Cookin’ Mint

This time of year, the land is like a heaving chest; all breath and moan with the heaviness that is harvest.  It’s in the air.  The perfume of ripe grapes seems phony it’s so overdone.  Drying hops can’t help but spill their scent from the many hot kilns that dot the roads.  The aroma of mint—in both the cutting and the cooking—can literally be detected for miles.  That’s how I knew.  We had been wanting to do a mint story but were waiting for the next cutting.  I was on my back porch on a recent evening, and breathing deep, I could smell it.  “Now’s the time,” thought I.

Meeting up with mint farmer Kevin Hudson of Twin H Farms in Toppenish, Washington, he tells me that the Lower Valley is one of the best Native Spearmint growing areas in the world.  Because of the Valley’s terrific soil and hot days, Native Spearmint thrives, putting out some of the best yields on the globe. This year in particular, the yields have been outstanding, which Kevin chalks up to good weather and good luck.  Typically, there are two harvests a year, about 64 days apart.  I want to see a cutting up close so head over to a field in harvest.

I arrive to see the swather as it is mowing down the last few rows of a field.  The smell is incredible.  Right away, the strong odor of fresh-cut spearmint is all around me.  It seems surreal as I watch a huge flock of blackbirds descend into the field to snack on all the flying bugs now abuzz at having been disturbed from their repose by the cut.
After the swathing, the mint is left to dry in the field for about two days which helps make the oil distillation process run more smoothly (more on that shortly).  In the adjacent field to the east from where I’m standing it’s already dry and ready to go.  I watch as a forage harvester chops it up and blows it into a mint tank where it will be taken and hooked up to some steam for cookin’.

Cooking mint (cookin’ mint in farmer-speak) is the process of distilling the oil from the plant.  Kevin’s distillery area is flanked by two bays on either side of the 600 horsepower boiler where tanks full of chopped, dry mint are hooked up to hoses pushing 25 lbs of steam pressure into the load.  If the mint is too dry, it doesn’t cook evenly, too wet and it takes too long.  But hit that sweet spot right in the middle, and in around 90 minutes, you strike oil. 
As the steam permeates the load it attracts the oil droplets from the leaves.  It then moves into a condenser where the steam is cooled back into a liquid state and piped to a room of separator tanks.  As we all know, oil and water don’t mix, so in the separator tanks oil rises to the top and the water remains on the bottom.  When the tanks are full enough, there is a large oil layer in the top level of the tank.  A valve high up on the tank drains the oil off the upper portion while more water is pumped into the lower portion, the rising water level keeping the oil pushed near the surface so it will continue to drain.  The oil is directed by gravity to a barrel just waiting for its harvest spoil of pure spearmint oil.

What’s left of the plant after distillation are black, wet, steamy wads called mint slugs.  This time of year, steaming mint slugs can be seen around the edges of various fields waiting to dry out.  Once it’s dry, it makes terrific fertilizer and will be laced back into the fields to enrich the soil.

Kevin says that it’s a privilege to grow mint.  With a limited number of growers present in the United States due to a marketing order, not just anybody can farm it.  But lucky for us, anyone can have it.  Next time you chew gum, pop an after dinner mint, slurp down a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone, or brush your teeth, take a silent moment to thank your local mint farmer.  The world would be a much fouler place without their efforts to keep us styled in minty freshness.