Kickflipping into the Small Town Farm life

From skateboarding the Drag to running a homestead farm in Fentress, this Austin couple is part of the latest wave of beginning farmers.

Cristen Andrews runs Small Town Farm in Fentress with her partner, Miguel Guerra. The couple lived in Austin for many years while learning the skills they now use on their one-acre property near the San Marcos River. Photo by Addie Broyles

Hi, Feminist Kitchen friends!

Earlier this week, I told you about a couple of stories I wrote this summer for Texas Co-op Power magazine, one about a group of folks revitalizing the food community in Menard and another about the challenges facing new (and new-ish) farmers in Central Texas, among them, inflation, rising feed costs, and changing demand for local food.

That second story — commissioned for the Bluebonnet Electric Co-op part of the magazine — included a sidebar on Small Town Farm, a one-acre farm in Caldwell County that embodies so much of what I see happening with beginning farmers across the state.

Miguel Guerra and Cristen Andrews did not grow up on farms, but after living the first half of their adulthoods in Austin, they decided that plants would be what carried them out of the rat race.

I wanted to tell their story as a way to illustrate a much larger trend, that new farmers are flocking to agriculture, even though the hurdles are higher than ever. According to a new survey from the Central Texas Young Farmers Coalition, 78 percent of young farmers identify as first-generation farmers, and nearly a third say that their farm work is an extension of their anti-racism work.

You can find out more about Small Town Farm on Instagram @smalltownfarmtx, or visit them on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the San Marcos Farmers Market on the square in San Marcos.

I hope you enjoy this newsletter! The Feminist Kitchen is a mix of reported stories and first-person columns, and I try to publish one a week. If you want to become a paid subscriber to support my work, check out a 7-day trial and see if you like it.

See you next week!

Addie