Moving to Texas has introduced me to some wonderful people doing wonderful work in terms of the local food movement. Soon after moving here, I saw a job posting that piqued my interest with the Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance. I did some digging and learned that FARFA is a national organization that supports independent family farmers. Hello, sounds like my kind of people. I reached out to them and learned about the Farm & Food Leadership Conference that took place in August in San Marcos, TX and jumped at the chance to volunteer there.
Turns out, I knew an attendee at the conference, which is kind of crazy since at the time I’d lived in Texas less than a year. When we met in the first conference session of the day we agreed that we thought we knew one another but couldn’t pin point how. After a few hours of the conference and back & forth about how might be connected we figured it out! Meagan was a yoga teacher at a studio a I frequented in Bloomington, IL. And here were are smack dab in the middle of Texas both new transplants. What a small world.
I had the chance to get connected to all kinds of people interested in all kinds of co-ops across Texas through a day long session lead by Annelies Lottmann, the Central Texas Program Coordinator for the Texas Rural Cooperative Center of the University of Texas/Rio Grande Valley. I left the conference energized and excited about the local food movement as well as the cooperative movement here in Texas. I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference.
