Farm for Thought is the fertile staging ground for advancing the agrihood and tiny home movements as more communities face the twin challenges of affordable housing and food security. The stories, news, innovative ideas, and partnerships shared here are informed and inspired by the success of transforming our historic urban farm into Austin’s first agrihood. Village Farm is a fresh approach to new urbanism unlike any in the country, a residential development of more than 120 tiny homes sited around a certified organic farm. Dig in to learn more about this green oasis in the built environment that is working to make local food more accessible, housing more affordable, and community more diverse and resilient.
On the eastern edge of Austin City Limits is where our family has lived and farmed for two decades. Green Gate’s mission and business have evolved to meet the most fundamental needs — food and shelter — in a rapidly changing environment. We have relied on the game-changing community supported agriculture (CSA) model to make small-scale farming more viable and to help grow our commitment to farm-based education and environmental activism. More innovation and partnerships are needed, however, to meet today’s imperative to grow more farmers, produce more local food, and advance farmland preservation.
At its peak, Green Gate provided weekly shares for 200 families and employed five full-time staff. Our vegetable, flower, and meat CSA was supplemented by the 32-acre farm we own in Bastrop County and other certified-organic producers. The farm’s award-winning summer camp served a diverse demographic — from scholarship students living in the neighborhood to the children of famous musicians, writers and actors. Hundreds of school tours have reconnected a new generation of youths to their ancestral roots. These are best crop we have grown and we want to help other farmers grow, too.
Like so many farms and ranches surrounding Austin, the 250-acres Bergstrom Farm was sold and developed starting in the late 1908s. Just 8 miles from downtown, all but the original 1902 farmstead and a dozen acres around it had been cleared, paved, and plotted into a sprawling maze of mobile homes, RV lots, and light industrial businesses. When ownership changed hands in 2015, our new landlord, Arizona-based Roberts Communities planned to level the farmstead to expand the RV park across the street. We fought to save the farm by introducing CEO Scott Roberts to the agrihood concept. Building a tiny home community was a double risk — few if any had been built to this scale and none with a working farm as its primary amenity. Making a working farm the primary amenity, instead of the traditional golfcourse, swimming pool, or community club house was another untested concept in an urban setting. Green Gate’s reputation as an innovative, welcoming farm helped convince Roberts that a marriage of urban village and urban farm would be a sustainable one. Build it, we said, and they will come. And they have, for the primary reason we predicted: the farm offers what they hungered for but has been missing from most residential communities — a more authentic and meaningful connection to nature and neighbors.
Village Farm construction began in 2017. The last phase was completed in 2023. As of Fall 2024, all 122 home have been sold. For the early buyers who got in before the pandemic, their home values have nearly doubled from the base price then of $75,000. Many owners add custom-built alterations that enhance their beauty as well as efficiency. Several homes designed and decorated by artists have more than one million viewers on their You-Tube tours (one has 4 million!). Others have been featured in tiny home channels. Residents include software developers, health care professional, Tesla employees, construction workers, college students, and retired couples moving closer to their children.
Recently, Village Farm’s success has capture the attention of Austin City Council. In May 2024 it approved a resolution to help spur similar agrihood developments across the city. Similar to how the CSA (community support agriculture) model help make small scale farming more viable, agrihoods need support from local government to scale up and compete with traditional, cookie-cutter developments. City Supported Agrihoods is what we are calling this new CSA: city planners and regulators collaboringat with developers, farmers, and landscape architects to reimagine new land use policies, building codes, and taxing incentive to seed agrihood development in the Extraterritoral Jurisdictions (ETJs. We see it as a win-win approach to making the ETJs extraordinary!