Selling Christmas trees only, Carver Farms ends years of U-pick harvests that drew generations

Jo Carver cultivated time on a tractor, either working the fields or pulling a wagon filled with kids on farm tours. At harvests, she’d share tips to cook or preserve produce with customers of U-pick at Carver Farms.

Her husband, Marv Carver, 82, did the mechanic work to keep farm equipment going and guided people to fields with strawberries, pumpkins, corn or – at one time – up to about 24 different crops.

For years, families took home Carver Farms-labeled recipes for making treats such as pumpkin ribbon bread. The Carvers also held free corn feeds to thank regular patrons.

“Those were the good times,” said Jo Carver, 80. “You just don’t have the energy anymore.”

After 45 years farming in the Newman Lake area, the Carvers have decided they’re done with harvests and officially retired in June. However, the farm still will continue to sell Christmas trees, a venture started by son Scott Carver and his wife, Tamryn.

In recent years as the elder Carvers semiretired, the family consolidated to open the farm only for Christmas trees, U-pick strawberries and a fall season of weekend activities. But this October, the fields off of Idaho Road sit idle and quiet against normally robust use with a corn maze and families picking pumpkins.

Both full-time educators, Scott Carver and his wife have helped his parents on the farm, but he said now is a time for the family to focus on a smaller portion of the farm, where they grow Christmas trees that were first sold in 2009.

The family is set on ensuring that the farm’s other acreage remains in agricultural uses through lease arrangements, he said.

“Christmas trees are kind of our night job,” said Scott Carver, as he and his family juggle work and family. He teaches horticulture at Spokane Valley High School, and Tamryn is Central Valley High School’s choir director. They have a daughter, Sylvie, 15, and son, Joel, 14.

“The other great thing about that is the farm is going to continue to be farmed, in Christmas trees and likely in alfalfa. One of the local farmers is looking at leasing the land for the alfalfa.”

Another portion of land is scheduled to be used for bluegrass seed growing research, he said. The farm was originally a Kentucky bluegrass operation.

However, he said the family also is aware and grateful that generations of families have visited Carver Farms as a tradition – sometimes with everyone from grandparents to toddlers to pick produce – and with the changes, that’s also ending.

His parents etched out the popular U-pick destination, but that land use wasn’t their original intention.

His dad was a Central Valley elementary teacher, but the couple also owned a nursery and mail-order catalog in the 1970s. They needed more land and took a leap in 1977 to buy 22 acres in Newman Lake, while selling their house and 10 acres near Arbor Crest Winery. They started out on the farm in a single-wide trailer.

“They specialized in dwarf conifers that would grow at high elevation,” Scott Carver said. “They bought the land in Newman Lake to expand the nursery, and then they wanted to generate some income from the land that was sitting idle, so they planted strawberries probably by 1978. That kind of took off, and they rolled with it.”

By 1992, they were able to buy adjacent land they’d leased when it became available for sale, which brought the farm to about 120 acres.

The expansion also came by chance, because the larger property was slated to be sold to a California horse rancher, but that sale fell through. “Mom and Dad had talked to the owner, who originally owned the 22 acres, and my parents told him, ‘We’d be interested in buying it.’ The owner didn’t know that. He said, ‘Oh, you would?’

“I don’t know that they necessarily moved out there to become a U-pick vegetable farm. They were kind of accidental farmers. Apparently, there was a need and want for fresh vegetables and fruit in the valley as a U-pick. That business grew, so they kind of stepped away from the nursery.”

The Carvers began to grow more crops in the 1990s, and people started coming to the farm regularly to pick produce – mainly from Spokane Valley and North Idaho. Early on, his dad sold pumpkins to grocery stores such as Rosauers, until U-pick demand grew.

Scott Carver said while growing up he’d go out with his dad in the early mornings to pick gladiolus and deliver them to downtown flower wholesalers.

Added to the strawberries and pumpkins were crops such as squash, cucumbers, rhubarb, green beans, garlic, corn and onions. As the farm’s variety of fresh pickings grew, so did the Spokane Valley’s population.

“It seemed like at the same time the Spokane Valley was expanding east, and we watched Coeur d’Alene and Spokane Valley kind of grow together, so to speak. Everyone coming out continued to support the farm on so many levels. They loved to pick their own vegetables.”

By the early 1990s, school tours and buses parked on-site also became a norm. Carver said his parents thought of that because of their grounding as educators. Marv taught for about 16 years before farming, and Jo completed teacher training but focused on their young children.

“They both liked kids, so they thought, maybe we can show kids where food comes from and give them tours,” he said. “I think mom contacted elementary schools and said, ‘We’re offering tours and we’ll tell the children about farming, give educational talks, show them how food is grown.’ ”

Usually, they’d send kids home with a pumpkin to share.

Carver has many memories from when he and his older brother Mike grew up on the farm.

“We both spent a lot of time on a tractor, and a lot of time on the end of a hoe, that’s for sure. We did a lot of weeding by hand.”

For his parents’ idea to host free all-you-can-eat corn feeds, the family set out picnic tables. “We would go out and pick the corn, and all I did was shuck corn. I became a professional corn-shucker. It must have been middle school. Those were some really good times.”

The farm seasonally employed people who were often neighbors. Scott Carver’s friends were among them. They’d head out at 7 a.m. to change irrigation hand lines, then work in the fields until noon. They’d pull weeds, pick some produce for bins and directed cars in the parking lot. The irrigation lines got changed again at 7 p.m., for work that sometimes went until dark.

“The worst job was pulling onions in the fall,” he said. “You cannot get the smell of onions off your hands. Of course, we didn’t wear gloves.”

He, his brother and friends also pulled garlic, a more fun task, so it could be stored in a greenhouse until ready to sell.

Carver said his parents enjoyed hosting people on the farm.

“For mom, one of her favorite things was connecting with people year after year,” he said. “She always enjoyed connecting with people who valued coming out to the farm, canning and preserving all this fresh food, because she valued that. She had a connection with almost every person who came out to the farm. Yet on the flip side, she also loved being in the field on the tractor.”

He also thinks his parents started to realize how many families viewed trips to the farm as tradition after they recognized children growing up, and then that group as young adults started bringing their kids.

“That told them that those families valued fresh fruits and vegetables and having an experience on the farm. They wanted to share that with their kids.”

The Carvers will keep the invitation open for the holiday season, to reserve times for U-cut trees. “We will reopen at the end of November and put the word out. It’s important to us that we keep the communication open between us and quite frankly the community that has supported us for 45 years.”