Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Plucky local farmers overcome obstacles to deliver their goods

Herbs by Diane

Wade Vandervort

Diane E. Greene holds sunflowers to make a bouquet for a customer at Herbs by Diane garden farm in Boulder City Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021.

Herbs by Diane

From left, Diane E. Greene and volunteers Georgia McClaine and Stephanie Tejada harvest sunflowers to make a bouquet for a customer at Herbs by Diane garden farm in Boulder City Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. Launch slideshow »

Mint and micro broccoli line the garden beds next to the Boulder City home of Diane Greene, owner of Herbs by Diane, the small-scale, year-round business that supplies local produce to restaurants and residents in Las Vegas.

She harvests every day in the summer, trekking to the garden and microgreen-filled greenhouse as early as 6 a.m. to pluck the greens before the summer heat damages the plants.

In the overbearing face of a desert summer, Greene and other farmers have grappled with monsoons and blazing heat atop the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts. The threefold combination has amounted to mixed results for local farmers, whose products feed and fuel the Las Vegas community.

Greene says she sells her herbs and greens to restaurants and casinos, a blow to business early in the pandemic when eateries shut down. She also sells through Garden Farms’ online market — a shift from the in-person ones she used to attend before the pandemic — which contributes to a small portion of her business.

“I thought it would be more popular than it has been,” she said. “But it’s picking up.”

At the virtual market, Greene sells herbs like basil, chives and oregano as well as mixed or individual microgreens, products she said are popular among vegan customers because of the greens’ plant protein.

The microgreens are grown in a neighboring greenhouse, but the other herbs and vegetables thrive in her outdoor garden, which is why an early harvest either by her or her volunteers is essential to keeping her stock up. To provide more protection against the heat, Greene said she may drape the plants with shade cloth, a semi-opaque dark fabric that permits some sunlight while hindering a direct blast.

Greene’s primary issue, however, is finding more workers to assist with the gardens and greenhouse, she said. Though she said she has volunteers who work for food, it has been difficult hiring full-time workers.

Before the pandemic, Greene worked with 10 other employees, many of whom left Las Vegas at the pinnacle of the pandemic due to safety and health concerns, she said. This mirrors a hiring shortage in restaurant workers in April, Greene said, when several owners struggled to keep businesses afloat with so few employees.

“Nobody wants to work,” she said. “It’s just like the restaurants.”

Amanda ​​Christiansen, owner of Cluck It Farm, said she experienced similar troubles when seeking more full-time farmers for her mixed vegetable and egg farm this summer. Some workers would only be available for a few days at a time, while those she hired would fail to show up. More often, however, she said she was not getting any applicants at all.

This summer, she and her husband worked approximately 80 hours per week out of necessity to the farm’s operations, including daily vegetable harvests and maintenance of their Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) program, the singular way the farm sells its products. The farm has one delivery driver, the only other full-time employee on its staff.

Their 13-year-old son, back in school now, assisted full-time in the summer, as did Christiansen’s mother, who now lives in Tennessee.

“Everyone’s completely overworked,” Christiansen said. “That’s not the lifestyle that we ever want to live. We didn’t get into this to live that lifestyle. So we don’t know how long it’s going last. I think that that’s going to be over soon, but for now, we just don’t choose to dwell on it, so we’re going to figure it out, I guess.”

Wendy Wilson, assistant manager of Garden Farms, which hires farm workers and connects them to local farms or private gardens and hosts education programs with nearby elementary schools, said the turnover rate among employees has been increasingly high during the pandemic.

Initially, hiring workers at the start of the pandemic was easy because in March 2020, many residents sought to grow their own vegetables with assistance from Garden Farms’ workers, Wilson said.

But by around January, workers began leaving at a higher rate, approximately every four to six weeks, Wilson said. Out-of-state workers in particular were available for short pockets of time before moving on and seeking federal assistance like unemployment benefits, she said.

“I’m not sure how long this can be sustained for mom-and-pop businesses,” she said. “We’re a pretty small business, and I’m sure a lot of people are feeling the same way.”

Working in the summer heat and on a solo basis can be taxing and isolating, said Sarah Beatty, who started working at Garden Farms in June 2017. She said she suspects workers may not anticipate the unpleasant toll gardening and farming could have — though in the right head space and with an entertaining podcast, work goes by more quickly.

Beatty also said her hourly wage, raised the more she worked, is sufficient in sustaining her life in Las Vegas. However, her savings from a previous job helped her through her starting salary, which was $10 per hour, she said.

“When I first started in the middle of summer, I did not understand what I was signing up for,” she said. “I don’t know what anybody’s financial situation is or if it just wasn’t enough money. … My guess is, if it’s the warm season, it’s because it’s hot.”

Rare, splintering rain fell over Las Vegas in mid-July, causing floods and waste pollution across the city. Myrene Delos Angeles, co-owner of Sundown Mushrooms, said rainfall is not as much a concern for their indoor mushroom farm, which grows varieties like oyster, piopino and chestnut depending on the season.

Sundown Mushrooms received its business license during the pandemic, Delos Angeles said. She and her partner — both of whom temporarily lost their jobs in a restaurant and casino, respectively, early in the pandemic — directed their unemployment insurance toward the business and started running it together full time in December.

Seeking more environmentally conscious additions as Sundown grows, Delos Angeles said that in the future, she will collect water from heavy rains to assist in the cool, damp atmosphere mushrooms thrive in.

“The drought is really concerning for us, not just for our farm, but just the town in general,” she said. “It doesn’t really affect us that much because mushrooms don’t require a lot of water compared to our fellow farms that grow vegetables. … In that regard, it hasn’t really affected our business that much but affected in a way of just a concern for the future of our water source.”

Sarah Stallard, farm manager of Las Vegas Livestock, said the wet weather brings enjoyment for the pigs she cares for on her farm, who love to roll around the muddy puddles after rainfall.

While flooding does occur, the pig pens have a drainage system that limits trapped moisture, she said. And though rainy days are play time for the pigs, wet weather is more difficult to manage because it is harder to keep the animals dry and ward off bacteria.

But a lack of rain does not mean devastation for the farm either, Stallard said. The pigs are fed with food waste from local restaurants and casinos rather than home-grown grain. Using a food source already in existence rather than one that requires water to be produced makes Stallard feel less concerned about the drought, she said.

“We’re trying to actually get a negative carbon footprint,” she said. “Pigs can eat things that aren’t fit for human consumption, and we cook it to get rid of bacteria, so we’re able to take a lot of different products, and that really allows us to not be affected by drought as much. So we’re pretty fortunate in that way.”

Although the restaurants and casinos that supplied them with food scraps closed in March 2020, Stallard said the school districts, which also closed due to COVID-19, provided them food the kids would not eat. Now, Stallard said she is freezing and building up the farm’s feed stock.

“I love that we are working on a sustainable sector,” she said. “I always read all the news about global warming. It’s nice to know that we’re trying to do something about it.”