Knopp Branch Farm

Located deep in the country near Edna, TX; Knopp Branch Farm provides organic produce to Houston’s top chefs and restaurants. From our figs to our turnips, we strive to deliver high-end quality, flavor, and diversity to our chefs. Beyond our farm-to-table program, our volunteer program (through WWOOF USA), focuses on educating aspiring farmers, gardeners, chefs, and outdoor lovers alike. Our farm-stay volunteers learn the logistics of an evolving “market farm” model, the basics of working with the land “hand to plow”, and putting in some hard work. We teach a practical application of organic farming as we see and experience it every single day.

Goals

We strive to educate our chefs, volunteers, and visitors on how an organic farm exists in the marketplace. It takes getting your hands in the dirt, spending a day simply weeding, or sticking it out in the rain to finish a harvest. There are five aspects of organic farming that incapsulate our everyday - seed, soil, water, weed, and harvest. Cultivating & promoting healthy soil is essential to organic farming, and we make great efforts to share our hard learned and long researched techniques with volunteers.

We provide farm-stay volunteers with practical and hands-on farming experience. If anything, our goal at Knopp Branch Farm is to teach just one skill — the simple practice of doing — with hard work, and without hesitation.

History & Lagniappe

14 years ago, Donna and Ernest Roth, after raising their family in Houston and settling into retirement, were ready for a change in scenery. Donna and Ernest, avid gardeners, hunters, and lovers of the outdoors, purchased a 37 acre property about two hours from Houston. They had envisioned a place where people could come to learn about organic farming and enjoy the simple pleasures of country living, like good food and good company. With a lot of help from family, workers, and volunteers, they transformed a grassy field full of live oaks into a fully functioning fruit and vegetable farm.

Over the past decade, Knopp Branch Farm has evolved from a small, family run garden, to a fully volunteer run market farm. The farm has 58 raised beds, 10 field beds, a vineyard, 3 citrus orchards, and some of the best figs, loquat, peaches, blackberries, and muleberries in Texas. In fall and winter, the volunteer team spends hours in the field and in the greenhouse, seeding and cultivating the vast variety of veggies that can grow in coastal Texas (including kale, arugula, cabbage, broccoli, beets, garlic, onion, carrots, kohlrabi, leeks, potato, turnip, radish, cauliflower, squash, and more). In the spring and summer months, the variety slows down a bit, but the cycle continues with peppers, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, melons, summer squash, and cucumbers. If you want to get your hands in the dirt or learn a little more about what we grow, check out our WWOOF USA profile and volunteer information.