photo by brian goddard

Along one of the busiest freeways in the Valley sits one of the best patches of produce. But its humble caretaker keeps a lid on it.

Every week thousands of motorists zoom past a fantastic farm in Scottsdale and have no idea it’s there. The owner, Ken Singh, is a friendly man, but he prefers they keep on driving. (If he spends too much time visiting, he isn’t farming, which throws his life  out of balance.)
Regardless, people flock to him, seeking advice from the charismatic man with the white beard and sparkling eyes.
Singh, who would not reveal his age, owns a 20-acre organic farm a stone’s throw from Loop 101 and Thomas Road, close to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation. Singh says that when he bought the plot in 2002, it had the worst dirt he’d seen in a lifetime of farming.
He cleaned up garbage, planted hundreds of trees of many varieties and slowly changed the hard-packed soil to a rich, airy earth that now supplies Phoenix chefs with dozens of types of baby lettuce, tomatoes, chili peppers, squash, herbs, onions and more.
The property is a forest farm of sorts and has about a dozen “rooms” bordered by trees, bushes, ditches and rustic barricades made of stumps or loose fencing. The farm feels 20 degrees cooler than its surroundings. Benches, chairs and structures are sprinkled throughout. 
Singh was raised in India, Canada and Arizona and wants his soil to be as fertile as when American Indians farmed the land. In honor of that history, Singh allows his Indian neighbors to pick anything they want for free. He gives a lot of things away, including advice. Singh doesn’t advertise himself or his produce, and yet, word of his talent has spread like wildfire anyway.