Agriculture is central to the story of the Texas Panhandle. In the late 19th century, early ranchers identified our climate and land as ideal for raising cattle. Sturdy homesteaders found ways to coax wheat or squash out of an arid landscape occasionally interrupted by severe storms. Those natural resources were also critical, of course, to the nomadic Plains Indians who lived here first, following the migration of abundant buffalo herds.
Life on the High Plains starts with the land.
It’s easier now. At the nearest grocery store, residents enjoy access to greens harvested in California, potatoes grown in Idaho, avocados from Mexico and oranges from Florida. But a recent combination of factors—pandemic-era supply chain disruptions, a desire for fresh and less processed food, and a deep well of community support—has begun changing the way some residents put food on the table.
On summer weekends through the end of September, small growers and producers interact with the public at the extremely popular Canyon Farmers Market and, in Amarillo, the new Sunset Marketown. The long-running Golden Spread Farmers Market brings fresh produce to the public on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Other small pop-ups appear throughout the week, giving residents the opportunity to buy fresh eggs, beef, fruit and vegetables straight from the source.
Call it farm-to-table, locavore, or any other trendy phrase. It’s still about nourishment from the land we call home. In light of that focus, inside and outside these markets, we spoke with the small producers who work hard to supply fresh, nutritious food to Panhandle people.
Protein
Ranchers Storefront
Justin Trammell is a fixture among the growers and producers at the Canyon Farmers Market. He’s a producer himself, operating Tir Bluen Farm with his wife, Whitney, where they raise Angus Cross cattle, Kunekune hogs, New Mexico Dahl sheep and heritage chickens. But beyond that, he’s been president of the Canyon Farmers Market since 2016 and is the entrepreneur behind Ranchers Storefront and Panhandle Meat Processing. The latter two businesses are partnerships with his father, Donnie Trammell, who also raises cattle.
“Being serious in local food production takes that kind of involvement,” Justin says. He grew up with farming on both sides of his family. While pursuing a wildlife biology degree from West Texas A&M University more than a decade ago, he worked with Ogallala Commons, a High Plains nonprofit focused on reinvigorating and sustaining the rural communities that depend on the Ogallala Aquifer. “You do that through a combination of entrepreneurship and resource management,” he says. He took those lessons to heart.
After he and Whitney married in 2014, they began raising chickens, sheep and pigs while working with Donnie Trammell on beef. “We started selling at the Canyon Farmers Market here, and through all that started seeing cracks in the conventional model,” Justin says. Profits were minimal despite his father’s decades of experience raising cattle in a small operation. It felt like they would always be minimal.
So the two Trammell men began looking into opening their own micro-processing facility. Regulatory hurdles proved a challenge, but the family-owned Panhandle Meat Processing launched in 2022 as an alternative to the huge beef production facilities in and around Amarillo. A few months later, they opened Ranchers Storefront to serve as a retail arm for those products. Today, they operate three Ranchers Storefront locations, all selling locally raised and processed meat, pork, lamb, vegetables, eggs and more. Trammell has even built a relationship with a family in Alaska to provide high-quality salmon, halibut and other seafood.
“You can trace our supply chain with two to three jumps,” Trammell says. He raises the cattle. The beef gets processed at Panhandle Meat Processing. Then, the public buys steaks at Ranchers Store Front. There’s no substitute, Justin adds, for buying meat and produce from local farmers and ranchers.
“It’s gone extremely well,” he says. “Every storefront has its own customer base.” He describes their McCormick store as “basically a neighborhood market” like older generations might remember from the 1950s and 1960s. Those markets and butcher shops have largely been lost due to federal food inspection standards implemented four decades ago, which limited small-scale producers’ ability to sell directly to customers. It meant seismic shifts in the meat industry.
Trammell describes staying in compliance with those regulations as a full-time job. “That’s basically all I do: handle the regulatory stuff for the facility and storefront and everything else,” he says. He’s on the board of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance and spends plenty of time in Austin lobbying for farmers, ranchers and access to local food. “There’s a massive difference between a plant like ours that kills 10 head [of cattle] every two days and a plant that [processes] 400 head an hour,” he adds. “Nobody writes regulations to scale,” and that causes issues for small producers.
But he’s willing to take on that challenge, and his businesses have found a dedicated customer base. “The only reason Dad and I did this is so we can go back to being actual producers. We didn’t do it to grow a food empire,” Justin says. “We did it to guarantee our future as farmers.”
(15891 S. Dowell Road, 806.499.3168; 7445 W. McCormick Road, 806.231.2391; 1505 Fourth Avenue, Canyon, 806.699.1462; ranchersstorefront.com)
Additional Beef Producers:
Null Ridge Premium Beef (575.799.5107; nullridgepremiumbeef.com)
Texas Beef Grass to Grill (806.690.4338; texasbeefgrasstogrill.com)
Ellison Land & Cattle (806.683.3110)
Venhaus Farms (806.773.1571; micahvenhaus.wixsite.com)
Chicken Eggs
JC Acre
“We’d talked about wanting to do something with our land since Celia and I got married eight years ago,” Josh Davis says. They had a small property—just an acre—on Old Ranch Road, three miles north of Canyon Country Club.
He’d been reading a lot about the Dust Bowl and the unsustainable farming practices that caused it. Davis didn’t just want to put his land to use, but to improve it and build healthy soil. Around that time, he picked up a copy of local poet Seth Wieck’s release Ulysses Arrives in Amarillo. The narrative poem made an impression on Davis. “There’s a line in that poem: ‘Plot by plot, I’ve won the land’s trust / Now she’s rich and full of the renewing green,’” he recites.
He wanted a rich, full, abundant property. That meant chickens.
“We realized laying hens was the place to start,” he says. Three years ago, he and Celia bought 50 laying hens. Now the couple has around 500—two flocks of 250 hens that produce more than 400 eggs a day, or “about 250 dozen a week for us to get rid of,” he says.
They sell their eggs directly to the public at Ranchers Storefront, at the Canyon Farmers Market, and through a subscription program called Yolk Folks. The latter is a customizable membership that schedules deliveries of farm-fresh eggs on a regular basis. “That’s our main push right now,” he says, though JC Acre also produces and sells leather products.
The hens subsist on a diet of natural insects, including this summer’s abundant grasshoppers, supplemented by Texas Natural-brand feed. Manure from the rotating chicken flock improves the soil, which improves the insect life. “Right now, the Texas Panhandle doesn’t have a lot of bug life,” Josh says, but he hopes to gradually foster enough healthy, natural food for his chickens so he can supplement less.
Unlike the cramped, unnatural conditions of large-scale poultry farms, JC Acre hens are free-range, with space to forage and peck for insects. “They live like a chicken should live,” Josh says. “A lot of people are searching for eggs specifically from chickens that don’t live on top of one another in just a few inches of space.” Customers regularly tell the couple that JC Acre eggs taste much better than store-bought eggs.
Josh and Celia have expanded beyond that first acre—the hens themselves rotate on a 3.5-acre pasture—but named their business after that initial piece of land. “It always brings us back that we started on one acre of land,” he explains. “A lot of farms want ‘acres’ or ‘farms’ in their name for expansion potential, but our reason was to re-center us back on the beginning.”
Other Egg Producers:
The Egg Shop (200 W. Valencia Drive; 806.231.3134)
Fletcher Farms Amarillo (fletcherfarmsamarillo.com)
Castro Family Farm (806.477.2310)
Quail Eggs
Honey Basket Backyard Homestead
Sarah Amstutz of Honey Basket Backyard Homestead literally turned her standard Amarillo-area backyard into a small urban farm. But the abundant raised beds behind her fence definitely aren’t the most interesting part of her property.
It’s the flock of quail that draws attention.
She’d originally begun raising meat rabbits when she read about the health benefits of quail eggs. She turned her focus to the small, resilient birds.
“As a bird, quail are super-social animals,” she says. “Every morning I walk out there, shake a cup of dried mealworms, sing a song and they all come to me to get food. It’s super peaceful.”
She keeps a flock of around 20 quail, which produce 10 to 12 dozen eggs a week. “Quail are ideal birds for small backyards,” she says, because they require much less space than chickens. They’re tiny enough to be held, easily, in the hand. “They’re just fun,” she adds.
Amstutz sells the eggs to the public through her Instagram account and appearances at the Canyon Farmers Market. Her quail eggs are gaining a reputation within the community, and she recently began selling them through the new S.E.A. Market Oriental Food, 2632 SW 34th Ave. Quail eggs contain higher levels of antioxidants and minerals, including Vitamin B-12, vitamin E and iron.
“They’re considered to be a ‘super food’ in some circuits,” she says about quail eggs. “They are the only shelled egg that contains vitamin A. They’re lower fat and have a richer, more complex flavor” due to a higher yolk-to-white ratio.
Other Egg Producers:
Duclops Ranch (806.418.0509; duclopsranch.com)
Spicy Acres Homestead (facebook.com/spicyacreshomestead)
Pixie Hollow Farm (806.340.0408; facebook.com/PixieHollowGarden)
Raw Milk
Wethington Farms
“I’m a 34-year-old, stay-at-home mom who milks cows,” says Kenzi Wethington from Wethington Farms outside Nazareth. She and her husband, Stanton, are raising four children between the ages of 3 and 10. He farms and ranches, and as of 2023, she’s in the raw milk business.
The family already was raising Angus cattle. But two years ago, Kenzi pitched Stanton on purchasing a few Jersey and Guernsey cows, heritage breeds known for producing extra creamy milk.
“Milking cows for my family turned into milking cows for a couple of friends, and then for a couple of their friends,” she says. As the demand intensified, Kenzi ramped up production, officially formalizing her business in 2023. Now, she maintains a herd of 15 milking cows who produce around 50 gallons daily for more than 215 families here in the Panhandle.
Raw milk is part of a growing movement in the United States. States like Montana, Alaska, Georgia and Wyoming have passed laws legalizing the sale of raw milk, though it’s still illegal in Texas.
Despite that prohibition, Kenzi explains, “Texas did legalize herd shares.” That’s how Wethington Farms legally provides milk to their Texas customers.
For a one-time $30 fee, customers buy a herd share—part ownership of Wethington Farms’ dairy herd—then pay an additional $44 a month in order to receive a gallon of raw milk every week. So technically, the customers are receiving milk produced by dairy cows they own. Twice a week, the family brings milk to a pick-up spot for Amarillo customers.
“It would be amazing if everyone had their own cow in their own backyard, but that’s not practical,” she says. “So they buy a little piece of our herd of Jersey cows. The monthly fee is for us to board and care for those cows. In return, they receive raw milk weekly.”
Kenzi points out that the FDA and CDC are still “not on board with raw milk” due to risks of bacterial contamination and foodborne illnesses. (For the same reason, the CDC also recommends against eating medium-rare steak and raw cookie dough.) But Wethington Farms’ herd-share owners and other raw milk advocates are interested in whole, unprocessed foods, she says, adding that many of the nutrients and probiotics in raw milk get destroyed in the pasteurization process.
Some lactose intolerant customers say they are able to drink raw milk without issues. Others are trying to get rid of eczema or other allergies. “It’s full of probiotics that are so healing to the gut,” she says, pointing out increasing evidence that the human microbiome—gut health—is linked to the immune system, inflammation and overall wellness.
Plus, she says, it tastes better. “It’s so rich and creamy. A lot of people say it tastes like drinking ice cream out of the gallon—it’s not lacking in the flavor department,” she says, describing it as “milk the way God intended it to be.”
Beyond drinking raw milk, her customers use it to make cheese, kefir, butter and other dairy products.
Demand is growing, but right now Wethington Farms is maxed out on production. Kenzi milks four hours a day, spends another couple hours bottling, and finds time in between to homeschool her children. “I’m doing the most that I can do. But we hope to expand in the future as our kids get older,” she says.
(806.240.8495; facebook.com/p/Wethington-Farms)
Other Dairy Producers:
Cross Diamond Farms (806.672.3946; cross-diamond-farms-and-ranch.myshopify.com)
Sweet Corn
Gee Family Farms
Almost 20 years ago, Tim and Michele Gee—pronounced with a hard “g” sound, as in “go”—were farming on a much larger scale. He had grown up in a Hereford farming family and was managing around 10,000 diversified acres with his brother. It was hard, demanding work. Eventually, the couple sold those acres, moved to Claude, and began to think smaller.
“As a farmer, you want to make more money on the least amount of acres,” Michele says. The family knew from the history of their crops that sweet corn had always been profitable and efficient. When they learned Moore County sweet corn producer Willie Wieck was retiring, they offered to buy his business and equipment. (Wieck passed away in 2018.)
That shift to what the Gees call “niche farming” was 10 years ago.
Gee Family Farms has since become the Panhandle’s dominant provider of sweet corn. In 2017, they moved their operation to Amarillo from Claude, setting up a sweet corn and pumpkin farm on South Whitaker Road. They also own and operate a pecan orchard near Hart.
“Every year our customer base grows,” Michele says. “As the older generation is passing away, there’s more of an educational push for the younger generation.” The Gees and their family members regularly advise customers how to use and preserve their fresh corn for weeks at a time, even into the winter.
“Once they taste it, they’re hooked,” she adds.
True to the name, distributing the corn to the public is a family affair. Tim and Michele are joined by their four sons, her parents, and another couple who help on Saturdays at the Golden Spread Farmers Market in Amarillo. It takes a team: “We’ll sell around 12,000 ears of corn on a Saturday,” she says. “It’s all hands on deck.” Additionally, the farm opens to the public from 2 to 7 p.m. every Friday.
The Gees also sell every other week in Claude and, on Thursday evenings, in far southeast Amarillo at the Farmers Market at The Country Corner (2210 E. FM 1151). Some customers even buy bulk loads at the farm, filling up pickup beds with ears which they’ll resell in places like Canadian or Memphis, and even into Oklahoma.
Tim says members of the public often ask why Gee Family Farms doesn’t set up at the popular Canyon Farmers Market. It’s primarily a space issue, he says. “[People] don’t understand how much we sell,” he says with a laugh. On Saturdays at Golden Spread, two lines form early and build deep. Some customers buy bushel bags of corn, which contain 65 ears. Distributing that many thousands of units requires starting with a semi-trailer load of corn, and wedging that kind of operation into the tight confines of the Square is a challenge.
Beyond the corn, Gee Family Farms is also known for their family-friendly Fall Daze at the pumpkin farm, which includes hayrides, a corn maze, corn shucking, a cotton patch and sunflower fields. Starting Sept. 28, it opens every Saturday until Oct. 26.
(7651 S. Whitaker Road; 806.346.5899; geefamilyfarm.com)
Other Sweet Corn Producers:
pH Veggies (phveggies.com)
Honey
Hefley Hives
“I started out how any hobbyist would,” says beekeeper Russell Hefley, who obtained his first bees in April 2018. “Curiosity got the best of me, and it grew from there.”
That phrase—“it grew from there”—is an understatement. Two years ago, Hefley stepped away from his full-time work as a welder/fabricator to focus entirely on his honey operation. He and his wife, Shyanne, now split weekend duties, selling to the public at both the Canyon Farmers Market and Golden Spread Farmers Market in Amarillo.
“Today, we’re a 160-colony operation,” he says. The Hefleys live on the northeast side of Amarillo but keep their hives all over the Panhandle, “mostly to the east” of the city, he says.
The total operation would have been even larger if not for the devastating wildfires earlier this year. Before then, Hefley maintained 280 colonies, overwintering many of them in Hemphill County. “I lost 100 colonies in the wildfires. I’m hoping to rebuild next spring. Spring is a time of expansion in the bee industry,” he says.
Their honey gets attention because it is purely local. Hefley Hives’ popular wildflower honey comes from bees pollinating spring flowers in the Panhandle until June. “It’s truly unique to our area, and might help with your allergies and all that good stuff,” he says. Because local honey contains small amounts of pollen from a geographic region, residents hope consuming it will help desensitize them to allergy-triggering pollen. (While medical studies about this are inconclusive, there’s no doubt that Hefley’s customers prefer the richness of unfiltered local honey over any mass-produced version.)
In the late summer, Hefley moves most of his hives onto cotton fields. Cotton is self-pollinating, but he says some Panhandle farmers have reported “a small increase in their yield if they have bees around.”
Like any kind of agriculture, honey production fluctuates with the climate and weather conditions. “It’s farming. Nothing’s guaranteed, year to year. You’re relying on Mother Nature to provide for you,” he explains. After a hot summer, Hefley pays close attention to the weather and its impact on his bees, because he realizes they’re a reflection of him—or vice versa. “If you put your time and sweat equity into [beekeeping] and see a reward, you feel a lot of pride from that. It makes you happy,” he says. “Bees are facing a lot of adversity these days, so to see them doing well makes you feel good.”
Along with the farmers markets, Hefley Hives products are available locally at SALT Spices & Specialties, Drug Emporium, and Panhandle Meat Processing locations.
(806.683.3963; hefleyhives.square.site)
Other Honey Producers:
Creek House Honey Farm (5005 Fourth Ave.; 806.381.3446; creekhousehoneyfarm.com)
Produce Growers
Dannerland Farm
Ben and Lindsey Danner have been selling at the Canyon Farmers Market for two years now, but didn’t intend to become Dannerland Farm or, for that matter, ever grow for the public. They just wanted a big garden at home to provide for their big family. “We have five kids,” Lindsey says. The couple’s children range from age 8 to 15. “I wanted to get my kids close to their food and have organic options in the backyard.”
It’s a big backyard. The couple lives on 10 acres and has dedicated half an acre to growing flowers and produce.
A custom home builder, Ben built Lindsey a hoop house (sometimes known as a high tunnel) as a way to extend their backyard growing season, trap humidity and protect plants from the wind. “I planted, filled it up, and got an insane amount of produce,” she says. “Lots of plants thrive in there.” In mid-August, her tomato plants were around 12 feet tall. She says they’ll hit 20 feet by the end of the season.
Lindsey began offering veggies to friends and family out of necessity, and then discovered a market. “I wasn’t the only person looking for local, organic produce.”
Every Saturday, people line up at 7:30 a.m. for Dannerland’s heirloom tomatoes, Asian cucumbers, what Lindsey describes as “weird squashes” that aren’t often found at the grocery store.
Edible flowers also get attention.
“Chefs love to buy them and use them on soups or in salads, or with cream cheese or herbs,” she says. Lindsey spends time educating the public on edible flowers like nasturtiums, because “people are not used to seeing that and don’t know what to do with them. Nasturtiums taste amazing. They’re a little peppery. My kids eat them right off the plants.”
Since that first tunnel, the Danners have added three smaller high tunnels, including one dedicated to strawberries and one for cut flowers. She also grows plenty of crops out in the open.
Both Ben and Lindsey represent Dannerland Farm at the Canyon Farmers Market, but Lindsey says they have defined roles. She’s the gardener and he’s the builder. “He’s the muscle behind this for sure. This is our dream together, being sustainable and being close to our food,” she says.
Mamie’s Backyard Farm
When their youngest child graduated from high school in 2017, Michael and Jamie Blasingame of Adrian were looking for a hobby to fill their time. He’s a full-time truck driver and she works in Dimmitt as a respiratory therapist, but both had enjoyed interacting with vendors at the former Amarillo Community Market.
Jamie decided she could garden, too. Their property had room—“It’s about half a city block,” she says—so they set aside around 500 square feet, planted some vegetables and began raising chickens.
“I think people should know how to sustain themselves, and we wanted to feed ourselves, too,” Jamie says. “Every year we increased the size of our garden.”
Now that garden is 5,000 square feet. Named for her nieces’ and nephews’ name for Jamie, Mamie’s Backyard sold products at Amarillo Community Market until it closed last year. This year, the couple moved to the new Sunset Marketown at Arts in the Sunset.
They sell a variety of products, headlined by potatoes, onions, pattypan squash and zucchini. “Last year, we added sourdough bread because people asked for it,” she says. “This year, we added striped candy.” They also grow several varieties of okra, black-eyed peas, green beans, jalapeño peppers, Carolina Reaper ghost peppers, serrano peppers and a variety of jams and jellies.
“It opens at 8 and we’re usually sold out of squash and zucchini by 9:30,” she says. “I was never a sales person until I started doing this. I love interacting with people and hearing their stories.”
She and Michael also find fulfillment in the simple act of gardening—even if they’re gardening for retail purposes. “It is very fulfilling. There’s a stress release. I love to go out in the garden for by-myself-time. I can think, listen to music or an audio book, and pull weeds,” she says. “It’s a wonderful feeling to have a beautiful, clean garden.”
(806.654.4335; facebook.com/mamiesbackyardfarm)
B.a.C.K. Yard Garden
With a five-acre piece of land between Canyon and Umbarger, Katie Kirkpatrick and her husband, Blaine Burnett, wanted to try their hand at backyard gardening. “My grandfather had a green thumb and I always wanted to but never really had space,” she says. They started small, planting a few varieties of produce. “It kind of worked.”
They planted more in 2014—the year the Canyon Farmers Market launched—and ended up with, in Katie’s words, “a ridiculous amount of cucumbers.” So Blaine made pickles, the couple became a vendor at the new market, and they’ve been involved ever since.
Today, B.a.C.K. Yard Garden is known for those pickles and cucumbers, along with a constantly changing selection of other produce. “We have eight kinds of squash,” Katie lists. “Several varieties of eggplants. Several peppers. Snack-sized tomatoes. Slicing tomatoes. Okra, tomatillos, Swiss chard, cucamelons, too.”
Cucamelons are small, grape-sized members of the cucumber and melon family, resembling tiny watermelons. They have a tangy, citrusy flavor and thrive in heat-tolerant climates like ours.
Among their popular eggplant varieties, Kirkpatrick and Burnett also sell fairytale eggplants. White in color with lavender stripes, these irresistible thumb-sized veggies are less bitter than a typical eggplant and can be eaten raw.
“Also, people also just really want okra,” Katie says. “And our bread-and-butter pickles. A lot look forward to the pickles in general.”
The couple’s daughter, Cierra, also helps with the garden and Saturday sales, and the name of their booth reflects the small, family business. B.a.C.K. is an acronym for “Blaine and Cierra [and] Katie.”
Both Katie and Blaine work full-time jobs—“the farmers market is just a hobby,” she insists—but Canyon knows them well from their consistent presence on the Square on Saturday mornings.
In fact, until last summer, Katie had served as the official manager for the Canyon Farmers Market. She attributes its overall success to the vendors, the community, and the demand for fresh food and produce. “It started small and each year got stronger and larger. We always learned something from the previous year,” she says. “We tried to create an atmosphere with everybody that makes it supportive and welcoming, and ran it from the viewpoint of a small business owner. That really benefited us in the long run.”
(facebook.com/BACKyardgardenCanyon)
Tim Moss
Tim Moss doesn’t sell produce under a name that includes the words “farms” or “acres” or anything to get attention. It’s just him, Tim Moss. “I do it as an individual,” he says.
His family gardened on their property north of Amarillo, and Moss still lives slightly outside the city limits, growing produce on two acres. “I grew up doing it as a way to supplement family income,” he says. “My mother was a big gardener.”
Despite having plenty to occupy his time—Moss has spent years in the water well business and owns and maintains rental properties—he has continued his family history of small-property farming. He’s been selling exclusively at Golden Spread Farmers Market since 2013.
“I really didn’t intend to go full-bore like I’ve done,” he admits. “I’ve always been a big gardener in the years before, but it just got bigger and bigger.”
He sells, in his words, “pretty much everything.” That includes okra, slicing tomatoes, small salad tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, cantaloupes, black-eyed peas and “all kinds of peppers.” Moss says people in this area tend to have similar tastes and interests when it comes to locally grown produce. He believes many of those preferences have been shaped by the impact of Southern culinary culture. “Southern cooking and the southern diet are well-established. I try to give people what they want,” he says.
On his property, everything starts from seed. Moss plants indoors in March and then transplants outside as the weather warms. “It’s all the old-fashioned way,” he says.
Given the influence of his own family’s gardening and farming habits, Moss laments that some of those older practices are falling away. “In the past, family has been a fixture of farming. But as time has gone by, there are [fewer] smaller family farms,” Moss says. “That’s kind of an alarming thing from my point of view. It would be nice to see it continue as it has in the past.”
Other Vegetable and Flower Producers:
Bontrager Blooms (facebook.com/bontrager.blooms)
Fischbacher Farms (facebook.com/gdfischbacherfarms)
MV Produce (806.773.1571; micahvenhaus.wixsite.com)
YoungFolk Flowers (facebook.com/YoungFolkflowers)
Schaffer Farm (schafferfarm.com/schaffer-flowers)
Crabtree Family Farms (806.390.9741; facebook.com/crabteefamilyfarms)
Pixie Hollow Farm (806.340.0408; facebook.com/PixieHollowGarden)
White Cottage (facebook.com/whitecottage)
Bear Creek Farms (806.471.9937; facebook.com/bearcreekfarms.pampatx)
Brushwood Acre Farms (806.803.1049; facebook.com/brushwoodacrefarms)
Square Mile Farms (square-mile.org/the-farm)
Fruit
Howard Farms
Soil matters. On the expanses of land outside Clarendon, the soil texture is sandy. It holds less water, but allows deeper root penetration, faster drainage, and in the case of watermelons and cantaloupes, sweeter flavor. Donny and Markeeta Howard have made a business out of it.
“Where I’m at, our soil is really sandy so you get that good, high sugar content,” he says about Howard Farms, where every year he plants 60 to 100 acres of watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins and other produce. “The north [Panhandle] has tighter ground, and it stays too wet under the melons or cantaloupe. You’ll get bad spots.” But the Howards’ lighter soil means dry conditions. That’s where melons tend to thrive.
Donny grew up in Clarendon and spent summers during high school helping out at his father’s farm, where George Howard raised many of the same crops. “After college, I started farming and raising my own,” Donny says. That was 22 years ago. “It’s kind of in my blood.”
Every other day, he and his team—including his sons Harrison and Hudson, and Donny’s father, George—pick up to 5,000 cantaloupes. They sell them to side-of-the-road peddlers throughout the Panhandle, meet with customers at Golden Spread Farmers Market three days a week in Amarillo, and supply most of the United Supermarkets locations in the Texas Panhandle and as far south as Lubbock.
As for watermelons, Howard Farms produces and picks around 2,000 a week, and if you buy one of Donny’s cantaloupes or watermelons at United, it was likely picked the day before. “Some of the [produce] you get in the grocery store might have been picked three weeks ago,” he explains. That doesn’t apply to his hand-delivered melons. “My stuff is vine-ripened. We pick every other day when they’re ripe and ready to eat.”
Despite those production numbers, Donny isn’t a full-time farmer. He works at Pantex in radiation safety, then spends his evenings driving truckloads of melons all over the Panhandle. “I started there a year and a half ago,” he says. Melons are a water-intensive crop, and Donny is worried about the aquifer. “They take quite a bit of water. If we don’t have water, we’ll be in bad shape.”
The Pantex job is a hedge against that future, but in the meantime, he and Howard Farms remain one of the premier suppliers in the Panhandle—and look for their local pumpkin stands in late September.
(806.341.2901; facebook.com/p/Howard-Farms-Produce)
Other Fruit Producers:
BT Farm Fruit Stand (facebook.com/BT-farm-fruit-stand)
Schick’s Strawberry Patch (432.940.6375; facebook.com/schicksstrawberrypatch)
Frontier Market (518 Ash St., Plainview; 806.292.8437; frontiermarkettx.com)
Mushrooms & Microgreens
Fuku Farm
“Mushrooms and microgreens are kind of our main staple,” says Myles Artho of Fuku Farm, an urban operation out of his home in the heart of Amarillo. Two years ago, he began selling microgreens to great success. Then he branched out into mushrooms, which had always fascinated him. “That took off. We couldn’t really keep them in stock, so we had to up our farm size to triple our output production. We’ve been impressed by everyone’s acceptance of mushrooms and microgreens in this area.”
He grows both crops inside the atrium of his home. “I use the front half for microgreens and the back half for mushrooms,” he says.
The Artho name may be familiar to some. “We’re all from the Wildorado area, a big farming family,” he says. “I’ve always enjoyed growing plants and having things for us to eat.” With three kids at home, he wanted to give them a hands-on opportunity to see how food grows. “We came across microgreens randomly. The kids loved eating them. We put them on literally everything—sandwiches, salads, soups. We’ll dehydrate them and make seasonings. We literally eat them almost every single meal,” he says.
In addition to microgreens—which are the first sets of leaves a seedling grows, packed with nutrients to fuel the early stages of plant growth—Artho has enjoyed cultivating and harvesting mushrooms.
Delicate oyster mushrooms and visually unique lion’s mane mushrooms are customer favorites at the Golden Spread Farmers Market on Saturdays or the Farmers Market at The Country Corner on Thursdays. “People are sauteing them or using them as a meat additive. Chicken goes a lot further [when combined] with mushrooms,” he says.
Artho also schedules a weekly delivery route for products within the Amarillo and Canyon area “so folks can have our product delivered direct to their door,” he says. They are also available in the front refrigerator at Scratch Made Bakery downtown for pick-up options.
As for the unique name, fuku is a Japanese word that means “good fortune.” And in Lingala, a language spoken in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo, fuku can mean “wind.”
“It’s obviously windy here, and we’re looking for good fortune,” Artho says with a smile. Also, “it was something that looks good with the word ‘farm.’”
(806.670.4064; facebook.com/fukufarm)
Other Microgreens and Mushroom Producers:
Hodgepodge Farms (806.683.0166; facebook.com/hodgepodgeurbanfarm)
Dawn Farm (806.221.2130; facebook.com/dawnfarmcanyon)
Majestic Mushrooms (facebook.com/majesticshrooms)
