Our Story
Kitty and Nick first met years ago while each solo thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. They’ve been walking alongside each other ever since.
Early in 2020, the couple moved from Missoula to Frenchtown and started getting to know the land and place they now call home.
They started selling produce at farmers markets officially as Long Step in the spring of 2022, after nearly two years of dreaming, planning, planting, tearing down and putting up too many fences to keep the deer away and generally setting up infrastructure to support a working farm.
Kitty is a writer and educator who brings over a decade of experience in farming and agricultural pursuits around the pacific northwest and western Montana. She studied sustainable agriculture and education in undergrad, has her permaculture design certificate and loves all things outside, plant and food-focused.
When not farming, Kitty spends a lot of her time in various writing-oriented endeavors, from teaching to freelancing. She has an MS in Environmental Writing from UM and occasionally maintains a website featuring her published work. If you’re interested in more of her words, consider subscribing to Long Step’s semi-weekly farm substack newsletter, which is her best attempt to connect two of her favorite things: farming and written words.
Nick got a later start on his interest in growing food. He went to college at UCLA and later got a masters in Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. Even though he’s not working on building satellites anymore, he does spend a lot of his time trying to bring more efficiency and organization into the chaos that is a Montana growing season, which might be just as much of a challenge. In addition to making our systems more effective and user-friendly, Nick is our lead on the farm for building projects, tool design, big picture scheming, research and experimentation. We have him to thank for our initial commitment of the farm to no-till growing, for which we’re endlessly grateful!
When Nick isn’t working on the farm or spending time with family, you’ll usually find him doing his best to get into the mountains in some capacity.
Penny is the newest addition to the farm, born at the end of the 2021 farm season. She might not help much with carrying heavy totes yet but she’s loves taking farm walks to visit her animal friends and check on the progress of plants. She’s strongly opposed to eating any vegetable, particularly anything we’ve grown on the farm, but we’re working on it.
The farm wouldn’t be complete with our sweet old farm dog Su, a couple Icelandic sheep and an ever-evolving flock of chickens.
In addition to Kitty, Nick and Penny, we’ve been lucky enough hire a remarkable crew every season who help make this space what it is. From planting, harvesting and weeding to jumping in with markets and generally keeping the vibes high, we’re so grateful for all the incredible help we continue to have over the years!