Madsnacks Produce is reinventing what it means to farm in Park City
Putting the 'culture' back in agriculture
Summer/Fall 2024
Written By: Ashley Brown | Images: Deborah DeKoff
During the Park City Farmer’s Market season, the Madsnacks Produce stand overflows with Oakley-grown abundance — crisp lettuce, kale, and cabbage, glowing radishes, carrots, and turnips, and juicy tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Amidst the cornucopia, you’ll find Madison and Chloe Goodman, usually accompanied by their two daughters, Stella, age 3, and Sarah, age 2.
When Chloe and Madison met, their lives revolved around outdoor adventure, specifically rock climbing. “Thanks to Madison, we played a lot. We lived in the car for a few years. And we climbed. That was the priority,” Chloe remembers. The idea to farm and sell produce sprouted from this recreation-focused era. And in 2018, Madsnacks Produce was born.
To start, Madison and Chloe leased plots of land in Salt Lake City, sold their produce to a handful of chefs and ran a stand at Wheeler Farm Farmer’s Market.
“We were both working full-time jobs on top of the farm, at the time. The farm did not make any money the first year or two, but we were psyched,” Chloe explains. Their decision to move the farm from Salt Lake City to Oakley felt like coming home. “We always knew we wanted to move out of the city. Madison is from Pennsylvania. He grew up in a true Amish farming community [his family is not Amish]. I’m from Texas. I also grew up in a small town.”
The transition from full-time employees to full-time farmers required a lot of grit and persistence. “We knew when we moved out to Oakley that I had to keep my job,” Chloe says, while explaining how they operated Madsnacks the first couple of years. “It was really hard. We bought this house, then both of our cars died. And I found out that I was pregnant within a month.”
Starting a family is a long-time dream for Madison and Chloe, so welcoming Stella into their life was a joy. However, the first couple of years required some serious hustle. “I had to bring a newborn to the market every week because I had nobody to watch her. It was freaking awesome. We were living the dream,” Madison laughs, and Chloe retorts, “We were not living the dream.”
At least, not yet.
Madison grew up on a homestead with a robust vegetable garden and a drove of pigs, so you’d assume he would have learned how to run a farm and grow food. But according to Madison, “I didn’t carry any knowledge from when I was a kid because I hated snapping green beans on the porch and weeding the tomatoes. … I taught myself when I was stuck in Alaska on a glacier … I taught myself via books and YouTube.”
In fact, raising Stella and Sarah without family nearby and the steep learning curve of farming almost caused the Goodman family to relocate. During a trip to Pennsylvania to see family, Madison’s dad asked him what it would take to keep them in Oakley. Madison answered, “There’s this neighbor. We’ve never talked to them, but they own 10 acres behind us. If they gave us the 10 acres, we would stay.” Within a month of listing their house, Madison says the neighbor knocked on their front door and said, “Hey, I have 10 acres that you can grow on.”
“They are like family now,” Chloe says. “They are such good people and so excited about what we are doing. We are very lucky.”
The miraculous gift of land gave the family a renewed focus and vision for the farm. “We’ve taken the word ‘agriculture’ and gotten rid of ‘culture’ — but without our culture, our community, our farm is nothing,” Madison says.
On the Goodman farm, soil health is second only to community, and Madsnacks Produce is in the process of earning a USDA Organic certification. The accreditation is more than a title for Madison and Chloe; it’s a farming method.
“Organic is always soil focused,” Madison explains. One of their soil-enriching practices, compost tea, is “water with a bag of compost in a cheesecloth. When you agitate the water, the aerating bubbles pull nutrients into the water. Then we spray it on the soil or the plants. We spray compost tea, seaweed, kelp and fish poop.”
In addition to soil-enriching practices like compost tea, crop rotation and cover crops, the Goodman family relies on biodynamic farming techniques. Biodynamics was created by Rudolf Steiner in 1924 during the explosion of chemical fertilizers. “He gave farmers simple directions on how to work with the stars and the spiritual world, and how to create a holistic experience throughout a farm,” Madison says.
Some biodynamic practices sound mystical, like putting lactating cow manure into a horn and burying it for six months before digging it out and spraying it on the land. But Madison says the data backs up the biodynamic techniques. “Even when compared to organic soils, most biodynamic soils are much higher in microbiology and have a healthier humus layer.”
The Goodman farm is a complete, living organism and their produce is proof of their success. “People often say, ‘Small farms are going to change the world.’ I don’t think small-farm farmers can change the world, I think we can change our community,” Madison states. “It boils down to the simple things in life — that you don’t need anything to make you happy.” Chloe expounds, “It’s about going back to the basics. Cutting out the things we thought we needed that we realized we don’t … We are reinventing what it means to be a farmer, have a family and do it all at the same time.”
