- [Announcer] This episode of Wish You Were Here with Eliza Blue is brought to you in part by South Dakota Public Broadcasting and the South Dakota Arts Council.

Thanks for watching.

(acoustic guitar music) ♪ Back roads and byways ♪ ♪ Campfires we lie awake ♪ ♪ Sweet grass and summer sage ♪ ♪ Come on baby, come and take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand, take my hand ♪ ♪ We're Dakota bound ♪ Join us as we travel to share stories and songs from the prairie.

When gold was discovered in Deadwood Gulch in 1876, thousands of prospectors flocked to the Northern Black Hills seeking their fortunes.

It quickly became obvious that the area at the mouth of Spearfish Canyon was more conducive to agriculture than mining.

The town and farms that sprang up there became suppliers of food for miners working on claims and in camps in Lead and Deadwood, places where the gold rush was exploding.

While other mining communities experienced the resulting boom and bust cycles that that industry often experiences, Spearfish grew more steadily.

Their focus on agriculture in particular made the town a good destination for folks who weren't interested in taking a gamble with mining.

Eventually Spearfish became a destination for the region's ranchers as well.

The high heat of summer and the relentless wind all made vegetable farming difficult on the open plains.

Whereas, Spearfish Valley was relatively well protected with rich, fertile soil.

Ranch families would journey to Spearfish in the late summer and early fall to buy a year's worth of produce.

Then spend a few days in the city campground canning it all before traveling back home.

Since those days, new industries, such as tourism have sprung up and flourished as a result of the natural beauty of this section of the hills.

Meanwhile, residential homes have replaced most of the farm ground.

However, Spearfish valley continues to serve as an agricultural microcenter, a bright jewel in the Queen City's crown.

Businesses like Gage's Gardens bridge the gap between rural and urban by bringing seasonal produce to their shelves while small scale agriculturalists, like the folks at Cycle Farm, a regeneratively managed operation that offers a wide array of fruits and vegetables, sell directly from their farm via membership boxes and a small farm stand located on Evans Lane.

Journey a little farther down Evans Lane and you'll find a relatively new business, Fretless Farm, which is owned and operated by singer songwriter and banjoist, Jami Lynn.

Jami Lynn spent a decade touring constantly before making the leap to urban homesteader.

And while you can still find her on stages around the region, she is now more often found working the soil here in Spearfish Valley.

Spearfish Valley has been a home to agriculture for quite some time, but more recently my former partner with The Nesters, a folk duo, and an amazing Dakota songwriter in her own right, Jami Lynn, moved here, took herself off the road as a touring musician, and started her own urban farmstead.

So we are so excited today to be at Fretless Farms where she's just getting ready to start her season as an urban gardener, and she's also gonna share some songs with us about this amazing time of year.

We wish you were here.

Well, we are gonna talk more with Jami about Fretless Farms in just a minute, but first I thought we could start with a song, Garden Gate, that's off your first album.

What do you think?

- Let's do it.

(light folk music) ♪ Go out, lean on the garden gate ♪ ♪ Where wind and dirt and water play ♪ ♪ See where the robin makes her home ♪ ♪ Perched on the iron gate alone ♪ ♪ The garden gate ♪ ♪ The garden gate ♪ ♪ Go out and see where she will land ♪ ♪ Offer her happiness in hand ♪ ♪ Make her a home where she can sing ♪ ♪ Drown out the caustic bite and sting ♪ ♪ The garden gate ♪ ♪ The garden gate ♪ ♪ You saw her long ago ♪ ♪ Burst of crimson puffed in show ♪ ♪ Wren in summer, guest in spring ♪ ♪ Painting skies and taking wing, oh ♪ ♪ Taking wing, oh ♪ ♪ Old man, see how your son has grown ♪ ♪ Suckling the Earth down to the bone ♪ ♪ Give him a spade and plot of land ♪ ♪ Behold the boy becomes a man ♪ ♪ You saw her long ago ♪ ♪ Burst of crimson puffed in show ♪ ♪ Wren in summer, guest in spring ♪ ♪ Painting skies and taking wing, oh ♪ ♪ Taking wing, oh, oh, oh ♪ (light folk music) ♪ Go out, lean on the garden gate ♪ ♪ Where wind and dirt and water play ♪ - We're here on Fretless Farm, and it's about a fifth of an acre.

This is my third growing season, and you can see the made beds behind us, they're all permanent beds.

They're in the same spot.

They never get tilled or turned over.

And everything is pretty small hand scale.

We're here in the one hoop house that I have on the property.

Right now in the spring, some of the lettuce and greens are transitioning out and we're starting to plant tomatoes and we'll have cucumbers and do those in the lower and lean style all the way to the ceiling.

And the great part about this is that you can also use it in the winter.

We're here in my makeshift nursery that I built for like 45 bucks out of junk that was on the property when we moved here, and this is where I seed lettuce every single week, all summer long and into the fall.

And we have some other things going on in here in the spring, but this is actually a pretty happening place all summer long because I grow greens throughout the year.

And this is where our tour ends.

(gentle folk music) ♪ Mayflower is the health spring ♪ ♪ And she pops right out of the snow's melting ♪ ♪ Glimmer color and a swift decline ♪ ♪ She can't keep up with the march of time ♪ (gentle folk music) ♪ Spotted dog is the finest friend ♪ ♪ Bright brown eyes, but the clouds rolled in ♪ ♪ Marched the rivers and he marched the plains ♪ ♪ He can't keep up with the march of time ♪ (gentle folk music) ♪ My love is the damnedest thing ♪ ♪ It brings to joy and pain ♪ ♪ He makes me humble and he makes me kind ♪ ♪ And we both keep step with the march of time ♪ (gentle folk music) - So as performers, the fact that it's raining today while we're trying to film these songs is a little bit of a bummer, but as a farmer it's actually pretty awesome.

(laughs) So I wanted to ask you about that.

What made you decide to transition from being a touring musician to being now a urban homesteader?

- Well, I kind of like, I've always wanted to farm when I was in college is when I really got into local food and learning where my food was grown, which is ironic because my mother grew 80% of the vegetables that we ate growing up and my dad grew all of our meat.

So that's where I started, I just didn't get it.

(both laugh) So I really did get into the idea of farming when I was at college, but music kind of took the driver's seat for a while and I just got really tired of driving around and being in a different place every night.

And it's funny that we're here in May and the apple trees are in blossom because the year before I quit touring was the first year that I thought I was going to be home for the blooms, and I missed them by like a few days.

And I had never seen them, we lived here for five years and I'd never seen them, and that's why I decided to farm.

Like I wanna be in the same place, and yeah.

And my parents really just showed me that it was a good life.

And so that's where I find myself now, it's stable in one place, not moving from place to place and a lot happier.

(chuckles) - Yeah, so literally in figuratively putting down roots.

- Yes.

(laughs) - And we talked about that when we played as The Nesters, that was part of the reason we came up with that name is 'cause we'd both gone from these like very transient existences to like really wanting to be a little more settled and like have a little nest around us.

So the next song we're gonna play is actually a song we played as The Nesters, but it is based on your experiences growing up with your dad when he had dairy cows.

- Yeah, my dad had a small dairy until I was maybe 12 or 13, and to call in the cows every morning and evening when he would milk, he would go, "Gabass, gabass, gabass," and I didn't know it was actually like "come boss", that's what it is.

And it's neat because based on where you are in the country and even in the state, people have different variations of it that they are used to.

And so, yeah, that's where this song came from.

- Awesome.

(light folk music) ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ Do not get left here, the dog by the hearth ♪ ♪ Come, oh, if I'm leading now into the barn ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ The udder is leading, she eagerly starts ♪ ♪ Come all you fine ladies, now into the barn ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ (light folk music) ♪ Orange tom cat is waiting for the smallest of spills ♪ ♪ He stretches and sharpens his claw on the sill ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ The cows in the stand shed, bulls calling out ♪ ♪ The heat rising up 'round their backs while it snows ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ Come Phoebe and Phyllis, come Dorothy and Dee ♪ ♪ Come Tina, sweet Dina, and Persephone ♪ ♪ Come Bessie, Fiona, come Bertha and Lila ♪ ♪ Come Norma, Regina, come Celia and Spike ♪ ♪ Cow boss, cow boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss, come boss ♪ ♪ Cow boss ♪ (light folk music) (crickets chirping) - [Narrator] And now some notes from the field.

(gentle folk music) - Spring in Western Dakota usually involves a few fits and starts.

The weather warms, we tumble from our homes in t-shirts praising the sun.

The next day, it's back to winter coats and knit caps, and we grumble to our neighbors, "I'm ready for this cold to be over."

The sun returns and so does our joy, until the next morning when we wake to snow.

And so it goes for most of the months of April and May.

When spring finally arrives for good it lasts about a week.

It's a beautiful week, brimming with lilacs and chubby bumblebees, gentle breeze, and ripening green grass.

We do our chores in shirt sleeves without breaking a sweat while the evening pools sweetly around us.

Then quite abruptly, it's the height of summer.

The pasture smells like bread baking, the heat of midday leaves hazy mirages on the horizon and the lilac's blossoms turn brown and shrink back to dry seed shells.

Our week of spring is over.

All this provides quite the challenge for those of us who love to garden.

I planted peas and spinach back in April, proving, as I do every spring, that hope can still triumph over experience.

Those little sprouts saw snowfall and many below freezing nights, but miraculously managed to straggle themselves up from the ground.

They are still far from ready to feed us, however, so the jump start to fresh veggies is minimal at best.

Thanks to some help from heating pads, the tomatoes, peppers, squash, and melons I started in the greenhouse have also grown up and will soon be ready to transplant.

Meanwhile, the broccoli cabbage and cauliflower I planted out last week are in rough shape because I thought we had arrived at our one week of Spring, but we had actually arrived at a different Dakota specialty, a week of wind, another hallmark of our unique weather patterns.

My poor brascos will likely survive, but with approximately one battered leaf left each, don't look much better than the plants that straggled through several winter storms.

While my peers back east are ready to harvest their first round of cool weather crops, my garden, though green, is doing a better job of producing burdock, dandelions, and cheap grass than all of the things I've planted on purpose.

However, though it is a little scary to write this, I'm knocking on wood as I do so, it does seem we have now left false spring behind for another year, and that the week of true spring has arrived, which is why yesterday we dragged our at our blue kiddie pool in anticipation of next week's return to the height of summer.

The kids begged to splash in their bathing suits, of course, even though the weather was closer to 60 than 70.

I acquiesced.

If we lived farther south, we would've been donning light jackets instead of swimwear, but it's a seize the day attitude here in Dakota.

Surely too cool for bathing suits, but there was frost in the ground two days ago and we can't be entirely sure there won't be again some morning soon, so bathing suits it was, and they were worn with adulation and delight.

You see, the plants that grow here without aid do so because of a thousand years of evolution, which taught them to thrive in circumstances other plants couldn't survive.

We Dakotans are much like dandelions as well.

Our roots are deep.

Our stems are tough.

Our blossoms and fruit aren't showy, but we know how to wait through long cold and the false starts until one bright morning.

We burst forth, ready to join the symphony of new beginnings.

Thank you so much for joining us for this season of wish you were here.

It has been a pleasure to spend time with you.

Whether it was from valley or mountain, prairie or dale, there's always a story and a few songs too.

So thank you to all our supporters, and especially to the musicians, artists, poets, and storytellers who shared their gifts this season.

And of course, thank you to the wind, to the rain, to the grass, to the trees, and all the animals who also call this place home.

(gentle folk music) (crickets chirping) ♪ Down in the valley, the valley so low ♪ ♪ Hang your head over, and hear the wind blow ♪ ♪ Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow ♪ ♪ Hang your head over and hear the wind blow ♪ ♪ Roses love sunshine, violets love dew ♪ ♪ Angels in heaven know I love you ♪ ♪ Know I love you, dear ♪ ♪ Know I love you ♪ ♪ Angels in heaven know I love you ♪ - My partner as part of the folk.

(groans) Okay.

(man laughs) All right.

- You're good.

♪ Back roads and byways, campfires will lie awake, ♪ ♪ Sweet grass and summer sage ♪ ♪ Come on baby, come and take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand, take my hand ♪ ♪ We're Dakota bound ♪