Meet Heidi and Bryce Hagen | Owners, Hagen Farms

We had the good fortune of connecting with Heidi and Bryce Hagen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Heidi and Bryce, Let’s talk about principles and values – what matters to you most?
We started Hagen Farms as a family project. We wanted our children to know the value of work and how to earn their own money. They all helped plant the citrus trees and helped care for them. In the beginning, we had the kids pick the fruit to sell to family and friends so they could earn their own money. Now that we have grown and the kids have grown, they help with sales, marketing, and all aspects of our family business. We also think it is important for people to know where their food comes from. We love having our children teach visitors about citrus and how it is produced.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
We are originally from Southern California. In late 2010 Bryce was offered a transfer for his career as a Mechanical Engineer to Mesa, AZ. We felt that this was a wonderful opportunity for our family. We were excited to get some land and space for our children to run around and learn. After the purchase of our property and moving to Queen Creek, we started to have ideas for farming our property. Hagen Farms is a family farm in Queen Creek, Arizona. Bryce and I, Heidi Hagen, and our 5 children started Hagen Farms in 2011. We started with a double-wide and 5.5 acres of desert. We as a family worked together to create Hagen Farms. We cleared the desert and planted over 200 citrus trees. Bryce and Heidi designed their home and together built it themselves with the help of their children. Our children have learned all about plumbing tile work, insulation, and painting a house. We now have a beautiful Victorian farmhouse and classic red barn ( that we also built ourselves).
When our small citrus trees started to produce fruit, our kids would pick and bag the fruit to sell to friends and family. They learned the value of work, and how they could earn their own money for their extracurricular activities. It was a great little family endeavor.
When the trees started to get bigger, and the kids were bigger too, we started to brainstorm ideas on how to market our family farm. We first started with local farmers’ markets. That was a lot of work with little success. We then discovered that winter visitors had the most interest is coming to our orchard and learning about the citrus we grew. We have met so many interesting people.
When 2020 hit, all the winter visitors left quickly and that fruit season ended quickly, with nobody wanting to visit us. With the January 2021 season about to start, our family brainstormed again and came up with the idea of hosting a U-pick. We had plenty of space for social distancing and people were eager to get outside. Our first U-pick day was a huge success.
We have continued to enjoy sharing our family farm and our family-grown citrus with the community and visitors to Arizona. We have met people from all over the world! Hagen Farms offers U-pick citrus during the winter and early spring and pre-bagged citrus is available for purchase. We also do small tours and educational presentations about farming and citrus in Arizona. We love sharing our story and our sweet citrus with the world.

Lessons that we have learned are that family is most important and that being willing to adjust your plans and goals is important.
Covid was a huge challenge to the sale of our fruit, but we adjusted and are doing great!
We love it when people as if we have oranges! It is so fun to tell them about all the different varieties we grow here! We currently grow, AZ Sweets, Kinnows, Tangos, Tangelos, Pink Grapefruit, Limes, sour oranges, golden nuggets, and Lemons.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We are all about family. We could not have our success without the love and support of our Family! A big thank you to our parents, The Hagens, and The Ballentines, for their support.

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/hagen-farms/types-of-citrus?authuser=0

Instagram: @hagen_farms

Facebook: Hagen Farms

Other: TikTok @hagenfarms