FREMONT COUNTY—A meadowlark fills the air with its melody, singing above the rumble of the nearby Popo Agie River. In a half-acre plot surrounded by a tall deer fence, Ethan Page orchestrates the preparation of several long vegetable beds. Page, along with Rose Kwasnieski and Samantha Crawford , transplant kale starts, lay drip lines and hand-water baby lettuce and carrots. Under Page’s guidance, the women punch valves in the line and measure out space between seedlings.  Though Page could be mistaken for a farm manager preparing his small operation for the summer season, he is actually a Central Wyoming College farming instructor. “This is a crop production practicum,” he explained. “It spans the growing season, from the start of April to the end of September.”  Students prep soil and plant in the spring, manage weeds as the summer progresses, then harvest vegetables to sell in nearby Lander. The course is offered through the college’s Regenerative Food Systems Program — the only one of its kind in Wyoming.  It’s fitting that college students can study small-scale agriculture in Lander, where the food scene is blossoming with a new class of microproducers and opportunities abound for aspiring farmers. Ripening cherry tomatoes hang inside the greenhouse at Central Wyoming College in Lander. It had snowed just days before, but that didn’t seem to bother the tomatoes. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) The bustling local food commerce harkens back to a century ago, when Lander touted itself as Wyoming’s “Apple City,” a nod to area orchards that produced scores of fruit varieties.   “Historically, the residents of Lander were sustained by small farms,” said Joanne Slingerland, a founding member of the Slow Food Wind River chapter. “But those went away when grocery stores came around.” By 1984, when Slingerland moved to Lander, where her husband’s family operated a ranch in Red Canyon, the concept of local food had largely faded.  A dizzying array of products was now available at the grocery store, and local cattle operations shipped their animals out of county or state for finishing and processing. People grew gardens, she said, but there wasn’t an organized, permanent place to buy or sell local products like milk or eggs.  But in 2008, a handful of locals launched a farmers market. “It was like, one or two tables with some baked goods, maybe a few things people grew in their garden,” Slingerton said.  Nearly 20 years later, the Lander Valley Farmers Market is a summer mainstay. It averaged 19 vendors a week who reported just shy of $100,000 in income in 2020, Market Manager Mercedes Rae said. Last year’s numbers jumped to 27 average weekly vendors, who reported $193,434 in income.  “It’s been amazing to watch,” said Janet Smithson, a farmers market board member who has been involved since the early days.  Deep roots With harsh weather and high elevation, Wyoming is not an ideal place to grow produce. But hardy agrarians have coaxed fruits, vegetables and grains from the soil around Lander for well over a century.  “I think just about everything that could be tried over the years, was, though not all of it worked,” said Lander Pioneer Museum Site Director Randy Wise.  People like Ed Young, an extraordinary cultivator who tended an orchard on land he homesteaded, turned Lander into an agricultural haven in the early 20th century. Young reportedly grew 38 varieties among the 2,000 trees. That’s how the town got its nickname, “Apple City.”  Bella Norton, an employee at Second Street Farm, transplants basil starts in one of the farm’s high tunnels in May 2026. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) Another notable orchard was located where the community college students today learn how to grow vegetables. Started as a homestead, the orchard was one of the state’s first commercial orchards. Lander citizens in 1917 donated it to the University of Wyoming, which devoted the site to agricultural experiments — including growing grains, quinces and apricots. CWC purchased the property from UW in the early 1970’s. Turn-of-the-century farmers also raised turkeys, grew pumpkins and sold honey. “Before the railroad, you had to grow it if you wanted to eat it,” Wise said.  Rail, agricultural industrialization and the advent of the grocery store reshaped food production and distribution, and by the end of the 1900s, Lander residents obtained the bulk of comestibles from store shelves.  Farmers markets popped up over the decades, Wise said. One began in 2007 in a greenhouse parking lot, Smithson said. The Lander Valley Farmers Market became official the next year when it moved into a museum parking lot in Lander.  “It was all, like, little mom-and-pop backyard produce growers,” said Smithson, who ran it for years. A national local food awakening was taking place, she said. But in the early days, Lander sellers were extremely limited by state regulations. “The only things you could basically sell in the market were baked cookies, produce and some crafts.” Curious cows at Second Street Farm near Lander. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) The Wyoming Food Freedom Act of 2015 changed everything. The legislation allows direct sale of nearly all homemade food and produce to “informed end consumers.” That freed vendors from impediments like licensing regulations that advocates said weren’t feasible for small producers.  Soon, the market became a hub for locally produced tortillas and macaroons, microgreens and jams, lamb, eggs and apples. It still functions as a small-business incubator and a community gathering place, Smithson said. The market is setting up systems so recipients of the federal supplemental nutrition programs commonly known as SNAP and WIC can use benefits to buy food at the market.  “We make the community a more liveable place,” Smithson said.  Joanne Slingerland and Meadowlark Market Manager Kylee Mecham smile in front of shelves of salsas, drinking shrubs, jams, hot sauces and spices in the market, where shoppers can also find local breads, meats and raw milk. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) With the market’s popularity and an increasing demand for local products, Slingerland and others began in 2023 to establish a brick-and-mortar store for local food — a kind of year-round farmers market that cuts out some of the work for producers. Meadowlark Market opened in 2024 in a main street space that formerly held a smoothie shop. Today, Meadowlark works with more than 120 vendors. They range from a Lander sauerkraut producer to a grain company in Ralston and a vegetable farmer in Cody. For sale are tubs of beef tallow, quail eggs, raw milk, homemade soaps and frozen chickens.   Along with being a pick-up point for orders through the food distributor Eat Wyoming, the market rents out its kitchen for restaurant pop-ups and cooking classes. It recently started hosting free weekly dinners for community members in need.  Microproducers Nick Hunkerstorm is among Meadowlark’s most active vendors. He sells microgreens and edible mushrooms year-round through Uncle Sassy Farm, which he operates from his house.  Hunkerstorm launched Uncle Sassy in 2020, when the stay-at-home dad’s two sons were no longer babies. He started growing edible mushrooms, learning from books and YouTube videos how to cultivate prized varieties like oysters and shitakes. He added microgreens — another nutrient-dense product that can be grown in small spaces year-round — cultivating crops like pea shoots and sunflower sprouts. Nick Hunkerstorm, who sells mushrooms and microgreens in Lander, smiles over a tray of sprouts in his home “microfarm.” (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) Nick Hunkerstorm shows off baby mushrooms just beginning to fruit before returning them to his humidity chamber. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) What began as a direct-to-consumer business, via email and the farmers market, grew as restaurants started placing orders. “It blossomed from there,” Hunkerstorm said. Today, his “microfarm” includes a mist-humidified fruiting chamber, a vat for treating his substrate mixture and an inoculation lab. He still sells at the farmers market, but has phased out individual share deliveries because so many people now buy his products at Meadowlark. “That’s been a boon, for sure,” he said.  Jan Francisco and her husband, a surgeon, had long dreamed of spending a year raising animals and homeschooling their six children. A couple years after they moved to a property near Lander, the COVID-19 pandemic offered that opportunity.  “So we bought a cow in Utah,” she said. Initially, the idea was to produce raw milk for the family. When Meadowlark opened, it gave Francisco a way to sell excess milk. The demand was enormous. “We were selling out every day,” she said.  Country Meadows Dairy has grown beyond the bounds of what Francisco ever envisioned. With three milking cows and two calves, the operation now produces about seven gallons a day, and recently became the first Wyoming dairy to be listed with the national Raw Milk Institute — a feat achieved by meeting testing and safety standards.  A Jersey milking cow and her calf at the Francisco family farm near Lander in May 2026. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) Though a newcomer to Lander’s food scene, Francisco said she loves the flexibility, the support and the quality. “There’s so much opportunity because of the Food Freedom Act,” she said. “Anyone can sell. It’s so cool.” Next generation  Between the open sky and ripe tomatoes and sweet terroir of local dirt, it’s easy to idealize farming. In reality, the lifestyle entails an enormous amount of work and a schedule that allows little to no time off.  Back at the Central Wyoming College farm, instructor Page said he tries to convey the full story. For some students, “it’s a little bit of a reality check.” Still, there are early-season mornings like that one in May, with the sun spreading a welcome warmth and hardly a weed in sight.  Lettuce grows from a vertical wall inside the Central Wyoming College’s hydroponic Freight Farm — a high-tech growing facility located in a shipping container — in Lander in May 2026. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) And with new technology like the college’s Freight Farm — a high-tech hydroponic growing facility in a shipping container — it’s easier than ever to teach aspiring growers how to farm without as much physical toil.  For those who genuinely want to farm full time, it’s a labor of love. That’s what fuels Pat and Bailey Brennan, operators of Second Street Farm, a 74-acre vegetable, flower and cattle operation on the outskirts of Lander. What started with a flock of turkeys in 2019 has grown into one of the most significant suppliers of farmers market veggies in the region. And they still can’t meet demand, Pat Brennan said recently after pitching hay to his Irish Dexter cows. Despite the taxing schedule, he said, “this is our passion.”  “It helps that it’s what we really want to be doing,” Bailey Brennan added. “And we’re stubborn.” This story was published in collaboration with The Daily Yonder, a national newsroom covering rural people and places. 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