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Interview with Tommy Garcia-Prats of Finca Tres Robles
Interview with Tommy Garcia-Prats of Finca Tres Robles
What kind of farm are you? What do you grow and how do you grow it?
Tommy Garcia-Prats is the co-founder and general manager of Finca Tres Robles. It is a vegetable farm that has been around for 6 ½ years and is primarily in the city, so they're also an urban farm. They grow primarily seasonal vegetables so anything from okra to carrots to bok choy and Chinese cabbage. Right now the weather is cooler in Houston, so mainly root vegetables and greens are grown. Then in the spring and summer it's primarily beans, squash, cucumbers, okra, eggplant. They aren’t a certified organic farm, but they don’t use any chemicals or sprays, like not even certified organic sprays. It’s “au naturel.” They do no till, so their days can be pretty intensive.
How would you describe your connections to the community?
Tommy says their goal is to serve the East End of Houston. Finca Tres Robles is located just east of downtown Houston, so that’s where they try to spend a vast majority of their energy and focus their food distribution. They do send some to the Urban Harvest Farmers Market, but the vast majority of their distribution happens through direct customer sales through their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and stands in the East End. They prioritize and discount for the East End. They do events, field trips and other community activities to encourage community participation.
How have you been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic?
Before the pandemic, produce at Finca Tres Robles would max out and that’s because, again, they’ve been in the East End for only about 7 years. Beforehand, they had a pretty strong following and a waitlist on their CSA every season. They did a lot of programming such as having field trips every week, classes on the weekend, free programming on the weekend, hosted events, and rented farm events. But now that whole side of the farm has basically been on hold due to COVID. So financially the event side of things was a big hit, cause they’re not a non-profit right now, but an LLC. This is Tommy’s business, so Finca Tres Robles lost a big chunk of their revenue right off the bat.
Thankfully, things are going well at Finca Tres Robles. While a lot has changed for them, their demand picked up so much at their farm stands. Their CSA and farm couldn’t meet that demand so they started partnering with farmer friends, and other farmers in the area who had lost restaurant outlets and were looking for other places to sell their produce. Tommy and his team buy consistently from other farms/ farm organizations every week and that helps have more product at their farm stand and more capacity in their CSA.
Tommy and his team also started doing what they call “The Neighborhood Produce Program,” which is a servitude that Finca Tres Robles does for their neighborhood partners and community members who need help with some of their clients and needs. They also do a weekly distribution to food insecure seniors and families in the East End reaching about 60-70 a week on average at the height of the pandemic (late spring through early summer). Today, they still reach about 25 seniors and families a week!
What would you like the local community to know about your farm? What can the local community do to support your farm?
Tommy wants the local community to know how committed Finca Tres Robles staff is to providing a quality product and a quality experience for all members of their community. Committed to serving those means and their neighbors who are working everyday or, because of the pandemic, are working no jobs. Their farm staff is really committed to the working class as well as the people who they would think of as foodies. They don’t just want to serve foodies, but strive to serve all members of the community.
The local community can support Finca Tres Robles by
Following them on social media via @fincatresrobles
Donating to their Neighborhood Produce Program
Buying their products at their farm stands :)
How did you get into farming? What do you like or love about being a farmer?
Tommy got into farming because of his own ignorance. He was born and raised in Houston and got to the point where he thought to himself “how can I be in my 20’s and not know anything about food.” The story is much longer, but that is the two sentence version. Tommy moved to Maine and worked on his first farm since in the city of Houston, there’s not a lot of farms.
He wouldn’t say that he decided or really thought of himself as a farmer until he moved back to Houston and realized that there are almost no farms in this city.
“We’re talking about 2 million people, Olive, and not that many farms. So yeah I had a desire to see my hometown grow, my home that I care for, value, and invest in; I want to see it thrive.”
“We’re talking about 2 million people, Olive, and not that many farms. So yeah I had a desire to see my hometown grow, my home that I care for, value, and invest in; I want to see it thrive.”
~ Tommy Garcia-Prats
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