2025: What a season!

2025 has been our first true year of production at Cherry Grove Farm. What a different year from 2024!

Last year was "the year of digging" as I spent much of the summer digging, tilling and setting up the layout of the farm's multiple crop beds. We produced enough vegetables for a decent, albeit late harvest, due to all the preparation the land needed to get into vegetable production.

In 2025, we were able to complete planting of our first 1000 strawberry plants, and our fields have been popping with strawberries!

We are on track to begin Pick Your Own strawberries next year in 2026, when we plan to have our farm stand up and open daily for the community to buy fresh local produce.

The 2025 Farmer's Market season has also been a big success. We have been harvesting as many vegetables as we can for sale at the Teton Valley Farmer's Market in Driggs, as well as the Tuesday Night Victor Market.

Seasonal vegetables we have had great success with in our fields this year include Carrots, Beets, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Purple and Green Beans, Romaine lettuce & Spring Salad Mix.

Our new high tunnel has been an amazing boost for our early season production, and now we are exploding with late summer tomatoes and cucumbers. We have also fall salad green greens and bok choi ready to harvest as the season turns cool here in the Tetons.

Growing our Flock

This year we established a foundation flock of Blue Footed Bresses for both egg and meat production. We are currently selling eggs from our 20 mature hens, with pullet eggs just beginning from our 20 younger hens. Having a staggered laying flock like this will allow us to rest the hens in their natural cycles of egg production without sacrificing the ability to provide eggs to our customers. We are in love with our flock! They are sweetly dispositioned, friendly and easy going as they free range in the pasture.

We are just beginning the incubation process, hatching small batches of Bresse eggs from our laying flock. It is a science and an art we are eager to learn, and working in small batches allows us to perfect our incubation methods. As these small batches grow they will be sold as whole frozen chickens to our community. Next summer we should be in full production, hatching batches of 50 chicks at a time, to be raised and sold for meat.

Planting for growth

Fall is just beginning but my mind is on next spring. Before the snow flies I will be preparing more crop beds, expanding our vegetable production again for next year. We have big dreams, we need bigger fields! We are hoping to find grant funding for a refrigerated shipping container unit for 2026. Refrigeration will help us increase our harvest and distribute our food as fresh as possible to our community, and beyond.

We have gotten some amazing feedback from our customers and are planning on planting crops that are in need here at the local level. Seeing what other farmers in Teton Valley produce, where there are gaps in production, and what our customers are looking for at the market has been invaluable. Next year we hope to increase our production of all our crops, but specifically increase production of spinach, head lettuce, and broccoli to meet the demands in our community.