Ryan Farnau at F-Stop Farm (Credit: Jaclyn Hubersberger)

What started as a gardening hobby turned into Ryan Farnau farming nearly all the available space in both his front and back yards, with another 6,000-square-feet soon to be tilled and seeded. With a handful of local restaurants sourcing from Farnau’s farm–hardly more than a third of an acre–F-Stop is quickly joining the ranks of Austin’s more well-known urban farms, like Springdale, Rain Lily, Boggy Creek, and HausBar to the east, and La Flaca to the south.

The sustainable agriculture movement is gaining momentum here in Central Texas, thanks in part to these urban farms, the restaurants that purchase their produce, and the patrons who support the restaurants and farmers’ markets around the city. Through the use of small-scale organic growing practices, these farms operate in direct opposition to big agriculture, fast food, and the industrialized food system. [Read more…]

Gretchen O’Neil, Petals, Ink. farmer and founder (Credit: Petals, Ink.)

Gretchen O’Neil’s love affair with flowers began as a child, enamored by the confetti-colored tulips that sprawled across her grandfather’s yard. Flower growing became more than just a family pastime for O’Neil in 2002, when she started working on a small farm in the mountains of Vermont. After moving to Austin in 2003, it took the native New Englander about five years to acclimate to the sweltering heat before she could even begin to consider growing cut flowers in the Central Texas climate.

You see, many of the flowers O’Neil remembers from her youth simply won’t grow here. She gradually embraced a new genre of gardening that included sun-worshipping plants like agave, and concepts such as “xeriscaping.” Eventually, she discovered that–with enough planning–her fantasy of growing an abundance of blooms could be actualized. [Read more…]