The hot sun and cool, short bursts of wind beat down on the 1.4-acre land called Bobcat Farm in Freeman Center Ranch. Rows of annual plant beds take root on most of the land, from the ripened squash and sweet strawberries to the warm-colored snapdragons attracting bumblebees. Bobcat Farm Club members come to the farm every day since there is always something to do, whether removing the weeds surrounding plants or ensuring they have the right amount of water.
However, the recent pause of a large grant put the fate of the farm and its club in uncertainty.
Bobcat Farm is an organic fruit, vegetable, herb and flower farm run by students. It uses regenerative agriculture, a method of restoring the soil and ecosystem to grow healthy plants. Nicole Wagner, assistant professor of crop and soil science and Bobcat Farm Club project director, started the organization in 2022 and has since seen the area grow from raw, degraded land and rocky soil.
“There was no like irrigation infrastructure, there was no power, there was no greenhouse… there’s no tool shed there were no tools, there were no seeds, nothing,” Wagner said. “So, we had to develop everything.”
Earlier this year, changes in the federal government put one of the farm’s two grants on hold. One was meant to build the wash pack and ends this August. The grant put on hold was responsible for paying the workers and interns, consumables such as seeds and fertilizer, harvesting tools, and research projects.
The work students do on the farm also helps them get jobs in the industry because of the grants. One of these funded projects involved working with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service to research different cultivars suitable for Texas. They wanted to grow raspberries under shade by erecting a hooped shade tunnel for them to better survive.
“That grant was funding all that work too, which was a great experience for the students to have because it was giving them great experiences to go out in the workforce, to make them competitive and for to be in the Texas agriculture space, whether as an industry or in [Texas A&M AgriLife] Extension Service,” Wagner said.
Bobcat Farm Club has a three-phase plan to build the farm. It completed its first phase — adding a hoop house, field crop plot and irrigation infrastructure — in its first year. Wagner phase two was still in progress, which included adding an orchard, post-harvest station and education pavilion, but the funding would have helped start the third phase, finish the infrastructure and pay the rest of the operating costs.
“The original plan of Bobcat Farm was to be run like a business so we would sell our produce, and then that would go to fund the farm’s operations, the farm manager, a few student workers or interns and then pay for operating expenses,” Wagner said. “We needed those two additional years to get past our startup phase, so it’s going to be challenging.”
Wagner said Texas State provided some support at the beginning and paid for some power infrastructure, but that was all the funds it received. The Freeman Center Ranch budget pays for the well water, and the ranch director and staff helped Bobcat Farm Club when it needed it. Wagner would like to see more support from the university for the farm’s support since it is used for multiple tuition-based laboratories.
“Prior to having this farm, we didn’t have these facilities for several classes in the ag department,” Wagner said. “We had no wet lab or dry lab for these classes. So, we built Bobcat Farm to provide this experiential learning, but we are bootstrapping most of it ourselves and not getting funding from the university to hold classes there.”
Wagner said she met with the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering to let him know about the farm’s challenge and value but recognizes that the situation is tight and challenging with the state of the grant landscape.
Since it is at the later stages of its startup, Bobcat Farm Club will have to work hard to grow and sell the seeds and crops it has to raise money. The selling period being between spring and summer gives it high hopes. Wagner projects the organization making $40,000 by the end of 2025 would be a big help. As of April 18, it made a little under $5,000 because of the less of research plots and crops due to last year’s hailstorm and tornado and the cold snap earlier this year.
Bobcat Farm currently sells its produce to Chartwells Dining Services and donates it to Bobcat Bounty. Pearl Willett, agribusiness and management senior and Bobcat Farm Club intern, said the organization is finding ways to diversify the people and places it sells to and increase its output.
“We have access to a freeze dryer,” Willett said. “For something like okra that’s going to be plentiful, it’ll be easy to keep a lot of it.”
Even if Bobcat Farm Club cannot make its goal in time, its members care about the farm and are dedicated to keep it going. Matthew McGinnis, geography resource and environmental studies junior and Bobcat Farm Club intern, said his heart would break but would come work on Bobcat Farm for free.
“You would have to come remove these plants to get them to not grow,” McGinnis said. “It’s a good use of my time to be out here, so you don’t need to pay me.”
