North Texas farmers and ranchers have been working relentlessly since Sunday as Winter Storm Uri sent temperatures to record-breaking lows and crumpled the state’s power grids. A combination of snow and ice, along with widespread power outages, has challenged Texas food suppliers as never before as they labor in below-freezing temperatures to save livestock and preserve crops.
“Farmers are a resistant-type people who are used to working with weather disasters and crops, but this is unprecedented. We’re in territory we’ve never seen before,” says Amanda Vanhoozier, chair of Slow Food DFW and founder of Coppell Farmers Market.
Yseut Berlingeri-Stambaugh of My Epicurean Farm, which supplies aquaponically grown microgreens to restaurants throughout Dallas, reports that she had lost 80% of her microgreens by Tuesday morning. The use of industrial, propane-powered space heaters wasn’t enough to get the plants through 15 hours without electricity during a night of single-digit temperatures that went negative by sunrise. Her 1,000 fish did manage to survive.
In Lucas, hydroponic farmer Jeff Bednar of Profound Microfarms and Profound Foods says he was awakened by a phone call from a neighboring farmer early Sunday morning alerting him that the power was out. From early Sunday, he rotated a propane-powered generator, which cost around $80 an hour to run, to keep his greenhouse plants alive.
Bednar says a burst pipe flooded a dining room in his Fairview event space Tuesday morning and canceled restaurant deliveries. To prevent food waste, he plans to donate the produce to local charities.
Bednar encourages people to think about local food supply during times like these. “Soil farmers have probably lost all their crops,” he says. “Without greenhouses, there won’t be a lot of vegetables coming out of the ground. If you want to eat local, there won’t be much available for a while.”
And yes, locally grown goods might cost more. “When you’re spending $500 a day to keep your plants alive, comments about being able to buy cheaper produce at the grocery store are hard to digest,” he says.
In addition to farmers, ranchers with livestock to keep hydrated and protected from the blistering cold are also working overtime.
Caroline Fruth, owner and operator of Fruth Farms Southwest in Caddo Mills, northeast of Dallas, has been hauling water to troughs from indoors and breaking up ice on the farm’s ponds with an ax so her cows, goats, chickens, horses and donkeys will have access to water.
She currently has 10 calves on the property while some cows give birth during the storm. There are a lot of mouths to feed. She says all bathrooms, shops, loafing sheds and closets on the farm are “filled with critters. There’s an old goose living in one bathroom. The barn cats are in another.”
Someone also abandoned a frost-covered pot-bellied pig on her porch Sunday night. After thawing him out, she sheltered him with the goats, which weren’t happy about the newcomer. She says animals and pets are often abandoned in the area, but it’s actually providing some amusement now. “In all this, I look down, and there’s a pig. I’m calling him ‘Fugitive Piggie’ for now.”
Fruth says that in her 25 years as a cattle rancher, she’s never experienced weather like this. “Farmers’ work is incredibly hard work, and it’s miserable,” she says. “There’s no other word for it right now.”
To keep going, she thinks of a customer who gives her a Christmas card every year in thanks for feeding her family. “That’s what I’m thinking about when I pick up my ax this morning. When you buy local, that’s what gives us strength.”
In Greenville, Rehoboth Ranch co-owner Mark Hutchins is keeping a close eye on water access points on his ranch, which specializes in grass-fed and pasture-raised meats. He says ranchers like him spend a lot of unseen time to treat animals humanely while also harmonizing operations with unpredictable Texas weather. “It’s behind the scenes. You don’t see it,” he says. “We don’t do this to get rich, or because it’s relaxing. We do this because we love it.”
Farmers, ranchers and farmers market directors are all asking for understanding from consumers who value local and organic food sources.
“We hope that when people come to our markets and see there is less produce than they expect this winter, that they remember that some of our farmers have just lost everything and are rebuilding,” says Casey Cutler, executive director of Good Local Markets, which organizes a network of farmers markets across North Texas. “It’s important to try and support our farmers by buying their pickles, their jams, their T-shirts, signing up for their CSAs, and attending markets that farmers rely on.”
CSAs are community-supported agriculture programs that allow consumers to purchase directly from farmers by buying shares of a farm’s harvest in advance. One such program is TX Farm Fresh, which offers 1,400 products from 30 local producers, with deliveries to Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Houston.
The owner of the program, Sam Maggard, who also owns Tonkawa Farms, says he had to start something new after the pandemic when restaurants decreased demand for his poultry. He and his partners delivered 438 boxes before the storm last week, and new memberships are growing at about 20 per week, he says. He’s relieved that even after canceled deliveries this week, he hasn’t lost any subscribers.
