Mother-daughter duo from Cedar City navigate loss while changing laws in Utah farming

CEDAR CITY — Owning a farm wasn't on Symbria Patterson's radar when she moved her family from Los Angeles to Cedar City in 2005 — but her 10-year-old daughter, Sara Patterson, had very different plans.

"Sara is kind of unique, and we knew she needed to live on an open space," Symbria Patterson said.

Sara Patterson, now 31, said the move to Cedar City to a 1-acre parcel of land might as well have been 100 acres.

"We could walk for what felt like miles without seeing a single house," she said.

While big-city life was all Sara knew, her mom always managed to keep a garden at their home. They also had a family friend who operated a community-supported farm in Nevada, which young Sara loved to visit. And as she played in her yard in Cedar City, she dreamed of one day having her own farm.

"I really loved the community piece to their farm, and I thought what a beautiful way to be able to grow food for people with community-supported agriculture," Sara said.

Community-supported agriculture is a business model in which locals pay upfront before the harvest, share some of the risk and enjoy the benefits of a local bounty.

Young Sara decided to take it upon herself to grow some veggies and sell them to locals. This, her mom said, was a fun hobby to watch, but it wasn't something they were going to invest much time or money into. But when she announced she'd sold some shares, her parents knew it was more than just a hobby.

Soon, Sara had made enough money to bring home goats and chickens, and she named her business Red Acre Farm CSA. By the age of 15, a handful of shares turned into 40. She soon generated enough revenue to buy the acre next door. Her dad quit his job to work for her full-time, and it became a family business.

'Could we get shut down, too?'

As her business grew, Sara kept in touch with her family friend in Nevada, who mentored her.

Then, the unthinkable happened.

"They had a farm-to-fork dinner, and they didn't send the right documentation for transporting food to the health department in time," Sara recalled. "They got shut down, and the food was destroyed with bleach. I was the one who ran and got the bleach, and I watched this beautiful food that had been grown and prepared by these farmers and these chefs get destroyed.

"It was a crazy experience that really changed my life," she added. "I asked my mom what the laws were in Utah and if we could get shut down, too."

As it turned out, they, too, were breaking laws.

"You don't really think when you're 14 years old, that selling vegetables or milk from your two goats is illegal," Sara said. "It's not that my parents were oblivious or not caring; we were naive to what we were doing."

Changing laws amid tragedy

Naivety was on her side, as was drive. Being young and eager to create a small community farm sent Sara and her mom to Capitol Hill in 2015. There, they championed a bill allowing farmers to legally fractionalize ownership of dairy animals, so consumers could legally access and drink raw milk for herd-sharing.

The bill was signed into law as HB104 in March 2015. That same day, tragedy happened.

"My husband had been holding down the place while we were on Capitol Hill, and there was some pretty heavy rain and snowstorms," Symbria Patterson said. "It was the end of March, and we were using some in-town greenhouses, and he didn't come back home."

Lynn Patterson collapsed and died suddenly at the age of 58 from unknown causes.

"Within an hour of my dad passing away was when the governor signed our bill," Sara Patterson said. "My whole life was kind of rocked. Losing my dad and my mom losing her husband —my dad ran the farm, so losing my father and my business partner kind of changed everything. At the time, we were just figuring out how to survive."

The community they had built through farming rallied around them, and they began to rebuild. A year or so later, another tragedy struck.

"I woke up to a house engulfed in flames," Symbria Patterson said. "We had to live off-site for a year and keep coming back. This farm was not designed to live off-site, but the community helped so much. I want to put a sign out in the front that says, 'Vegetables didn't build this house; it was insurance.' The fire was the silver lining in the clouds."

Mother and daughter

Rebuilding after loss took more than building a new house or even growing a community; it took a mother and daughter working together to build a future for the greater good of small farms. To date, the two have helped pass over 20 bills that help small farm owners expand farm-to-table operations in Utah, while also advocating for farmers across the country.

"Some people think you're going back in time with some of the things we're doing, but the thing is, we're losing our ag, and we're losing our farmers," Sara Patterson said. "We're losing our water and our land, and we have to be innovative to be able to stay in the game. I want other people my age to be able to farm and be able to be first-generation farmers and to be able to stay in these multi-generational farms."

Red Acre Farms CSA is a closed-loop farm, which means they use and reuse everything on the farm to limit its environmental impact. They said their goal is to be both a steward of and an asset to the community. The mother-daughter duo also runs a nonprofit called Red Acre Center that works to promote and protect farmers, small rural and urban farms, and the right for people to choose what they eat.

"It seems like such a simple way of life, just to be eating the food that you grow and selling it," Sara said. "It's not just a way to make money; it's part of a lifestyle."

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