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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Growing fresh food - and giving it away
Last year, John Paquin gave away 70 percent of the fresh produce harvested at his farm. How did he make ends meet as a single dad with three kids at home?
“It doesn’t take much to live on,” he says. Paquin, who formerly owned a construction company and farmed for many years with his family in West Texas, started Walnut Creek Organic Farm outside Rockne, near Lockhart, in 2000.
Since then, he’s built the farm into 48 acres with crops as varied as asparagus and watermelon, which two daughters and a son help cultivate. However, he didn’t want farming to be the only thing his children learned in the fields.
When Paquin was a child, his dad would drive around on Sundays with boxes of vegetables and hand them out to those in need.
“Having children, it just strains my heart” to see people go without, Paquin says.
“One day, me and my daughter were headed to the farmers market, and we saw this guy picking up cans. We took him to his home and started bringing by food on a weekly basis,” he says.
Soon, Paquin and his children, ages 10 to 14, were donating produce to the food bank in Bastrop. Now, the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless and Austin Salvation Army receive fresh fruit and vegetables as well. The Paquins make donations twice a week.
With fuel and commodity prices rising, Paquin says he’ll be able to give away only about 40 percent of his crop this year. The rest will be sold through his Community Supported Agriculture program — which has memberships available for $30 a week in 10-week increments for those looking to sign up — and area farmers markets, including the Sunset Valley and Austin markets.
Fuel prices are also affecting volunteers, usually some of the 85 CSA members, who usually come out to Walnut Creek to help in the fields.
“We don’t have people come out to help like they used to,” Paquin says.
For now, he’ll work the land with his kids and several other workers, bringing fresh, clean and safe food to hundreds of people across Central Texas, no matter if they can afford it or not.
If you want to volunteer with Walnut Creek, go to the farm’s Web site, http://www.walnutcreekorganicfarms.com/.
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