It’s a beautiful morning at the Utah State University Botanical Center in Kaysville.
Dozens of small acreage and urban farmers have gathered from around the state to learn tips and tricks from Extension specialists on a whole host of topics.
Crops, soils, techniques, and technologies were all on display. Extension experts, like Miles Becker, came equipped to lead sessions in all manner of content geared towards the small-scale grower.
Becker offered a few different possibilities for his gathered attendees to discuss.
“So I was going to give you the options of a couple different things we could talk about," said Becker. "One is watering, we can talk about pruning and structure, and then the third thing we could talk about is just like general health, like, so how do you know if your tree is growing?
Some of the sessions were simple demonstrations, things the farmers could bring back home and immediately deploy themselves.
Burdette Barker, an irrigation specialist with USU extension, led participants in an activity to quickly assess soil moisture by hand.
“Take a little handful [of soil]," said Barker. "Fill it. Does it muddy your hand? Can you get a little bit of water out of it when you squeeze it?”
Sam, an aspiring farmer in attendance, said that the best part of the activity was it's simplicity, adding, "it’s super helpful that it’s free and that you can just do it with your hands.”
The presenters also showed plenty of tools they test in their research, tools designed to make small farms more efficient and productive. Shital Poudyal is an extension horticulturist who demonstrated a useful new piece of technology for the small scale grower.
“So what this smart irrigation controller does is it pulls that weather data from the weather station that is closest to the site," says Poudyal. "And then it will ask you what type of plants [you're growing], what type of soil, how much water your landscape receives.”
Across Utah, the total acreage of farmland is declining, but the number of farms is actually increasing.
Today, around a third of Utah farms are smaller than 9 acres, and lots of the growers are relatively inexperienced.
It’s a hard industry to enter, so events like this field day are especially important to participants like Lisa Grams.
Grams is the owner of Bramble and Sage Flower Farm. She says that she comes to events like this to “find new cultivars, new plants, talk to people, and find new resources.”
The farmers at this event say that when you’re growing on a small scale, forming relationships is especially important. It's easy to see how events like this form close ties between growers and agriculture experts.