Intro to Honey Mustard Ranch
Even if you’ve lived in Rowlett, Texas and know the roads by heart, it’s still very likely that you didn’t know about Honey Mustard Ranch. This community-focused farming operation hasn’t been around for very long, but they’ve been building on the lot on Rowlett Road (near Circle K), and are making impressive progress for the amount of time that they’ve been there.
Suburban Permaculture
Check out Honey Mustard Ranch’s About page, and you’ll learn about how this investment property was transformed into a suburban permaculture operation.
What is suburban permaculture, you might ask? Some consider it a transformative movement in today’s culture, where many people long for ways to get out of the frantic buzz of city life. More than an aspiration, there are suburban farms, gardens, and ranches popping up around the world. And it’s changing the lives of people who live near those farms.
According to Jan Spencer, suburban farming “could be a core part of a green restoration economy, culture and society.”
“Transforming Suburbia”
Chicken coop in production, next to ranch’s golf cart
Jan Spencer writes for Resilience.org: “Many existing design and construction skills like carpenters, electricians, architects, landscapers, can be applied to transforming suburbia, along with many kinds of manufacturing jobs for products such as heat pumps, solar hot water heaters, galvalume metal roofing, insulation and more.”
Setting up a ranch is not a small project, and requires building materials, knowledge, and some engineering skills. Chirag Gupta is the Director of Training on the ranch, and discusses some of the earlier projects they started and what they learned.
“The overarching theme is repurposing,” Chirag explains. The chicken coops are made from materials found by the team, and some of the raised garden beds are made from used tires that were discarded on the side of the road. “Something that a lot of people experience when they’re here is that we work with what we have.”
Using resources that were already around was practical and helped to save money, but Chirag and the team at HMR want to give “trash” new life on the ranch. The scrap materials that ranch visitors work with will support the multiple projects that are underway at HMR.
“It’s that same sort of artistic philosophy of repurposing trash,” explains Chirag. The creative solutions that the team and visitors at the ranch come up with in their projects are a result of that philosophy.
“We also work with local resources and nurseries. Covington’s Nursery has handouts on what plants and insects are native to the area,” explains Chirag. “Let’s try to build something with what we have around us,” he says. “Let’s look for ways we can repurpose trash instead of just piling it up into garbage.”
Education at Every Level
The ranch’s vision is to be “A place where children, adults, and seniors can learn basic ranch skills in a peaceful and educational and collaborative atmosphere.” The Ranch promotes education at every level: The team is always learning as they make progress on the ranch’s projects, and are in turn training visitors and incorporating what they’ve learned along the way.
Part of learning is testing ideas and experimenting with the gardening project. “We use LocalHarvest.org to see what crops are doing well in our region (Zone 8),” explains Chirag. Chirag has also received donations (and offers) from visitors and friends, in the form of new plants.
“A friend sent me elephant ear bulbs recently, so I’m learning how to grow those now,” he says.
Connecting the Community
Another benefit to the ranch is the community that is being built around it. The ranch oversees several animals from neighboring farms, and many of the projects on the farm started because of help from friends and neighbors.
This kind of community building isn’t unique to Honey Mustard Ranch, according to Jan Spencer: “There is a growing number of friends and neighbors taking fences down and integrating their properties in ways beneficial to all involved.”
As humans, it’s crucial that we strengthen the relationships in our neighborhoods, communities and cities, especially when there is an air of division in our society these days. We hope to build relationships at Honey Mustard Ranch on shared values: community resilience, access to nutritious food, and making eco-conscious living decisions.
“Given the deepening and worrisome trends we all know, the more people making these value, priority, lifestyle and home improvement choices to reduce eco footprints, the better,” explains Jan Spencer. “Because those actions all complement others doing likewise, and they all have a positive effect on almost every social, political, economic and environmental challenge of our time. No need to wait, no permission required.”
Want to be a part of what we’re up to? Get in touch here or sign up for a Sunday tour!
