Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas: Profiles of Organic Farmers and Ranchers Across the State

by Pamela Walker & Linda Walsh
Texas A&M University Press, 184 pp., $23

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve visited a farmers’ market. Maybe you’re a regular and depend on market vendors for weekly vegetables, fruit, meat, and cheese. Or perhaps you’re a subscriber to a community-supported agriculture endeavor, paying a farm up front for a season’s worth of fresh produce. You might have wondered about the folks on the other side of the vendors’ tables – who they are, what their lives are like. What were their paths to living on small farms, following organic practices? Does farming support their families? Is it satisfying, difficult, discouraging? Does it make them happy?

Walker and Walsh’s book of essays and photos answers many such questions. It consists of in-depth profiles of 11 successful farm families around Texas, several in the Austin area. Working in tandem, the writer and photographer spent three years visiting farms, documenting farmers’ lives, and listening to their stories. From inland shrimp farmers in the Permian Basin to organic citrus growers in the Rio Grande Valley, the subjects are disarmingly candid about finances, frustrations, and challenges, as well as dreams, plans, and relationships with their customers, their animals, and the land.

While the farmers’ profiles represent a spectrum of backgrounds, viewpoints, and motivations, various commonalities emerge throughout. Thoughtful stewardship of the land and commitment to organic and sustainable practices is universal, although the high cost of official organic certification is a hot topic, and several have opted not to pursue it. All talk about dealing with government policies and programs designed for large-scale conventional producers, not for small family farms. Many of the families can’t afford health insurance, and they routinely make material sacrifices to support their farm lifestyle, but despite the challenges, all express fundamental satisfaction with their choice to farm for a living.

This article appears in December 4 • 2009.

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MM Pack is a food writer/historian and private chef who divides her time between Austin and San Francisco. A regular contributor to The Austin Chronicle and Edible Austin, she’s been published in Gastronomica, The San Francisco Chronicle, Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America, Nation’s Restaurant News, Scribner's Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, The Dictionary of Culinary Biography, and Southern Foodways Alliance’s Cornbread Nation 1.