Idaho Farmer Tries Hand At Desert Agriculture - Moapa Valley ...

By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

A new produce stand at Glendale offers locally grown crops to local residents. Photo by Vernon Robison.

About a year ago, Matt Wissel of Nampa, Idaho started to work on a business experiment that brought him to the Moapa Valley area.

Wissel is the owner of Wissel Farms, a well-established Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm near Nampa. In addition to providing produce to its shareholders, Wissel Farms also supplies product to about 40 grocery stores in southern Idaho and in Salt Lake City. In addition, Wissel Farms does a brisk business at its roadside produce stands.

The only trouble was that the growing season up north doesn?t start early enough. Wissel wanted to be able to bring watermelon, cantaloupe and other summer produce to the market and to his shareholders by the July 4th holiday. So he started looking for farmland further south.

?I was looking for temperatures similar to Bakersfield (California),? Wissel said in an interview with the Progress. ?But I don?t want to run my trucks all the way into California. I wanted it to be in Nevada because it is an easy drive through the state and there are no big cities that you have to go through.?

Wissel said that he looked at Pahrump, Ash Springs and even St. George and southern Utah.

?But in those places you can?t really harvest before July 4,? he said. ?I wanted to be able to start the harvest around June 15.?

So he finally settled on a spot of ground here in the Moapa Valley. This season he has leased the fields just behind the new AM/PM convenience store in Glendale.

Wissel began planting the fields back in mid-March. Now they are bursting with sweet corn, watermelon and cantaloupe.

Of course, there are challenges involved with farming in a new climate. Wissel said that he has faced some of those. But early on he sought the advice of locals who have been involved in agriculture.

?When I first went down there I tried to talk to everyone I could,? Wissel said. ?For growing sweet corn they warned me about the potential problems with pollination.?

Like most plants, corn must be pollenated in order to produce. Corn pollen is spread, not by bees or insects, but by wind. Wissel explained that in the hot desert climate, corn pollinates only in the early morning, before the temperatures soar. But that is also the time of day when the wind is usually calm.

Wissel did a little research and used an idea that he found for pollenating the corn rows. They attached ropes which hung from the sprayer attachment on a tractor. They then ran the sprayer over the corn fields in the early morning. This caused enough motion in the field that the corn tassels dropped their pollen and the field was successfully pollenated, Wissel said.

Another potential challenge where Wissel received some local help was in dealing with local government business requirements. He originally wanted to set up a permanent farmer?s market right on the highway, using a couple of the rooms at the Glendale Motel as the storefront. His idea was to sell produce from the Moapa farm and bring produce like peaches and cherries down from Idaho to sell to local customers and to highway travellers. But Wissel admitted that he didn?t know what would be required to bring this idea into action.

?I didn?t know anyone here,? he said. ?And I didn?t know anything about the local government or about the process.?

At that point he made a visit to the Small Business Help Center in Overton. The Help Center was opened last September by the Moapa Valley Chamber of Commerce. It was set up to help prospective small business owners through the regulatory process of opening a business in the community. Last year, Chamber President Carol Bishop had written a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture grant on behalf of the Chamber in order to fund the center for one year.

Wissel approached the Center early this year just hoping to get some help with finding some local workers who could help him with establishing an irrigation system for his fields and then continue helping with the farm.

?We helped him with that, though that wasn?t really what we were set up to do,? said Bishop. ?Then we made him aware of what we could do for him.?

The Center began looking into what would be required to set up the farm store that Wissel had in mind.

?We were interested in that because he was willing to sublet space in the store for other local producers,? Bishop said. ?That would basically give an outlet to local farmers who wanted to sell their produce but didn?t want the foot traffic on their own land. It was exciting.?

But the Center staff soon realized that such an endeavor would be a complex regulatory project to get approval.

?We found that there was so much rigamaroll involved with the various county codes and rules when you try to sell produce off of the property,? Bishop said. ?It would be a nightmare to do it. We tried to assist but there was so much red tape with changing zoning and everything that would be needed. He finally decided to just sell his produce on-site.?

The Center researched into the requirements in the county code for Wissel to do that and made sure that he would be in compliance.

?They were a lot of help,? Wissel said of the Help Center. ?They provided me with contacts at the various entities and looked into the details for me. It definitely would have been a lot harder if I hadn?t had their help.?

The farm stand is currently in operation on the edge of the field just behind the AM/PM store in Glendale. Currently selling at the stand are plenty of corn and watermelon, locally grown.

Wissel said that he hopes to get approval in the future to bring fruit and vegetables from his farm in Idaho to sell at the Glendale stand.

?That would bring a lot more variety in how much we can offer to the local folks down there,? he said.

This fall, Wissel will continue to sell a fall crop of sweet corn at the stand. He will also be providing a pumpkin patch for local residents to purchase pumpkins. And after a year or so of being closed, the Glendale Haunted Corn Maze is planning to re-open this year under Wissel?s direction.

The Wissel Farm stand at Glendale is currently open every day between 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.

The Moapa Valley Small Business Help Center will be open until September 30 and is available to help would-be entrepreneurs in starting local businesses. For more information on the Center call 397-6060.

Source: http://mvprogress.com/2012/08/01/idaho-farmer-tries-hand-at-desert-agriculture/

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