Today we’d like to introduce you to Ellie Pavliska.
Alright, thank you for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
My background isn’t in agriculture at all! Until recently, I was a classically trained pianist and music educator in San Antonio. I had two music degrees, years and years of practice under my fingers, a full studio of wonderful students, and zero passion for what I was doing. I was what you’d call a textbook case of burnout. I was desperate to bring some meaning back to my life, something tangible and real. I thought, “What’s more real than growing the very thing that sustains us?” So I started learning how to garden and grow my food. This was back in 2017, and during this time, my husband and I were living in a small apartment in San Antonio – not very conducive to growing vegetables!
I grew up in Floresville on land my grandfather used to farm peanuts, and I loved growing up in the country. My parents still live there, so it seemed the perfect spot to start my gardening journey. I would drive down to Floresville to work in my garden, at first a few times a week, but soon nearly every day as my garden grew. I was still teaching full-time but devouring books about organic gardening and permaculture in my spare time. I tried many different growing methods; some worked, and others didn’t! But each year, our garden got bigger and our grocery bills smaller. My husband and I started talking about owning some land of our own, and in late 2020 bought a couple of acres from my family in Floresville. Initially, we just wanted to homestead and live more simply and self-sustainably. I hadn’t seriously considered starting a farm or trying to make a living from our land. But as I mentioned earlier, the burnout was real. I was increasingly feeling lost with my work. I started only feeling truly happy when my hands were in the dirt. COVID was also clarifying for me, as I think it was for many people. It forced me to think about what I wanted out of my life. It also showed me how fragile our industrialized food systems in this country are and how important it is to have a local food system made up of local growers and producers. We shouldn’t have bare grocery shelves in this day and age. Bit by bit, I started wanting to be a part of that local food system. I thought, “If I can grow food for myself, why not grow it for others?”
Fast forward to 2022, and I decided I was ready to take the leap and start our vegetable farm. Our little farm is still in its first year, but I am proud of what we’ve already accomplished. We’ve sold at small weekly markets in Wilson County nearly every Saturday since March, and we just held our first produce share pickup, where customers can come directly out to our farm to pick up their products and see the market garden. We’re just getting started, and I can’t wait to see how we continue to grow!
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Oh gosh, it’s been the bumpiest road, with many twists and turns. Deciding to change my life around at 30 has been the scariest thing I’ve ever done. It’s hard to make a big career switch even if you know deep down that it’s the right thing for you. I am so thankful to have such a loving and supportive family who have always been there for me, especially my husband! Cody has been with me every step of the way.
Apart from the emotional upheaval, starting a farm from scratch is hard work. When I decided to start the farm at the beginning of the year, our two acres were still fairly undeveloped and not ready for a market garden the way I envisioned it. I quickly realized that I would have to work with the garden I currently had on my parents’ land. So I redid the garden, tearing it out and digging out new beds that were all a standard width and length so that I could maximize efficiency at the small scale I was working with. In the end, I essentially ended up with ten 50-foot garden beds. It wasn’t a lot of space, but it was enough to get us started. All the while, we were working on getting a much larger space on our property ready.
How we farm is different from how most people think of farming. I don’t own a tractor, and I use mostly hand tools. The wheelbarrow is my best friend! It is a lot of physical work but on a human scale. At a human scale, it is quite amazing how much you can grow in a relatively small space. The market garden we built on our land is 8,000 sq ft, a little less than a quarter of an acre. That sounds like barely anything if you’re thinking of farming at a tractor scale. On a human scale, however, it’s a lot of space and work! Digging out our thirty-eight 50-foot beds by hand and spreading two dump trucks’ worth of compost, also by hand, were just a couple of the crazy things we had to do to jump-start our market garden. I think it’s safe to say that during this last year, I’ve worked harder than I’ve ever worked before in my life. In the summer especially, I would routinely get up at 4:30 am every morning to get enough work done before the heat became unbearable. But happily, our market garden is finally completed, and we’ve been able to increase our growing space drastically.
As you know, we’re big fans of Labatt Acres Farm. What can you tell our readers who might need to be more familiar with the brand?
Many customers assume that the name of our farm comes from a family name. But the name is rooted in a piece of local history. Our farm is off of County Road 120, but the road used to be called “Labatt Road” as it went through a small rural community called Labatt. Most of Labatt’s founders were farmers and ranchers of Czech, German, and Mexican descent. My Czech great-grandfather moved with his family to the community in the early 1900s and farmed peanuts. There was a one-room schoolhouse that he would walk to and that my grandfather grew up attending, too. Pavliskas have lived in the area ever since. I wanted to preserve some of that local history in our farm’s name since the Labatt area had such a rich farming history attached to it already.
We are a small but diverse vegetable farm growing on only a quarter of an acre. It’s just myself and my husband working the farm. In this first year, we’ve brought carrots, radishes, lettuce, kale, spinach, scallions, tomatoes, peppers, okra, cucumbers, squash, green beans, and peas to markets, to name a few! We care deeply about responsible land stewardship and farming without synthetic chemicals, focusing instead on regenerative growing methods. We are focused on soil health and use no-till and low-till methods to keep our topsoil intact and productive. Our mild climate in South Texas allows us to grow our seasonal produce year-round. We also offer canned products such as pickles when in season, always homegrown, and from our garden. My husband manages our bee hives, and we provide raw honey when it is in season. We also use natural resources on our land; for example, we canned a bunch of prickly pear jelly over the summer because the cactus plants were loaded with fruit!
We are selling at local weekend markets in Wilson County, but we plan to expand into other markets in our second year. We are also planning on offering produce shares straight from our farm. Each share comprises 5-6 veggies picked fresh the day before, and customers can come to our farm for pickup. We held our first on-farm pickup last weekend and plan on offering them more often as we head into spring. It’s a great way for us to meet more of our customers and for them to see how we grow. Anyone interested in participating in future produce shares can sign up for our newsletter on our website.
Please talk to us about happiness and what makes you happy.
The whole process of watching a tiny seed grow into a beautiful plant makes me happy! Don’t get me wrong, it takes a huge amount of effort and work to get something from seed to harvest, but that’s part of what makes it so gratifying. I’ve always loved a challenge. Part of what drew me to the piano was how difficult of an instrument it is to master. Farming presents challenges, but they are so rewarding in the end because you can literally taste the fruit of your labors! And then to be able to share the fruit with others? It doesn’t get much better than that.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.labattacresfarm.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/labattacresfarm
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/labattacresfarm
Image Credits
Ellie Pavliska
