Fresh Growth
Fresh Growth
Sweet Hollow Farm: Connecting People to Food and Farming
In today’s episode we speak with Jonah Sloven, from Sweet Hollow Farm, a diversified organic farm in Victor, Idaho. Sweet Hollow Farm serves the neighboring Teton Valley community through their CSA, farm stand, and farmer’s market.
Jonah discusses how his travels from his environmental studies ultimately directed him to small-scale agriculture and its beneficial effect on communities. His ultimate goal is to connect people with their food.
“For me, it’s a lot more than growing vegetables. I really want to grow the community and connect people with their food.”
Sweet Hollow Farm’s crops include leafy greens, root crops, and greenhouse tomatoes. Jonah says the CSA is the main focus for Sweet Hollow. He enjoys growing directly for his customers, as well as getting to know them personally. In addition, the farm sells at the Jackson Hole Farmers Market and a few local restaurants.
We’ll hear how the seemingly intractable problem of bindweed can be suppressed through cardboard layer mulching. His Western SARE-funded project researching this practice is addressing three questions: does the cardboard mulching control weeds; is it financially feasible; and third, what effect does it have on the soil?
Jonah explains how the project’s preliminary results are very promising. Hand-weeding has already been nearly eliminated. The project will be expanded and replicated through a partnership with Central Wyoming College’s Farm Incubator Program.
(photo by Jonah Sloven)
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Thanks for listening to Fresh Growth! To learn more about Western SARE and sustainable agriculture, visit our website or find us:
Contact us at wsare@montana.edu
Steve Elliot: 0:07
Hello and welcome to season four of Fresh Growth, a podcast by the Western SARE program. That's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. I'm your host, Steve Elliot Elliot, alongside co-host Stacie Clary . Thanks for listening for the past three seasons and joining us as we sit down with more innovative producers from around the West. Just for background, Western SARE is funded by the US Department of Agriculture's, National Institute of Food and Agriculture to promote sustainable farming and ranching across the American West through research, education, and communication efforts, like this podcast, Fresh Growth introduces producers and agricultural professionals who are embracing new ways of farming and ranching. They'll tell us about their experiences adopting more sustainable agricultural practices and the challenge and benefits they've seen. Today's guest is Jonah Sloven from Sweet Hollow Farm, a diversified organic farm in Mountainside Village in Victor, Idaho. They serve the Teton Valley community through their CSA Farm Stand and Farmer's Market. Sweet Hollow's top priority is to grow the highest quality vegetables for the community while being excellent stewards of their land. And by the way, Jonah has also received a Western SARE Farmer Rancher Grant. Jonah, welcome and thanks for sitting down with us.
Jonah Sloven: 1:20
Yeah, great. Thanks for having me.
Stacie Clary: 1:23
You recently received Western SARE Research to Grassroots grant as well, correct?
Jonah Sloven: 1:30
Yeah , just found out last week that we also got funding for that project, so super excited for taking that one on as well.
Stacie Clary: 1:39
Nice, nice. So we'll get to hear a little bit about both of those , those projects, but first just start , it would helpful for folks to hear a description of your area in Idaho and what it's like there .
Jonah Sloven: 1:52
Sure. Yeah. So I run Sweet Hollow Farm, which is located in Victor, Idaho. We're in eastern Idaho along the Wyoming border. We farm in the mountains, so we're at 6,200 feet, which is growing zone four B and a , a pretty tough climate. Our last frost is mid-June and our first frost is mid-September, so that's about 90 frost free days. So it's kind of a sprint of a season. <affirmative> . But yeah, we're in a semi rural area, some small towns, but awesome sport from our community.
Stacie Clary: 2:31
Great . So
Steve Elliot: 2:34
You have, you have an interesting background in food and environmental work. How did what, tell us a little bit about that and how it led you into farming.
Jonah Sloven: 2:43
Yeah, sure. So I went to college, kind of unsure of my past, my direction, what I wanted to pursue. I ended up in the business school and for me realized that wasn't for me. I was a much better hands-on learner outside of, of the classroom. So I switched over to our environmental science program, which was a , a much better fit for me. It let me travel through different field programs and abroad and kind of get, get out of the classroom, and that's ultimately what led me to small scale agriculture. I was in Thailand and I got to see sort of what agriculture can do for, for communities themselves. And this kind of came at a time where I was feeling pretty worn down and overly burdened with environmental issues that I was learning about in the classroom. So it seemed like something I could do with my own hands and kind of on a day-to-day basis that was really improving the situation and making me feel good about, yeah, about my impact in the world. And so from there, yeah, I got to travel around and work on some other farms in South America and, and do some wooing. And ultimately it brought me out out here to the Tetons. And at that point, kind of farming had been just sort of a hobby of mine. And yeah, I got pretty, pretty lucky with our farm situation here. And one thing led to another and, and started the farm.
Stacie Clary: 4:18
Why did you choose the area? The Teton area to start farming? I mean, you have 90 days , you called it a sprint. What made you choose the area?
Jonah Sloven: 4:27
Yeah, so I moved out here more for the mountains than for farming. I had been living in this area for about five years and was honestly looking for another place to relocate, to start a farm, but I, yeah, I, I heard about this farm lease and it was a , a great way for us to get started. And basically our, our lease is I trade two of our CSAs for the land that I'm farming right now. So it was yeah, too good of a deal to pass up and, you know, allowed me to, to really take a dive and, and get started without a ton of risk involved.
Stacie Clary: 5:06
Yeah, that's important. So maybe give us some more details about Sweet Hollow Farms , you know, how large an operation it is , your growing practices, what you grow, how do you market? You mentioned CSAs.
Jonah Sloven: 5:21
Sure. So we're currently renting about five acres, three of that is in production and about a quarter acre of that is greenhouse and hoop house space , which like I said, is super important for us. And we do diversified veggies, so a lot of leafy greens root crops. One of the big greenhouses is all tomatoes. That's a major crop for us. And, and the CSA is sort of our main focus right now. This year I'm looking for 80 members, hopefully. And then we also sell at a farmer's market over in Jackson Hole, which is about 40 minute drive for us and a few wholesale restaurants as well. But for me, the CSA is kind of the most important. I like, I like that route because I get to know my customers, I get to grow for them directly. And the neighborhood that we're located in is a big portion of our CSA members, so when they walk over and pick up their shares and they bring the family and I get to see them open up their box and enjoy. That's kind of where it all comes around for me and makes the hard work pay off.
Steve Elliot: 6:35
Yeah. How long does the, the greenhouse and the hoop house extend your season? How many, how many extra days or weeks do you get?
Jonah Sloven: 6:44
Yeah, so going into this year I hope to grow year round . I'm , I'm gonna do greens and stuff year round , but until this point I haven't had infrastructure in place to really make that feasible. <affirmative> We just got a well put in. So now we have water year round and I'm gonna be finishing another greenhouse this spring, which at that point it kind of makes sense to put in the time to have things going , but really our temperatures are cold, but we have such good sunlight here, which makes it feasible..
Steve Elliot: 7:19
<affirmative>. Yeah. Well, let's talk about grow practices.
Jonah Sloven: 7:24
Yeah. So we kind of are taking a hybrid approach. Originally when I started the farm, I wanted to be completely no-till. I saw a lot of sort of new age market gardeners. And this was the style that first got me hooked and, and realized on our scale it wasn't quite feasible, mostly because of the weed pressure we had. <affirmative> this high density growing style made it pretty impossible for us to cultivate and we defaulted to hand weeding which really crushed us. Yeah. So we started spacing things out and growing sort of on a more traditional row crop style, which we had some successes with, and then also got started experimenting with the cardboard layering deep cardboard mulch.
Steve Elliot: 8:16
All right . That , that leads us into your, your, your first Sarah project. So we'll , we'll jump ahead and talk about that. I mean, the problem, the idea, the grant, the research and , and what you're finding.
Jonah Sloven: 8:31
Yeah. So the main problem for us on-Suite Hollow is bindweed . It's crazy weed. If you're not familiar, the rhizomes are aggressive 10 feet underground or something like that, and, and they're like thick ropes that just never seem to run out of energy. And the first season we were farming, you know, I reached out to our extension agent and she told us that we could get it under control if we were diligent in seven to 10 years. And that kind of just crushed me. Hmm . Yeah . In , in our two years, it barely felt like we were diligent and I can't imagine 10 years of working harder to control it than we had. So I started looking at other solutions and I stumbled on how other growers had been using cardboard as sort of a biodegradable wheat mat with a thick layer of compost on top. <affirmative>. And I also had a friend here in the valley who had been using this technique on sort of a smaller scale, and I saw the potential he had with his successes. And so we tried it on, on a smaller portion of our farm, and it seemed to definitely have potential. And then I applied for the Fair Farmer and Rancher grant. <affirmative> . And the , the premise of our project basically is looking to answer three questions, kind of compared to a traditional tillage system. So first of all, it's looking at does this really control weed ? That was kind of most importantly for us. Uh , second is, is this a financially viable option? I mean, the cardboard and the compost and the labor of kind of building these beds is significant, so . <affirmative> looking at whether this makes sense to transition to and third is effect having on the soil . And all those are kind of broken down into a little more specifics , but that's kind of the, the meat of the project. And for me, all of these were questions I was sort of wondering and struggling with on my, on my own. And so it was really awesome that Sarah kind of gave me this framework to look for these answers and, and be able to study them and, and put this information out there because I couldn't find much of it.
Steve Elliot: 10:50
Right. And to try it without the risk. I mean, you've, you've got some, some financial backing to, to do the experiment and, and , and get answers. So, so talk us through what, what you did and what you found so far.
Jonah Sloven: 11:07
Yeah, so we just completed the first year of the two year project, so really at this point, I just sort of have some baseline data. We'll get the hard findings next year after we have more to compare it to. But this last season we ended up growing winter squash side by side. So each block is 20 feet wide by a hundred feet long. And we had 400 foot rows of different squash varieties side by side . So yeah, we were kind of tracking we density took soil samples before the project started and then compiled total harvest yield. <affirmative> side by side <affirmative>, and yeah , some interesting results, but definitely we'll have more concrete data at the end of this next year.
Steve Elliot: 12:04
Visually what look and hand were you hand both plots or both ?
Jonah Sloven: 12:13
So I kind of tweaked the experiment a little bit from when we first submitted, which is awesome that Sarah allows that flexibilityand , and a huge point of these projects being farmer driven and that it's not a perfect paper to practice system. So right . I ended up covering both plots and landscape fabric for the first year because the weed pressure is that bad. <affirmative> that I did not want to just be weeding just to document the hours. Right . And so this year we're gonna do onions on bare ground and that'll be kind of the real telling point of what's happened with the weed pressure. <affirmative>. So yes , to answer your question, there was not a lot of hand weaving last year because of how I set up the experimentbut this year will be the true test of, of whether this experiment really will pay off in , in that regard. Gotcha .
Steve Elliot: 13:14
Right ,
Stacie Clary: 13:14
Right. If if you, if it does pay off , if you find it , it's helpfulhow do you think it could help other small scale growers and , and are , are there other in your area that are kind of following what you're doing ?
Jonah Sloven: 13:29
Not so much. We're sort of in a, in a unique scale is what I think makes this practice more important because we are limited for space, so we need to figure out how to most efficiently use that space and to be able to take care of the weed pressure and not have to get in there with tractors or, or specific cultivation equipment forces us to get a little creative. So that's sort of unique to, to our farm as far as commercial growers. But yeah, absolutely. I see this as being something other growers are interested in a lot of sort of backyard home scale farmers again, because that, that space is the issue. But we've had workshops and, and events already that there's definitely a ton of interest in this technique. <affirmative>.
Stacie Clary: 14:24
Awesome.
Steve Elliot: 14:25
Does the new grant spring off of this or is it for something else? The r and e grant?
Jonah Sloven: 14:31
Yeah . So the research to grassroots now will take this project in these findings and expand on that. So I , I've partnered with Central Wyoming College and their farm incubator program, and we're gonna take some of their incubator farm plots and do the cardboard compost method over there. Hmm . Yeah, they we've been, we've been working with them for a few years and they always come out this way on their farm tours and they've seen the experiment and sort of our preliminary trials and, and they got super excited about that and, and wanted to expand on that on their region as well.
Steve Elliot: 15:10
Oh , fantastic.
Jonah Sloven: 15:11
Yeah. Super excited.
Stacie Clary: 15:13
Good . Congratulations.
Jonah Sloven: 15:14
Thank you.
Stacie Clary: 15:16
So looking at the values of starting the farm for you, you've, you've talked about wanting to cultivate a sustainable community and food culture, so it's beyond the , the no-till practices in the organic how does that play out at Sweet Hollow as interacting with your community?
Jonah Sloven: 15:34
Yeah, for me it's a lot more than growing vegetables. I really want to grow the community and, and connect people with their food, is kind of the ultimate goal. And so we've done that through some different farm to table dinners, the last of which was last summer. We had everything set up nicely in the field and a thunderstorm happened right as people were arriving, so Oh , <laugh> . Yeah . So we moved into the greenhouse and the tables were set up between the rows of tomatoes and carried on as planned , but it was a awesome evening.
Steve Elliot: 16:11
That sounds good. That sounds good. I mean, that kinda adjustment and there's , there's a fresh tomato right there.
Jonah Sloven: 16:17
Yeah, exactly. And for me it's , it's , I know , I can see how this value added stuff is really enforcing that connection of, of food and place and people and getting them excited about what we're doing, getting them involved in more ways than just the CSA. But I, I, I think it's really important to share what we're trying to do and get people involved and have different education workshops and gardening opportunities where people can learn for themselves as well.
Steve Elliot: 16:49
<affirmative>
Stacie Clary: 16:50
<affirmative>. Right.
Steve Elliot: 16:53
So I want to go back to, to something you talked about right at the beginning, becuase I think I haven't heard it expressed as quite as well as you did. It's so easy to get overwhelmed by what's going on in the world in a, in a sort of negative way and get paralyzed by, you know, what's happening globally and not be able to do anything. How, how did you get from that space to something that's productive for you personally and for a community?
Jonah Sloven: 17:32
Yeah, it's, you know, as simple as really just seeing a seed start as a tiny little spec and germinate and grow into a huge plant that's eating people seemed like the ultimate thing that I could do myself to kind of take control back. <affirmative> break, break the chain of yeah. Not knowing where your food comes from. I mean, losing connection with, with food and something that, you know, we consume more than three times a day and not having any idea what's happened with that. Seemed like for me, being involved in that was, was one of the most important things I could do. And even if it's just for my 80 CSA members, it was truly something that could make a difference. <affirmative> .
Steve Elliot: 18:25
<affirmative> How did it , when you sort of hit on that , what changed? I mean, for you personally?
Jonah Sloven: 18:34
Yeah, for me it gave me a drive. It gave me you know, something that I could take ownership for. And, and at the time before I had started the farm, I was sort of a seasonal ski bum. <affirmative>, I had been working as a snowboard instructor, a fishing guide, and it's all fine and great, I got to spend time outside, but I was just kind of lost in not feeling like I had any real passion or project that, that gave me that spark of motivation. Yeah.
Stacie Clary: 19:09
Yeah.
Jonah Sloven: 19:10
And the farm, I mean, as being a farmer, you really have to be a jack of all trades. It's , yeah , growing the food is one thing, but you're constantly networking. You're constantly trying to sell, figure out, you know, what crops are profitable, how to grow them profitable. So yeah , it's got the whole business component that's often forgot about, but yeah. Farmers are wearing ten different hats at once. <affirmative>. So it kept me, it keeps me engaged. Yeah. Which is also huge for me.
Stacie Clary: 19:45
Nice. Yeah. So you had this vision and this idea that seemed to work for you and what you needed to do and you started it and it's hard work. It's still worth it, the hard work and the wearing all the different hats?
Jonah Sloven: 20:00
Yes. Absolutely. Hard work. That's what makes it so fulfilling is, you know, August days where the summer harvest bounty is overflowing, that's where it really pays off. And yeah. Able to share that with friends, family, community members makes it worth it.
Steve Elliot: 20:18
Yeah. We spoke to someone recently who, who said, you know, the thing, one thing that you thought is, is unfair for farmers and, and it gets put on them and it's, and it's backwards, is this idea that farmers have to feed the world. And her point was no, farmers have to feed their communities. And if we get back to that what you're doing is, that's a different mindset for farming and restores that connection between people and food and land in , in a way that , you know , large scale production just doesn't.
Jonah Sloven: 20:54
Yeah , absolutely. And again , back to what you guys are doing , I , I really appreciate it and think it's so important to value small diversified vegetable producers because I think that the answer to, to sustainable agriculture is not bigger farms, but it's more farms, more smaller farms that have their own little place in their communities. <affirmative>. So yeah, we, we as producers appreciate what you guys are doing for, for us little guys in the grand scheme of things.
Steve Elliot: 21:27
And we appreciate what you're doing, which is why SARE’s here.
Stacie Clary: 21:33
We generally end our podcast by asking what advice do you have for young growers or, or any growers who really just want to get started farming sustainably, but also successfully.
Jonah Sloven: 21:46
Yeah, definitely. I would say go for it. You know, that's definitely easier said than done, but you can get involved in so many different ways to get started. Reach out to other farmers, other nonprofits, schools, people in your community and see how you can get involved, how you can start learning. You know, my first real go at farming was I reached out to my old high school and borrowed some of their greenhouse space because it was empty during the summer. And so that let me start learning and messing around again without doing much more than buying some seeds and some starting mix. So getting that experience and making connections I think goes such a long ways. And then other advice would be don't be afraid for failures. I think especially in this industry, so much is out of our control and failures are inevitable. The important part is learning from those mistakes and using them as opportunities to grow. But don't be too, too hard on yourself as, as a new grower or a seasoned grower when things are out of your control. But it's also an opportunity and, and for us, the bindweed , you know, had me on the edge of giving up and throwing in the towel and, and trying to relocate and, and now it's turned into an opportunity to get involved to be sharing our story here with you guys. Yeah. So failures are part of it and they’re opportunities to shift your mindset.
Steve Elliot: 23:27
Good advice.
Stacie Clary: 23:28
Good advice. Well, thanks Jonah, for sitting down and talking with us . Really appreciate it.
Jonah Sloven: 23:35
Yeah, totally. I hope I hope other people find it useful and there are some tidbits in there that can be worthwhile. Yeah.
Steve Elliot: 23:44
Absolutely is, Definitely. Yep, All right. Well, thank you very much.
Jonah Sloven: 23:50
Appreciate it. Yes. Thank you.
Stacie Clary: 23:58
Thank you for listening to Fresh Growth. We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information on Western SARE grants and our learning resources, visit westernsare.org.
