Let's say you're a well-to-do gentleman farmer. You're Robert Redford, let's say. This is the place you would choose for your garden: Five acres near Midway in the He
ber Valley. Five acres in the middle of horse pastures and alfalfa fields, just off a narrow country road by a bend of the Provo River, with Mt. Timpanogos shaded blue in the background.The new Sundance Farms is pretty enough to be a movie set. But oh, no! This is a working farm. This is where the flowers are grown - the ones you see in the dried wreaths in the Sundance Catalog, the ones you see floating in the bath oils, or bottled and sold as edible garnishes for muffins or cheese.
And this is where the Sundance herbs are grown, too. Herbs for the Sundance vinegars. Herbs - along with lettuce and radishes and onions - for the Tree Room restaurant at Sundance. And when there is extra produce, which there often has been this summer, it is sold to a food broker who sells it to restaurants in Salt Lake City and Park City.
The general manager of Sundance Farms is Liz Sprackland. Sprackland grew up in Chicago, came to Utah to visit friends and never left. She was managing a restaurant at Sundance Ski Resort 10 years ago when she heard the rumor that her boss was thinking about growing some flowers for the restaurant tables.
She went to Redford to report she'd majored in horticulture in college. He put her in charge of the garden. She started planting flowers on a half-acre near his house. What happened after that is really the story of how a small business grows. And even though she didn't have an MBA, Sprackland and the other Sundance Farms employees figured out what to do.
You run a garden the way you run your personal budget, Sprackland says. You are careful with your boss's money. "You become extremely practical."
In fact, Sprackland started her garden with practical plants. She knew these would grow in Utah: Rocky Mountain penstemon, artemesia and other varieties from the sagebrush family. When she grew too much for the tables, she learned to dry flowers. When she grew too many herbs, she dried them, too.
She hired some of her friends and then some seasonal help. They started making herb rows. They picked grass from alongside the river, dried it and braided it and tied herbs to it.
About that time the first Sundance Catalog was printed. As catalog printings increased (from 250,000 in the first printing to 10 million this year) so did the sales of Sundance Farms products. The first order they got was for 50 herb rows, Sprackland recalls. They had 50 on hand. They hurriedly started making more. Within a few years, they were making and selling 6,000 herb rows annually.
"A lot of it was trial and error," says Sprackland. The business grew out of the garden. They'd grow too little of one thing. She'd hurriedly find a local grower and buy a bit more.
Everything they grew, they grew organically. They wanted to bottle and wrap in recycled glass and paper, so Sprackland learned where to buy at the same time she was learning what to make.
She started finding local cooks and craftspeople. These days goats' milk soap comes from Kamas. A Midway man makes their cinnamon syrup, using a family recipe from pioneer days. The couple who fashion little crates for soaps and seeds do the woodworking out of their home.
When she hit upon the bath product line as a way to use more flowers and spices, the business took another leap. Today bath oils are the biggest sellers, she says.
It got to the point, a year ago, where Sundance Farms was growing and manufacturing and mailing out of locations in four different counties. Redford decided to consolidate the farm operations. He bought an old dairy farm in the Heber Valley and began remodeling the milking barn.
If you were wealthy and starting a cottage industry, this is the kind of cottage you'd build. Pale wood floors and ceilings and work benches. White walls. Lots of light.
At the front of the new farm building is a small store. Down the hall are several workrooms and a drying room. At the back is a kitchen outfitted with restaurant supply tables and sinks and - oddly - a small washing machine.
On a recent weekday morning Lyn Walker, production manager, could be found in the kitchen, leaning over the sink, rinsing lettuce leaves. Two daddy long-legs scrambled frantically to avoid being washed down the drain. Bugs come with the territory when you garden organically.
She does this twice a week, picks 40 pounds of lettuce leaves to be carted to the Tree Room restaurant. Time was she dried them by hand, putting the damp leaves in a pillow case and swinging it over her head. But then Sprackland, visiting some West Coast organic farms, noticed a washing machine and brought the concept of spin dry back to Sundance.
The 11 Sundance Farms employees are mostly women and are, for the most part, friends. The working environment is one of carefully controlled urgency. Most of the women used to work in restaurants, and as they fill orders and talk about upcoming tours and classes, there is a feeling of being in the kitchen during a huge dinner party.
Sprackland is flexible, she says. She lets her employees choose their own hours. But she's not totally flexible. There is one non-negotiable job requirement. Says Sprackland. "Every employee must visit the garden every day."
You must keep track of everything that grows, she says. You must harvest when flowers and herbs are at their peak. This garden may look like a fun little hobby, but it's not.
So, there is that inflexible job requirement. Which is a hint that, in this garden, not all is paradise. There is hard work. There are mosquitoes.
There are even allergies. Mary Ann McCollum says she has to shut the door of her little bouquet-making room whenever she is working with dried Sweet Annie. After years of fingering the fragrant plant, several of the other women can't take the smell any longer.
In some respects Sundance Farms is a New Age idyllic garden. It is an aura they are selling in their products and in the $45 classes that they offer. They exemplify the "earth-to-table" concept, Sprackland explains. Only it's not the concept you learned in your own garden, which no doubt would require you to can tomatoes and stand over a hot stove during the hottest days of summer.
This is the first time, in the 10 years they've been in business, that Sundance Farms is in a public location. Sprackland says, even before they put up a sign, they were getting visitors.
Why, you have to wonder, don't we all, who like to garden, have gardens of our own?
Perhaps the answer lies a little bit in the name of Robert Redford and a little bit in the prices and packaging of the handcrafted Sundance products. Perhaps it makes us feel good, on some level, to imagine that if we dried our herbs and put them in pretty bottles and put the bottles in a sweet little crate and tied the whole thing with an artful dead vine, some awestruck tourist would ring the bell and pay us $80 for just a few ounces of our lovely produce.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Heber Valley on display
Several Heber Valley businesses have come together for a Tour the Valley promotion this weekend. Tastes and tours and raffles and discounts are being offered from noon to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Maps are available to lead the visitor from one site to the next, beginning with site one, Rocky Mountain Baskets, at 511 W. 100 South in Heber City.
Other locations include Water From the Moon gift shop, Off the Wall Antiques, Heideklang Pottery, Sundance Farms (3303 W. 2400 South, Charleston) and Books and Beyond, the valley's newest business, so new it won't have any books to sell until September.
Sundance Farms is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays with tours at 10 a.m.