It’s an overcast Sunday morning here in North Texas. Rain is in the forecast once again and with a little luck it will continue Monday. Another “rain day” would be welcome during this busy time of year. Another peaceful morning drinking coffee and getting some well-deserved rest and some writing time would be amazing even though this is one of the busiest weeks of the year.
Juneteenth is this Friday and Ms. Opal’s Walk for Freedom is at nine o’clock at Will Rogers Coliseum. Opal’s Farm will be there for the celebration with lots of great veggies. I’ve been told that, God willing, Ms. Opal will be there to ride in the comfort of air conditioning to lead the walk and celebrate her hundredth year. After all the miles she has walked to advocate for a day of celebration on June 19th, she has definitely earned the comfort of air conditioning on a Texas summer day.
Our Executive Director (and candidate for Texas Congressional candidate for Texas District 25) will be in Evansville, Illinois (one of our sponsor cities) for Opal’s Walk and then in Chicago for the Grand Opening of the Obama Presidential Center. We’ll all be walking together at the same time as many folks around the country and the world. Please come and celebrate freedom and unity with all of us.
Event Details
Date: Friday, June 19, 2026 Location: Walks taking place across the country
Walk Host Cities:
Fort Worth, TX
Evanston, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Los Angeles, CA
Grants Pass, OR
Washington, DC
Juneteenth has never meant as much to me as it does this year. The constant onslaught of bad news – an unjust war, increasing economic hardships for the majority of Americans, the daily attacks on our freedoms and democracy – can be overwhelming, bringing hopelessness and despair. Juneteenth is a reminder that we all have something to celebrate – our freedom and each other. It offers hope for what we were always meant to be. It’s truly a statement of “we the people”. It’s so much more than a holiday simply honoring the freedom of African American enslaved people. It frees us all from the oppression of fear and hatred that old ideas of class and racism that have weighed on us all. It’s a time to join in unity instead of the deep divisions that so many of us feel.
It truly is a time to, as Ms. Opal says, celebrate freedom from Juneteenth to July 4th. In this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, celebrating Juneteenth has never been more important – it’s about the freedom we all should have and enjoy. Please join us, whether in one of our host cities on in your town , as we walk together to celebrate unity and Juneteenth.
Happy Sunday morning my friends! We had a fantastic Cowtown Farmers Market and Opal’s Farm Stand yesterday. The predicted rainy Saturday turned out to be a beautiful summer day. It waited until the evening to start pouring down so Opal’s Farm received a huge blessing with God’s irrigation!
If you haven’t had a chance to visit the Opal’s Farm Stand you need to come by and visit. We’re at the corner of Rosedale and Evans (1109 Evans) every Saturday from 1 PM until 4 PM. We’ve been blessed to have other vendors asking to come down. Stephen from Tabor Farms is there frequently with an abundance of produce grown right here in Fort Worth as well as Demetria’s incredible herbal teas and salves to meet your wellness needs. We’ll be adding two new vendors in the coming weeks so please come out and join the fun.
Tomato season is well under way. First time market goers may want to come early as tomatoes tend to sell out quickly. There’s nothing better than a real tomato – locally grown 100% organically! A warning though, you may never want to eat grocery store tomatoes again…
Please remember that next Saturday, June 13th, from 8 AM to Noon, is Cowtown Farmers Market’s 40th Anniversary Festival. It will be a special day for all of us. We hope to see you there.
September is finally here, and meteorological autumn has begun. I’d like to think that truly means the end of summer, but I live in Texas, so I know better. We’ll still see some hot days but hopefully no more triple-digit-temperatures. All-all we’ve had a mild summer compared to the last three or four years. We even had rain in July and August, which is rare indeed. Opal’s Farm, with the new fall seed, loves it.
Today is one of the one-in-seven instances that the Labor Day holiday falls on the first day of September. Those who get the day off will be spending time barbequing with family and friends or simply catching up some sorely needed rest. Thanks to the rain this morning I get to spend some time at the desk and reflect on what Labor Day truly means. Labor Day isn’t always a holiday for farmers, so I thought I’d take advantage of the weather to play catch up on the recent farm news.
Most of you all are aware of the cutbacks that led to staff layoffs at the first of the year. Add to that an April knee injury and I’ve been working a bit slower than usual this year. I also had to scale back the amount of land we were cultivating to our original one acre. The good news is that we were still able to surpass last year’s total in pounds of produce grown. That’s what happens as the soil becomes healthier with each passing season. That’s why farming regeneratively is one of our core values.
Stacey Harwood, our Volunteer Coordinator, has remained on staff although paychecks have been a bit erratic this spring and summer. She’s been with Opal’s for six years now and has become a loved member of Opal’s family (we may be a non-profit but we’re really a family farm!). She’s done an excellent job of working with our volunteers and we’ve had some great groups and individuals come out to work on the farm. If you have volunteered with us, please know there’s no way to adequately tell you how much you mean to us. We’ve been able to get so much more completed with your help. Your impact has reached far beyond just the farm to the tables and people across the communities we serve.
Help is treasured, but the reality is that most days it’s just me at the farm. That’s not always so bad though. I’ve really thought about how we can serve our community better. One way we have done that is to open Opal’s Farm Stand every Saturday from 1 PM to 3 PM at the “Doc” Sessions Community Center Parking lot (201 S. Sylvania – the corner of 4th and Sylvania).
Opal’s Farm Stand offers more affordable prices for our quality organic produce to our neighbors. We are also a SNAP/EBT retailer and began offering Double Up Bucks two weeks ago with the help of Texas Health Resources Community Hope and Double Up Texas. SNAP participants can redeem up to thirty dollars in SNAP benefits to purchase fresh produce. Those thirty dollars then becomes sixty dollars, doubling their purchasing power.
We’re still at Cowtown Farmers Market most Saturday mornings, but our emphasis is switching from so much being sold at retail to lower pricing for our community. To be honest, it’s a bit of a financial risk. It takes time to build a market location. Farmers live on slim profit margins. People fail to realize the work that goes into growing good heathy food. That’s why Cowtown offers great food at a fair price.
Unfortunately, farmers markets are not always accessible to marginalized neighborhoods: either in location or pricing. We’re so grateful to be a part of the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program at Cowtown. The market and our regular customers are a blessing to us. They’ve helped sustain Opal’s financially and we wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for them. However, we will be taking less produce to Cowtown so that more is available to the neighborhoods we serve through Opal’s Farm Stand.
We also want to extend a heartfelt thanks to Jesse Herrera of CoAct and the Funkytown Mindful Market. Their market is held on the first Saturday of every month at Texas Wesleyan University (1201 Wesleyan in Polytechnic Heights). They’ve been purchasing Opal’s Farm produce to sell to the Eastside neighborhoods they serve. The next market will be held on September 6th from 11 AM to 2 PM.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to the Dallas Wings WNBA and the Texas Fence Association. In January, they built a chain link fence around our bio-intensive third of an acre. The Dallas Wings front office spent a volunteer day at the farm and got so much done that I am in awe of them. They’ll be returning in September and the Texas Fence Association will return to fence another third of an acre (you all are amazing!).
Our first cohort of Taste the C.U.R.E., in partnership with Tarleton State University, graduated on June 28th. The students did a great job of learning and using bio-intensive farming methods. Several have kept their farm plots while others have chosen to take the knowledge they learned and apply it to their own backyards and neighborhoods. The next cohort starts in February and more details will be forthcoming.
Finally, I want to remind our readers of the importance of today, Labor Day. It was signed into law June 28th, 1894, by President Grover Cleveland following the Pullman strike and decades of struggle by the US labor movement as industrialization grew throughout the end of the nineteenth century. Labor Day is a day to remember and celebrate the sacrifices of the US labor movement and honor their achievements and the prosperity we enjoy today.
Have a great holiday. Enjoy your family and your neighbors. Stop by and see us at Opal’s Farm. We’d love to have you join the family!
I hope everyone is staying hydrated and healthy now that summer seems to have started in earnest. We’re hanging in there and keeping the summer crops watered to keep bringing you fresh, healthy, LOCAL produce (you can’t get much more local when you’re right next to downtown!).
We have so much to pass on to you all. June has been an amazing month already and Juneteenth is right around the corner. One of the Juneteenth events you shouldn’t miss is the Empowering You – Education, Health, and Job Fair to be held tomorrow and Saturday at the Trinity River Campus of Tarrant County College. See the attached flyer for details and while you’re there, come see us at the Opal’s Farmstand.
Greetings from Opal’s Farm. We will not be at Cowtown Farmers Market this week. The busy Spring planting season came to a bit of a halt this morning. The rain that came in overnight has been great for the farm and not so great for “being under the weather” physically. We will be there next Saturday morning and hate missing the Spring Festival this weekend. Bring your umbrellas and join the fun at Cowtown Farmers Market today!
I can’t stand to miss our family and friends at the market. Over the last five years, Cowtown Farmers Market has truly become family. It’s the highlight of my week. There’s something special about our market and the farmers and vendors who come each week to bring fresh local produce, meats, honey, and all kinds of other local products. I’ve learned so much from the knowledge freely shared by the farmers and friends there.
I grew up in Fort Worth but spent many days at my Uncle Carl’s ranch in South Texas or my Uncle Roof’s dairy farm up towards Boyd. I tend to be more of a carnivore when it comes to diet. That remained the case until I came to Cowtown. You see, Cowtown is unlike the way most folks shop for groceries. People actually stop and talk to one another. No avoiding hurried and harried people with shopping carts and frustration with checkout lines. You won’t find one self-checkout stand at the market; although people may line up because one of our farmers has something special that week (especially when peaches, tomatoes, and blueberries come in).
I’m no vegetarian, nor am I knocking those who are. I still love meat, but Cowtown helped me broaden my food experience. Customers have shared their many ways to cook the fresh produce we bring to market each week and I’ve tried them all (well, most of them anyway). I’ve incorporated many of their recipes into my diet. I even like greens now (except for kale – you all like it so we’ll keep growing it for you – I’m not there yet…).
I hope you will all head out to Cowtown Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. Get to know our local farmers and vendors. Cowtown is a producer-only market. All the farms are within a 150-mile radius of Fort Worth. Everything is truly local. No one is a reseller – getting their produce from a distributor or wholesaler. In other words, we don’t have field tomatoes in January or Brussell Sprouts in August. Learning to eat what’s in season is not only respecting the Earth’s rhythms but benefits overall health as well.
Food is one thing we all have in common. It is to be savored and enjoyed by family and friends and so should shopping for it!
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