Agriculture as art
It's harvest day for an unusual wheat field in Bozeman and Tucker Griffin is using an unusual tool, a scythe.
"Finding my rhythm out here," Griffin said.
He holds the long wooden handle in front of him and swings from right to left. As he swings, a curved blade slices the wheat just above the ground and the stalk falls as he takes a step forward and swings again.
This field is an art piece on exhibition at Tinworks Art,
It's a new take on a 1982 piece by conceptual artist Agnes Denes. Denes planted an acre of wheat in lower Manhattan. The golden crop looked dramatically out of place in front of the towering cityscape and newly built world trade center. Tinworks invited Denes, now in her 90s, to adapt the piece to a plot of land in Bozeman's north end.
Tinworks Director Jenny Moore convinced Denes of the similarities between Bozeman today and New York in the 80's.
"I think I convinced her by explaining in one of the most rapidly developing neighborhoods in booming Bozeman, rather than being given over to development, this land is being valued as a place to center artists and their work," Moore said.
The installation is titled Wheatfield: An Inspiration. The Seed is in the ground.
The seed was put in the ground almost a year ago, last October by local farmer, Kenny VanDyke.
"We farm on a fairly large scale so everything we have is meant for doing hundreds of acres in a day so I actually had to go rent a small tractor and a small drill to do it," VanDyke said.
The small job raised some eyebrows. His father-in-law called him in the spring to gossip.
"You know some knucklehead seeded a wheat field over in like the like the downtown district of Bozeman...I was like oh man that's crazy and then I broke it to him ...I was like yeah your daughter married the knucklehead that decided to seed that," VanDyke recounted.
The Tinworks site was once used for metal manufacturing, hence the name. The land was purchased and slated for development. The owners used the space in the meantime to host a pop-up art show in 2019, and after seeing such a positive community response, decided to continue using the space for inclusive art experiences.
Like the harvest. A cross between manual labor and a community celebration, even with a signature drink, Switchel, made by the curatorial assistant Bri Mango.
"I made it by making a concentrate syrup out of molasses maple syrup and a ton of Ginger like an unreasonable amount," said Mango.
The recipe was found in a scything handbook, and has been a traditional harvest drink, usually with whiskey added in.
Even though the field is a work of art, it was always intended to be food. MSU students came in the fall to test the soil and make sure after years of being used as a parking lot and dumping ground, it was safe to grow an edible crop.
MSU plant sciences program also loaned their thrasher. A piece of equipment they use on test plots to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The wheat being harvested today began on a test plot almost ten years ago as a part of MSU research. The strain, Bobcat Winter Wheat, was bred to have a solid stem, making it more resistant to bugs laying their eggs in. The variety is now among the most popular across the state.
Jim Berg who was one of the researchers breeding Bobcat Winter Wheat, brought an electric wheat mill to harvest.helping community members turn the harvested wheat into flour to take home. Berg first heard about the project as he was walking his dog in the neighborhood, and initially thought it was odd, but came to understand it's value.
"There's a lot of people in Bozeman that probably don't intimately see wheat growing and now they can help with a harvest and you know go through a process so I think it's I think it's great," said Berg.
People like Melissa Dulin, who came to try her hand at hand harvesting.
"Even though I grew up in Montana, no I've never had that experience and this is my parents grew up more ag based were before a lot of machines, they had to do a lot of hard work so I think it's a good experience to do with the old fashioned way," Dulin said.
