Back to North Dakota: A Whirlwind Visit to Martin Goter Farm

I didn't visit a farm in the prairie pothole region in June—or an organic farm. Martin Goter's farm is both.

September 29–30, 2026

Flying is weird. And unnatural. And exciting. And fast!

When I drove to North Dakota last summer, it took me a day and a half to drive from southwest Michigan to Bismarck. Today, I’ve covered the same distance in only three hours of flying time—one hour-and-a-half flight from Grand Rapids to Minneapolis and another from Minneapolis to Bismarck. I’m feeling slightly disassociated as I leave the Bismarck airport with Emily (the Acres event planner) in our rental car. I woke up in Michigan; now I’m in North Dakota; and it feels like I wasn’t anywhere in between.

We’re in North Dakota for an Acres field day at Menoken Farm tomorrow, but I requested that we take the early flight in today so that I could squeeze in one more farm tour. I realized after my trip in June that I’d made a serious omission—I didn’t tour a single organic farm in North Dakota. I want to know how organic farmers operate in this beautiful but harsh environment. So I got in touch with Martin Goter, who is not only certified organic but also Real Organic, Regenerative Organic, and biodynamic!

It’s a long but lovely drive from the airport to Martin’s farm through the prairie pothole region of eastern North Dakota. The signs of fall are everywhere. The grass and reeds around the pothole lakes are golden brown, the leaves on the cottonwoods are yellow, and the dozens of water bodies reflect the blue, cloud-speckled sky.

There aren't many trees in North Dakota, but there are a few, and their leaves are already turning yellow.

We leave the paved road and drive another ten miles on dirt roads. The landscape is dimpled and curved around the pothole lakes, but the roads, whether dirt or paved, are a rigidly straight grid. They don’t go around the potholes; they charge straight through on an embankment. At one point there’s a road intersection right in the middle of a lake.

Martin’s waiting outside the barn to greet us. He explains that he grew up on this farm, but didn’t want to be a farmer. When he finally decided that he did want to take over the family farm, he wanted to do it biodynamically. He learned a lot from Fred Kirschenmann—who lived just about an hour away—and other organic farmers. Now he grows buckwheat, flax, oats, millet, and other gluten-free organic grains.

Martin Goter took a shovel and penetrometer out to this buckwheat field to show us his soil.

After talking to other farmers in North Dakota, my big question for Martin is about weeds. He doesn’t till much—only a shallow disking for planting his late-season crops—and of course he doesn’t use herbicides. So what does he do about the weeds?

“Weeds don’t scare me,” Martin says as we head out to look at some of his fields. Yeah, he has some weeds, but his crops still grow. He looks at weeds not as an enemy, but as Nature’s way of healing the soil. When he first started transitioning his land out of conventional production, he noticed that the weeds followed a clear sequence. First, Canadian thistle came in strong for a few years. But then it started to wane as it was attacked by thistle stem gall flies and diseases.

Thistle stem gall fly helps keep Canada thistle in check naturally, stunting growth and hindering seed production.

Next, annual sow thistle became the predominant weed. Martin loves pulling up sow thistle plants; they make a satisfying “pop” as he pulls them up to show us all the soil life clinging to the roots. By the fifth year after transition, he found that sow thistle wasn’t really a problem anymore, but dandelions were moving in. “And the final thing I really fight with is pigeon grass, but it’s never really been a bother to me,” he says.

Visiting Martin’s farm gives me yet another perspective on farming in North Dakota. Maybe weeds aren’t the real enemy. Maybe serious weed problems are simply an indication that the farming system is out of balance. Maybe the “tillage versus herbicides” debate is missing the fundamental question of whether it’s possible to grow crops in the Plains without excessive disturbance of any kind, either chemical or mechanical.

The biodynamic inspector told Martin that his soil was the best he'd ever seen—even compared to other biodynamic farms!

As I tell the farmers at Menoken Farm the next day, I don’t have all the answers on how best to farm in North Dakota. And maybe there isn’t one right way; maybe it’s different for each farm. But seeing Martin Goter’s farm gives me hope that there is a future for organic farming in North Dakota—a future that can avoid both the excessive tillage that caused the Dust Bowl and the herbicides that have such detrimental impacts on soil life and human health.

The weather is stunningly clear as our evening flight leaves the Bismarck airport after the field day. I can see everything—a combine harvesting a field, wind turbines turning, and hundreds of pothole lakes with perfectly straight roads cutting through on embankments. We fly directly over I-94, and I can trace the exact route I drove back in June.

From the air, the roads and towns look so small and the prairie looks so big. I know that, on the ground, those fields are enormous. But from 30,000 feet, the human impact on the land seems tiny compared to the vastness of the prairie. It reminds me how fragile a foothold our modern civilization actually has in the northern Plains, how dependent it is on transportation and supply chains from other areas.

We fly over Fargo—a tiny dot, swallowed up in the vastness of prairie. The trees start coming back, first a few scattered clumps and then whole forests. By the time we start descending into Minneapolis, the ground is forested. The sun is setting, and the prairie is just a distant memory. I feel dislocated again. It’s been a whirlwind trip. But I’m glad I made it. I treasure every moment I was able to spend in North Dakota and the Great Plains—that vast, windy, beautiful land that’s played such a major role in the history of American agriculture.