Texas State senior Emily Nickerson drives her Toyota Rav4 filled with fresh Bobcat Farm produce to the Wimberley Junction Farmers Market at 8 a.m. on a Sunday.
It was the first time the student organization that grows organic vegetables and herbs as part of their hands-on learning process at Texas State got invited to sell produce outside of San Marcos. It has been only over six months since they entered the market to learn more about the business side of agriculture.
‘‘We’re not trying to undercut any other farmers,’’ said Nickerson, who volunteered for over 500 hours before getting paid through an internship at the Bobcat Farm. ‘‘This is their livelihood. For us, it’s just a learning experience.’’
Bobcat Farm would eventually provide nutritional value to Texas State by regularly having a farmers market on campus. So far, even establishing a location is a challenge because of logistics.
‘‘There’s a lot of material we have to carry: tent, tables, the produce itself… It’s a lot of heavy lifting,’’ said Nickerson, hoping that other organizations, like Bobcat Blend, the Horticulture Club or the Ceramic Club, could join them to make such a student market feasible.
Bobcat Farm, a sustainable student farm, was founded by Nicole Wagner, Ph.D., Texas State assistant professor as a laboratory for her classes in 2021. It all started with an unexpected phone call.
A gentleman, Andrew McGowan, called Wagner to learn more about her work at Texas State. Wagner said that McGowan, a Texas Instruments retiree with a physics degree who donates money to causes such as sustainable food production and education, has become a friend of hers and her students.
‘‘I’m actually in contact with him on a weekly basis. He’s always checking in and is very fond of the work we’ve all done at Bobcat farm,’’ said Wagner, who is currently in charge of the two farms — Bobcat Farm and her own in Buda where she grows edible flowers.
Wagner said that Mc-Gowan’s donation of $101,000 made it possible to start the transformation of 1.5 acres of raw, degraded soil at Freeman Ranch Road into productive land. This is what regenerative agriculture that Wagner strongly believes in is about.
‘‘Now there is a number of beds and crop production enough to sell produce to local farmers markets, and also donate to Bobcat Bounty, which is the on-campus, free food pantry,’’ said Wagner.
There are two blocks of beds – 50 and 100 feet and a 1,776 square feet structure for in-house seedling germination, which the farmers call the hoop house. There is a toolshed and a fertigation system, which is an automatic water delivery also used for fertilization.
A 1,776 square feet structure for in-house seedling germination, which the farmers call the hoop house, has appeared on the lot recently. By Yelizaveta Kalinina.
They are planning to build an orchard to be able to grow fruit and nut trees as well as keep animals. Bobcat Farm secretary Katrina Berthold said they would start with poultry for easier management in the initial stages.
‘‘We are only in the first few years of running this farm,’’ said Berthold, who first got to the farm in 2021 during a class and stayed as an intern. ‘‘Right now, we're looking at maybe getting some chickens or geese because that would help a lot with our pest pressures and the weeds we have been battling for two years.’’
Wagner has secured a USDA grant to develop an education pavilion that would serve as a post-harvest station to wash and pack vegetables so the farm members would not have to take the produce to campus upon harvesting to get it ready to donate or sell.
“We have a lot of infrastructure to develop over the next two years. That acre and a half will be completely built out and beautified with hedges that serve as shading,’’ said Wagner, adding that the farm will be a creative, therapeutic space that produces food and educates.
There is a form of horticultural therapy that is grounded in research and helps patients with mental health issues by working with the soil and plants. That aspect of the farm is yet to be researched, but Wagner said she could sense its therapeutic effect. Some students come to the farm daily even though they do not have to.
‘‘I witnessed a lot of students that have mental health issues, and that is a kind of an epidemic. I think that having the farm just really grounds people and allows them to connect in a way that is not facilitated easily in classes,’’ said Wagner, calling the farm a happy place.
Before coming to Texas State in 2014, Wagner used to work in the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., forecasting crops of South America and developing briefing materials on agricultural trade policies for the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.
‘‘It was fascinating to hear the Secretary say something you wrote for him to say and doing the analysis on how this affects other countries, the Americans,’’ said Wagner, noting that life in a dense political city made her realize she wanted to come back to food production and teach students who loved growing plants as much as she did.
Landon Brown, a farmhand and Texas State water resources senior involved with the farm for about a year, said the club has become a hardworking and close-knit community of people passionate about sustainable, regenerative agriculture.
‘‘I read a lot about the ills of the industrial agriculture system. And when you work on a farm like this, it shows you that it takes hard work, but it can be done, and it's very rewarding,’’ said Landon Brown, who is also a substitute teacher dreaming of planting food for his family on a farm of his own.
Farm’s secretary Berthold, who would also love to have a farm one day, said there is a lot of red tape for farmers in Texas now, on top of environmental concerns.
‘‘Land ownership is becoming more and more controversial. People are kind of being forced to give up the land that they've even inherited because the property taxes are so insane,’’ said Berthold, an agriculture senior who got into the sphere because she enjoyed keeping houseplants in her home in Austin.
Most of the farm’s active members, including those who have been there since the beginning, are graduating this year.
Nickerson, who has moved from a volunteer, beginner farmer in 2022 to an intern, overlooking the farmhands and marketing, is graduating in spring. She said they are looking for students willing to take leadership roles.
‘‘That’s super important for us to know, once we leave, that the farm will be taken care of,’’ said Nickerson.
To get involved with the farm or learn more about their on-campus sales of harvest boxes, check out the Bobcat Farm’s Instagram @txstbobcatfarm.
— Nicole Wagner, Ph.D.
Bobcat Farm
