Chris Pyper was born and raised in Midway, in a home neighboring horse pastures and an old dairy barn, rural and mountainous.Perhaps there were farmers in his life in those formative years, but when he left home as an adult, his career path took him about as far from farming as one can get: He became an accountant.Living in Seattle, Pyper’s friendship with a farmer there sparked his interest, and when she moved back to her hometown in Kentucky to start her own farm, he went along.“I had been working in an office for a nonprofit in Seattle and was just kind of tired of office life,” he said. “I told her I’d help her for the first season, and then I just fell in love with it.”He’s been a farmer ever since, now in his 11th year. “I farmed for four years … and then decided I was ready to do my own thing. I had been out of Utah for 11 years and was missing it, the horses, the mountains and family,” Pyper said.Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordHe worked out a deal to lease a portion of his mother’s horse pasture and start a small, organic farm on land that can actually be seen from his childhood bedroom window. Moving into his own home just down the street in 2018, he got to work planting crops and starting his business, which he named after his favorite trees — Rustling Aspen Farm.Rustling Aspen Farm sells during the area’s 21-week season, about eight weeks shorter than what Pyper had in Kentucky, but plenty still grows. He also started a community-supported agriculture program that delivers weekly to about 25 families.“I like to grow a wide variety of produce, mostly for my CSA. I’ll flip through the seed catalogs every year, find new things sometimes, but just do a lot of what works,” Pyper said.Pointing to two greenhouses at the front of a third-of-an-acre parcel, he lists some of the food he grows: cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, onions, tomatillos, peppers. Beyond the greenhouses are rows of crops like radicchio, spinach, zucchini, five different varieties of potatoes, cauliflower and pumpkins.Chris Pyper sits in the garden outside of his childhood home. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordThis section of the gardens abuts a brown house shaded by huge trees and with a large garden of its own — the home Pyper grew up in. His mom always had a garden, Pyper said, but now he’s taken it over. “I definitely was the whiny kid that didn’t want to help weed, but, you know, who wasn’t. But I did love picking cherry tomatoes straight off the plants and eating them. So that hasn’t changed,” he said. “I would say I’ve always grown stuff, but really in the last 11 years is when I actually learned how to grow food productively. Before that it was always sort of a hobby.”Returning to the land, literally, Pyper said there are some benefits to having been a former accountant.“I do use a lot of spreadsheets,” he said with a laugh, “for all my planning, all my bed layout, because I have to do a lot of crop rotation. … (And) I feel like I bring that more-perfectionist or numbers side to precision planting. Each plant needs optimal spacing to reach its best size.”While running a small business is never easy, Pyper said he’s received a lot of community support.Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record“I’ve been very fortunate. I think that I moved back and started this farm at the right time,” he said. “I definitely think there is more demand for food, but I’m feeling pretty maxed out with the space that we have already.”Along with the field rented from his family, Pyper also farms on another field across the street that longtime family friends own. They let him use the space in exchange for a CSA share, he said.As an organic farmer, Pyper employs techniques like planting cover crops over the winter, experimenting with biochar from Alpine Forestry and using compost made with manure from his family’s horses, his “walking compost making factories.”Overall, things at Rustling Aspen Farm are going well, he said, but it’s never without its challenges — for them, primarily the “things that want to eat.”The deer are the biggest issue, he said. They sample from the garden with abandon. “They have their favorites, and then once they eat all the favorites, or I cover them all, then they’ll be like, ‘Okay, fine. We’ll eat this,’ even though it’s like, there’s a whole field of grass you could eat,” he said.Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordThe two main ways of managing nuisance deer — eight-foot-tall fences or permits to shoot them — aren’t easy options for Pyper both as a renter and with the area’s different laws regarding deer management. So he makes do with motion-activated sprinklers and crop covers.But then there’s insect pests. Miniature flea beetles pepper lace-like holes into the leaves of the brassica family, cabbage and mustard crops. Aphids, even smaller, suck sap out of vegetables, which kills them. Grasshoppers get bad, too, and target flower heads like Pyper’s dahlias.“I know there’s going to be some sharing with nature, but if everything we’re growing becomes uneatable or unsellable,” he trails off with a sigh.But again, he reiterates, he’s been fortunate with the community’s support, seen especially through farmers market sales.After his first season farming and selling at the Heber City Farmers Market, Pyper collaborated with other food producers to start the Midway Farmers Market in 2019, focusing primarily on food and agriculture. He’s now the market’s only organizer.Chris Pyper holds a bouquet of fresh cut flowers. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park Record“I’ve done everything in my power to keep crafts out of it, just because, nothing against craft vendors, but there are plenty of those happening already,” he said. “Based on the feedback I get, the community likes it.”Held Saturday mornings at Midway’s town square, they have around 15 vendors, including Rustling Aspen Farm, some local bakeries and even a goat milk soap maker. The market runs 10 a.m.-1 p.m. from June to October, and this year’s final market will be Oct. 26.During the farm tour, Pyper wanders through rows of crops and returns with samples: a yellow cherry tomato, a handheld salad of arugula, a purple spicy mustard green and spicy cress, which are all part of their mixed-greens mix. He pulls a utility knife out of worn work pants and returns with a bouquet of orange-and-red dahlias.“It’s important to me, or fulfilling for me, to grow beautiful food and flowers that my community is excited about eating and enjoying. So that’s what brings me joy,” Pyper said, holding the flowers out for a photo. “Also, I like to eat good veggies and cook. So I won’t say I grow a lot of things just for myself, but there are a few things where I’m like, ‘No, this is just for me, or I get to eat the first one.’”Like a fig tree, he said, whose fruit right now is just for him.While there’s a market for Pyper to expand, his priority is to stay hands-on.“I don’t want to get too big in that, I don’t want to be just a manager; I still want to be a farmer,” he said. “It’s a good lifestyle. I feel like I’ve structured my business so that I’m busy all the time, (so I’m) trying to find more of that work-life balance, working on my ‘saying no’ boundaries.”Visit Pyper’s booth at the Midway Farmers Market through the end of the season, where he’ll have fall crops available like squash and root veggies — beets, potatoes carrots, onions, garlic, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, pumpkins and acorn squash, to name a few. Learn more on their website rustlingaspenfarm.com.A head of cauliflower ripens before being picked at Rustling Aspen Farms. Credit: Clayton Steward/Park RecordThe post Farmer Chris Pyper returns to his roots, now in year seven of Rustling Aspen Farm appeared first on Park Record.