The changing face of rural Texas

This month brings two stories about young (and youngish) farmers and a history-making magazine cover.

Menard residents Sarah Johanson, Logan Bell, and Amie Prest all left rural Texas before returning to this small town. They found out recently that their ancestors were close friends. Photo by Scott Van Osdol for Texas Co-op Power

I met Logan Bell last year on a camping trip in Menard County, where this beginning farmer was transforming an old piece of family land with their partner, Geer Gillespie.

The couple was expecting, and my first interaction with Logan was during milking hour for the goats. Bell, six months pregnant at the time, deftly managed the herd while Geer welcomed us at the gate, gathering firewood and selling us a bag of coffee from a roaster down the road.

A BIDEN sign hung next to a queer flag icon, announcing that this was a safe space for LGBTQIA++ or BIPOC travelers passing through this part of rural Texas.

Geer Gillespie gathers firewood for us during our Hipcamp stay. Photo by Addie Broyles

Over the campfire that night, we found out that the couple had only been at the farm for a few years at that point and they’d welcomed dozens of people who said they might not have otherwise traveled through this part of Texas without knowing there was a place for them to safely pitch a tent.

Johanson Farm coffee is one of the products that the Johanson family sells from its property in Menard. Photo by Addie Broyles

That was the moment I knew I’d write a story about them and/or Menard, but I didn’t realize that LowGear Farmstead was just the beginning.

When I started reporting on this story for Texas Co-op Power earlier this year, I found out that Bell and a number of these other food business owners, including the coffee roaster down the road, realized that they are all descendants of a group of Menard friends, who called themselves The Angels back in the day.

Known as The Angels, this group of friends has several descendants who are working together today to revive parts of Menard.

The ladies in this photo are all gone now, but their friendship lives on in Hannah Beall, who runs a canning business called Han-Can; Sarah Johanson, who sells coffee beans through Johanson Farm; Amie Prest, whose family is behind Texas Scratch Kitchen, and Bell, a massage therapist who is raising goats and restoring family land along the San Saba River.

It was an honor to tell this story for the visibility it brings to what is happening in one small community when people go back to where they grew up carrying new ideas and ways of doing things.

The Johanson family has roots in Menard, but Sarah Johanson said she never thought she’d raise her family there. Photo by Scott Van Osdol for Texas Co-op Power.

To read the whole story, go to texascooppower.com/connecting-with-the-land.

(It’s worth noting that this is a ground-breaking story for Texas Co-op Power to publish. To my knowledge, Bell is the first non-binary person to appear on a statewide magazine cover in Texas, where scarcely few queer stories are given this kind of attention.)

Also in this month’s Co-op Power magazine is another story that I worked on for months earlier this summer about the challenges facing this wave of new and not-so-new local farmers, many of whom were crushed with demand during the pandemic and are now facing catastrophic changes to weather and market conditions.

This is a story that I’d been wanting to tell for a while, and I’m grateful that the Bluebonnet Electric Co-op commissioned me to write it. The print version goes out in the magazine that is sent to co-op members, but it’s available for free at bluebonnet.coop/hard-lessons-small-farms.

Miguel Guerra and Cristen Andrews own Small Town Farm, one of dozens of small-scale family farms in Central Texas. Photo by Addie Broyles

It was through this story that I got to spend some time with Miguel Guerra and Cristen Andrews, who run Small Town Farm in Fentress. I was totally blown away by their operation and have a whole story about them coming about in the newsletter this week.

My apologies for the delay in getting these Substack newsletters to you these past few weeks. As you can tell, it’s been a busy summer! I’m so glad to see these pieces go to print. I hope you enjoy them!

Thanks for subscribing and supporting this independent journalism project. Paid subscribers, look for a few additional stories over the next week. I’m working through a backlog of pieces, so thank you for your patience.

Addie

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