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It all begins with our distinct terroir — the Arizona desert river valley soil and climate produce wheats with character and minerality. Our organic and regenerative farming practices result in a nutrient-dense wheat, while healing and feeding the earth, and providing our crops with the wholesome ecosystem they need to thrive.
Classification: Heritage soft winter wheat.
Introduced by Spanish missionaries to Mexico and southern Arizona, White Sonora was grown extensively by the native Akimel O’odham people in Arizona. It is believed to be the first wheat introduced to the New World over 300 years ago. The flour has a faint off-white color and light gold speckles and a pleasant light wheat aroma with a delicate, creamy wheat flavor. A lower gluten-producing protein wheat used mostly for cakes and pastries.
Classification: Ancient landrace durum.
Admired for its flavor and spectacular dark blue black “bearded” head, it originated in the Fertile Crescent and was revived in the U.S. by The Whole Grain Connection. The wheat flour has a light-yellow color with brown speckles and a light sweet and nutty taste with hearty toasted wheat notes that linger on the palate. A higher gluten-producing protein wheat which makes it ideal for pasta.
Classification: Modern hard red winter wheat
Developed by The Bread Lab in Skagit Valley, Washington, for whole grain use and as a pillar for the local grain economy. It was developed for flavor and high yields for organic farmers. The wheat flour has a cream color with brown speckles. A distinctive rich wheat taste with subtle caramel, cacao, coffee and nutty notes. Skagit 1109 consists of hundreds of different varieties, allowing the wheat to adapt to its environment. Some refer to it as a “modern non-GMO landrace wheat.”
Classification: Hard red winter wheat.
Red Fife was the baking and milling industries' standard of wheat in Canada that disappeared during the great depression. It was reintroduced to North America 10 to 15 years ago. The wheat flour has a light-cream color with brown speckles and has a deeper and more complex flavor than common hard red winter wheats. Breads made with it bake up moister, with a cohesive crumb. Traditionally used for breads and dinner rolls.
Classification: Prosopis glandulosa and Prosopis velutina.
Mesquite trees are native to northern Mexico, Southern California, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico and have been used by indigenous groups as a food source for many generations. The mesquite tree produces a pod or bean that can be ground into flour or cooked whole in water to produce beverages. The mesquite flour is considered a super food by many and provides a great source of vitamins and minerals, including calcium, fiber, protein, and amino acids. Its delicious sweet taste and low glycemic index helps to satisfy hunger, and stabilize blood sugar, making it an ideal sweetener. To learn more about mesquite click here.
Oatman Flats Ranch has a rich cultural and natural history. Dax Hansen, its current owner, is committed to reimagining agriculture based on a view of the farmer as steward and the farm as an integral part of a shared and evolving landscape. In an effort to adapt to our changing world, the farm is transitioning from practices that deplete and despoil the land to those that heal and restore it, and from approaches that ignore the cultural historical contexts of farms to those that embrace and celebrate them. In so doing, farm owner Dax hopes to honor his ancestors, and the indigenous inhabitants who preceded them on the land. And he aims to bequeath to future generations a resilient and thriving oasis in the desert.
The farm site called Oatman Flats Ranch has been an anchor of the Hansen family for four generations. Dax’s grandfather Ray Judd Hansen raised quarter horses, and grew cotton at Oatman Flats Ranch for 50 years. Like so many other families, the Hansens were on the verge of losing their farm, so Dax set out to find a means to keep it. What began as a search for a viable business model soon evolved into a journey of discovery, and a well-nigh quixotic mission. Along the way, he has gained a newfound passion for the uniquely delicious and diverse flavors of the Sonoran Desert.
Once a fertile floodplain of the Gila River, an ancient crossroads of human habitation, worship and travel, the landscape surrounding the farm when Dax took the reins had become much degraded. The river has been damned and diverted upstream, the groundwater overdrawn, the desiccated watercourses choked with invasive species of plants, and the farm soils depleted and overrun with weeds. The already extremely high temperatures are on the rise, and the already scant rainfall is on the decline.
It’s hard to imagine a more challenging place to grow a large-scale farm. And yet, Dax and team have endeavored to combine ancient traditional knowledge and cutting edge agro-ecological principles to restore fertility to his farm’s soils, while also replenishing water resources and boosting soil carbon sequestration. The farm is a case study of agricultural methods for arid lands that may sustain healthy ecosystems, including people, crops and domesticated animals, as well as native flora and fauna.
The overall objective is to enable the land to heal while also providing an abundance of nutritious food for the community, and healthy lifestyles for farm workers. The concept is to produce premium products in a way that is both environmentally friendly and economically viable, and thereby create a model for families to keep their farms, even in the face of climate instability and water scarcity.
Oatman Flats Ranch aims to achieve this goal by growing relatively drought-tolerant crops, including perennial crops, and using agroforestry techniques to help regenerate the degraded farmland, while also restoring water equilibrium and sequestering carbon.
The first step was to gain organic certification. This was achieved this in 2019. Now Oatman Flats Ranch is going beyond organic and transitioning the 600-acre farm into a full-fledged regenerative operation specializing in heritage grains and arid-adapted crops.
In 2020, Oatman Flats Ranch became Arizona’s largest organic grower of heritage wheat, with a bumper crop of White Sonora, Red Fife and Blue Beard wheat. All the wheat fields are sown with a wide array of summer cover crops, and the drylands pastures with diverse native grasses, herbaceous flowering plants, and wildflowers. We are growing several different varieties of prickly pear and agave to intercrop in the driest fields, as well as native leguminous trees and heirloom fruit trees. These arid-adapted perennial plants will not only serve as food crops, but also as windbreaks, wildlife habitat and soil conditioners.
