Turtle Gulch Gardens offers fresh produce year-round
Everyone, it seems has vegetables to spare in the summertime. Backyard gardens produce bumper crops of tomatoes, zucchini and radishes until the weeds take over, the rain stops falling and the gardener loses interest. Then those wonderful veggies Mom encouraged you to eat are gone.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a year-round supply of fresh produce? That thought is what inspired White River Valley Electric Cooperative members Melissa and Ancel Buff to put better food on the table for patrons of their Turtle Gulch Gardens in Bradleyville.
These days their veggies are sold from a retail store in Bradleyville, delivered to customers in Springfield and also improve the lunches at rural schools in the area.
The couple moved from Springfield into rural Taney County eight years ago and set out to reclaim the land from the brush and blackberry bushes that had taken over. Lifelong gardeners, they wanted to transform what Ancel calls “good ol’ Ozark hill dirt” into soil that would grow something besides weeds.
The result was predictable: “We started having more produce than we could use,” he says. “You give it to neighbors, but it was even more than that. We had a lot.”
The couple purchased a former feed store in Bradleyville that was being used as a salon. The interior was still set up for hairdos, so they put lawn chairs on the porch and on Saturdays sold their produce out of cardboard boxes.
“People really liked it,” Ancel says. “We thought, ‘hey, there’s something to this.’ ”
That’s when these would-be entrepreneurs visited a friend who was growing produce in high tunnels. Similar to greenhouses, high tunnels offer the ability to control the environment inside by raising or lowering walls and covering crops with frost covers in the winter.
They bought one and started learning to grow indoors. The operation grew with the help of grants, including a Farm to Table grant from the Missouri Department of Agriculture. White River Valley Electric Cooperative also pitched in with a low-interest loan from their revolving loan fund that helped them meet the terms of the grant.
“I love Turtle Gulch and all they stand for,” says Devin Sonnenfelt, White River Valley’s senior business development specialist. “Projects like these are near and dear to me as well as being the heart of any rural community.”
Even with the assistance, the learning curve proved to be steep. They were determined to grow produce sustainably, organically and with as few costly inputs as possible.
For an entire winter they stockpiled cow manure from farm fields, which was composted for the spring crops. Meanwhile Melissa started seeds in a small greenhouse. When the time came they transplanted 800 tomato plants into the compost.
“The next day they are all lying on the ground,” Ancel relates. “We took pictures and sent them to the University of Missouri and they came back and said, ‘That’s an easy one. Those have been poisoned with Grazon.’ ”
It turned out the manure came from cows that had eaten hay sprayed with the broadleaf herbicide. The chemical stayed in the compost and killed the entire crop of tomatoes. “It was eye-opening,” Melissa says. “Lesson learned — now we make sure where it’s coming from.”
Undaunted, the operation moved ahead. Currently there are three high tunnel houses with room for another. There’s an outside bed where watermelons and cantaloupe are grown. Another outside area delivers as much as 2 pounds of asparagus daily in season. Chickens provide hundreds of fresh eggs.
A state-inspected processing building took the business to the next level. It houses multiple wash stations, with the water recycled for irrigation. Two walk-in coolers set to different temperatures keep the produce fresh. It even has an elevator for putting the massive shade cloths and other accessories into storage.
“Our goal all along was we didn’t want to be a tomato farm, we didn’t want to be a lettuce farm. We wanted to have Grandma’s garden only on a lot bigger scale,” Ancel says. And that goal certainly increased the workload at Turtle Gulch Gardens.
“This is not easy,” he admits. “Because you have a different set of bugs, a different set of fungus, a different set of everything for every plant you’ve got. Having a constant supply of something is also a difficult challenge.”
He likens the operation to a dairy farm, where the farmer has to be on hand every day to milk. “That’s the downside to it,” Ancel says. “You get up in the mornings, you open up the tunnels. You have to get the airflow in trying to keep things cool in the summer or from freezing in the winter. Then at night you reverse it.”
The Buffs have mastered the art of growing produce in cold winter weather. But it takes constant vigilance and much work. As the temperature drops in the evening, they add frost covers to the rows of plants. The covers are rated for different temperatures.
“Depending on the temperature, it’s one cover, two covers, three covers,” Ancel says. “You figure your math.”
The soil holds some of the heat from the day. Adding the covers can add as much as 30 degrees to the environment on their own. If necessary small heaters can be plugged in. The temperature has to be constantly monitored, resulting in a lot of sleepless nights.
And then the sun comes up and the covers have to quickly come off. “It can be 85, 90 in here in a hurry,” Ancel says. “There’s no sleeping in.”
As an organic farm, keeping the plants healthy at Turtle Gulch Gardens is also a challenge. They use organic sprays made from herbs or flowers and get help from the good bugs, frogs, lizards and salamanders that frequent the area. The soil is routinely amended with new compost, which these days comes almost exclusively from their own farm.
The result of this attention to detail is healthier produce, the two believe. “In the grocery store, a head of lettuce is a head of lettuce,” Ancel says. “Do I want the one that’s been on a truck for two or three weeks and I’m not sure how it was grown? Or do I want the one that was harvested yesterday and hasn’t been sprayed with chemicals? It’s a different way of doing things.”
Patrons of their store in Bradleyville seem to love the farm-to-table operation, which considering the season might offer melons, strawberries, carrots, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers and the popular sweet turnips. There’s fresh bread, relishes and dressings packaged for Turtle Gulch and locally sourced honey.
And because Bradleyville needed a place for lunch, hot and cold sandwiches, homemade soups and salads were added to the business.
“We’ve watched them grow this farm down here and everything they’ve done,” says customer and friend Frank Thompson of Springfield. “They fight those high tunnels through the winter and that takes work. But they do it. And it pays off.”
His wife, Jayne, adds: “We enjoy the fresh produce. I know it’s fresh. The shelf life is unbelievable. It’s really been a great experience as we’ve watched their dream grow.”
The Turtle Gulch Gardens retail store is located at 25862 State Highway 76 in Bradleyville. It’s open Tuesday through Saturday. For more information you can call 417-543-8970, visit turtlegulchgardens.com or find them on Facebook.