Peanut the goat is a classic redhead, sassy and spicy, as described by his 12-year-old owner, Ryker Butler.

The 6-month-old baby goat loves to wrestle, jump on people and clumsily pretend to be a mountain goat. If anyone other than Ryker tries to feed him, Peanut will snootily turn his head away. When he sits, obscuring his legs, he looks like a “jelly bean.” 

Peanut’s original name was Biscoff. Ryker renamed him Peanut Anderdingus. His surname comes from a viral meme and the fact that “he can be a dingus,” Ryker explained.

Ryker knew when he bought baby Peanut from a family friend that he’d be raising him as a meat goat to be auctioned off at Wasatch County Fair Days’ junior livestock show. It was the first year Ryker or anyone in his family had participated. Though he loves Peanut, Ryker accepted his fate.

“You’ve got to eat something. It’s the life cycle,” Ryker said Friday. “Some people like eating goat, and some people don’t. So, it’s dependent on the buyer if they want to eat him as brisket or lamb chops or just keep him as a family pet.”

But at the auction Saturday, the bond that Ryker and his mom, Kylie, had formed with Peanut proved stronger than they anticipated.

Local company Epic Engineering bought the goat for about $700 and decided to send him to Springville Meat Company for processing. That’s when Kylie attempted to buy Peanut back — but Epic Engineering donated the goat to her instead.

“It was a huge thing that Epic did for us in just donating him back, because Ryker will still get that donation money for all of his work,” Kylie said.

Peanut now lives on a friend’s farm in Duchesne, where he will continue to be raised as a pet.

Though Kylie and her son learned that the livestock auction isn’t for them, Ryker became a more responsible and patient person by raising his rambunctious goat.

Kylie and Ryker also appreciate the role the junior livestock program plays in the community.

“The farmers that raise the beef? This is where it starts, with generations of this,” Kylie said.

The livestock auction involves goats, sheep, cows and swine. The animals are judged for their potential meat quality, hence why the goats and sheep are shaved.

“Then, you can see their muscles,” Kylie explained. “You just don’t go past the knees, and then you’ve got to leave the tip of the tail.”

The resulting haircut made it look like Peanut was wearing woolly boots and had a feather duster tail. 

Peanut won second place in the lightweight division, earning Ryker a pink Reserve Champion ribbon.

Participants can also win awards for how they handle their animals and present them to the judges. Children aged 8 through 18 participate in the auction either through Utah State University’s 4-H livestock program or the Future Farmers of America, or FFA, of which Wasatch High School agriculture students are members. 

Kody Clyde, a Wasatch High School agriculture teacher of 23 years, said there are always a few tears during the auction as youth say goodbye to their animals.

“It’s a hard lesson, but they learn that they’re actually doing something really good that’s going to benefit other people afterwards,” he said. “They’re actually making a difference in someone’s family, where they’re going to have a high-quality meat product to enjoy all winter.”

For Heber City native Billy Hansen, the junior livestock program is a way to keep in touch with the Heber Valley’s agricultural roots even amid rapid growth and development. Hansen participated when he was growing up. This year, his four kids, aged 9 to 18, raised sheep for the auction.

“It’s so expensive to raise livestock and to have animals because land is so expensive and feed is so expensive. So, this is a way that kids can still get a feel for raising livestock and still be able to do it on not as much land,” he said.

Hansen and his kids also participate for the life lessons. His oldest son learned one last year when his sheep died unexpectedly the night before the auction.

“They work hard for it, and it doesn’t turn out the way they wanted it to or imagined it to. That’s part of life, too,” Hansen said. 

Wasatch County 4-H livestock coordinator Abigail Johnson has also participated in livestock auctions since childhood. She said another thing kids get out of the experience is a chance to be a leader as they help younger kids in the program take care of their animals.

Clyde agreed. He was raised in Heber City and said participating in FFA was “the one thing that gave me confidence.”

“I was pretty shy, not very outspoken, made a lot of friends and was forced to become a leader,” he said.

Raising animals also gave him that sense of responsibility all kids in the program benefit from.

“They’re learning how to take care of a living organism. You can’t go on vacation and not worry about who’s going to feed your pig,” Clyde said. “You have to go out twice a day and feed and water and walk and wash and train and all these things. It’s a really big commitment.”

Their kids’ work culminates in community members — family, friends, companies or hotels — buying their animals for sometimes thousands of dollars. One year, a lamb went for $50,000 as a fundraiser for a local family whose barn had burned down.

But to Clyde, at least, the money is secondary to what youth learn from the program.

“In my opinion, we’re raising kids, not livestock,” he said. “It’s nice that they’re getting these big paychecks. But to me, the product we’re getting in our community is a well-rounded kid who knows how to work and knows how to go out into the industry and get things done.”

The post Wasatch County junior livestock program is about ‘raising kids, not livestock’ appeared first on Park Record.

Any notions of Heber Valley’s agricultural industry being on its last legs are quickly shattered with a tour of Wasatch High School’s 1-acre farm.

Two adolescent goats curiously poke their heads through fences in a secluded barn. Greenery sprouts everywhere, both outdoors and in the greenhouse: mint and rose hips, watermelon beginnings and plump cherry tomatoes that students pluck for a sneaky snack while they work.

The labor is constant. Even in the July heat, a handful of students kneel on the ground, weeding the landscape instead of taking refuge in the air-conditioned indoors.

Tending to the farm is the students’ summer job, and they’re compensated well for it — $13 an hour, matched by $13 an hour set aside in a scholarship fund.

Agriculture teacher Matthew Zierenberg launched the farm, Ideal Farms, five years ago as a way to give his students hands-on experience and summer employees with a gateway to university.

“A lot of kids that come and work are not your typical … generational-wealth kids,” he said. “When we hire kids, we look for the kids (for whom) there’s a real need.”

The employees’ salaries and scholarships are funded entirely from revenue generated by Ideal Farms, which sells its wares to local vendors, including the Utah Department of Natural Resources. 

The farm has generated about $400,000 in its five years of operation, according to Zierenberg. Anything that does not pay for student employees rolls back into the farm’s continued operation. 

Zierenberg’s local advocacy for agriculture has not gone unnoticed. This month, the National Future Farmers of America Organization named Zierenberg a national teacher ambassador for the upcoming school year. While most states have multiple ambassadors — as many as six, in Texas’ case — Zierenberg is the sole ambassador in Utah. 

Zierenberg will provide training and resources to fellow agriculture teachers, assisting them in establishing work-based learning programs and tweaking national curricula to be relevant to Utah’s unique agricultural industry.

“Agriculture’s not just corn and animals. Agriculture is all the timber and the rangeland and the ranching that we do here, wildland firefighting, keeping our forests healthy, prescribed burns and all that kind of stuff,” he said. 

Zierenberg will also continue as an advocate for agricultural education in Utah.

“We see a lot of pressure from our Legislature right now. They’re looking to cut certain programs, and the summer ag is always right there on that (chopping block),” he said. “Luckily, we’ve kept it, but we want to make that a lot stronger and show this is hugely beneficial to our students as they go on to their future careers. But it’s also helping them to give back and build an economy right here in our state, right now.”

Recent graduate Trey Torres worked in the summer agriculture program all four of his years at Wasatch High School. The money he has earned will help fund his entomology studies, as soon as he can pin down which university to attend.

If Torres’ passion for insects was not apparent by his T-shirt reading, “Easily Distracted By Ants,” it shines through in his voice as he talks about the ant colonies he keeps in his room. 

“The first thing I remember, I ate a roly poly. That was I think where it started,” he said, half joking. 

In taking various agriculture classes and working on the farm in the summer, Torres has earned valuable skills — time management, teamwork and leadership — that will stay with him as he pursues his creepy-crawly career.

Seventeen-year-old Zadie Mitchell said something similar about her experience growing tomatoes.

“We had tomatoes at the beginning, but they really weren’t good, so we had to start over and plant different kinds and learn how to problem solve,” she said. “I think that’s a really useful skill in the future because you’re always going to run into problems.”

For Zierenberg, the appeal of teaching agriculture is instilling grit and critical thinking in students. 

He has been a teacher for 17 years, entirely at Wasatch High School. He’s currently one of five agriculture teachers in the Wasatch County School District. He began by teaching biology, physics and chemistry, later teaching an agricultural biology class. Within a few years, he’d transitioned completely to the agriculture program. 

Zierenberg found the constant hands-on learning a welcome change from the sparse, controlled labs in other science classes. Running a farm is also an excellent way to keep students off their phones, both because they’re engaged and their hands are too dirty to touch their screens.

“Meeting the kids with something that’s real is the key, and that’s what agriculture does,” he said. “They feed the goats. They’re like, ‘Oh, I have to keep this thing alive. This is real. I actually have to do this. If not, the thing dies.’ You don’t get more real than that.”

Growing plants and raising animals are also excellent Trojan horses for Zierenberg to sneak science concepts into his students’ minds.

“(In growing apples,) we talk about the roots, the shoots, the gibberellins, all the stuff that goes into raising a tree and raising healthy plants,” he said. “We bring all that science into it. But they see it as, ‘I’m learning to make apple sauce!’”

The high school’s agriculture program also teaches students about sustainability. 

Zierenberg’s students in the agricultural track of the high school’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies are installing solar panels on the farm to fuel its entire electrical output. The walls of the goats’ barn are lined with recycled Plexiglass instead of plywood. And the greenhouse uses a closed-loop aquaponic system. The students look after goldfish and koi, whose waste becomes fertilizer for plants. In return, the plants clean the water pumped back into the fish’s tank.

“It’s basically an ecosystem just running right here. We take the benefit of fish waste and put it into growing lettuce and tomatoes,” Zierenberg said.

Students learn how to take care of the environment through the projects they participate in through the agriculture program. 

They’ve sold thousands of willows to the Division of Wildlife Resources to plant along rivers to regenerate stream banks eroded by overgrazing or wildfires. They’ve raised thousands of chukar partridges for Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife to sustainably hunt. 

Not all of Ideal Farms’ projects make a profit. Students are currently growing trees to replace native plants destroyed by construction at the new Deer Creek High School. They also donate lettuce and tomatoes to local food banks every year. 

While agriculture has certainly shrunk in the Heber Valley, Zierenberg is consistently surprised by the popularity of the high school’s program. 

“Some of them, they come from legacy farm families here in the valley. So their grandparents owned a dairy. I mean, we had 40 dairies in this valley at one time,” he said. “Their parents skipped a generation, and we just see this resurgence … that interest in learning about where their families come from.”

The waitlist for Wasatch High School’s agriculture program is constant, Zierenberg said. The program will expand to accommodate more students when Deer Creek High School opens next month.

Zierenberg said it’s hands-on learning that draws in most students, even those with nothing more than a passing interest in agriculture. He said he hopes that even his students who do not go into the industry remember the National Future Farmers of America Organization’s motto as they cultivate their futures: “Learning to do, doing to learn, earning to live and living to serve.”

The post Wasatch High School teacher stands out as Utah’s lone ambassador of agricultural education appeared first on Park Record.

Sheila Probst Siggard’s big, red barn on nearly 8 acres in Midway has been in her family for as long as she can remember. All that time, it has been a muse for artists across the Heber Valley. 

During the Midway Art Association’s annual plein air contest, painters flock to the public roads surrounding her property to set up easels. There seems to be at least one artistic depiction of its two silos and Park City pine logs for each of the four seasons. 

“With all the development coming in Midway, I’ve thought about leaving, but I said, ‘I can’t leave my barn,’” Siggard said. 

The 73-year-old owner even considered having the barn moved to a new location, possibly by dismantling and reconstructing it. But Siggard has found another solution to preserve her barn: by establishing a conservation easement on her and her neighbors’ properties. 

The conservation easement, referred to as the Heart of Midway Project, encompasses more than 17 acres from four neighboring properties north of 250 N. and west of N. Center St.

Siggard’s idea originated when the city passed its first $5 million open space bond in 2018. It wasn’t difficult, she said, to convince her three neighbors to collaborate on the project.

“We’ve seen so many pieces of property get developed, and then there’s all the traffic and the ugliness of houses instead of a beautiful, open field,” she said. “We’re kind of old timers. We just love agriculture and hate to see Midway be destroyed. So, we want to help preserve it.”

The combined land value is appraised at about $5 million, according to Wendy Fisher, executive director of Utah Open Lands. The landowners are donating a combined $1.8 million of the cost. Three landowners are donating 25% of the cost of their land. Andrew Larson is contributing the full value of his 3-plus acres. 

“We’re not in it for the money. We’re in it for the preservation of the land,” said Phyllis Shelton, one of the landowners and Siggard’s cousin.

Shelton has been on board with her cousin’s plan since the start, agreeing before she’d even told her husband. She hasn’t had to do too much work, either. The effort has been “Sheila-driven,” she joked.

Siggard said she was the first to apply for funds for Midway’s first open space bond. In 2023, the Midway City Council committed $250,000 of those funds to the project.

Since then, the community Volksmarch fundraiser in September raised an additional $85,000. 

Midway passed its second $5 million open space bond in 2024. Fisher and the landowners approached the City Council on Tuesday, seeking $750,000 more for the Heart of Midway Project. The City Council unanimously approved the funding. 

“It’s pretty outstanding for a piece like this to be contiguous through this agreement of owners,” said City Councilor JC Simonsen.

The land is being preserved for its use by livestock and as an essential winter foraging ground for wildlife like deer. It is also being preserved for its open field views and the potential establishment of a public trail easement on Siggard’s property. The mapping of that trail will occur at a later date.

The landowners, with the assistance of Utah Open Lands, have to raise funds for the remaining $2.1 million value of the conservation easement. That could come from various federal, state and local sources, as well as private foundations. 

Fisher added that Utah Open Lands recently received approval for a Regional Conservation Partnership Program through the National Resources Conservation Service, which would have provided federal funding for projects including the Heart of Midway, but “claw(ing) back of funding” by the federal government has stalled the program.

Once the Heart of Midway conservation easement is established, the landowners will have the ability to continue to occupy and farm their land. Larson was also approved to construct a new home on his property, the details of which are to be determined.

For Siggard, finally establishing the conservation easement would mean everything. 

Her family was Swiss immigrants who lived in Midway for at least four generations. Her father raised beef cattle, and she has plenty of fond memories being his assistant, filling syringes for vaccinations and keeping the fire hot for the branding irons. 

“I remember one time there was an Angus cow. They’re very good mothers. … My dad got too close to the calf, and the cow started to chase him. My sister and I were in the barn, yelling, ‘Run, Daddy! Run!’ And he made it,” she remembered with a laugh. “Lots of good memories.”

The post Midway neighbors combine forces to establish a conservation easement on their properties appeared first on Park Record.

The Utah Department of Transportation is currently refining its environmental impact study for the controversial Heber Valley bypass to have a lesser impact on the North Fields where the new highway is planned.

The North Fields is a freshwater wetland area northwest of Heber City’s downtown that has seen agricultural use for generations.

Project Manager Craig Hancock told the Wasatch County Council on Wednesday that UDOT representatives visited the North Fields last month for a site visit with members of the North Fields Irrigation Company, which has controlled farmers’ water use in the area since 1860.

“Some of our team members met with them in the field, spent the morning going over some of the key historical features that they wanted to point out to us, focused primarily around historic ditches,” Hancock said. “We thought it was a very productive meeting, and we’re continuing to coordinate with them.”

Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 requires UDOT to review the adverse effects the Heber Valley bypass could have on historic properties and collaborate with stakeholders to minimize them. 

Despite having infrastructure dating back to 1860, the North Fields Irrigation Company was not invited to participate in the Section 106 analysis for the draft environmental impact statement UDOT published six months ago. The irrigation company identified this as one of 99 deficiencies with the study in a press release published in February. Now, the irrigation company is a Section 106 consulting party for the final environmental impact statement.

Hancock said that UDOT may have had “some incomplete data” about ditches in the North Fields and that the North Fields Irrigation Company plans to share “a more complete map” that UDOT can compare with its own information. 

Time will tell how collaboration with the North Fields Irrigation Company informs UDOT’s engineering and alignment of the bypass. Beyond the ditches’ historical significance, the irrigation company was also concerned that the ditches could become polluted through stormwater runoff from the bypass.

UDOT expects that mitigation measures will prevent any pollutant discharge that would significantly degrade water quality in the area. UDOT will create a mitigation plan that will be reviewed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. However, that plan will not be created until the design stage, after a final decision has been made about the highway’s alignment.

Hancock also reminded the County Council that UDOT is considering a shift in the bypass alignment further east in the North Fields. He added that UDOT recently received additional funding through the Utah Transportation Commission for further analysis, including field work and a traffic analysis.

Numerous local and state elected officials made the request to shift the bypass east in a letter they sent to UDOT in March. The letter, drafted by County Councilor Erik Rowland, argued that a re-alignment closer to U.S. 40 would avoid bisecting existing farmlands, better align with the county’s goals of establishing open space and conservation easements in the North Fields and more effectively prevent groundwater contamination. UDOT in May agreed to consider a re-alignment east.

County Councilor Luke Searle was excited to hear that UDOT is addressing the concerns of local farmers and elected officials.

“It sounds like, based on the letter we wrote, you’re hearing us,” he said. “This process is going in the right direction.”

UDOT will begin mapping wetlands in the North Fields in the next few months, Hancock said. That analysis will inform UDOT’s plan to protect at least 2 acres of wetlands, canals, ditches and perennial streams for every acre impacted, which is 54 in the current alignment. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will approve or deny that plan.

Hancock said he was unsure at this point whether UDOT will delay publishing its final environmental impact statement, which has been expected by the end of the year.

UDOT will begin determining funding sources for the bypass only after the final environmental impact statement is published and a record of decision has been made with the Federal Highway Administration. The current bypass route has an estimated price tag of $760.5 million, but that will likely change with the re-alignment. UDOT representatives have said that costs are bound to increase by the project’s horizon year of 2050.

The post UDOT working to mitigate Heber Valley bypass impacts on North Fields appeared first on Park Record.

Heber City is preparing to weather the storm — or rather, lack of it — during the outdoor watering season in light of Gov. Spencer Cox’s issuing of a statewide emergency declaration over drought conditions on Thursday. 

The latest Water Supply Outlook Report by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, released May 1, said this has been Utah’s “worst winter for snowpack going back to at least 1930.” Snowpack — the accumulation of snow, which melts seasonally into bodies of water like reservoirs — provides approximately 95% of the state’s water, according to the Utah Division of Water Resources.

Currently, 22 counties in Utah are in severe drought, with the remaining seven, including Wasatch County, experiencing varying levels of extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Just over half a percent of Wasatch County’s land area is experiencing extreme drought.

Heber City has been preparing for Cox to make an emergency declaration since the state-federal Drought Response Committee recommended he do so on May 7. 

In preparation for an emergency declaration, the City Council on Tuesday agreed to draft and vote on a resolution to enter into the second phase of the city’s four-stage water shortage plan during its next meeting.

The second phase indicates a moderate water shortage that is expected to last the rest of the pressurized irrigation season, which is April 15 to Oct. 15. 

The city encourages residents to voluntarily conserve water in several ways, including limiting hard surface washing, covering swimming pools when not in use and reducing the water level by four inches below spill line and washing vehicles using a bucket and hose nozzle. 

The city also asks that residents limit lawn watering to three days a week June through August and two times a week in April, May, September and October, and that residents to not water their lawns during rainy, snowy or windy days or between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

The third phase would make mandatory the guidelines around lawn watering, swimming pools and hard surface washing. The fourth phase would create more stringent water conservation mandates.

The full water shortage plan can be found in the agenda materials for the meeting.

Now that Cox has issued a state of emergency due to drought, Heber City could initiate the third phase of its water shortage plan. 

However, Cox’s emergency declaration does not include any statewide water conservation mandates, instead recommending that cities and counties implement their own restriction plans. As such, Heber City would coordinate with Central Utah Water Conservancy District, which includes Wasatch County, and local irrigation companies before entering the third phase, Mayor Heidi Franco explained.

“We have to rely on (the Central Utah Water Conservancy District) and what they tell the irrigation companies about how much is going to be coming through the canals that can be used for outdoor watering,” Franco said. “I’m expecting next month to get a report from (the Central Utah Water Conservancy District), as well as the irrigation companies, on if there would be any cutbacks, you know, 10%, 20%. Who knows if there would be any cutbacks for the outdoor watering levels that we’re used to?”

City engineer Russ Funk meets with representatives from the Central Utah Water Conservancy District on a monthly basis and said the district expects mandatory cuts at some point in the irrigation season.

“Right now, their message is voluntary reduction. Whatever we can save now is going to help us extend the irrigation season later,” he said.

Franco, for one, is eager to enter the third phase and wanted to do so before Cox issued his declaration.

“It’s not going to be a pretty sight when Deer Creek (Reservoir) gets lower or Jordanelle (Reservoir) gets lower. And I’m sure that when we see that happen throughout this summer, depending on moisture, people will be more cautious,” she said.

No phase of Heber City’s water shortage plan requires indoor water conservation. Nonetheless, the city will be including both outdoor and indoor water conservation tips in its newsletter.

Additionally, City Councilor Mike Johnston and Public Works Director Matthew Kennard recommended that residents download the EyeOnWater app, which tracks household water use.

Any cutbacks or mandates on agricultural water use would be issued by water districts or irrigation companies rather than Heber City. 

Agricultural producers can apply for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food’s Emergency Disaster Relief Loan Program to help cover “disaster-related losses.” The six-month application period opened on Thursday in response to Cox’s drought declaration. 

Johnston expressed some frustration with agricultural water use on Tuesday.

“I don’t want us to save, save, save, cut back, cut back, cut back, and all the farmers don’t,” he said. “It’s kind of tough when you’re saving, and you’re not watering your park strip, and you drive by the billions of gallons being thrown on the hay. It kind of makes you feel stupid.”

City Councilor Yvonne Barney responded that that was no reason for individuals not to do their part in conserving water. She also recommended meeting with local farmers to better understand their water needs. 

She also alluded to the controversial 40,000-acre Stratos data center project in Box Elder County, which since its approval by the Military Installation Development Authority has prompted concern about its proximity to the Great Salt Lake and protests to its water rights applications. It’s still not clear exactly how much water the data center would use.

Barney said that “we may be frustrated” with “huge data centers going in” but that there was “nothing wrong with us being wise nonetheless” about individual water conservation.

The post Heber City encourages water conservation as Gov. Cox issues emergency drought declaration appeared first on Park Record.

Madison Goodman is what you might call a wealth of knowledge. Throw him a curveball like how to grow turnips in the heat of Salt Lake summer, and he’ll tip his weathered Pirates ballcap back, scratch his head, then deliver a verbal flow chart: if conditions are this, then this. If not, then try this. 

Where does all that knowledge come from? For one, his mother, who passed it on from the generation before her — and the generation before that.

“I’m a fourth-generation farmer, and I learned from my mom. And from YouTube,” he joked.

After close to a decade of applying that generational knowledge to farming in Utah, Goodman is now spearheading the Ballerina Farm market garden efforts by growing year-round produce on 100 garden beds for the local community.

Originally from western Pennsylvania, Goodman chased snowboarding west to Utah, earning a few degrees before returning to the farming lifestyle he knew best. This time, in an unconventional, urban way.

“I was working in a climbing shop, and one of the guys was like, ‘Hey, look, there’s this guy making money off of farming yards in a city.’ And I was like, I want to do that,” he said. “I reached out. I found some people who were willing to lease me some lawns, and I was able to piece together a good chunk of land in the city. And I just commuted in between all my farming plots with a bike and my tools strapped to it.”

When it was time to land somewhere more rural, he received a loan from the bank and started his farm in Oakley on just shy of an acre. That’s how Madsnacks Produce began, and as a “one-man-show,” Goodman tried just about every market garden technique: from selling to chefs and operating a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, to selling at farmers markets.

Joining the Ballerina family

His CSA introduced him to Hannah and Daniel Neeleman, the now-influencer couple who founded Ballerina Farm in 2017.

“Hannah and Daniel were in my CSA for a few years. They were part of my farm. And over the past few years, every year they’d say, ‘Hey, we’re ready for you to come over and grow vegetables with us whenever you’re ready to,’” Goodman said. “And every year I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love my farm so much. I’m not quite ready to do that yet.’” 

But eventually the timing worked out, Goodman said, remembering the day when, while working part-time at the Ballerina Farm dairy, he finally told Daniel, “I’ll do it.” It was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

“How they presented it to me is that, ‘Hey, you can have your dream farm here at Ballerina, and let’s work together to create your dream to feed more people,’” he said.

A simple dream farm for Goodman has a few essentials: organic practices, use of a biodynamic calendar, diverse and seasonally driven products, access to on-farm fertility, plus proximity to “eaters.” And Goodman could come closer to his overall goal of feeding more people with the infrastructure, land and financial backing that the Neelemans could bring to the project.

“I never saw myself working for somebody, and then I met Daniel, and I just knew instantly, ‘Oh, this isn’t a person I’m going to work for. This is a person I’m going to work with, and we’re going to create something that specifically the Wasatch Back is missing, which is fresh produce,’” Goodman said. “There are some awesome market gardeners up here. There are just not many people doing it year-round.”

Ballerina Farm started to build out its market garden last September, and when it came to preparing its plot of land off S.R. 248, Goodman explained that he essentially had a clean slate: nutrient-rich land that hadn’t been used for crop production.

Plus, he got to see how the seasons affected the field before putting in garden beds and constructing the “tunnels,” which are garden structures that provide shade and can block wind. 

“As it got closer and closer to the time to break ground, the water table moved, the grasses grew, and then they faded, and you could just see how the land moved over the season, which really depicted how we set it up,” Goodman said. 

So much so that Goodman went to Daniel the day before construction and said, actually, let’s change plans and do it a different way.

“That sporadicness is one of the things I love about working here. People are OK with last-minute decisions,” the farmer said. “The land got to choose it, which was really beautiful.”

Now they’re about six months in, adjusting to the challenges that are unique to the Kamas Valley, like year-round frost, a high water table, and lots and lots of voles — what Goodman calls their “current lunch partner,” not “pests.”

To feed the farm, Goodman uses compost made from the Ballerina Farm dairy cows, fulfilling his dream of a closed-loop system. Manure from the “120 beautiful milking ladies” just down the road is mixed with bedding and any garden leftovers to make a nutrient-rich compost. That’s then added to the soil to help grow more produce, which then goes back to the dairy, round and round in perpetuity. It’s a perk that also drew Goodman to the Ballerina Farm project because it means he knows exactly what’s in his fertilizer and, therefore, what goes into his food.

As for running a biodynamic farm, it’s a skill that Goodman cultivates, teaching the rest of his staff how it works. Biodynamic agriculture details a holistic strategy for growing food that can maximize productivity, following a calendar organized around astrological movements of the stars and the moon for management techniques such as planting, weeding and harvesting.

“We’re looking at a horizontal plane, but I believe there’s a vertical plane. I don’t believe that, I know that. I experience that,” Goodman said. “And what that means is we’re constantly increasing the land to work with the energetic forces that move through the cosmos.”

For him and many in the farming community, biodynamics is a proven science with a direct link to productivity. And for a market gardener, productivity is everything, especially one like Goodman, determined to feed as many people as possible. 

“To give you perspective, I think we could probably feed about 250 families a week over half of the year off of this space … making up probably about 75% of their caloric intake,” he said of the 100 beds at Ballerina Farm. 

Goodman said that basically all the produce sold at the farm stand on the Kamas property and the farm store in Midway has been grown in the garden, except potatoes. His produce is also used in meals coming out of the farm store kitchen, as well as the commissary kitchen, which produces items like the Ballerina Farm basil pesto.

Production will only continue to ramp up, he said, as more of the beds come online. As a year-round, seasonal farm located at 6,500 feet, Goodman also emphasized an ever-changing selection dependent on which products grow best during which month of the year. Embrace it, he said.

Growing workshops

Something that Goodman also introduced to Ballerina Farm is a series of growing workshops, held quarterly in time with each season. It’s something he did every spring at Madsnacks, an educational component that’s also a core value of his.

“I think that passing this knowledge down is super important. And moreover, I believe that the masses shouldn’t be fed by a few. I believe that the masses should be feeding everybody. Everybody should have a garden,” he said. “My ideal scenario is somebody comes to this workshop and they don’t ever have to come back and buy produce from us ever again. They just learned how to do it all themselves.”

While the three-hour workshops merely scratch the surface of the intricacies of market gardening, Goodman does his best to make them overwhelmingly instructive — or your money back, he joked at the start of last month’s spring workshop. 

The morning sessions, which conclude with a garden lunch, are designed for people already growing food or interested in starting. But aside from a loose structure that includes a tour around the farm, a semi-lecture on important steps for that season in the garden, and a hands-on component, the rest is completely catered to the group in attendance.

For the spring workshop, half the group was based in the Wasatch Back while the other half was based in the Salt Lake Valley, meaning Goodman adjusted his information for each person’s context. 

“We often think that you need this big amount of land to grow a lot of food, but the reality is you need a tiny amount of land to grow a lot of food if it’s used very efficiently. And that’s what we’re going to learn today,” he told the group of roughly 20 new and experienced farmers.

The conversation ranged from the importance of row covers to protect against frost and bugs to the best strategies for sprouting and hardening plants. 

And, true to his promise, he packed the session with information, going into each topic with some variation of “If I were going to,” “What I would recommend,” “I think the best thing you can do,” and “There are a few things that I usually do.”

One couple was getting ready to start a home garden close to the Great Salt Lake, so would salinity in the soil be an issue? Another was based in Daybreak, where toxic soil meant raised garden beds were essential. More established gardeners, like a husband and wife based in Woodland, would turn to each other every so often with an “Oh, that’s what happened!” and make a quick note in their booklet.

For the hands-on component, attendees practiced making soil blocks for starting seeds and assembled a compost tea pouch to take home.

Because each workshop is designed for a specific season in the garden, Goodman encouraged people to come to as many as possible. For example, the summer classes, scheduled May 8 and 9, will be different from the spring sessions.

“Instead of the planning and dreaming phase, now you’re at the ‘in it’ phase, where you’re dealing with pests, you’re dealing with weeds, you’re thinking about, ‘Oh, my goodness, should I be pulling this plant to replant something new? How do I make that decision?’” he said.

And of course, tips for summer bleed into fall, which turns into winter, a “fully evolving circle” that gardeners will get to know. 

The workshops, priced at $123 per person, are posted on the Ballerina Farm website at ballerinafarm.com/pages/events. Kids under 10 are welcome for free. 

Adding a garden to the vision

While Ballerina Farm first started with pigs, the steadily growing company — which now produces items like beef, milk, ice cream, eggs, flour and highly popular protein powder — always planned to add a garden to the mix. It’s all part of the founders’ dream to create an agritourism site in Utah.

In late 2024, the Neelemans advanced that vision by annexing their 14-acre parcel into Kamas, and city officials agreed to create a new agricultural tourism zoning to allow visitor-focused development.

The couple’s plans for the Ballerina Farm property at the time included elements like livestock, orchards and gardens, with public-facing amenities such as a farm store, café, creamery and event space.

Now, it’s steadily coming to life: What started as a simple shed-turned-farm stand now has pens for cows and chickens, an ice cream trailer, a covered patio, a barn for events and Goodman’s fully functioning market garden, a central part of the concept. 

“This whole thing that we’re doing out here at 248, it’s about community,” the farmer said. “It’s creating space for people to come in, interact with their food, be able to see the animals, be able to buy our produce and see where it’s being grown.”

He gave the example of chickens, which the farm will soon raise for meat, that people can come and see while they’re out grazing the pasture. It’s all about a transparent, intimate interaction between the “eater” and the food, he said.

“My part in this whole agritourism is bridging this gap that we have where, you go in the grocery store, and you buy a chicken, and you go home and eat it, and you have no idea about how that chicken was handled,” he said. “Here, you’re going to be able to see that chicken … the whole course of its life, up to the day that it’s processed and put in the freezer, and then you get to eat it. Or see the chicken that’s laying your eggs or look at the vegetables that you’re eating.”

While food culture in more rural parts of Utah is still “pioneering,” Goodman said, he praised the Wasatch Back community in particular for their interest in supporting local growers. It’s an attitude that will lead to success in what Ballerina Farm is trying to accomplish, he said.

“I see this resurgence around health and community, and especially here on the Wasatch Back, I see a lot of people really embracing not only local food, but specifically local food grown in a way that is better for their body and is also better for the land,” he said. “People take a lot of pride in living in the Kamas Valley, and I feel like it’s the same in Park City and in Heber. We have pride for where we live. And I think that that is a trickle-down effect in how people purchase local and how they steward the land that we’re on.”

It’s part of why the Ballerina Farm produce grown in the Kamas garden will be sold locally, not shipped nationwide, Goodman said. None of the vegetables he’s growing are listed on the website.

“At the end of the day, there are a lot of things that Ballerina could choose to do, but we are choosing to invest our energy into a community,” Goodman said. 

The addition of the garden also expands farm stand goods to growers, like the recent addition of Ballerina Farm compost for sale. It’s fantastic, Goodman said, especially for those based in the Wasatch Back.

“I can’t think of a more sustainable way of feeding your garden than getting something that’s just miles away and doesn’t have to be shipped,” he said.

And, because he can’t help himself, a tip:

“Now’s the time to apply it. April, great time. Get the compost in the ground. Start working your soil, put the seeds in, it’s going to feed your soil over the course of the whole entire season,” he said.

The post Local farmer’s knowledge, vision seeds a growing market garden at Ballerina Farm appeared first on Park Record.

East Side farmers, land managers, climate activists, health experts, natural resources consultants, and even a veterinary emergency planner emphasized how adaptive agriculture practices in Summit County could help offset the impacts of extreme weather and drought.

More than 60 “movers and shakers” from across the Wasatch Back attended the Summit County Health Department discussion last month at the DeJoria Center in Kamas, making it the largest turnout for the speaker series yet. The Utah State University Extension also participated.

The meeting spotlighted innovative strategies in northern Utah and Summit County to manage and combat growing threats related to climate change while also acknowledging the interconnections of agriculture, mental health and community resilience.

Half Circle Cross Ranch owner and operator Colby Pace, Bill White Farms manager Craig McKnight, U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian Dr. Leah Trapp and Open Range Consulting owner Gregg Simonds, the event’s panelists, stressed the importance of implementing conservation practices such as cover crops, no-till farming, composting and solar energy.

“Basically my whole career has been a drought. Agriculture is just plain tough as it is, and a lot of things have happened since ’94. It’s been a roller coaster. You get one good year, you get five bad ones,” Pace said during the Sept. 19 event. His ranch was the recipient of the 2020 Utah Leopold Conservation Award. “Mother Nature’s not your friend in the ranching world.”

Pace and the other speakers discussed how cultivating cover crops can enhance biodiversity, bolster soil health and enhance water retention, and also improve resiliency. They mentioned how techniques such as rotational grazing or beaver dam analogs can be used to help restore the land. 

McKnight explained how the agricultural industry has moved to a monoculture, and he wants to see more diversity back in nature. He said solar energy is free and each plant feeds the biology of the earth — making for healthier soil, healthier animals and a healthier community.

Trapp agreed. The president-elect of the National Association of Federal Veterinarians spoke about the transition from regenerative agriculture to extractive agriculture, which prioritizes short-term yields over long-term stability. 

She highlighted the ties between emergency preparedness, crop diversification and food security as critical components in fostering a strong agricultural sector.

“I think about our food supply in terms of national security, and it greatly concerns me that we have all these monocultures, that our soil is dying, that we have foreign partners owning the majority of our slaughterhouses, majority shareholders in our swine operations. It’s not cool. We need to do better. We need to do local,” Trapp said.

Simonds shared how he helped transform the 350,000-acre Humboldt Ranch in Nevada from a landscape into a thriving ecosystem with a specific focus on water management, drought insurance and reducing the percentage of bare ground to enhance water retention and soil health.

“When you grow plants, you grow nature, you grow life, and you turn these whole landscapes into water banks instead of watersheds and that’s a big deal. That’s the whole basis of my ranching career,” he said. “The byproduct of civilization has been to make bare ground.”

Local support for farmers and ranchers was also a key point of the discussion.

Speakers called on community members to buy through “Utah’s Own” or the “Farm to Fork” program through the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food and at the Park City Farmers Market or the annual Junior Livestock Sale at the Summit County Fair.

Visit health.summitcounty.org for information about enviornmental health or upcoming events.

The post Summit County farmers share strategies for climate-resilient agriculture practices appeared first on Park Record.