This summer Midway locals and visitors may have noticed a slight change to the farm on River Road next to Heber Valley Artisan Cheeses.
For seven seasons, Francis Family Farms ran the 7 acres as a U-Pick farm, known especially for its raspberries. Now, the land is in new hands.
Well, not exactly.
Velvet Acre Farms is now operating the market farm near Memorial Hill, but the owner and farm manager certainly aren’t new to the property.
Erin Jensen decided to take over when farmers Steve and Kala Francis retired earlier this year. Jensen, whose relatives have owned the plot for decades, said she wanted to bring the operations into the family fold.
As an interior designer who started her own firm in 2014, Jensen said she was looking for a change of pace and is eager to try her hand at farming.
“We really fell in love with what the Francis’ had started and the idea of what it could become,” she said. “I had been feeling like I wanted something different — something slower, and something I could do with my family while still having a creative outlet.”
Jensen currently lives in Riverton with her family and runs a hobby farm with mini highland cows, chickens, mini donkeys, and beef cattle she raised herself. The hope is to eventually move up everything up to the Midway farm full time, she said.
“Keeping the farm in the family is really important to me. I love that our kids get to be part of it and learn what it means to care for the land, grow food and understand where the things they eat actually come from,” she said. “I want this to be something they can grow up with and hopefully carry on in some way.”
But in the meantime, Jensen needed someone with experience to spearhead the growing operations. That’s where Midway-native Jacee Andersen came in.
Andersen, who spent the last two years working at Gracie’s Farm in Wanship, said her family was always close with the Jensens. So, she called them when she heard they needed a farmer.
Taking the job gave Andersen the chance to build her own farming vision, but it also brought her back “full circle.”
“When this was an alfalfa field, me and my sister grew up playing soccer in this field and raising chickens,” she said. “It’s cool to be able to come back, and the same people that were here that raised me are buying from the farm stand. It’s such a cool, full-circle moment because I never thought I’d come back to Midway. Never. So it’s cool to see the community again and be a part of it.”
She also never planned to be a farmer. While growing up in Midway meant growing up in an agricultural community, Andersen decided to pursue product design and development at Utah State University in Logan.
But after taking a job designing ski clothes and mountain bike apparel, Andersen said she realized how wasteful the industry was and that she was holed up in an office instead of being outdoors.
One day she went to the Downtown Farmers Market at Pioneer Park in Salt Lake City and learned about its closed-loop system, where any excess inventory is turned into compost. Fascinated, Andersen quit her job and visited Costa Rica to learn more about farming before moving to Hood River, Oregon.
There, she went to the farmers market and offered to help out for the season, becoming the town’s shared “harvester.”
“I had this idea of farming, and it’s so much harder and not what you think. But I was just addicted, like absolutely addicted,” Andersen said. “I just knew it was what my calling was.”
That’s why in 2024 she applied to work at Gracie’s Farm, which is led by Lynsey Gammon as part of The Lodge at Blue Sky, Auberge Collection. There, the farming philosophy of using regenerative methods, ensuring healthy soil and mentoring other women aligned with Andersen’s own goals.
It’s what she’ll bring to Velvet Acre Farms.
Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record
This season, which runs through October, is a discovery year for the small crew, Andersen said, so she decided to simply build off what “Farmer Steve” started.
Having existing infrastructure is huge for a budding farm, Andersen said. Velvet Acre inherited about 1.5 acres of farm beds, all the irrigation and a high tunnel, which helps grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and basil. The farm also has some perennial crops that return every year, like asparagus and, most famously, 3,000 feet of raspberry bushes.
The biggest benefit so far has been the size. With 7 acres to farm, Andersen said Velvet Acre Farms has much more room to experiment with different crops and methods, whereas market farms are usually limited to an acre.
Cover cropping, or planting crops between growing seasons to add nutrients to the soil and keep the ground covered, is something Andersen has been able to try on some extra beds this year. It’s one way she can improve soil health, which is important for farming and an overall healthy environment.
“It creates more microbial activity from the soil, so you’re bringing in all of the nutrients to the root zone for the next season, so you don’t have to bring in and haul in compost and use all that labor to spread that,” Andersen said. “(You) never really get the opportunity to get two back-to-back cover crop seedings.”
This year also gave Velvet Acre Farms a chance to experiment with different soil amendments and mulching practices to best balance the salinity and pH levels in the high tunnel.
One row of tomatoes was planted with plastic mulch, another with living mulch and another with wildflowers. Andersen said they’ve been monitoring the tomatoes for signs of dehydration, caused by high salinity, to determine which method is best.
A big challenge the farmers hope to address next year is the lack of power on the property.
Right now, they don’t have the ability to heat the high tunnel or a greenhouse. Without heat, they can’t grow their own seedlings from seeds, which meant this season they had to buy already-started plants from other farms and wait until the weather warmed up enough to transplant crops such as tomatoes. That should change come next season, Andersen said.
Francis Family Farms was set up as a U-Pick, meaning anyone could come and pick crops from the land, so Andersen and Jensen said they wanted to continue some of that model.
“We have so much respect for the Francis family and the seven years they put into this land, and we really want to honor what they started while making it our own,” Jensen said.
Visitors are still welcome to pick seasonal crops like raspberries, pumpkins, summer and winter squash, kale and fresh flowers. However, certain crops like tomatoes, zucchini, snap peas, peppers and broccolini are now sectioned off to be harvested and sold grab-and-go style at the farm stand.
Andersen said not only is a U-Pick farm a great stop for families, but it also helps reconnect people to their food.
“People don’t know that raspberries have a season, tomatoes have a season. They’re not supposed to be year-round,” she said. “It tastes better because you picked it and you saw it, and you know the farmer, you know the land, you know it’s being taken care of. So I guess it’s more imprinted in your brain, and hopefully that lasts.”
Andersen said for this first year, she’s taken a big-picture approach to see what flows organically and observe what the community wants.
“There’s this really big energy in market farming to just go, go, go, go, go, produce as much as you can in our short season. And this year I’ve really been trying to take a step back,” she said. “None of us really know the land yet.”
In the future, she’s considering possible community supported agriculture, or CSA, memberships. This season, Velvet Acre Farms is offering a week-to-week harvest box. Rather than committing to a whole season of produce, people can buy one-off boxes based on availability. The farm is also hoping to keep collaborating with locals, like sourcing compost from the Kohler family and providing produce for restaurants like Hidden Peak, The Pizza Yard and Midway Mercantile.
All of it is aimed at bringing awareness to farming, Andersen said, which is necessary even in a small mountain town like Midway.
Andersen said growing up, everyone at her school was a rancher or had crops like wheat, hay and alfalfa. But now she’s seeing interest in agriculture decline. For example, Mountainland Technical College, which offers career and technical education at the high school and college level, just opened its first campus in the Heber Valley, but it doesn’t have an agriculture program, citing a lack of interest.
“That shocked me,” she said. “That goes hand in hand with my personal goal for this season of just connecting people back to where food comes from and how big of a responsibility it is for all of us to buy local, support farmers.”
She referenced the book “What I Stand for Is What I Stand On” by American environmentalist, farmer and cultural critic Wendell Barry, who died Tuesday. He wrote, “If you eat, you are involved in agriculture.”
Eaters, Andersen said, have a huge role to play in the success of farming.
“As a farmer, we’re not the ones really deciding what happens to the land. It’s the people, the eaters, because if they don’t buy our food, then we don’t have a purpose,” Andersen said. “The eater is the person who really decides what gets to happen to the land and their community, and a lot of people don’t think about that.”
Velvet Acre Farms is ultimately shaped by the community, by what people choose to buy and support, Andersen said. September is one of the most bountiful months on high-elevation farms, she said, with an abundance of popular items like raspberries, pumpkins, decorative corn and tomatoes. Of course, the raspberries are a big seller, but she encouraged people to branch out and try other things, like turnips.
Jensen said it’s just the beginning.
“Long term, I’d love for Velvet Acre to become a place that feels like a part of the community — a place where families can come, pick flowers and berries, see the animals, shop for fresh produce and just slow down and enjoy being outside,” she said.
U-Pick season at Velvet Acre runs from 2-7 p.m. on Wednesdays and 10 a.m.-7 p.m. on Saturdays through Oct. 24.
The farm stand will be open during Swiss Days festivities, which run Friday and Saturday. It’s located across the street from one of the event shuttle lots, so Andersen encouraged people to pick a container of raspberries or a bouquet of flowers while in the area.
“Come and pick, bring your family and see where it comes from,” she said. “Teach your kids about food from an early age so they want to keep seeing that in their life and they keep buying the local raspberries as they grow up.”
To learn more, visit velvetacrefarms.com.