Motta Family Farms was once famous for its garlic. Started in 1968 by brothers Dominick and Ambrose Motta, the pair operated 90 acres in Layton for more than 40 years, growing onions, peppers, garlic, cabbage, lettuces, and more in an area now buzzing with development. “I remember weeding and thinning onions, it was all hand harvested,” said Laurie Eccleston, one of Dominick’s three daughters. When Laurie and the other Motta children inherited the land, the sisters and their three cousins discussed what the future of Motta Family Farms would look like.  “None of us farm, but we wanted to honor what our parents did,” Laurie said. Their decision to keep ten acres of land in agriculture opened the door for a new generation of farmers to continue the legacy.

Putting the Pieces in Place

The initial setup for the Motta brothers was earthen ditches. Assistance from the Soil Conservation Service, NRCS’ precursor, helped install cement lining and siphon tubes in the 1970s. Fifty years later, Laurie reached out to NRCS for help replacing the flood irrigation with a drip system to meet the new needs of the operation. “The irrigation system we put in has enormous amounts of redundancy in it,” said NRCS Conservation Planner Corey Schellenger, “It had to be able to irrigate ten acres of drip at one time, and also one row at a time.” Water utilized from three different sources; a well, secondary irrigation water, and culinary water flow into a filter station where a variable frequency drive device allows the pump to run slower or faster depending on the demands in the field. Assistance from the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food’s Agricultural Water Optimization Program helped fund the irrigation system.

Walking past rows of hot peppers, rhubarb and leafy greens, Laurie stoops over a crop of carrots and pushes down on one of the tops before popping a 9-inch carrot from the ground. “Look at that! My parents never did carrots, so I never got the joy of this,” Laurie said, smiling as she brushed off the soil. It’s a trick she’s learned from the urban farmers now leasing land on her family’s farm.

An Opportunity to Grow

Tyler  Montague, founder and farmer of Keep It Real Vegetables, is one of three urban farmers currently farming on the property. Prior to moving his location to Layton, he had operated up to 13 micro farms in backyards or unutilized spaces across Salt Lake City. “I leased a plot from the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) for several years, just kind of piecing a farm together out of any land I could find,” Tyler said. A micro farm in Amy Motta’s backyard in Sugarhouse, one of Laurie’s sisters, was how he first connected to the Motta family. When Amy invited Tyler to check out what they were trying to build for urban farmers in Layton, he was blown away. “There’s not going to be an opportunity like that for me to get that amount of land with that infrastructure this close to my clients,” he said. 

Tyler now grows vegetables and cut flowers on three acres of the property, employing seasonal and full-time employees. Farming on the Motta family’s land has also opened eligibility opportunities through NRCS that Tyler and the other growers didn’t have before. Currently he has a Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) contract with NRCS focused on cover crops for two of the acres. Jaleigh Jensen, another farmer leasing half an acre for vegetables and cut flowers, is participating in both CSP and the Regenerative Pilot Program (RPP) with NRCS to test the soil and monitor irrigation requirements. “This is my second year on this space, this little plot, and we’re so grateful for the Mottas letting us kind of have a new life out here,” Jaleigh said. 

Facilities provided to the farmers on the property include a building with a 20-by-40-foot cooler to safely store produce, and a small house Laurie and her husband Joey renovated for them to rest during the day. Walking into the home, signs and other knickknacks Laurie and her sister Amy thrifted from area stores now decorate the space. One wall in the small living room displays pictures of Dominick and Ambrose Motta, other members of the Motta family, and their new generation of urban farmers. Next to the photos hangs a 40-year-old braid of Motta garlic. Since bringing farmers back onto the land, the garlic has also returned thanks to a nearby urban grower who had originally purchased the garlic decades ago from the Motta family. 

Laurie initially saw herself as a landowner without farmers looking for farmers without land, with the goal of bringing in a new generation to carry on the community and conservation built by her father and uncle. “They were good stewards of the land, with good relationships to the people they sold to,” Laurie said, “I think they would be proud of us.” Looking ahead, Laurie hopes to bring farm-to-table dinners and educational opportunities to the farm as well.