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Travel in Texas:
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The Earth, The Soil, The Love of the Land
Agriculture in Hill Country
The Hill Country is rich with farm land. This is peach country, and the peaches are among the most luscious in the world. The climate can be temperamental, however. When you speak to the farmers they will talk about late freezes and hail, that this is not the optimum weather, but when the peach crop is good, the flavor is better than anything and the crop abundant. When the weather is not in the mood to cooperate, however, the people who work the land know the heartache inherent in farming.
This is not agribusiness, this is good, old-fashioned farming. Today most farmers hold higher degrees, but prefer to touch the land. This is what they love.
What does it mean to throw off the expectations of an easy job in exchange for the vagaries of weather? Perhaps at the end of the day it is good to say that one has been present in one's own life.
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Dan Bacon of
Wild Boar Farms
Hwy. 290 & Luckenbach Rd. 830-990-8187 |
Dan Bacon runs Wild Boar Farms, primarily peach orchards that supply a family-owned well-stocked roadside store. Speaking of his store, Bacon will tell you that this has been a bad season and the store isn't as filled with peaches as he likes. He shrugs, a gesture of awareness that weather will not behave and then smiles. "When we have a good season, we have to have someone out there directing traffic and there'll be people out there waving money at us. They buy bushels. They see the abundance and think it's easy. Then they think they want to get into agriculture."
Farming goes back in Bacon's family to his grandfather and it was on visits to his grandparents that Bacon picked up the love of the land. He knew first-hand that this was a difficult business, one in which a bad year meant a total loss of income. He did not go straight into farming. First he went to university where he earned an MS in Plant Physiology. From there he detoured into the newspaper business. His choice to publish three weekly papers for farmers may have been a hint that he would one day veer away from newspapers into farming. All his friends were farmers and Bacon states that he noticed that "they were always moaning about the weather, but they were happy." Bacon understand the odds of having the bumper crop one year and weather conditions that destroy a crop the next. And if the weather starts to look unfavorable for peaches, in go a crop of okra, or tomatoes, or blackberries or cabbage or string beans. With his family, he produces preserves, jam, jellies, all of which they sell at the store.
If you ask him how he deals with the fluctuating weather, the irregular crops, he shrugs. "I wouldn't trade it," he states simply.
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Jamey Vogel of
Vogel Orchards
12862 Hwy 290 East (830) 644-2404
www.texaspeaches.com/vogel
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Jamey Vogel is the youngest in his family. Like Bacon, Vogel tells you that farming was not his first endeavor. He headed first to university where he earned a degree in accounting. "I was working as a CPA," he says, "when mom and dad said they were getting older and needed help." Rather than crunch numbers, he went back to the farm to "16 hour days all summer. Sun-up to sun-down." Though he still practices accounting, it is now a side endeavor.
Vogel talks of the problems of weather with that infamous shrug of the shoulder. He tells you that the commercial market has declined because large supermarkets want the same thing every year at the same time, but the weather in Fredericksburg is vulnerable. "It's worth the gamble. I love what I'm doing. I want nothing more in my life than to produce good peaches. I got an accounting degree, but it wasn't the same. In addition to selling peaches by the bushel, Vogel farms makes jellies and preserves. Their line is named after his mother Nelda, and is from a recipe his mother has been using for fifty years. "We aren't even sure where it came from. My daughter and my Mom do most of the cutting and peeling and so forth for the preserves." Nelda is no mere label, it is the old-fashioned way.
"There's a lot satisfaction in knowing that you will produce more in your life than you will consume yourself. And people are going to be happy with what they buy. They are return visitors. They come every year from all over Texas. They buy 20 boxes and bring it back for their friends."
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Daryl Whitworth of
the Fredericksburg Convention & Visitor Bureau
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What is this well-suited gentleman doing on a page devoted to touching the soil? He works for the Visitors Center, organizing the schedules of visitors, discerning what would appeal, going beyond the call of duty to help. But his love and passion for agriculture is equally strong. He does not go home at the end of the day to kick off his shoes and put his feet up. He kicks off his shoes, changes into boots, and heads to his tractor to plant winter grazing coprs -oats, wheat and
turnips- for the cattle to eat. He also has to plow the peach orchards,
but he saves that for his free time in daylight hours. On dark winter nights, he is oftenfgeeding the cattle.
Whitworth raced through university with scholarships all the way. Today he holds two degrees, an MBA in marketing and and a BA in management. He worked at an animal nutrition company in sales, selling vitamins and minerals for livestock, and came to Fredericksburg when his wife was offered a teaching position. They knew the quality of life in Fredericksburg, that they would have farm land if they moved there, and "jumped at the opportunity." Whitworth likes to talk about farms and farmers with interested visitors. He tells you that a few of the old-time farmers, the ones that look like they don't have a penny to their names are land rich. "The old expression is that they have more land than you could say grace over. Some of them," he says, "can sell their land and never work another day in their lives. But they hold on."
"It's about core values. It's about your children - what you want them to know and understand about life. It's about heritage, not money."
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