CLARKSVILLE, Ohio – Branstrator Farm has been in the family since 1823. Jon Branstrator is the fifth generation tending the soil there. He is currently growing non-GMO corn and beans using no-till and cover crops but what he finds most interesting is growing and milling heritage grains.

The farm, however, went through many iterations to get to that point. His dad, Ralph, grew up working a team of horses. He left the farm during World War II. He did all kinds of things, such as driving a truck, to avoid farming.

“Then at one point he was given access to one of the farms that my grandparents owned,” Branstrator said. “He went to some kind of farmer’s school, I think they were put on by Purdue. Whoever was teaching it said, ‘Get rid of all your livestock, tear out all of your fences, and plant nothing but corn every year.’”

Ralph wanted to escape the drudgery of farming that he grew up with, so that’s what he did. That’s how Jon grew up farming.

“Economically, it worked out back then because the inputs were cheap; insects, diseases, and different problems associated with continuous corn took a while to develop,” Jon explained. “By the time I took over the farm, I started renting it from them about 1975, and I was kind of locked into that system. He thought this corn system was heaven-sent, and to grow anything else was some kind of heresy.”

Jon wanted to diversify the farm, and that led to disagreements with his dad. So, he moved on and did other things. He was going to college in Arizona when Ralph passed. In about 1999, Jon came back to take over the farm.

“I came back with all kinds of ideas; some of them worked, some of them didn’t,” Branstrator said. “I started farming with the help of my neighbor and exchanged work for the use of their equipment. It was during one of the economic downturns, so I was not making any income. I was going to have to get a job to support my farming habit.”

Brad Bergefurd, now retired from The Ohio State University, suggested he grow pumpkins. Branstrator planted 6 acres, and when that was a phenomenal success, he planted more. He got up to 30 acres of pumpkins. He expanded into peach trees and strawberries.

“I had a bunch of fantastic Mexican folk working for me, and it was awesome,” Branstrator said. “I did that for quite a while, but labor kept getting harder to secure. There was competition from roofers and landscapers who were paying 20 bucks an hour. So, during COVID, I put that down for a while and went back to commodity farming, although with cover crops and no-till regenerative practices.”

Branstrator had tried growing heritage grains earlier, but southwest Ohio was not yet ready for that, so he put it aside. But now, while growing commodities was good financially, he wanted to do something more interesting.

He went to some classes in Maine and Kentucky. The learning curve is a lot different for heritage grains than for commodity grains. Branstrator persisted, bought a mill, and found some local markets.

He bought a 1980 International 1440 combine that he tuned up just for wheat. The combine is in great shape, but it is old, and he doesn’t want to put a lot of hours on it, so he hires a neighbor to do his corn and soybeans.

He landed an account to market his heritage grains with the Dorothy Lane Markets, an upscale grocery in the Dayton area.

About then, Branstrator met Jay Brandt, who had formed the Local Millers, a group of like-minded farmers who partnered to preserve and promote diverse varieties of wheat and corn, and to bring back the lost technique of stone-milling.

“It is hard to grow everything yourself,” Branstrator said. “They had a good set up and Jay was really good about expanding so that somebody was growing Einkorn and maybe Blue Corn, somebody else was growing spelt, and something else. Between us, we had a pretty good list of grains.”

So, Branstrator primarily grows Red Fife wheat for Dorothy Lane and other markets. He has built some of his own equipment and last year, cleaned about 2,000 pounds of his wheat. He does some retail business but finds that with retail, the flour might sit on the shelf for a long time. The nature of stone-ground flour is such that it has a shorter shelf life and can get rancid.

“When I am delivering to my professional bakers, it is fresh,” he said. “If it sits on a shelf for months, it is not so good.”

Branstrator has about 45 acres in these grains. Just enough to satisfy the customers he has.

“Like so many things in agriculture, you have these romantic notions about growing flour; you get into it, there are big and little things to pay attention to, and it makes it interesting,” Branstrator said. “Then, I really feel good about producing a clean and healthy flour that performs well for the bakers. This year’s Red Fife, everybody is going crazy about it.”