August 12, 2010 - Jamey Gage's roots run deep in the Central Texas soil. His family helped settle the area in the 1820s and has spent much of its time since then engaged in one form of agriculture or another. Gage has taken the passion for growing things to eat and turned it into B-5 Farms, which is named after the family's old cattle brand that dates back to the 1880s.
As a boy growing up in Kyle, Jamey worked in his grandparents' garden during the summers. The farm chores turned into more of a passion than work, though he admits that his grandparents might have taken it a little easy on him, his brother, sister and cousin. He learned that he had a lot to learn when he and his sister decided to become farmers when Jamey was 12, but he never stopped learning, not even as he devoted most of his time to earning a degree in finance from the University of Texas.
After moving his operation from his parents' place in Kyle to his and wife Pamela's new place near Lockhart, Gage finds that he is still learning how to best grow good things to eat; for him, that's what growing has always been about.
"Our passion is food," he said. "If you can't eat it, it doesn't interest me. I'll choose edibles over ornamentals every time."
The move from Kyle to Lockhart has forced the Gages to focus primarily on selling vegetable plants and herbs this summer as he works to amend the soil on his new place. It's not so much that the land has been abused as it has been ignored, he said. An application of 45 cubic yards of turkey manure to the growing area has provided a jump start to restoring fertility and he expects to have some tomatoes ready for the fall market.
Most of what he grows are heirloom tomatoes, which can be difficult to grow. Joe Masabni, a vegetable specialist with Texas AgriLife Extension, has said that he has seen few high-yielding heirlooms and few growers showing a profit on them. Gage is an exception, though he admits that growing heirlooms can be a dicey proposition.
"The demand for our heirlooms last year was staggering," Gage said. "We had people lined up to buy them every week. But I will say there are some varieties that are better suited to our geographic region and climate than others. When you find ones that are suited to the region and climate, you can end up with a tomato that is actually more resistant to droughts and heat and certain insects and diseases. Others might not do so well."
The heirloom varieties can be fickle too, producing well one year but not the next, even though conditions and practices are basically the same, he said. In that regard, Gage believes that hybrids are more reliable than some of the heirloom varieties but he said the risk is worth it.
"Sometimes people look at the heirlooms and they might be turned off by the color," he said. "Most people are used to seeing red tomatoes, but we have tomatoes that are yellow and some that are bi-colored. Others ripen green and some have flakes of pink in them. Others are darker.
"The real difference is in the taste. They have such a wide range of flavors and textures, tastes you don't get anywhere else. There is such an incredible diversity of food out there that it seems like a shame to let them go to waste."
Though Gage hasn't been able to farm full-time, he is planning for that day with the move to Lockhart. He's planted a vineyard of Black Spanish grapes that he is growing with cuttings he got from the Val Verde Winery, the oldest in Texas. He's planted artichokes, partly because few others have and also because he likes to eat them. He has 125 chickens that are busy this summer keeping the grasshoppers at bay but will start paying their own way soon by producing eggs. He also grows blackberries and has planted a small peach orchard. He said it all's part of a need to be diverse in a volatile market.
"This is an uncertain business," he said. "You want to have a certain amount of diversity in any financial venture, but farming especially. You need something like a vineyard that will produce when something else doesn't. It's too risky to just depend on one thing."
The family has a great tradition of keeping farms going for a long time. His family's Johnson-Gordon Farm near Hutto received its Family Land Heritage designation from the Texas Department of Agriculture in1984. His family also owned Oatman's Dairy for many years. The old dairy farm was located near what is today South First Street in south Austin but was for many years part of a wider agricultural belt.
"I enjoy producing food and I always have," he said. "To me, there is nothing nobler than growing food for people to eat. It's also a good path to self-sufficiency. It really harkens back to my parents and grandparents and respect for what they were able to do with the land. It's good, honest work."
