113: Josh Slotnick of Clark Fork Organics and Garden City Harvest on Salad Greens, Short Seasons, and Food as Fuel for a Social Ecology

Josh Slotnick has farmed at Clark Fork Organics on the outskirts of Missoula, Montana, with his wife, Kim Murchison, since 1992. With about eight acres in vegetables and eleven acres of total crop ground, Clark Fork Organics is a pillar in the Missoula local foods community, and is well-known for their salad greens. They sell at two farmers market, through a local health food store, and to restaurants in the community. In 1996, Josh and a few others founded Garden City Harvest, a non-profit in Missoula that builds community through agriculture. Garden City Harvest does this by providing community education while managing ten community garden sites and four neighborhood farms in Missoula. Josh is the director of Garden City Harvest’s largest farm, the PEAS Farm, which is a partnership between Garden City Harvest and the University of Montana’s Environmental Studies program. Josh digs deep into how Clark Fork Organics builds and maintains relationships with their restaurant clients, both during the short, intense growing season and over the winter, when the farm doesn’t operate. We also discuss how these same techniques spill over to the farmers market, and how they’ve used those relationships to keep a marketing edge as the local foods scene has grown up around them. And, Josh shares the many ways that the PEAS Farm and Garden City Harvest have contributed to the overall social ecology of Missoula. We also talk at length about salad mix production at Clark Fork Organics, as well as their irrigation tools and strategies – and about how Josh juggles two farms, family, and friends. Perennial support for the Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously provided by Vermont Compost Company and BCS America. Pictures, show links, and more at farmertofarmerpodcast.com/episodes/slotnick.