First Day at the Farmer's Market!!

I apologize for not keeping our posts updated... I hope to be more consistent in the future.

We are excited to announce that we will be selling our first crop of lettuce and salad greens at the Provo Farmer's Market tomorrow morning!!

We have lots of large, beautiful red leaf lettuce, butter crunch lettuce, and a mix of salad greens (mesclun) that includes arugula and chicory. We have some small little bugs that seems to have a gourmet appetite, because all of our arugula has tiny little holes in it. It still tastes great, but any suggestions on how to get rid of tiny black beatle-ish looking bugs would be appreciated. They haven't touched anything else besides the arugula.

Spring has Sprung? Really?

They say that March comes in like a Lion and goes out like a lamb. I think mother nature got confused this year because March started out fairly mild and ended with a snowstorm. If the weather was trying to play an April Fools joke on us, when we woke up to snow on April 1st, we didn't think it was very funny. Looking on the bright side, however, we are glad that we'll have more runoff during the summer to water the crops with.

So, between snowstorms and balancing our day jobs, we at Elm Crest Farm have been trying to get the ground prepared for crops and seeds started. One of our cold frames was invaded by mice who enjoyed a salad of a variety of seedlings, much to our chagrin. We have since replanted and mice-proofed our cold frame.

Since we're still trying to get everything on the farm organized and ready for larger production, and since we don't know exactly how large our customer base will be this year, we are starting out fairly small. So far we have started the following crops with more to come:

-Snow peas
-Bibb Lettuce
-Spinach
-Broccoli
-Pink Flame Lettuce (a new crop we are trying, has cool pink edges and nice texture)
-Tomatoes-Cherokee Purple & Big Mama
-Onions
-Peppers-red, green, & yellow sweet bell peppers, CasaBella (mildly hot)
-Sweet Basil
-Italian Parsley
-Shasta Daisies

We welcome any comments, suggestions, or crop requests. Despite the setbacks we sometimes encounter with the weather and rodents, we enjoy working with mother nature to produce healthy, home grown food and look forward to sharing our harvest with the community.

The History of Elm Crest Farm

Elm Crest Farm has been family-owned-and-operated for 4 generations since the arrival of the Mormon Pioneers in Utah Valley in the 1850s. It began as most farms did back then, a homestead with plenty of acres to grow enough food and crops to support a family. In 1921, the Johnson family began focusing their farming efforts on dairy cattle, selling their milk to a local dairy co-operative, and for over 85 years, the farm continued to operate as a dairy.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes: the only thing constant is change. As the family grew and with each succeeding generation, the farm shrunk smaller and smaller. As Utah Valley has grown and faced the pressures of a growing community, many of the acres previously used to grow crops to feed the cattle herd have been eaten up by urban sprawl. In 2007, when the expense of operating a small dairy on a limited number of acres became cost prohibitive and with the last generation of dairy farmers facing retirement, the dairy herd was sold. Since then the family has used the 40 acres of remaining land to grow alfalfa and barley for the few beef cattle that remain and to sell to other local farmers.

Now, in 2010, as more people are becoming aware and informed of the important benefits of buying and consuming locally grown produce, we at Elm Crest Farm recognize what a precious resource we have under our feet that can be an enormous benefit to the community: 40 acres of prime farm land! As our local population increases and costs of shipping rise while the quality of produce purchased at the grocery store declines, we are excited to learn more about providing quality, locally grown, fresh produce. Our plan is to start small, using just a couple of acres, and then expand as business grows.