Plum Crossroads Farm

Home
Plum Crossroads Farm

An urban farm right here in Wichita Falls!

We specialize in sustainable, regenerative agricultural practices and provide hard-to-find gourmet items like microgreens, gourmet mushrooms, and fresh herbs to restaurants and home cooks.

Address

Website

https://www.plumcrossroads.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Plum Crossroads Farm posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Plum Crossroads Farm:

Shortcuts

Address
Alerts
Contact The Business
Claim ownership or report listing
Want your business to be the top-listed Pet Store/pet Service?

Country:

City:

Food - The Stuff of Life

I grew up in Wellington, Texas. Drive to Childress, turn right, go another 30 miles, and you’re there. I grew up working cattle with my Daddy, hoeing cotton in the hot summer sun, shelling peas with my MaMaw, and picking peaches with my MeeMee. And then, I grew up. I got married, had five kids and one grandkid, built a career in marketing, moved to the big city of Wichita Falls, and life just kinda happened.

But my home is in the garden and the kitchen. Food is how I connect with my family and friends, and growing that food is how I connect with my community and the world. But that’s hard to do when we’re so separated from our food. So I created Plum Crossroads Farms to give local chefs and home cooks some new options.

Big agribusiness doesn’t take very good care of our planet. They till up the soil, releasing carbon into the atmosphere and contributing to global climate change. Then they truck our food vast distances, burning up fossil fuels. And our current system makes the food supply vulnerable. Food goes from farms to just a small handful of processing plants, then to our stores. Any problems in the processing plant (like bioterrorism or Coronavirus), and we have a problem getting food to the people. A centralized food distribution system (like the one we have now) is vulnerable - vulnerable to attack, to foodborne illness, and to disruption from just about anything.

And the current system doesn’t take good care of the land. By tilling up the soil over and over again and row-cropping every square inch of ground, it releases available nutrients into the air. This increases erosion and depletes the nutritional value of the soil, so plants don’t grow as well. We put some nutrients back with chemical fertilizer, but when the soil is poor, the plants don’t have as much flavor or nutrition.

It doesn’t take good care of the farmers, either. Farmers who work with big agribusiness are at their mercy, and they’re exploited and mistreated, subject to harsh contracts and difficult working conditions. They’re sued and attacked if they speak out. It’s one of the reasons that farmers have the highest rates of su***de in the United States.

But the good news is, it doesn’t have to be this way, and I’m here in Wichita Falls to show you that there ARE other options.

The difference between dead dirt and living soil is nutrition and micro-organisms, and we can put micro-organisms back into the soil with compost. Two of the best sources of compost are mushrooms and p**p! I keep a small flock of backyard chickens and compost their dung thoroughly, working it into my soil diligently to allow all that nitrogen to mix with our natural clay soil here, and in as little as six months, I’ve managed to turn my hard clay back into living soil with earthworms and bugs and loads of living things. And mushrooms are next on the agenda!

You may be familiar with the soggy, flavorless, week-old button mushrooms wrapped in plastic and styrofoam that you buy in the grocery store, but Plum Crossroads Farms will be growing gourmet oyster mushrooms right here in Wichita Falls! You’ll be able to buy top-quality oyster mushrooms - the kind used in five-star restaurants all over the world - in lots of different varieties that are harvested that morning and delivered to you an hour later in biodegradable, breathable packaging! And when that substrate (the stuff you grow mushrooms in) is spent (all used up), it becomes compost to help put nutrients back into our local soil.

That soil is then used to grow fresh, top-shelf herbs like basil, dill, and cilantro. These herbs grow well even in soil that’s not perfect, so their roots can help work soil and mix up the nutrients for later plantings. For the chefs and cooks here in Wichita Falls, you can get fresh herbs harvested that same day by hand with the utmost care and consideration. No more bruised leaves or harsh processing, no more plastic clamshells to clog up the landfill and never decompose, and no more rotting herbs sitting in your fridge because they were already a week old when you bought them.

Coming this winter (2020/21), we’ll be adding microgreens to our offerings! Just around the corner, you can expect to see things like quail eggs and other specialty foods.

We want to be your gourmet food supplier, and we DO offer delivery to restaurants in Wichita Falls, Burkburnett, and Iowa Park. But beyond that, we want you to know that your support of Plum Crossroads Farms supports more than a local, veteran-owned, female-owned urban farm. When you buy from Plum Crossroads Farms, you’re supporting the community, the environment, and the planet.

And you’re also making delicious food with ingredients you can’t find anywhere else around here! ;)