By Lorrie Baumann

Seely Mint Patties have a depth of flavor that’s unmatched by conventional varieties of the same confection. Hand-made in Oregon with Fair Trade-certified European dark chocolate and heirloom peppermint oil grown on one of the last remaining mint farms in the U.S., they’re the product of a fourth-generation farming family that’s been growing mint in the lower Columbia River basin since the middle of World War II.

Mike Seely, today’s farmer, says that his grandparents switched their farm from onions to mint while his dad and his uncle were fighting in the Pacific campaign during World War II. A few farms in the region were already growing mint, and it was a crop they hoped to be able to make some money with and could farm without help from their sons. “Dad had spent a year at the University of Washington studying electrical engineering when he got his draft notice and joined the Marines,” Seely said. “He was a radio man in the Marines and worked with a [Navajo] Wind Talker. Once he had the radio shot off his back…. When he came back, he started farming alongside his father, raising mint.”

Mike’s dad expanded the farm from 35 acres to 115 acres, met a girl he liked at a dance hall and had five kids, including Mike, who started farming when he was six years old, raising pumpkins and selling them on the front porch for enough money to buy a $19.95 Timex watch. In following years, he expanded his farming operation to include other vegetables as well as the pumpkins for his front-porch farm stand. “That’s how I paid for college,” he said.

Mike followed in his father’s footsteps by studying electrical engineering – he has a degree in electrical engineering as well as a master’s degree in business administration – before he went back to farming, this time with mint. Since there was no acreage right around his parents’ farm, he started his own farm 20 miles away. By this time, just about everyone in his family was raising mint and processing it for its oil, which found a ready market for the mint flavoring in candies, toothpaste and even tobacco. “William Wrigley from Wrigley Chewing Gum would come out to the farm in the ’50s and grab the hoe from Mom and hoe 100 yards down the row with Dad and say, ‘We’re buying your oil again this year.’” Mike said.

“Wrigley used to have 11 or 12 flavorists. One of their main jobs was to sniff the oil that came in – every barrel, They knew, when it came in, which barrels of oil came from our farm – that was the difference.”

The depth of the aroma – and the flavor – of the Seely peppermint oil is the result of the unique heritage of the plant from which the oil comes, Black Mitcham Peppermint. It originated near Mitcham in England after the Romans brought spearmint with them from the Middle East on their way to conquer England, Seely says. “It crossed with watermint somewhere along the way to produce peppermint.” Discovered in the 1600s, the Black Mitcham variety was named after the town in which it was grown and the black edge on its leaf. “It evolved along that latitude to produce a unique essential oil.” Seely said.

That latitude isn’t far off the latitude where Seely’s farm is found today, and, as it grew in England, his peppermint grows in a rich peaty soil in a climate that’s very similar to that of Mitcham to produce an oil whose flavor is a delicate balance of more than 200 chemical compounds. “That’s what creates a very unique flavor profile that’s controlled by soil, climate and how you raise it,” Seely said.
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The scientists point out that peppermint oil has a composition that’s dominated by menthol, the chemical that produces the cool sensation when you breathe air into your mouth while you’re chewing a Seely Peppermint Patty, as well as menthone and a host of other chemicals that lend it antioxidant and anti-radical properties.

Seely preserves those delicate components by harvesting his mint just once a year, rather than the twice-yearly cuttings that are done by some of his neighbors in the Columbia River Valley, starting in the morning just when the plants have begun to bloom. “It really never evolved to be that kind of plant – to be harvested twice a year. It evolved to have a little bit of bloom to make the oil. Everybody else is focused on the yield rather than the flavor profile of the oil,” he said. “One harvest is enough for us. We want to harvest at that 3- to 5-percent bloom where you really have that flavor profile that we want.”

That flavor profile comes out in the Seely Peppermint Patties that are a flagship product for the Seely Family Farms brand. Those were invented by Mike’s wife, Candy, after the market for fine-quality peppermint crashed when a synthetic menthol oil took over after the patent on its manufacture expired in 1962 and manufacturers started looking at it as a “natural flavor” that was a cheaper alternative to real mint oil. “This was in the ’90s, and it was no longer about the quality of the oil; it was about the price point,” Seely said. “They started to transition away from high-quality, clean ingredients.”

Seely and his family of growing children started looking for another crop to raise on their farm, starting with a trip to the Portland, Oregon, farmers market to see what other farmers in their area were growing. “We thought we were done raising peppermint and spearmint,” Seely said. “On the way home, we realized that there was nobody selling mint at the farmers market. We talked our way in and got a booth. With no marketing plan or anything, we started selling.”

What Mike and Candy started taking to the farmers market was peppermint and spearmint leaves for tea and bottles of the oil. They didn’t sell much. “We realized that people really had no clue about mint oil. They didn’t understand. They didn’t know if they wanted spearmint or peppermint or what,” Mike said. “They didn’t know what to do with it.”

Candy decided that the best way to show farmers market shoppers the potential of the oil was to demonstrate with some of her peppermint patties, which she took to the market to offer as samples to potential customers. “The very first lady – from a very wealthy area in the west hills of Portland said, ‘I don’t want to make these – I want to buy them,’” Mike recalls. “That’s literally how we got started.”

That was a moment of destiny for Seely Family Farms, which today offers 17 SKUs of products that contain the Seelys’ real peppermint and spearmint oil grown and processed on their farm in northwest Oregon. They include Seely Peppermint Patties, Dark Mint Melts, Peppermint Bark, Ivory Mints that are made from premium Italian white chocolate and peppermint/spearmint oil and candy canes – red-striped ones made with peppermint, green ones made with spearmint and red and green-striped canes made with a blend of peppermint and spearmint. The range also includes mint teas: Oregon Heirloom Peppermint Tea; Oregon Mint, made with a blend of peppermint and spearmint; Oregon Native Spearmint; and Oregon Peppermint & Green Tea. “We are destined to grow our business. One pint of peppermint flavors 55,000 sticks of peppermint chewing gum. It goes a long way, so we have a long ways to go to use all of our mint oil in all of our products,” Seely said. “It’s really all about clean ingredients, being sustainable, being Non-GMO Verified, using peppermint oil instead of synthetic.”
For more information, visit www.seelymint.com.