MURRAY, Utah — For shoppers at Wheeler Farm's Sunday market, the end of the growing season can feel like a laid-back morning spent browsing fresh local produce.
For Utah farmers and growers, though, the end of the market season is bringing a chance to reflect on a year that was anything but easy.
The spring freeze wiped out much of the state’s tree fruit crop, leaving some growers without peaches, apples and other popular fruits. Others said a mild winter brought additional problems with insects and disease.
At the Tagge’s Famous Fruit & Veggie Farms stand, Meshia Taylor said the family felt the impact firsthand.
Family friends in Idaho helped provide peaches after the freeze destroyed much of the crop they had expected to sell this year.
For other growers, the challenges went beyond weather.
Jack Wilbur of Three Squares Produce said higher fuel and fertilizer costs have added to the expense of getting crops to market.
But those rising costs aren’t necessarily showing up in the price shoppers pay.
Wilbur said the farm sets its prices for the season and has largely absorbed the additional costs rather than passing them on to customers.
“We’ve just absorbed it,” Wilbur said. “It’s kind of what we just have to do.”
Some crops did have a strong season.
Growers at Wheeler Farm said summer and winter squash and cucumbers performed well, helping fill their stands even as other produce became harder to find.
Sue Sweet, who has worked farmers markets for about a decade with Grammy’s Fruit & Produce, said customers have been asking for varieties of fruit that simply weren’t available this year.
“Do you have Macintosh?” is the kind of question she has been hearing.
The answer, she said, has often been no, not this year.
For Sweet, the impact has been personal. She said the difficult season forced her to wrap up her market schedule earlier than planned.
“It was heartbreaking,” she said.
She won’t be attending the next two markets, saying the combination of the freeze and the difficult year for tree fruit has made it too difficult to continue.
Still, growers said they’re already looking ahead.
Jack Wilbur said farming requires a willingness to keep going even after a difficult season.
“You just persevere," he said. "You just always plan on next year being better.”
For local growers, every sale at the farmers market can help make that next year possible.