Jill Schramm/MDN Bottled raw milk is among products available direct from the farm to consumers at Bartlett Farms, operated by family members, from left, Nicole, Peter, Jim and Lynn Bartlett.

BOTTINEAU – Farming is truly a way of life for the Bartletts of Bottineau.

When James Bartlett moved his family to 160 acres nestled along Lake Metigoshe in 2004, he put into practice a philosophy about food, lifestyle and business development that takes a more holistic approach to agriculture. Bartlett Farms is finding success in a farm-to-consumer model that focuses on nutrition-dense, chemical-free animal products that haven’t gone through the usual supply-chain processing.

Bartlett Farms sells customers shares in its cattle and poultry to obtain raw milk and pastured meats delivered to their doors.

James and Lynn Bartlett operate the farm with son, Peter, and his wife, Nicole. Peter runs the raw micro-dairy while James runs the poultry, hog and beef operations.

Three other sons have had a hand in the farm and continue to assist in nonproduction avenues. Jonathan, who started the poultry operation, is in seminary, studying to become a Reformed Presbyterian pastor. David operated a yard care company in the Lake Metigoshe area and now lives at Detroit Lakes, Minn., as does Andrew, who runs a film-making and idea company.

James Bartlett was teaching engineering at North Dakota State University when he began thinking about entrepreneurship. As homeschooling parents, the Bartletts wanted to start a Christian-based, family operation that offered teaching moments for their boys.

“We were always encouraged to be entrepreneurial,” Peter Bartlett said, “and then take whatever we were interested in and pursue it. So moving to the country, I appreciate Dad’s vision for that because he was specifically wanting each of us to pursue things we were interested in.

“I just have liked animals. I’ve like birdwatching, being out in nature, and now I get to go be with nature every day and use it as a way to help people,” he added.

To achieve that brand of entrepreneurship required starting with the right piece of property.

“We prayed for three years,” James Bartlett said. They could have gone to New Hampshire, where his grandparents had land, but they felt they should stay in North Dakota.

“We put a map on the wall at home, and we put a red line through all the places we had been,” he said. “The only place we hadn’t been was the Turtle Mountains.”

He brought students on a tour of a Dunseith electronics company and drove through the area. Becoming more serious in the search, he placed an ad for land in the local newspaper. From the three responses, the Bartletts selected their property and begin to develop the business vision.

A recounting of their story states they started with a semi-trailer, pop-up camper, raw land and a two-sided thatched roof over a toilet seat cover on a bucket. They built a house and began a livestock operation with just a goat barn. They later moved in cabins from a youth camp to use as chicken coops as they gradually developed an operation to provide eggs, poultry, pork and beef.

They learned from neighbors about tilling, weeding and fertilizing with animal waste. They also became part of an online network and connected with a remote veterinary consultant.

Their first sales venture was selling raspberries at a farm stand. They began getting interest in their chickens, and as word of mouth about their operation spread, they added raw milk.

To their knowledge, they were the first in North Dakota to offer raw milk through a cow-share program, which began in 2009. They started with groups of customers sending a pick-up person to their farm. Eventually, the Bartletts began delivering. The farm currently delivers to Minot and Bottineau every week and Bismarck, Williston and Fargo every other week. It has more than 100 customers for its raw milk.

Bartlett Farms doesn’t sell raw milk but sells shares in a cow. A single share equates to a claim to two gallons of milk a month. Customers can buy a single share or multiple shares.

“We were copying a model that was used in Virginia,” Peter Bartlett said. “But in North Dakota, there was no law. It was just a gray area until 2011.”

In 2011, a bill to ban what they were doing came before the North Dakota Legislature. Bartlett Farms’ customer base in Williston and Bismarck packed the legislative hearing room. In the end, legislators amended the bill to make cow shares a legal method to distribute raw milk, increasing the protection for the business.

James Bartlett said only about 3% of the U.S. population drinks raw milk.

“Most people haven’t really studied the benefits of raw milk – the vitamin benefits, the enzyme benefit. A lot of people find healing,” he said.

Peter Bartlett added the main reason people hear about the farm is they have children with conditions such as allergies, eczema and asthma. The problem is a gut issue, and raw milk nourishes the gut, he said.

“When it gets pasteurized, it actually becomes the number one food allergy,” he said. “So raw milk is actually the cure for the number one food allergy in America.”

The farm is working to become listed in the Raw Milk Institute, which requires having certain procedures and practices in place to be accountable to the public regarding product standards. The farm does test for salmonella and e-coli on a regular basis and can test specific samples for any consumers who have concerns. However, samples have never tested positive for the bacteria, they said.

The Bartletts raise heritage breeds, mostly Jersey, which produces a higher butterfat content.

“We actually see a quite a long lifespan. Some of the commercial dairies will cull after five or six years of production. We have cows that are probably about 11 years old,” Peter Bartlett said.

Consumers also can buy poultry shares to receive the eggs. A single share is two dozen a month.

“Pretty much everything we do is designed to help people heal their gut in some special way. So with the eggs, we avoid soy, corn and wheat, because there’s some people that are allergic to eggs because of what the chickens are eating. So if we can make a special custom recipe to feed our chickens, then those people can benefit from the eggs,” Peter Bartlett said.

Once a hen is no longer laying, the customer gets a soup chicken. Each summer, the farm also raises pastured chicken and turkeys for the meat.

The farm does its own butchering for poultry. Hogs and the Angus beef are butchered in a USDA-certified facility.

As they continue to grow their operation, the Bartletts have implemented business systems that track everything from gallons of milk each cow gives to the time each family member devotes to the operation.

Lynn Bartlett originally chronicled the farm’s adventures on a blog as it established its place in the agricultural community. The Bartletts were early pioneers with a farm website presence. In addition to its website at barlettfarms.us, the farm maintains a presence on social media platforms and issues a monthly newsletter.

“So that’s been fun – just using technology to reach out to people,” Peter Bartlett said. “Farming in the 21st century is different, and if young people, like myself want to begin farming, you have to think about it more like a business, as an entrepreneur first, and then apply that to agriculture. If you just take the family farm and try to do it the way it’s always been done, you’re going to run up against prices that are really low and competition that you can’t beat because of scale. If we were trying to compete at the price of wholesale, bringing our animals to the livestock ring, we couldn’t raise enough to even come close. It has to go direct to the consumer in order to get enough value.”

Nicole Bartlett, a nutritionist engaged in consulting and teaching, operates a business called Robust Living, which has a website at robustlivingnutrition.com. She has conducted courses in Minot and Bismarck, which have included demonstrations on how to make kombucha tea, bone broth, yogurt and cheese. Peter and Nicole founded the Weston Price Foundation chapters in Minot and Bismarck.

“It’s been really interesting, too, to try to talk to people who had no farm experience, and they want to get healthy food. They’ve never had any contact with a farmer,” Peter Bartlett said. “So we have to learn both the farmer language and how to communicate to the city people. Because we weren’t farmers to begin with, I think it’s been a little easier for us to step into that role and relate to them.”

The Bartletts give farm tours every year, usually in August, for their share owners.

“One thing I think is big is seeing the consumers who enjoy our products,” Peter Bartlett said. “There’s a reward in having somebody come up to you and give you a hug and say how much your products mean to them. That’s not something most farmers get to feel.”