As I walked into the living room of Charly Blackwood and Will Shanahan on a Wednesday afternoon, I was welcomed by the smells of cinnamon, warm buttery oil, and sweet honey, and a nod from their cat Zoey. Charly and Will were just finishing up a day of baking English muffins for their small business, Furrow & Fly. Will handed me a Cinnamon Golden Raisin muffin, hot off the griddle. As I devoured my muffin and we settled into our chairs, a timer went off and Charly hopped up to open a large tub full of dough to my right. She washed her hands and arms and proceeded to stretch and fold this giant mass of dough to strengthen the gluten. I’m gathering this is a typical night at their household.

Charly Blackwood has deep family roots in Bozeman, Montana. Her great-grandparents, Albert and Emma Blackwood, purchased land from a homesteader in the 1890s and started farming crops and raising sheep. Charly grew up in the original farmhouse, and her father still lives there and leases most of the land to farmers. She has fond memories of riding in the combine with her Dad for the wheat harvest and taking it to the grain elevators in Belgrade. Growing up, Charly felt like she lacked a connection in Bozeman to keep her there long term and left multiple times until the pandemic forced her to return, and she started looking at her family history. There is no doubt growing up on a wheat farm influenced her decision to become a baker.

Great-Great Grandmother Emma Blackwood feeding chickens. She and her husband, Albert, purchased the farm in 1892.

Charly met Will in Bozeman through mutual friends, but they officially connected in New Zealand when they were both traveling abroad in January 2019. The following winter, they obtained one-year work visas in Hobart, Tasmania—Charly was going to teach ESL and Will was looking for a job. They got as far as buying a car and finding housing before covid-19 shut down their plans and they had to return to Bozeman, where they knew they’d be able to hunker down to wait out the pandemic.

Charly spent the summer of 2020 making ice cream for Genuine Ice Cream Company, and Will was a full-time farmer at Amaltheia Organic Dairy and Vegetable Farm. According to Will, they were exhausted and only had “enough brain power to make dinner, eat it, and go to bed even when the sun was still up.” But on most of these evenings, they would find the energy to sit on the porch and brainstorm jobs that would fulfill them in different ways, and most of the ideas involved them owning their own business.

Charly immersed herself in the baking craze that took over many households during the pandemic. She had worked at a coffee shop in Bellingham, Washington, when she was in college and remembers them having delicious breakfast sandwiches on homemade English muffins. On one of their evening brainstorming sessions, she and Will agreed that Bozeman lacked a good breakfast sandwich, and decided it was important to start at the source—a good muffin.

Charly began experimenting immediately. Before the pandemic, she had always avoided baking breads that relied on inconvenient dough schedules. The Furrow & Fly English muffins take 24-36 hours in total to make, which is why homemade ones aren’t seen more commonly in bakeries and grocery stores. Charly said the pandemic offered her ample hours for baking and gave her something “to care and tend to and put some additional structure in a totally formless time.” It also helped her feel like she wasn’t stagnating and spinning out, a feeling many people have experienced in the past few years.

Charly might still be in the kitchen perfecting recipes if Will hadn’t nudged her to start getting the product out. It was the fall of 2020 when they buckled down and started running multiple test batches, with friends and families giving feedback along the way. Will started a bank account, registered the business, and helped turn Charly’s recipe into a spreadsheet so that she could vary the batch size easily. Over time they have both figured out their roles in the business. They interchange baking jobs often and they’ve learned to communicate each other’s needs, understanding that they sometimes have different priorities. Without a doubt, they both agree this business could not run with just one of them.

Furrow & Fly has stayed devoted to the goal of using as many Montana-made products in their recipes as possible. Charly first developed their Plain and Kamut Sourdough varieties of muffins. It was important to her to have a unique flavor option that helped them stand out—never mind the fact that there is no other English muffin bakery in town. She has been a long-time admirer of Bob Quinn, author of the book Grain by Grain and resident of Big Sandy, Montana. Quinn is a farmer who single-handedly revived Kamut, starting with a single jar of grain that he grew for seed and then planted a field the following year. He’s taught other farmers around the state how to successfully grow organic Kamut, and has written globally recognized standards for how to keep the integrity of the grain and ensure its high nutritional value. According to Charly, no one would be growing Kamut anywhere without the efforts of Quinn.

The Kamut they now use comes from Montana Flour & Grain in Fort Benton, the safflower oil from the Oil Barn in Big Sandy (which Quinn used to own), wheat flour from Wheat Montana in Three Forks, spelt and rye from Conservation Grains in Choteau, and oat flour from Sister’s Gluten Free Bakery in Belgrade. Charly also made it a priority to develop a dairy-free product, which is partially responsible for the long fermentation times of the dough. In total, Furrow & Fly has seven flavors, adding Cinnamon Golden Raisin, Everything, Rosemary, Wheat and Seed, and Gluten Free options to the original Plain and Kamut Sourdough. A great product starts with its ingredients, and Furrow & Fly infuses their muffins with the intention and dedication you expect from a small and local business. Their attention to detail from day one is evident in their increasing popularity.

The growth of Furrow & Fly has been exponential, mostly by word of mouth. Their first order form was filled exclusively by people they knew, and by the next week it was mostly strangers. They started by operating out of their kitchen with one pancake griddle and a Hobart dough mixer that coincidentally shares the name of the town in Tasmania where they’d intended to spend 2020. They aptly nicknamed it the “Tasmanian Dough Devil,” though it sits unused in the corner now as the business has grown. When they were using up to four pancake griddles in their house, they searched for a commercial kitchen and ultimately landed on remodeling their garage to fit their needs.

As of summer 2022, they have sold their 100,000th muffin but have made many more. Furrow & Fly sells muffins via an online order form where you can receive them at your doorstep, and they are also available at Farmer’s Markets around Gallatin and Park Counties. In-person sales have become a highlight for Charly and Will. They are grateful for the immensely positive response they have received from other vendors and the general public. At any new market they go to, there is excitement, curiosity, and unsolicited advice because people want to help. Charly smiles, saying, “there is a piece of pride when you are a local business. When you succeed, it reflects back on the community and vice versa.” Charly feels like it has answered the question of where she belongs in her community in a way that fulfills her and lets her give back. “[English muffins are] something so familiar, but people have generally written them off because they’re pretty bland from a store. We didn’t have to sell people on the idea of English muffins; we just had to show them a product that was really delicious.”

“There is a piece of pride when you are a local business. When you succeed, it reflects back on the community and vice versa.”

— Charly Blackwood

I asked how they define themselves when asked what they do for a living. Will chuckled and said they cheekily respond with “small bread specialists, muffeteers, and the muffin people,” but overall, they identify the most in calling themselves small business owners. There is a lot of overlap in it being a DIY and small-scale operation, and they find solidarity in trading notes with other small business owners in town. The connections they have made with the community have solidified their place in this town and helped connect Charly to her Bozeman bloodline.

In all the chaos of a rapidly growing business, catching their breath is important to them. Their current size has room for growth to hire more people, and they want to create more stability throughout the year so that it doesn’t ebb and flow seasonally. But they enjoy taking breaks when they can to make sure they come up for air and gain perspective on the business. Charly says she doesn’t want the business to match the fast pace of growth seen in Bozeman these days. Furrow & Fly is their first run of a small business and has affirmed that this is the path Charly wants to take. Her ultimate connection to this place is her family farm, and she wants to make it her future and build a business around it to provide opportunities for other small farmers so they can stay in this community and thrive. “It’s through mutual support that we are able to have the local food economy that we have in Bozeman.”

As we wrapped up our interview, the doorbell rang and it was Bob Quinn, hand-delivering Safflower oil. They hugged and he was rewarded with a fresh English muffin, just as I had been welcomed. The experience of Furrow & Fly goes beyond just eating bread. It’s the transfer, hand to hand, of a locally made product with a backstory of homesteading and farming land in Montana. Whether it’s at a market or opening your door to a brown paper bag with the Furrow & Fly stamp on it, these muffins tell a story of two people finding their place in a community that supports farmers, growers, and makers alike.