Spendlove Vegetable Ranch

In mid-June 2026 the Spendlove Vegetable Ranch table at the Hurricane Utah Farmers Market held beets, pork, and onions. The ranch gives the market’s place and hours as Hurricane City Leisure & Recreation, 63 South 100 West, every Saturday from March through November, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The pork was new that season. At the start of June, Jeff Spendlove and Loni mixed a custom spice blend to take to the butcher with the ranch’s first bunch of butcher hogs. Every whole hog had been sold ahead. A day later the ranch posted that the freezer was full: ground pork, breakfast sausage, fresh side pork, chops, fresh ham steaks, spare ribs, and roasts. When Jeff and Annie took a trip that week, Kaci worked the market table with the produce, eggs, and pork. Earlier posts that spring offered California citrus (“No avocados this time sorry”), eight castrated piglets at $150 each, and three lambs, “two girls and a boy,” still “on the bucket” at $45 apiece.

Thirty acres on 2000 South

The farm lies at 1260 East 2000 South in Apple Valley, a Washington County town of about 950 residents some 30 miles east of St. George. The ranch’s Facebook page describes a beef operation with a market garden beside it. The state agritourism directory lists in-season produce, eggs, home-bottled goods, and locally raised meats. The town’s business directory gives the ranch a single line: “Locally Grown Fruits, Vegetables, and Meats. Farmers Market and U-Pick.”

The online shop shows the range. It lists collards, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, green cabbage by the pound, garlic, radishes, green onions, extra-large zucchini, and tomatoes by the case. It sells chicken eggs, whole chickens, and lamb heart, liver, and kidneys. It also sells live stock: weaned lambs, a male baby goat, and a potbelly pig. One listing, “Feed the Cows,” runs from $10 to $100. Another is a two-day homesteading class in hog butchering.

The ranch’s pages describe a full visiting program:

• U-Pick gardens of vegetables and herbs, open in summer.
• A petting zoo of goats, sheep, chickens, and rabbits.
• Baby Animal Days, with baby goats, lambs, and chicks to hold and feed.
• Farm-to-table meals served at the ranch in season.
• Guided tours for school groups and families, which the ranch says cover its practices, the history of the land, and the family’s story.
• Classes in canning, gardening, butchering, and animal husbandry.

Tours and workshops are arranged by calling ahead. The activities page also announced a self-serve farm stand opening in spring 2025. No page in the record confirms that it opened.

The ranch is owned and run by Jeff and Annie Spendlove with their 10 children. Their own account puts the whole family “out in the fields, tending animals, picking produce, canning jams.”

The summer the hens went

The ranch’s posts through the summer of 2026 tell of a change. On June 13: “It’s time to say good bye to our hens for now.” On July 21 the ranch posted a video titled “Why are we moving and other questions we have been asked.” The next day it had “about 25 chickens still to gift to a new homestead.” On August 14 it posted four lines:

The animals are gone, The fields are over grown, This season has come to an end, As a new one begins…

Eight days later: “After fixing yet more tires we finally got to show the kids our new home.” The posts that followed describe an auction with the children (“It’s been a while since I’ve heard an auctioneer that smooth”), a fence going up because “we are getting some sheep,” a farm stand found “near our house,” and, late in September, a pantry as “our first project room.” None of the posts names the new place.

The ranch’s website still lists the farm as open Saturdays from 9 to 1, with the Hurricane market schedule beside it. It also notes that hours vary for U-Pick and events, and asks visitors to check social media or call before coming.

From Texas to the Hurricane market

Annie Spendlove dreamed of owning a farm from the time she was small, according to the ranch’s own telling. Jeff is a southern Utah native who grew up farming, and Annie grew up in the same region. The couple have farmed together since 2000. Shortly after they married they moved to Texas and farmed there for many years. Annie kept her own booth at farmers markets there for five years.

They came home to southern Utah in 2020. A St. George News article of August 2022 says they moved to Hurricane; the ranch’s pages place the farm in Apple Valley. That first year Annie found no local market where her family could sell what it grew. She called the Hurricane Recreation Center to ask about starting one and was put in touch with Andrea Wittwer. The two opened the Hurricane Farmers Market in 2020. The ranch opened in the spring of 2021.

Wittwer ran the market for its first year and a half. As her work at the recreation center became more nearly full time, Annie took over in January 2022, in time for that season. The 2022 article describes a Saturday market running May to October with 18 to 20 vendors a week. Artisans were held to a third of the stalls. “We wanted to base our market on more of the farmers markets that are more food and more farmers, which is why we limit our artisans,” Annie Spendlove said.

Ben Scow, the USU Extension agriculture agent for Washington County, taught free backyard farming and gardening classes once or twice a month in the Zion Room. He opened an outside door onto the market and taught pruning, composting, and pest control. Becky Wood served as on-site manager.

The market marked its second anniversary on August 20, 2022. Vendors donated items worth their usual fee, and drawings for prize baskets were held every half hour. The season closed with a Halloween market, with trick-or-treating and a costume parade. “Our ranch gives us an opportunity to have a lifestyle where we are with our kids,” Annie said that summer.

Homestead pigs

In December 2024 Apple Valley took up a proposed ordinance on pigs. The town did not allow them, though many residents kept them on agricultural land. The draft would have allowed one pig per acre on agricultural lots, up to 15, and as many as 40 with a conditional use permit. A public hearing was set for January 8 and a Town Council vote for January 15.

The Spendloves spoke for it. “I don’t want people to have to go to the government to get permission to have to grow food for their families,” Annie said. “I want homestead pigs. That’s what I’m pushing for.”

A neighbor, Garth Hood, objected: “They smell.” Jeff answered the point directly. “There is a lot of misconception that pigs have to stink. The big commercial operations — yeah, they stink. But the small family that has one or two pigs, or even 20 or 30 pigs, doesn’t stink.”