PARK CITY — When Chad Midgley graduated from Bountiful High School and turned down a scholarship to study meteorology at the University of Utah, they thought he was half-crazy.
When he told them what he planned to do instead — become a farmer — they knew he was completely loco.
For one thing, Chad didn’t own a farm.
For another thing, he didn’t know much about growing things.
For yet another, he was mostly broke.
“We used to tease him that he was running a lemonade stand,” says his father, Paul.
With a big smile, he adds, “But he soon proved us wrong.”
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In the wonderful world of More Than One Way to Succeed and Do It Your Way, meet Chad Midgley — a terrific example of what can happen when desire and passion converge on the corner of opportunity and ingenuity.
He took his teenage dream of being a farmer, talked his dad into letting him use his acre of land and his tillers, ordered a book by Andrew W. Lee called “Backyard Market Gardening,” figured out what crops he could plant that would pay the best yield, and started tilling.
The result? Seventeen years later, Chad’s Produce Inc. just might be the most successful one-man farming operation along the entire Wasatch Front.
In an era when all you hear about is the plight of the small farmer, Chad, 35, is thriving as a small farmer. Besides continuing to work his father’s acre of ground in West Bountiful, he’s purchased three more acre plots in Syracuse and Ogden (and completely paid off two of them), where he grows peaches, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, peppers, chard, collard greens, kale and sorrel.
Those four acres, plus a partnership with a fruit grower in Willard, keep Chad hopping year-round, selling everything he grows at seasonal farmers markets up and down the Wasatch Front — in addition to a regular year-round Saturday market at the Oasis Café in Salt Lake City.
His cash crop is French sorrel, a leafy plant that has been prized in European kitchens for centuries. Known as “lemonade in a leaf” because of its tangy, lemony taste, it adds a wake-up spice when mixed in salads and other food dishes.
Traditionally, Utah hasn’t produced much French sorrel, or sorrel of any variety, because of the hot summer climate. But Chad devised a way — he’d prefer not to give away his secrets — that not only produces excellent French sorrel, but at a remarkably quick rate.
“It grows fast,” he says, “I can plant it and pick it every 10 days from April to November.”
He keeps a steady supply coming to a growing corps of followers — one ziplock baggy at a time.
“Try this, tastes like lemon,” he says as he tempts farmers market customers with free samples.
Then he adds, pointing to produce booths in the distance, “Boring lettuce down there.”
Chad calls his French sorrel “lemon spinach.”
“We first just called it sorrel,” he explains. “But nobody knew what that was.”
He reports that he goes through 300 bags of lemon spinach a week.
“It’s almost like selling drugs,” he says, “only it’s legal.”
These days, now that they’re in season, he’s also selling an average of 2,000 pounds of peaches a week — in addition to everything else he packs in the white Chad’s Produce van and, with help from his dad Paul and wife Liz, hauls to market five days every week.
It’s not easy work. The hours are long and can be physically demanding, especially in the growing season. Chad reckons he puts in 80-hour weeks in the summer and fall.
“I do the weeding, watering, marketing, bagging, selling and I’m in charge of quality control,” he says, ticking off his job description.
But he’s his own boss, running his own operation on his own terms.
“I’m living the American dream, aren’t I?” he beams. “I’m doing something I love and making a living at it.”
Lee Benson's About Utah column runs Mondays. Email: benson@deseretnews.com