the quality test for human consumption because it got too wet.
In addition to growing hay, corn and different legumes, the farm typically grows three types of winter wheat, which is planted in the middle of September and harvested in early July.
“It comes up in the fall, usually from two to eight inches, which would be the tallest,” Kenyon said. “It goes dormant for the winter, and then it wakes up in the spring and shoots up in height throughout April, May and June. It’ll start to turn more of that golden brown, yellow color. And then usually the first or second week of July, we combine it.”
The entire effort is a family affair. Tom Kenyon, nearing 70, still spends long days on the farm but now with the help of his son. Catherine Kenyon, Tom’s sister and self-proclaimed “Cornmeal Queen,” also helps with things like ordering and packing.
While Nitty Gritty Grain Co. hit the ground running in the renaissance of grain production in the state, it wasn’t without a lot of help from family, friends and a state that still intrinsically values locally produced foods.
“I think we are super lucky to be in Vermont because the consumer here actually appreciates and is willing to pay a premium for a local grain,” Kenyon said. “So, in that regard, I think that Nitty Gritty probably wouldn’t really work as a model in a lot of other places in the country.”
For Kenyon, this was the entire reason he came back to the farm five years ago after working in architecture after school.
“That’s the biggest thing for me is being able to grow local, healthy, organically sourced grain in Vermont,” he said.
