It’s been a year since I moved to Austin, TX from Boston, MA.  Best decision I could have made, seriously. For better or worse, Austin is something of a Neverland, perfect for artists, techies, and foodies alike.  While we all have to grow up eventually, the vibe in Austin makes it easier to do it on your own terms.  As a graduate student and part-time farmer, Austin has provided the backdrop to support a full exploration of what my next step will be. You can eat well on a budget, get outdoors without driving an hour, talk to your local farmers, and even volunteer on the farms, working side by side with farmers.

          My engagement with the local food system began shortly after I arrived and sought out local farm volunteer opportunities. I didn’t and still don’t have a car, so access to some opportunities was limited, but the East Austin community proved to be ideally located.  From our abode in Hyde Park, the 350 bus goes straight down Airport Blvd to the East Side.  The folks at Boggy Creek Farm were the first to respond to my volunteering interest and I began around this time last year volunteering on the farm doing fieldwork once a week for four hours.   While the work is absolutely rewarding, it came with an added bonus, some farm-fresh produce for your four hours of work.  This is not how volunteering in Boston works, at least in my experience, and this was not a situation where you find someone showing up simply because of the “free” food.  Some days the work is truly exhausting, so you need to love the work and the people as much as the food trade arrangement.  Despite a less than ideal financial situation my first couple of months here, I was able to work for almost more produce than I could eat in a week.  It truly surprised me how few people know about these opportunities.

About a month later in September, I received an email from the co-owner of Springdale Farm, about a farmer’s market volunteering opportunity with them.  I had hoped this would lead to connections in the community but had no idea just how much these connections would come to define my first year in Austin.  Like Boggy Creek Farm, Springdale Farm offers volunteers farm fresh produce for two and a half hours of work at the market stand.  Volunteering at Saturday market has become one of my favorite weekly events.  It’s proven to be the perfect environment to form new connections with a diverse array of farmers, chefs, restaurateurs, local artists, and other community members, all passionate about food from their own angle.  It’s a little more of a relaxed atmosphere than field work at Boggy Creek Farm, and a more social experience while you ring customers up.  Hardly knowing anyone in the city, I quickly came to enjoy seeing the same customers each week, learning about their backgrounds, and what they had planned for their chosen produce that week.  I’ve made friends with the other volunteers and now eating healthy, organic, local food is just as much a part of my social life as my work and academic life.

          I’d been to farmer’s markets before moving to Austin, all in the northeast, but the Springdale and Boggy Creek markets feel like a small-town community gathering.  The owners and operators of these farms truly love what they do and it’s completely contagious.  Chefs start arriving five minutes before the doors technically open, eager to get their pick of the day’s veggies.  Whole families with their children and dogs come in and catch up with the farm owners, discussing farm matters equally as much as unrelated day-to-day concerns.  In my studies of sustainable food sourcing, I have found that driving to multiple local markets does result in higher emissions than going to a central grocery store.  However, there’s truly no replacement for cultivating relationships with the people who grow and cook your food. The experience creates a multifaceted appreciation of food, one that no amount time buying organic produce at Whole Foods can replace.  The more connected to farmers we are as consumers, the more quickly and effectively we can shift the market towards more sustainable organic growing techniques like no-till and permaculture that conserve soil carbon and produce more nutritious food.

          The Austin chapter of Slow Food provides an ideal platform for foodies of all kinds to meet and spread the word about Austin’s local food scene.  In addition, the monthly Slow Food Happy hour rotates to restaurants around the city that consistently shop at the local farms.  While my experience remains limited to the East Side, there are at least nine farms within a twelve-mile radius of my apartment north of the city center.  With so much produced locally, restaurants can find most of what they need to build a fantastic menu at any time of the year.  We even have fresh ground flour and corn, grown locally, available at Barton Creek Mills, and local humanely raised grass-fed beef, chicken, and pork.

          The communities here in Austin are inspiring, inclusive, and support food education through organizations like the Sustainable Food Center (SFC), Food for Black Thought, and others.  SFC makes farmers markets accessible to those in the SNAP program by matching up to $30 of fresh produce in double dollars. There is always work to be done, but the people here are willing to do it.  My graduate thesis focuses on family land south of Jackson, MS, a community with its own burgeoning local food system.  I will continue to live in Austin, but am moving towards splitting my time between Austin and Jackson in the next year in an effort to learn about the vibrant food community of Jackson, MS. Having grown up in the northeast, and having lived in one southern city for a year, while researching the food scene in another (Jackson, MS), it has become increasingly clear that there is no single sustainable food system model. Designing systems that work requires us to pay attention to local culture, history, and economics.  Working part-time at Boggy Creek Farm for the past 6.5 months has made this even more clear.  I’ve learned to enjoy this process and look forward to further exploration.