Farmers Sam & Dan. 

Sam: I am from a small town in Texas called Florence, Texas. It's maybe an hour and a half north northwest of Austin. If you travel on I 3 you'll see an exit for Florence and then it's just due west of there. When I was there, the town was roughly 8 people, so very small, rural kind of ag community. A lot of my friends raised goats. I'm not from a family of ranchers or farmers, you know, my mom was in the military, so it paid for her nursing school and so she was stationed at Fort Hood, which was maybe a like a 3 minute drive from Florence. 

Dan:   I grew up in Mississippi in Vicksburg, Mississippi. It's right on the Mississippi River. Just a boring small southern town. Famous for a civil war siege. That's about it. So I didn't come from a farming family or farming community, but um, I developed the interest in farming later on in life. I studied mechanical engineering. Okay. Yeah. Um, I've always liked tinkering with stuff and you know, when you come out of high school, if you're good at math, there's generally pressure, you should be an engineer of some kind. As I started to near the end of my education, I realized that I wasn't going to enjoy most jobs that I could get as an engineer. I like them well enough I guess, but things look bleak a little bit. So I became interested in natural farming and wanted to try to move to that as a semi-retirement. 

Dan: Retirement? What retirement?! 

Leah: How did this farm come to be? 

Sam: So I'll let Dan tell the story. I instigated it, well, unknowingly instigated and I put this seed of farming in Dan's mind and then, 

Dan: Then I dragged her down with me. 

Dan: Yeah. She read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and said, hey, this is a good book. You should read it. So I read it and I was really inspired by it and I started reading more about permaculture, natural farming in general and sort of developed the dream of starting a farm, having some natural space to live in, to kind of escape from the rat race there, it kind of thing. And 

we found this nice property just outside of Austin. Um, I kept

pestering her that we should buy it. We went and bought it and 

now she is really doing most of the work on the farm. She's 

doing all of the hard labor. That's what that was my plan all 

along. Yeah. She's developed an interest in flower farming and 

has really developed that part of the farm plan and that part of 

our future business. 

Sam: I've always been interested in local food and sustainable agriculture and I've read a lot of books about it. Just our food 

system in general. And the idea of being a farmer never crossed 

my mind. And then when Dan broached the subject, I thought it 

was a beautiful dream and you know, we need farmers and we 

need local food. And I was always on board. I just never really 

found my place in it until recently. 

Dan: And our agriculture system is severely broken. It is extremely wasteful and damaging to the environment, damaging to the 

people in it. And I think we can do a lot better. I think there are, 

there are systems that exist that can be used to make it a lot 

better than it is. That's what we're hoping to do, uh, to develop 

a system fit for central Texas that will be good to the earth and 

the people involved in the agricultural enterprise. 

Leah: So how did the interest in permaculture come about? 

Dan: I think in the Omnivore's Dilemma he interviews Joel Salatin. From Polyface Farm. They talk about his farming practices and 

the interconnectedness of all of the pieces. And there may be a 

passing reference to permaculture in the book. That seed 

started to grow in my mind and I started to read, read about it 

from other sources. 

Dan: It's interesting how like just influential Michael Pollan on, I think our generation really everybody who's doing stuff with 

horticulture or agriculture, I know. That was a big inspiration for 

a lot of people. 

Leah: When did you guys actually buy the land? 

Sam: We bought it in September of 2011, so it was the same time period is all of the Bastrop fires were going on. I don't have a 

very good memory for dates, but that has been imprinted in my 

mind because we would look out on our horizon and we had 

just bought this house and this property and we would see like 

five or six like plumes of smoke from like small fires on the 

horizon and they weren't that far from us. I mean they didn't 

pose an immediate threat, but they seem to close enough to 

where we had like bags packed and we had an exit plan. And so 

that's why that date sticks in my mind.

Dan: Yeah. At the same time as the Bastrop fire, there were a lot of small fires happening on the side of the roads. It was extremely 

dry and windy at that point. So there were lots of wildfires 

starting. 

Dan: Yes. The fire wasn't just in Bastrop.It was a good portion of eastern Travis County as well. 

Leah: I'd like us to paint a picture with words of this place. I've been there, it is kind of southeast of, of Austin and you can actually 

kind of see the skyline from the farm. You can also see pilot 

knob if I'm not mistaken. Can you explain what pilot Knob is? 

Sam: So we're not geologists, but our basic understanding is during the Cretaceous period when this portion of Texas was all under 

water, there was magma coming to the surface of the land 

where it meets the water and it just erupted. Dan? 

Dan: Yeah, I guess enough magma leaked out that it boiled the water created a steam explosion and that was kind of the first 

eruption. And then it just burbled out lava and ash for a long 

time afterwards, which ended up creating, McKinney falls is 

made of the ash and lava from that, from that volcano. So the 

actual, the actual falls at McKinney falls are made of, made of 

what erupted from the volcano. 

Sam: We recently read a batter and it seems like the falls at McKinney falls were once a beach on the pilot knob volcano, and 

somehow the beach turned into rock. And then that is what 

McKinney falls is. 

Dan: Maybe it's ash that sedimented or lithified? We're reaching the limits of our geological knowledge here. 

Sam: And pilot knob is also the name of one of the volcanoes proper, but it's also the name of the group of volcanoes. It's like four or 

five volcanoes over there. 

Dan: But they're all extinct and now they're just big hills. There's a water tower on top of one. They're building a subdivision. Right 

at the bottom of the volcano. 

Leah: That's really crazy. Sam, you were telling me about that when I came out to the farm that if they're just developing it. 

Sam: Where we live is fairly rural. In the past, closer to the Colorado River, there were some, some gardens that provided Austin with 

veggies. For the most part, most of the agriculture out there 

seems to center around cattle and Hay production and it's

rolling hills. It's blackland prairie, it's poor. We are just outside of 

city limits and there is encroachment from development coming 

from two directions right now, basically from the north and from 

the west and they're also expanding Slaughter all the way out to 

where we live. So currently Slaughter dead ends, maybe half a 

mile before our property. So there's road development, there's 

encouragement from subdivisions and it's just a poor rural area. 

And we've been given an offer from a development company for 

our property and it was, it was terrible. It was cash. And I could 

see that if someone was in need, like most people are that they 

would just take it and sell their property and it would be 

subdivided. 

Dan: Yeah. So there's a good chance one day we'll be an urban farm. 

Sam: I have to repeat that mantra to myself on a daily basis. Urban Farm, you know, at any given time I can hear construction noises 

from the road, from the development. I can hear airplanes, I can 

hear our neighbors, we have a trucking company, I can hear 

traffic and I just tell myself "urban farm" and somehow it makes 

it better. 

Leah: How many acres is it? 

Dan:  Almost . 

Leah: How much of it are you cultivating right now? 

Sam: I would say that we have six acres set aside for farm production and we have saved roughly four. Would you agree with that? 

Yeah, that's probably been about four for our house and what 

we have deemed our "inner fence." 

Dan: We're, we're also trying to save some space for natural habitat. 

Dan: Yes. So even though I say we have six acres set aside for the farm, that's our orchard, which is spaced far apart and allows 

space for native grasses and forbs. And our flowers, if you count 

the bed space, it's only an eighth of an acre. Like if you count 

the total growing area and then the whole section is like a 

quarter to a half an acre. 

Sam: Well, some beds will never be tucked in for the winter because we are growing a lot of perennials. We're growing a lot of native 

perennials. And so those beds, once they're established, we 

don't plan on ever, you know, flipping them until the, until the 

plant needs to be divided or until it starts, like the stems start to 

get shorter year by year and then maybe it's time to, you know, 

plant new ones.

Dan: Our goal is to weigh things as heavily towards perennials as makes sense because it's lower labor on our part. It's a less soil 

disturbance. So they can harvest nutrients and water more 

effectively than annual crops because they'll have larger root 

systems. So that, that's, that's where we're leaning. But you 

can't escape from annual plants in a flower farming context. 

Sam: We don't want it to escape from the annuals either. I love cosmos, I love zinnias. I love sunflowers. They grow really well 

here. They're fairly low water, you know, demanding. And so I 

would say that my personal goal is roughly % perennials and 

% annuals. 

Leah: What kind of perennials are you growing now? Or I guess they grow all the time, but what kind of perennials are you going for 

flowers? 

Sam: We are putting in echinacea, purple echinacea, I wanna grow Monarda fistulosa, that's a perennial. Yarrow, which I know isn't 

native, but it seems to be at relatively benign, naturalized 

flower. Echinacea and yarrow for example, they might bloom the 

first year, but the stems get taller the subsequent years. And 

then I think they start to then kind of taper down and get 

shorter and shorter. What else? We are growing a flower called 

a Baptisia. Yeah. And you can't harvest from those until their 

second or third year. And we're growing something called 

culver's roots, and those are fairly large, bushy plants and we 

are actually putting those in our orchard. They just came in the 

mail two days ago and we're interplanting or orchard with 

those. 

Dan: The orchard is intended to be designed as a mixed perennial polyculture. So these will be performing multiple roles in the 

orchard, you know, as a nitrogen fixers as pollinator slash 

beneficial insect attractors, as cut flowers. 

Leah: And it's pretty hands off once they're established. They just keep giving and assuming we can get them to survive their first year, 

through their first summer, really, then we should be golden. 

Should be pretty easy after that. Yeah. 

Sam:  And the natives that, you know, like the echinacea and stuff, I mean those are all things that should be fine because they're 

native to that area. 

Dan: And they can handle the midsummer furnace. 

Sam: Yeah. That's really cool. So lower water, lower soil amendments in general, just less initial setup, you know.

Leah: What kind of fruit trees? 

Dan: We have a variety of peaches, plums, pears, apples, etc. A variety of different chill hours, because we don't necessarily 

know what our accumulation of chill hours is going to look like 

every year. You know, it's always variable, but it seems like 

things are just going to be more variable in the future. So a wide 

range of chill hours, different ripening times, like that kind of 

thing. We also have pomegranates and figs, so it's kind of a 

shotgun approach to see what works well for us. 

Dan: We've also got some pecans planted up in the front. So basically we have a front and a back orchard. There are some mulberries 

up there, some selected varieties of mulberry. We also have 

native Texas mulberries, which I'm going to experiment one day 

with grafting to using those as root and grafting selected 

varieties to those. I actually don't know how you say it. Jujubes? 

Leah: Jujubees, yeah. 

Dan: I've heard Jujube and Jujubee, so whatever it is, those things, we have some of those. 

Dan: We also have loquats on the property that we don't really eat the fruits from. Oh, I don't care for him. Dan does. They're good 

evergreens and we have planted them on the berms of one of 

our ponds near our flower field to use as a windbreak. 

Dan: Yeah, that's, that's a big problem with our location. It's great. You can see the city, you see fireworks on the th of July. That's 

cool. But the wind blows from the north in the winter and it can 

be very damaging for plants and it can freeze plants that are 

frost tender. So we need lots of windbreaks and where we're 

trying different things, different different methods of breaking 

the wind. 

Sam: Yeah. I'm normally, when we plant these sort of extraneous plants, if you will, something we're not necessarily cultivating to, 

to sell the fruits from or to use in like floral arrangements, we 

try and choose native over nonnative, and loquats are obviously 

not native, but they'll provide food for the birds and they grow 

fast and they fit all of our other requirements. So it was hard to 

to say no to them and I'm, you know, they can kind of sucker a 

bit and send up like new baby plants, you know, a distance from 

them. But I'm not aware of them being on any sort of invasives 

list being really highly ranked for, you know, do not plant. 

Leah: Speaking of birds, what kind of wildlife do you guys see out there?

Sam: So we have a pond. The pond at the front of our property was there when we bought it. And I've seen water snakes, turtles. 

We have terrestrial crawfish. 

Leah: Terrestrial crawfish, what does that mean? 

Dan: They're crawfish that will crawl up into the field when I guess when the water table gets too high. And so they'll dig chimneys 

down to the water table fairly far up into the field. 

Sam: They don't require, um, they don't need to be underwater. So I've seen them on my land just fine. 

Dan: Yeah. Like after it rains heavily, you'll see them wandering around in the field, snapping their claws at you, saying, leave me 

alone, buddy. 

Sam: We have a lot of aquatic birds around the pond. Great blue herons and egrets and some night crown herons. We see cara 

caras, as we see all kinds of hawks. We see voles, rabbits, 

coyotes, 

Dan: Skunks, possums. Kind of your standard stuff in this area. Coyotes, we definitely have coyote. Sometimes you'll hear them, 

you know, get a kill and the whole pack goes nuts. Roadrunners. 

Sam: Roadrunners and quail, my favorite. Quail are a good sign of a healthy prairie. And so I haven't actually seen quail in a while, 

Dan. Yes. Seen that more recently. Quail are a good sign. 

Dan: We're at least not the worst prairie in the area. 

Leah: Any armadillos out that way? 

Dan: No, I haven't seen any. 

Leah: That's good. 

Dan: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not aware, is there a problem with armadillos? 

Leah: : They dig! Wherever there's water, they'll dig up your drip irrigation. 

Dan: : Oh, okay. Well that would be a pain. We do have a rats that will chew through our drip irrigation. Yes. Thirsty rats. So that has 

informed our drip irrigation system design. We have to make 

sure the tubes are too large to fit into rat mouths. 

Leah: Got snakes out there?

Sam: We do! Rattlesnakes and garter snakes and rat snakes. I guess those are the most common ones. 

Dan: But yeah, we see several rattlesnakes a year and I'll put them in a bucket and move them because I don't want to kill them. 

Dan: Over time we will develop some sort of designed ecosystems which leaves space for birds and small mammals and things, 

beneficial insects, things like that. Out in the orchards, 

especially, the goal is to have kind of a layered multispecies 

system. So tall trees, short trees, shrubs, ground crops, root 

crops, vines, things like that. That's kind of the permaculture 

goal. 

Sam: And in the orchard we can only just expect that we're going to lose some of our fruit to birds and mammals. And we just have 

to be okay with that. We have to overplant and we have to 

expect for losses and just accept that we are creating a habitat 

that is appealing to wildlife and we want them to be there and 

you know, it's a trade off. 

Dan: They also perform ecosystem services where they are eating each other, they are providing pollination. Um, so we want all of 

these animals to be here cause we don't, or these insects, these 

birds, because we don't want to have to go spray pesticide on all 

of our plants. We want some birds to live out their little birdie 

life, eating insects and provide free pest control. 

Sam: And in the flower field we want to attract birds as well to eat caterpillars that might ravage our amaranthus. We want to 

attract toads. Toads are also voracious insect eaters. 

Dan: Sam started to experiment some toad houses. 

Sam: I made one toad house and my goal, my new year's resolution, which I haven't met yet, was to have a toad house on every cut 

flower bed. I'm a little behind, but we'll get there. 

Dan: Is that what FDR said, a toad house in every bed? 

Sam: So we want to attract birds. You want it to attract toads, and we can attract the birds via the fruit trees or the interplanting of 

natives that provide food for birds. But we also, I was reading 

that some people put up a lot of bird feeders in their flower 

field. They want to attract bats to help with insect control, 

moths in particular. Obviously mosquitoes. 

Dan: Moths seem to be a big pest for amaranth and sunflowers. So you'll find just, you know, half a dozen or more types of

caterpillar crawling all over. And a lot of those are moth larval 

stages. 

Sam: And it seems to be seasonal because the amaranthus we grew last year in the spring was not affected at all, but the amaranth 

we tried to grow in the fall was infested and it became 

ridiculous. I mean, we were hand-picking caterpillars off the 

amaranth by the hundreds daily. And I was like, this is a waste of 

time. I'm just going to cut our losses and pull it all up and, and 

toss it out because we don't want to ever apply insecticides. 

We'd rather build this ecosystem that kind of take care of takes 

care of itself to an extent. You know, obviously there might need 

to be human intervention depending on the situation. 

Dan: Yeah. It makes you see why people would tend to move towards using pesticides. 

Sam: Yeah, it would have been fast, relatively inexpensive, especially in terms of labor, and it would have most likely have been 

effective and we wouldn't have wasted a crop. 

Dan: So stay tuned. We'll see how it works. We're also getting ducks this year. Uh, and as we hear, we hear, at least the ducks are 

gentle insect eaters. They'll, they'll go through your beds as long 

as the plants are big enough and they can't trample them, they'll 

go through the beds and pick off the insects instead of 

scratching the ground. Like chickens will. 

Sam: And ducks start off as ducklings, and what is cuter than a duckling? 

Dan: Even adult ducks are pretty cute. 

Sam: And we're getting a goose per someone's suggestion. We're getting a single goose to live with our ducks as a guard goose. So 

if there are two geese, they will imprint on each other that this 

is my family, this is my bretheren and everything else is an 

outsider. And so they might, they may not attack the ducks, but 

they may not be protective of the ducks. But if you get one 

goose, it will imprint that the ducks are its family, or at least its 

friends. And so then it'll be protective of the ducks. 

Leah: Cool. Well, I wanted to ask about bats because it seems like the bats fly east usually, and they provide a lot of ecosystem 

services to farmers in ya'll's area. Um, have you guys seen the 

bats? 

Sam: We have seen the bats.

Dan: Yeah, we've, um, we've seen bats around our house around dusk before, uh, they don't seem to have taken up residence in 

our single bat box yet, but we'll just build some more bat boxes 

and wait. 

Dan: We don't see bats often. I can only recall seeing bats once. It was last year in the fall and we were outside working late or 

walking to the house from working and I looked up and we saw 

dozens of bats. It was pretty special, you know, and so we would 

like to encourage them to stay with us and we want to build 

more back boxes, but I know they need to be built to certain 

specifications. And the Bat Conservation International, BCI has, 

has, you know, the instructions, they have plans online, so. 

Dan: It was probably a really bad idea, but I had one of our WOOFers build it and I don't think she'd ever used woodworking 

equipment before. But it was like, here's how you use a table 

saw, now go build us a bat box. And here we are. We weren't 

sued. Everyone still has their fingers all is well. 

Sam: And we have an empty bat box. 

Leah:  So in case people aren't familiar with what a WOOFer is... 

Dan: That's a volunteer program where you perform a work trade. People come and stay on the farm, they receive room and board 

and hopefully information in trade in return for their work. So 

we have a guest house that was on the land when we bought it 

and the woofers stay there and do work for us. 

Sam: WOOF stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. We love WOOFing. We've been participating in the WOOF 

program for four years. We would not be where we are without 

the the WOOFers. It's invaluable work and we've made 

friendships through the program. 

Dan: We've gotten so much work done by WOOFers. They get a lot out of it too. There's a great deal they can learn by coming out. 

A lot of people don't care that much though, they're just looking 

for a way to travel cheaply. You know, Austin's a bit of a 

destination these days so people can come there and have a 

cheap place to stay. 

Sam: But there are some people who come through the program and we tried to select for these people and just how enthusiastic 

they are about it makes me feel hopeful for the future of 

farming. And I hope that even if they don't become farmers, 

they still work on their homesteading dreams. It's inspiring.

Dan: Yeah. It can be a great way for people to learn about homesteading in general or see if they actually like it because 

that's essentially what we're doing when it comes down to it. 

You know, we're homesteading with a farm business. 

Dan: It's quite possible we have discouraged people from being farmers. It's a lot of work. 

Leah: So are you guys, are you guys trying to seek any kind of certifications? I know those can be really onerous. 

Sam: We don't feel like we will ever seek the organic certification just because of the time and money involved. And you know, the 

term organic, at least commercially, it doesn't really mean a 

whole lot. As you know, there are large scale organic farms that 

are barely doing anything different than conventional farming. 

So we're really fond of the term that people use, 'beyond 

organic.' But obviously that's not a certification, right? The only 

search, the only certification I feel like we would ever pursue 

would be something that designates us as a wildlife habitat or 

land restoration or prairie stewards or something along those 

lines. 

Leah: And what does 'beyond organic' mean? 

Dan: Organic has come to mean something relatively limited. It's, we don't use pesticides that are deemed not organic. But a lot of 

food that is certified organic is grown in an industrial organic 

system that is industrial monoculture. No wildlife habitat, heavy 

tilling, heavy water usage, heavy chemical usage. It's just the 

organic, the quote, "organic" chemicals. So beyond organic, you 

know, that's a very nebulous term. There are lots of different 

farming systems that could fall under that umbrella. But any 

type of natural or regenerative agriculture, Korean natural 

farming is something I've taken an interest in lately. KNF. They 

love acronyms, so many acronyms. 

Dan: I don't know anything about Korean natural farming and other than what Dan tells me and he assumes that this info sticks in 

my mind but it doesn't. So he'll use an acronym and I'm like, and 

that stands for, 

Dan: Korean Natural Farming focuses on using beneficial microorganisms in the agricultural process. So they will culture 

different types of microbes and then use those for certain 

purposes or create extracts of plants. One on one concept is to 

take the growth tips of plants or the fresh young flowers of 

plants and crush them in a sugar solution or crush them up with 

sugar. And then that will extract some of the growth hormones

and things like that. Or you can culture the native microbes that 

are just present in the air all around us, increase their 

concentration and then use that as a way to inoculate larger 

quantities of organic matter. A lot of these are composting 

microorganisms that then you can put on your plants, think 

things along these lines. So it's related to a lot of modern 

regenerative agricultural techniques like compost teas. Elaine 

Ingham is a big proponent of microbial diversity in the soil and 

harnessing that through composting and compost teas. 

Leah: Okay, let's talk about water. 

Dan: Ugh! 

Leah: Assuming you're on a well? 

Sam: We're not, we're on municipal water. City of Austin. Well, we get our water from a coop, but chances are most of our water 

comes from the City of Austin. 

Dan: The Co op is connected to the city's water network and uh, they, they buy water from the city I guess and then sell it to us. 

Sam: It's called Creedmoor Maha. We are on city water. We irrigate with city water and we recently got an overview of our water 

use from the last year. And what did we see, Dan? 

Dan: We actually use less than the average consumer, even though we're running a 10 acre farm! 

Sam: I don't want to toot my own horn, but...
Leah: Go ahead and toot it! 

Sam: Toot toot! I feel like personally, we have a lot of room for improvement personally. You know, I like to take baths in the 

winter and sometimes I run a load of dishes when the 

dishwasher isn't as full as it possibly could be. 

Dan: yeah, we currently 

Sam: We irrigate with municipal water, but we do a lot to try to limit our water use. In the flower field we rely a lot on mulching. The 

native perennials will require less water through the summer. 

When we broke ground on our cut flower field and November 

27, Dan dug up a secondary pond in the flower field with a 

bulldozer. We plan on capturing as much water in that pond as 

possible and then when it starts to reach its capacity, we will 

pump that into some sort of holding tank and then we'll use the

water from the holding tank to irrigate the flowers. We don't 

necessarily want to pull directly from the pond because we are 

trying to create wildlife habitat. But when we have excess, 

especially in these big rain events, we can pump from the pond 

to a holding tank and then divert that to our cut flowers. And 

then in the orchard, everything is planted on a series of swales 

that follow the contours of the land. And we sort of have the 

problem right now to where our clay is just too heavy and we're 

getting too much water at once. That the water that collects in 

the swales is just staying there for a really long time and 

becoming stagnant and turning anaerobic. 

Dan: Yeah. Not every technique works in every environment. Swales are one of the big techniques that are really pushed heavily by 

permaculture folks on Youtube. They're great, but they have 

their limitations and dense clay is one of those limitations. So 

really what needs to happen is to build a huge amount of 

organic matter in the soil so that it will absorb the water instead 

of just trapping it in these open canals. 

Sam: We still want to keep the swales.The fruit trees are planted on the berm, the hill behind the swale. And we still want to keep 

the swales in place, but we've been throwing a lot of random 

organic matter in it. Vegetable waste that we might have, 

cardboard, random branches from the property, tree trimming 

tree trimmings, leaves. We get weaves from a landscaping 

company. We picked up some spent mycelium medium from 

Myco Alliance. So just anything we can get our grubby little 

paws on. So, I mean we just, we plan on filling the swales with 

that and then hopefully it will slowly break down. And like Dan 

said, it will become kind of a nice soil that will hold onto the 

water rather than just tiny little micro ponds that are turning 

funky and getting kind of gross. 

Dan: And the other thing I've started to do is to spread native perennial seeds of trees and shrubs that will grow up in the 

swales and provide a source of woody plant matter that we can 

chip and use as a way to, to build organic matter, uh, on our 

property in general. 

Sam: Those seeds have all been collected from our property. 

Dan: Yeah. They volunteer anyway and they volunteer where we don't want them, so they might as well volunteer where we do 

want them. 

Sam: So we have mesquite pods. Just various oak acorns, honey locusts pods, mountain Laurel seeds.

Dan: We haven't been putting the mesquite pods in the swales. Yeah. Can, you know, we can use the mesquite pods for other things. 

We made a syrup from them last year that I used to feed some 

compost tea. We didn't eat the syrup. It was bitter. I'd like to try 

making some beer from it one day. 

Sam: We love mesquite trees at Cassiopeia Farm. They're thorny so they're hard to work with. People kind of consider him junk 

trees, but we love them. 

Dan: Yeah, they're great permaculture trees. They have so many uses. Tey're nitrogen fixers, they have nice shade so they can act as 

kind of a nurse tree if you plant a young tree underneath and 

have some shade. They have flowers that bees like, they make 

pods that are edible. The wood is useful for all kinds of things. 

It's a great, woodworking wood. Can be used for smoking. 

Sam: When we first moved in, I haven't seen this in a while unfortunately, but when we first moved in, we had some 

mesquite trees near the pond and we would see crawfish and 

grasshoppers impaled on the thorns. And I was like, this is a 

little sadistic. Is there some weird little child in the 

neighborhood that has just been impaling these innocent 

creatures. And it turns out I was a shrike. So a bird would take 

the insect take its prey and then impale it on the thorn and then 

kill it. And that's happening. That's how the insect would die. 

And then they would eat it. 

Leah: Like a skewer. 

Sam: It's a crawfish kebab. 

Leah: As new farmers, you guys are transforming this land from what was probably conventionally agriculturally used previously. And 

you're trying to really improve the land a lot. What are your 

concerns as far as being a young, being a young farm, getting 

started up, where there has been a lot of turnover in the past 

decade or so with local farms. And part of that is because of 

development and the real estate market is just so crazy and it's 

so hard to make a lot of money growing vegetables. I know that 

flower farming is like much more doable, it's a higher margin 

than vegetables. So I want to hear your experience in terms of 

the challenges of starting this farm in Austin at the time that you 

did. 

Sam:  One of my biggest concerns is, we currently aren't zoned agriculture. We're not zoned anything. There are no deed 

restrictions on our property.

Dan: We're in the county, so there's no zoning there. 

Sam: I'm concerned that if we get annexed and as development comes our way, ideally we will be grandfathered in and we will 

be allowed to stay where we are. But then just as the 

development continues around us and we become more 

housing, less rural, that someone, somewhere might comment, 

well that's not fair that they're a farm, but we're not zoned for a 

farm or they won't like the traffic that, I mean, I don't know. Our 

farm is never going to have a lot of traffic. So that's a bad 

example. But somewhere someone's going to complain about 

living next to a farm because we've seen examples of that House 

Bar, you know, Springdale fought for so long. Oh goodness. 

What's the other one that just moved further east? The name 

will come to me, but we've seen that repetitively in Austin and 

I'm just concerned that that will happen to us, that we don't live 

far enough away from Austin. I don't feel like we're safe where 

we are. You never know what people think. Like people may not 

want to live next to a farm or our neighbors might love living 

next to a farm. 

Dan: Yeah, I think some of the problems with the farms in East Austin were related to the events that they kept having. And that's 

something we would like to do. Maybe not to that extent, but 

we do want to have gatherings there. 

Sam: Yeah, we want our farm to be a focus of the community and we want it to feel communal and we want to have big events where 

we can bring like minded people together, educate people or 

have festivals or fairs, you know, not, not huge festival, but you 

know, parties. And so, you know, you can't predict people's 

feelings about living next to a farm. And we know we can say, 

well we were here first. You, you chose to live next to us. But 

that doesn't mean that we would win if we were, you know, if 

someone brought it to the city hall, that doesn't mean that we 

would, you know, survive that fight. 

Leah: So, development, is one challenge that is kind of always in the back of your mind. What about climate stuff, droughts and 

floods and storms and hail and all of that shit? 

Sam: Definitely. In terms of, I guess relating back to the city, I think we're concerned that eventually water might become so scarce 

that we might be cut off from municipal supplies. And although 

our longterm goal isn't to rely on it, we might have to, you know, 

if it's not raining over Austin, it's not raining on our property 

either. And so we might have to resort to municipal water. And 

so my concern is that we'll be restricted in the number of

gallons we can use or will be considered sort of, it's extraneous 

use. You know, we don't necessarily have to grow flowers to 

survive and so we might get cut off from the city's water supply. 

So, but on a grander scale, that's a heavy question, you know, 

climate change is a real serious threat for us and we have to do 

the best we can... I assume the worst. You know, I'm naturally a 

bit pessimistic by nature and we have to plan for the worst and 

hope for the best. I don't know how, we have to assume it's just 

going to be awful. And so a lot of our decisions are guided by 

this idea of climate change being a real thing. 

Dan: Yeah. [Sighs.] I think well thought out permaculture design can help with that. I don't think it's a magic bullet necessarily, but 

with lots of components of a system performing the same or 

similar purposes, there should be more resiliency. That's the 

hope. But I don't know, I don't know if we can rely on that 

necessarily. I tend to be a bit more optimistic and just look at 

each day or take each day as it comes. So I don't think about it 

too much to be honest. But you know, it does play a part in our 

planning. We buy fruit trees that have a range of different chill 

hour requirements. We're planning things kind of on the 

warmer end. If something can't handle, can barely handle the 

summer here right now, then we probably shouldn't buy it 

because it certainly won't handle it in the future. But there are 

unknowns too, because the winters could be very erratic. We 

don't know necessarily if we're going to get these polar vortex 

jet stream shift things happening where we get, you know, even 

if on average the climate is warming, we get days in the teens in 

midwinter, which is not normal for central Texas. 

Leah: There are those huge temperature plummets. Like we've had, it's 8 one day and it's 3 the next day and the plants are just like, 

"Agh!" 

Dan: Yeah, that can be really bad for plants in the spring. This year we had early blooming, our peach trees were blooming in early 

February. And if we have a late freeze, they might be screwed. 

So yeah, there, there are a lot of unknowns and there's only so 

much you can do about it. I think maybe a shotgun approach is 

the best we can do and try to try to build these resiliencies into 

the system. 

Leah: Having a polyculture approach is really building in a lot of resiliency. 

Sam: Yes. Financially too. You think about the apple orchards or the peach orchards in the Hill Country. Late freeze, you lose all your 

peaches. You just don't make any money that year. But us, lets

say we lose all of our peaches but a different fruit variety is fine 

because it hadn't gone, it hadn't budded yet. Or we still have 

our flowers or even if we lose a crop of flowers because of a late 

freeze, we still have subsequent, you know, I think diversification 

is key. 

Dan: Another example could be pollinators. You know honey bee populations are collapsing but mason bees are wonderful 

pollinators and they are in competition to an extent with the 

imported bees. 

Leah: But you guys are keeping bees too, right? 

Sam: Our initial thought with the bees was that, that's how we would get our agricultural tax exemption. We needed a certain number 

of hives on our property to be eligible for it. And so we have one 

honeybee hive we bought, we bought our queen from Bee 

Weaver Goods in May and we hope to expand our beehives. But 

we also want to do as much as we can to support the native bee 

population before we expand our honeybee hive program. I 

read a paper recently put out by the Xerces Society and they 

were broaching the subject of honeybees and how they can 

affect native bee populations. And there are some studies that 

show that there is disease transmission from honeybees to 

native bees and there's obviously competition once a bee visits 

a flower. I think that another bee won't come in and visit the 

same flower. They leave some sort of chemical scent behind or 

some sort of residue that tells the next bee, Hey, this has been 

pollinated already. So if you have a really strong population of 

honeybees, that my overwhelm your flowers. It might force the 

native bees to go to a lesser quality flower that puts out lesser 

quality pollen and nectar. So not only is there a possible disease 

spread, but there's also the chance of the native bees not 

getting the nutrition that they need so it can really put those 

populations at risk. So we aren't really comfortable expanding 

our honeybee hives and numbers until we do everything we feel 

like we can to support the native bees as well. Because insects in 

general, but especially the native bees, their populations are 

struggling. You always hear of colony collapse related to 

honeybees, but it's all bees and it's a lot of insects. 

Leah:  So how did you get your agricultural exemption? 

Dan: We don't have one. We're paying full taxes!
Leah: You don't have it? 

Sam: No. So a lot of people do it with goats. We don't want goats for a variety of reasons. Although I follow a lot of goat farmers

on Instagram and everybody's goats are kidding right now. 

That's the right term, they're delivering. And so there's baby 

goats everywhere. And I'm like, oh, those things are adorable. 

Dan: Goats seem like a headache, though. 

Sam: They seem like a lot of work. There's no such thing as a goat proof fence. Isn't that what people say? So we were like honey 

bees, you know, and that's an easy way to go about it. And we 

do want more hives and I think the land can support more hives. 

We see a really healthy native bee population on our property. 

We just don't want to do anything to diminish it. 

Dan: So we would like to provide more habitat for the natives before we move to too fast with honeybees. 

Sam: Yeah. We want to slowly just tiptoe into it. So it might be awhile before we get our ag exemption. 

Leah: They should really make it easier for small farmers to get an ag exemption. You know, like you shouldn't have to have a big 

livestock all over the place if you're growing plants sustainably. 

Dan: Yeah. I guess they might have the problem then of people cheating the system. I think there's a lot of desire to get that tax 

exemption and no, well I'll just put a horse out there. No, I've 

got a tax exemption. Neat. Um, so I can understand where 

they're coming from, making it so difficult. But yeah, it does kind 

of put young farmers in a difficult situation. 

Leah: Is there anything you guys would like people to know about, like any misconceptions that you think people might have about 

running a farm or starting a farm? 

Sam: I think when a lot of people come to volunteer on our farm, they expect to see me out in the flower field, like 

wearing a skirt, with flowers in my hair and a little basket and 

I'm just like floating above the rows of flowers and it's just so 

breezy, so easy. It's incredibly hard. It's incredibly rewarding.I'm 

getting choked up. It's the most rewarding thing I've ever done. 

But it's so hard. 

Dan: Yeah. There's some marketing fluff maybe on Instagram from some folks. 

Sam: This is very much how we started, with the dream and the passion. And then it's hard for people to keep the passion 

flowing once they get past the honeymoon phase of it all. You 

know, because once you get past the excitement of, "I'm going

to grow flowers and have a booth at the farmer's market," the 

backbone of it is a lot of work and it's not all on my shoulders. 

You know, it's on our friend shoulders. It's on Dan shoulders. It's 

on our volunteers' shoulders. It's on, it's kind of on the 

community's shoulders to support us and make sure that we're 

successful. 

Dan: It's a lot of work. It's very difficult to do while working a full time job. 

Sam: Dan works full time. I'm on the farm full time and Dan works at a Monday through Friday job. 

Dan: So I think what that points to is getting an enterprise like this off the ground, you need a lot of time and/or money, preferably 

both. And we don't have those things, so it's taking a long time. 

And there's a steep learning curve, probably given more time 

that could have been made a bit bit easier. I think WOOFing's a 

great way to do this for people to go learn directly from people 

that have already been through that learning curve. 

Sam: We had been growing plants and we've had a garden for a long time, but we've never done anything on this scale. We've made 

a lot of mistakes. I mean we discover newmistakes all the time 

and we're like, "Oh, that seems so obvious now that we know 

what we know. And so there is a big learning curve, but the 

amount of information that we can take in on a daily or weekly 

or monthly basis is pretty outstanding. You know, I think we're 

getting to the point to where we're becoming confident. I 

wouldn't say we're confident farmers, but we're becoming 

confident and you know, we feel like we can, we can objectively 

look at something and we can make a pretty good decision 

about it. 

Dan: Yeah. Another thing I would say is, you know, this is probably a very small sector of people, but I think there are the sort of 

permaculture dogmatists that will not critically consider the 

techniques presented. They kind of take everything as gospel 

and that's not a good approach either. 'm kind of drifting away 

from using that terminology, using the word permaculture, 

because people get into arguments online about, "Oh that is or 

that isn't permaculture..." 

Leah: Regenerative agriculture is a good term. 

Dan: Yeah. It's more of a mouthful, but that's what I'm drifting towards I think.

Leah: And then what about you guys? You're not just business partners but also a couple. So how do you, how do you divide 

up the labor and make that work? 

Sam: Since Dan does work Monday through Friday, I'm in charge of the farm Monday through Friday. Except in the summer when 

the days are longer and Dan can come home from work, 

especially if we're working on a big project. Like last August, Dan 

put in our deer fence around our flowers. This is a last minute 

scramble and so he would come home from work and work on 

that during the week. But for the most part on a regular week, 

I'm in charge of the farm Monday through Friday and then we 

have a collective work day on the weekend. It has been 

Saturday, but we just got accepted to the downtown farmer's 

markets and that's on Saturdays. So our workday will have to be 

on Sunday. And so yeah, I guess most of the farm labor is done 

by me. I should back up and say that I'm more in charge of the 

flowers. Dan is more in charge of the orchard, which thankfully 

right now doesn't require the same amount of attention as the 

flowers. I 

Dan: And that's kind of the goal to have that be more of a hands off system in the long run. You know, it probably needs more 

attention than I'm able to give it. 

Sam: But yeah, I, I think that we would be farther along in our orchard if, if my interest in the farm had peaked a little bit sooner or if 

Dan had more time to devote to it. 

Dan: I tend to be Mr. Fixit and fix the mechanical stuff. Which makes me wonder sometimes if technology is really the best way to 

use our resources. Because it seems like you spend more time 

fixing the stuff than actually using it. 

Sam: Yeah. So Dan is our farm handyman. I'm the farm bookkeeper, you know, I'm in charge of ordering and finances and keeping 

track of the receipts and spending logs. I plan out the flower 

field. We split the labor as much as we can physically. And that's 

about it. Life is pretty much all farm right now and we like it. 

Dan: We give as much of the hard stuff to WOOFers as possible. They're young bodies. 

Sam: We do. We're in our mid thirties and you know, injury, pain, is accumulating. Our bodies are not wearing out, but they're 

starting to show signs of age. And a lot of WOOFers who come 

through are in their early twenties. And so maybe I'll have them 

scoop a couple more loads the compost than I do. Where hazing 

them. I suppose that's what they're there for. And I think the

only way that this will be feasible longterm for us into our 

retirement or into old age is if we can rely on younger folks to do 

the physical labor for us and we provide the knowledge and we 

do all the behind the scenes and then they actually implement it 

for us. So we'll be working hard and for a long time. And it keeps 

us in shape. 

Leah: One more question. How do you deal with climate anxiety? 

Dan: I have found that my general mindset is improved when I take care of my body physically. So when I am able to sleep well, 

when I make good choices, when I'm able to exercise my body, 

my general disposition is a lot happier. And that bleeds into all 

areas of my life, including being stressed about the uncertain 

future of the farm and the world in general. So for me, the best 

way is to start with myself. I volunteer a lot and I meet a lot of 

really cool people and learn about a lot of really cool programs 

and that are doing things to improve the state of the land or 

increase the amount of water going into the aquifer, or working 

with endangered species. And just knowing that there are 

people and organizations out there that are dedicated to this, 

and meeting people who want to be farmers, really gives me 

hope for the future. So volunteering and being sound of mind 

and body really helped me personally. 

Dan: Yeah, I agree with a lot of what she said about the hopefulness of seeing all these people that are interested in helping to 

regenerate ecosystems and so on. In general I'm more of an 

optimistic person and I don't think about it that much. I try to 

live day to day more and you know, plan as much as I can for the 

future, but it doesn't bring me much existential dread from day 

to day, to be honest. 

Leah: That's good! 

Sam: Dan is a lot more zen than I am. I'm a little ball of nerves at times. 

Dan: To be honest. Thinking about it doesn't do you much good. And, and it's not like I tell myself that. I just don't happen to think 

about it that much. So maybe I'm your average selfish American. 

Leah: Somebody's got to stay present. We can't all be so neurotic all the time.

Dan: sustainablefoodcentersSaturdaydowntownmarketfromnine tooneareon Instagramat@CassiopeiaFarm. That'sC. A. S. S. I. 

O. P. E .I.A. Farm, and then we're on Facebook at 

@CassiopeiaFarmATX.