Family farms cultivate mint as they look to diversify crops

Breathe deep and you can almost taste it in the air this time of year driving across the Rathdrum Prairie.

It's sticky and sweet, like a starlight mint melting on the tongue.

"Lots of people love it and lots of people don't like it," Wade McLean said as his Suburban bumped along a rutted dirt road between fields of peppermint growing as tall as his vehicle's tires.

McLean doesn't really care for mint.

The smell doesn't bother him much when he's swathing the fields at harvest time, but at the still — where the plant is cooked until oil is released from its leaves — it's too strong for the 58-year-old farmer.

He's happy the still is a mile from his house.

McLean and neighbor Terry Nichols are the only two mint farmers in North Idaho, with hundreds of acres of the pungent plant growing between the two of them.

Nichols and his brother, who grow the majority of mint on the Rathdrum Prairie, are already harvesting crops. McLean plans to start harvest next week.

For 30 years, McLean has been the manager for Satchwell Farms. His wife's family has been farming up to 1,000 acres on the prairie for generations.

Wanda and Wade McLean are the sixth generation.

Mint is a difficult crop, McLean says. He started growing it 15 years ago to better his soil, not long after Nichols planted his first crops of peppermint.

McLean used to grow bluegrass. It wasn't just the field-burning controversy that has him looking to other crops.

With the costs of fertilizer and fuel rising, bluegrass is not the money crop it used to be.

He's experimenting with ragweed. Pollen from the plant will be harvested and sold to be made into allergy tablets, McLean said.

"You have got to diversify and do things to make money so you can still survive," he said. He raises wheat, hay and cows, along with the mint.