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Certified organic farm thrives in downtown Austin |
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By MONETTE TAYLOR | South Central Texas |
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May 16, 2002 -- Like most urban cities, Austin is filled with private houses, apartments, and businesses, but if you look closely on a downtown street in the northeast section, you'll find a tiny farm. Boggy Creek Farm, on Lyons Road, offers a respite from the normal hustle and bustle of city life. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, visitors will find fresh, organic produce, fresh, cut flowers and various breeds of chickens; plus young mothers with children soaking up the sun and fellowship offered at the farm. Owners Carol Ann Sayle and her husband, Larry Butler, operate the five-acre farm on the grounds of a farmhouse that is thought to be one of the three oldest homes in Austin. Through extensive research, Sayle and Butler have determined, although they do not have the paperwork that guarantees the history, the house was built in 1840-41. The farmhouse has surely seen severe weather over the many decades, but it was just last fall a tornado churned through the farm, uprooting trees, breaking branches and ruining crops in the ground. A large oak tree lost a limb that crashed into the house, and although it did substantial damage, the farm did not close to shoppers. "Before the tornado, we didn't have enough tables for our produce - we were rolling in produce - but at the next market, two days after the tornado, all we had was cabbage! Big cabbage," Sayle recalled. There was not an efficient way to let shoppers know about the damage to the produce crops, so they proceeded with the cabbage sale. "We're always open, so how could we tell people not to come. So, we started hauling these cabbages and putting them out there with a few other little things, but, basically, it was cabbage day," said Sayle. Butler didn't think people would want to pay for such large cabbages and nothing else, but Sayle assured him they would, if it would help save the organic farm. And they did. After the trauma of the tornado, the couple started over with many of their plants. Normally, they raise vegetables on two farms. One 47-acre farm in Gause, where they plant the more "land intensive" vegetables such as tomatoes, melons, squash, cucumbers and peppers, and the vegetables in Austin. "Here in Austin, we grow most of the winter crops, because they need constant attention and we need to have them fresh for market," said Sayle. Butler travels to Gause a couple of days a week to check on those crops while Sayle takes care of the Austin farm. As if the tornado wasn't enough of a set-back, the late freeze in March this year killed several of the vegetables in the ground and they had to replant, again. "We lost our garlic, which was just amazing to lose. It got down to 15 degrees here," Sayle said about the weather disaster. "It killed all the garlic and melted all my sweet peas. Even the broccoli was killed. The strange thing is the chard made it." To walk through the grounds of the farm, today, it's hard to imagine the damage from the tornado and freeze. Rows of fresh vegetables are planted, along with numerous kinds of cut flowers, some sharing the same beds. "We do it for many reasons. Partly, because we sell bouquets and there is a demand for fresh flowers, but even if we didn't sell the bouquets, we'd have fresh flowers because it's a good draw for beneficial insects and it makes the place pretty and lifts everybody's spirits," she said. The farm is a Texas Department of Agriculture Certified Organic Farm, and no pesticides are used. "If you're putting chemicals on it (garden), you're not going to have any better luck than organic farming. The main difference between a chemical farmer and an organic farmer is that a chemical farmer can use herbicides and we can't. So, all weeds must be pulled by hand or mulching ... things that are labor intensive. That's the one thing that makes organic produce more expensive," said Sayle. There is a 28-foot well on the property and Sayle uses drip hoses to water the plants rather than soaker hoses in order not to waste water. They rotate their crops, she said, but they have their own way of doing that, too. "It's not very scientific, and we don't even have it written down. What I do at this time of year is I get up on top of the roof and take a photograph of everything, so if we have any concerns, we go back and say, 'Oh yea, it was good over there!'" While Sayle and Butler can't imagine enjoying their old lives in art and real estate nearly as much as farming, there are drawbacks. "You're never through. There's always something you need to do ... some emergency that needs to be corrected. It's like having a million babies out there and they're all screaming!" she laughed. "The best thing is the people who come and get the fresh produce, and they are so grateful and so thrilled. They have clean and incredibly fresh food, and they know they're getting their nutrition. There's folks who eat all their vegetables from these fields," Sayle concluded. Boggy Creek Farm: www.boggycreekfarm.com. |
