Sustainable Agriculture
One great farming writer has commented that every major innovation in agriculture came, not from farmers,
but from urban gardeners. And that is where the agricultural plan of Agarita Creek Farms came from. While
in Houston, Tom learned much of heirloom plants, upon pollinated vegetables, and herbs.
We are still, at this point, more gardeners than farmers. And that is planned to continue. If you have read
our mission statement, you know we believe that small farmers have no business growing commodity crops. The
window of opportunity for small farmers, we believe, is in the "local foods" movement. We believe that small
farmers should grow what their local customers want, and to develop relationships with them, through farmer's
markets, customers who actually buy from the farm, and CSA's.
We have two gardens: a small test garden that was formerly our family garden and
a second two acre garden for far larger scale production. As we evolve, we may
or may not continue large scale gardening. In order for us to be able to
increase will depend on growing our heritage livestock business.
Farming and gardening is difficult in our country and, thus far, the financial
rewards bear little resemblance to our level of effort. No matter what happens
though, we will continue gardening to fee ourselves, our guests, and our family
and friends, and as an educational resource for all who visit our farm and
ranch.
This year, we are growing lettuces, spinach, radishes, carrots, onions, potatoes, peas, beans,
Chinese greens and
vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, watermelon, other melons, and herbs. We have a small number of fruit
trees, which will, of course, grow as we expand to a large orchard. We will grow berries and grapes in the future.
We have a fair number of producing pecan trees, which we will expand.
We also grow most of our own livestock feed, and plan to expand this operation from just coastal hay to a more
healthy and complete mix for our sheep, cattle, and deer. This is expensive, and will be somewhat trial and error
(no one here is doing pasture mixes; we will be pioneers). It may take us a while to get this right, but we will.ight, but we will.
We will initially start selling our produce to our guests, and at farmers markets. We plan to form a CSA in
2010 or 2011. Please stay tuned.