The corner of Cedar Valley where Red Acre Farm CSA sits was once a dusty backroad patch that a ten-year-old girl treated like a hundred acres. "We could walk for what felt like miles without seeing a single house," Sara Patterson told KSL of the family's arrival in 2005. On October 10, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., that same ground will be decked out for fall, and anyone who shows up can pick a pumpkin for carving, eating, or decorating, or grab some squash for the table, while the farm fries up apple cider donuts and pours hot apple cider. There is story time with a live scarecrow. There is no admission fee, and by the farm's account, there never has been.
The story of how a Los Angeles family ended up growing year-round at 5,900 feet in southern Utah's red dirt begins with an escape. Lynn and Symbria Patterson left what the farm's own history describes as the crime, stress, traffic, and endless cacophony of modern life that Los Angeles had become, arriving in Cedar City in 2005 with no long-term plans to stay. Their youngest daughter, Sara, was ten. She wanted animals, dirt under her nails, and plants in her garden. She and her dad planted too early that first year and everything froze. She planted again anyway.
For the next two years Sara tended laying hens, sold eggs, and grew enough to sell to friends and neighbors. A family friend had just started a community-supported agriculture farm, and Sara, then fourteen, was captivated by the model in which locals pay upfront before the harvest, share some of the risk, and enjoy the bounty. She marketed, sold, and traded for her first four shares and launched her own farming enterprise. Her mother, Symbria, watched what she assumed was a hobby. "Sara is kind of unique, and we knew she needed to live on an open space," Symbria told KSL. Then Sara announced she had sold shares, and her parents understood it was more than a pastime.
The name she chose carries three meanings at once. Red Acre honors her grandpa, Red Wright, who grew up on a farm; the red dirt of southern Utah; and the classic comedy Green Acres, which the Pattersons, by their own admission, resembled more than they wanted to admit. By the next summer Symbria had joined full-time. Partnering with a family friend who owned high tunnels, they began growing crops year-round. When Sara produced more than her CSA members could eat, she started selling at farmers' markets and founded a weekday, year-round market in Cedar City. At sixteen, her farm had expanded enough that she bought the adjoining acre. A farm stand followed. Before long they were selling at four farmers' markets and feeding 85 shareholders weekly.
What happened next turned a teenage farming project into something closer to a movement. As Sara worked to raise food for her community, she ran into what the farm describes as cumbersome and overreaching laws restricting her and other agrarian entrepreneurs. Mother and daughter became advocates, and according to KSL they helped pass more than twenty supportive bills in Utah. The Solari Food Series, which interviewed the pair, framed their work bluntly: in Utah, the mother-daughter team led a revolution over five years in passing food and agricultural laws, navigating opposition from agribusiness and state regulators along the way. The farm today produces raw milk, meat, and vegetables, and it has become, in the words of Red Acre Center, a year-round source for local good food, a place to visit and gather for events, and a peaceful spot to commune with the sun and the soil.
The land itself is a character in the story. Red Acre Farm CSA grows year-round at 5,900 feet in the pastoral Cedar Valley, and it holds CCOF Certified Organic, Real Organic Certified, and biodynamic status. Biodynamic farming treats the farm as a single self-sustaining organism, a philosophy that sits comfortably alongside a business built on neighbors buying shares before the first seed goes in the ground. The farm's stated purpose is to grow, raise, and cook food that sustains the land, the community, and the soul, and its events calendar moves deliberately through the seasons, welcoming babies in spring, tasting the harvest in fall, and settling into the quiet of winter.
That reputation has traveled beyond Iron County. Red Acre Farm was the only southern Utah location to make ABC4's list of the top ten pumpkin patches in Utah, compiled from Google Maps reviews, which noted that during October pumpkins are available during open hours at the farm. For a state whose pumpkin patches cluster along the Wasatch Front, a biodynamic CSA in Cedar City earning a spot on that list is a small point of pride.
The October 10 gathering fits the farm's pattern of low-barrier, high-warmth events. Visitors can pick up a pumpkin for carving, eating, or decorating, or choose a squash to take home. The farm will be frying apple cider donuts on site and serving hot apple cider, and there is story time with a live scarecrow, a detail that captures the farm's willingness to be a little theatrical about the season. The event runs 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 2322 W 4375 N in Cedar City. Admission is free, as it always is. For information, call (435) 865-6792 or visit redacrefarmcsa.org.
There is something fitting about a farm named for a grandfather, a color of dirt, and a television comedy about city people stumbling into country life hosting a fall day where a person in a scarecrow costume reads stories to children. The Pattersons came to Cedar City to get out of the city, and two decades later they have built a place that invites everyone else in, at no charge, for cider and donuts and the chance to carry home a pumpkin grown in red dirt at nearly six thousand feet.