About Me
October - December 2016: Pro-Organic Belize Internship
After graduating high school in the Allen, Texas' class of 2015 I briefly attended community college, worked at Sprouts, sold antiques at trade shows, frequented health food stores, started developing a philosophy on how I thought people could live healthy lives. I had a lot of ideas but no way to make a living off of it or any money to get something started.
On a vacation to Belize in the Fall of 2016 I was offered an internship with Pro-Organic Belize to help set up a produce distribution group. I was given 3 meals a day, a place to live, and was tasked with being one of the intermediaries in between a farmer who began growing organically and the group of expats who made up the organization.
We made weekly trips to a Mennonite community for vegetables and distributed them to our members in a CSA format as well as hosted speakers, classes, and facilitated education for farmers interested in growing for a quickly developing organic market.
2016-2020: Grassfed & Farm to Family Belize
After returning to Dallas for the start of 2017 I knew I wanted to get back to Belize so I set in working every job I could find in between trips. Grocery delivery, market research, landscaping, moving, trashman, and every job I could possible find allowed me to scrape enough to live in Belize for months at a time and one time even up to a full year. My time in Dallas was spent trying to get a press pass to any concert or festival I could get to begin developing the skills I needed to run a health-focused media network.
Farm to Family Belize was my attempt at distributing produce around the country from the rural areas I lived in to the coastal regions I had spent time in and developed relationships. My inability to properly manage and fund the project resulted in a short lived business.
It was at this time I began podcasting and attempting to capture some of the people I had been around. Travel guides, food reviews, tourism referrals, farm tours, and informational video series allowed for consistent content while I began acquiring permits to import Moringa from the farm I was living on directly to the U.S.
I was on one of the last flights out of Belize in March of 2020 and moved to Oklahoma.
2020-Today : Freedom Acres Farm
By 2020 I had met Evan and began working a little bit around Freedom Acres Farm. We hauled some square bales, picked pumpkins, and by the end of the year I was committed to helping scale up the produce operation in the spring.
They had developed a brand in the community through the Durant farmers market but year after year we moved towards selling exclusively from the store on the farm.
Grass-finished beef, pastured pork, and eggs from mobile laying hens are sold year-round while navigating through the seasons to grow what the land will bear. Summertime is filled with tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, watermelon, cantaloupe, peppers, eggplant, and more. By August we are planting lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, radishes, kale, collards, and the rest of the cool season crops.
I write more about my experiences and what we learned along the way in an article linked below.
What I learned in 6 years on a produce farm (coming soon)
About our Farm
In 2024 we were newly married and expecting a daughter. We purchased this 3.22 acre property from a close friend with hopes of moving onto the property immediately but as the due date got closer and we struggled to purchase a doublewide we decided to move into a rent house closer to our son’s school in Caddo. We raised hogs, chickens, and began to garden that fall but soon the 30-minute drive became too much. My wife had brain surgery that spring and soon we completely forget about the property.
Two years later we have acquired an adjacent acre and remodeled a house. I spent from January to July working every single day to get us out of rent and onto the property. As of the summer of 2026 we are moved in, the 3 acres is mowed, and we are just waiting for rain.
As soon as some rain comes, we will work the entire 3 acres, begin getting the grass killed out, and plant a cool season cover crop. In the spring we will let the neighbor’s cattle in for a few days to graze it down and fill the field with manure, mow it short, then plant a warm season cover on it. By next summer we will have it divided up into 16 bed plots and begin our rotation of cash crops, cover crops, and rest.
The model will be a fusion of the market gardening strategies of people like Jean-Martin Fortier and Elliot Coleman with the cover crop strategies of people like Gabe Brown. The direct seeding, starting transplants, bed maintenance, harvest, and bed flip is what I have done for a few years now so that part is going to stay the same.
Freedom Acres will go to seasonal hours August of 2027 and close down for the winter. I was approached and asked if I would like to ramp up my operation and takeover the farm’s obligations to Happy Tails Dog Food and FreshRX. I will spend the next year prepping the ground and building a CSA program with our current customers, planting for those two businesses, and transitioning to seasonal work at Freedom Acres June and July.
