What is The Wild Farm?

The Wild Farm is an inclusive, creative and supportive part of the San Antonio farming community. We are a group of women working to provide the fertile grounds for education on urban farming while simultaneously nurturing the land we are honored to steward. We are passionate about providing the community with access to fresh and local vegetables, cut flowers and fresh herbs. In embracing regenerative practices, we foster a resilient and sustainable food system. In healing the land, we heal ourselves.

What do we do?

First and foremost - we are farmers, gardeners and growers! When you visit the farm, you will see our market garden, our greenhouse and our hoophouse bursting with all manner of seasonal flowers, herbs, and vegetables. We are here to share our knowledge, learn, and experiment with all of the possibilities our many growing seasons provide.

We are also careful tenders of the wild land. These two acres were once littered with trash and with harmful, invasive species that did not provide nourishment or shelter to our wild animal compadres. Gathering the accumulated debris from across the property has been a meditation on human consumption and the creation of waste. We strive to make every event at the Farm a zero waste event, and we’re always excited to try new methods of growing that don’t involve chemicals or plastics. We also accept waste from the community: give us your Halloween pumpkins, your chipped and worn planters - and we will put them to good use!

Four women tend trays of zinnia seedlings on a bench inside the hoophouse
Two women in the market garden: one crouches to tend a staked row of plants along the drip line, the other stands in the straw path between the beds, with pink flowers and a wooden fence behind them
A blue bucket overflowing with freshly cut orange and yellow marigolds
Two women kneel at the far end of a new bed, setting out leafy green seedlings between the drip lines, with bare winter trees behind them
Volunteers fill red wheelbarrows with mulch beside a grey wooden building, one of them holding a pitchfork

In thoughtfully planting the land with native trees interspersed with edible trees (bay laurel! olive! loquat!), we hope to remind our community of our role as members of an ecosystem and awaken the memory in our bodies of a time when humans walked through this land, nourishing themselves with fruits and berries that grew in abundance. For free.

The Farm is a gathering space - for women, their families and community members - to join together to celebrate, eat, mourn, and learn. We host all manner of events including dinners, mending and repair gatherings, farm tours, educational workshops, book clubs, weddings and celebrations of life. If there’s an event you are interested in collaborating on, just reach out!

Origin Story

The property from the air before the farm: a red-roofed house and two overgrown acres, ringed by trees and neighbouring homes
A derelict glass-walled outbuilding, half hidden by brush, behind a heap of old lumber
Five white and brown goats on dry grass, with a mound of wood chips and a chain-link fence behind them
An open stretch of grass on the property under a wide sky, a path and a wooden fence along one side

In 2023, Michelle’s Zillow alert dinged: the price had drastically dropped on a 2-acre property just West of Woodlawn Lake. The property, slated initially for the development of 26 new townhouses before the developer backed out, was overgrown and littered with trash. The existing house and structures were crumbling and a little spooky. Michelle fell in love. She dreamed of raising her children and an entire crew of rescue animals in a restored green space in the middle of the city - with trees to climb, a food forest and gardens full of veggies and flowers.

As time passed, however, it became obvious to Michelle that individual dominions were not what was needed. Private land ownership was not the way forward. Rather, Michelle knew that such a special place, particularly in such dire and isolating political and environmental times, needed to be shared by the community. Her concept for The Wild Farm was born: a collective space where humans could work creatively with mother nature to grow food and protect green spaces in the heart of the city.

Private land ownership was not the way forward.

In 2024, Michelle was connected to Jovanna Lopez through a dear friend, Cecile (she shows up later in our origin story too!). Jovanna had co-founded and was working at an urban farm on the East side of San Antonio named Garcia Street Urban Farm and was struggling with educational institution burnout. The importance of re-connecting her community with the land had become further and further from what was actually happening as the college was unsuccessful in aligning the farm with the college’s needs. Jovanna assisted Cecile Parrish (our Master Beekeeper) with some aggressive bees on what is now The Wild Farm SATX. When she saw the space she asked Cecile what they planned on doing with the space.

Over one wide-ranging discussion (eco-experimentation outside of the bounds of capitalistic production? ethical flower and vegetable cultivation in harmony with the land? local exchanges of food and services?! bees? rainwater collection? wildlife corridors, even?!) and a handshake, they decided to set out to see what The Wild Farm could become.

Year one

Year one involved trash: picking up literally decades of trash from the land, removing harmful invasives so the existing native plants could thrive, clearing a swath of grassy slope and removing stumps to smooth out a space for the market garden, terracing slopes for native plantings and to catch waste water, installing - piece by arduous piece - irrigation in the rows, and so much more. In other words, it was a lot of work. A lot of unfun, unglamorous work that didn’t always feel like it had a lot to do with actually growing anything.

By Spring 2025, though, things were really happening! A fence now secured the entire perimeter of the property, making it safer for the children, dogs and volunteers who visited the Farm. 5-foot rows of the market garden had been built, amended, covered in compost, and littered with mushroom blocks. Tomato plants towered over our heads and nasturtium flanked the rows. We were so excited by and grateful for a grant from the San Antonio Food Policy Council that allowed us to build our wash and pack station and a mobile cold storage.

A yellow wheelbarrow full of trash cleared from the land: plastic bottles, cans, a deflated ball and scraps of plastic
Newly built rows of the market garden, dark compost alternating with wood-chip paths, under a clear winter sky
A long, freshly dug bed of dark soil running across the land toward two yellow posts
The Wild Farm’s market table under a park pavilion, draped in its green banner and set with buckets of marigolds

Year two

In Fall of 2025, we hosted a magical dinner in the garden with food contributed by several wonderful local chefs and restaurants featuring ingredients from the garden. Proceeds from this event helped to fund our food forest, which has been carefully planned and will be planted in Fall of 2026.

In December of 2025, Cecile came on Board as Head Farmer and Bee Keeper to allow Jo time to work on fundraising, programming and educational events.

By May of 2026, we had our bees and plans for a responsible beekeeping program that incorporates the needs of our local, wild bees. Our Spring flowers were enchanting, we’d successfully popped up with flower bouquets at markets and small businesses around the city, and we’d finally filed all of our paperwork to incorporate as a non-profit! The non-profit world is complicated and often ugly but we are hoping to bring total transparency to this process that becomes necessary for all too many small farmers.

Guests share a long-table dinner in the garden at dusk, under strings of lights
Cecile Parrish, head farmer and beekeeper, smiling behind a wooden beehive with bees gathered at its entrance
Two women kneel among pink flowers in the garden, cutting stems, with wire hoops over the rows behind them
A girl in overalls holds a toddler’s hands as they walk through wildflowers, a dog close behind them
A hand holds up freshly pulled onions over a row of onions growing in straw mulch
A woman stands among snapdragons in the garden, holding a small dog, with wire hoops arching over the rows

Stay tuned for Fall 2026! The magic continues.

Community Members and Partners

It is a central tenet of The Wild Farm to build partnerships with community members and organizations who serve and empower women, foster sustainability and access to locally grown produce, and re-green urban spaces. We host many volunteer days and encourage you to come visit the Farm, learn some things, share some knowledge and make some friends.