Without a doubt, 2022 was the Seed Project Foundation’s biggest year ever, thanks to your support. We’re so proud of all the food we’ve grown, nonprofits we’ve supported, and new partners we’ve made in the community. Here’s a quick look at our impact this year!

On a very frigid Tuesday night, over a hundred farmers, ranchers, educators, artisans, and local food advocates gathered in the Grand Ballroom to catch up, share a meal, and listen to a presentation from Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doctor.

It’s hard to believe it had been two whole years since our last farm tour, and it felt soooo good to get back on the bus! We loaded up 50 eager folks bright and early and headed out to the country for the day.

After rescheduling several times over the last eighteen months, we finally welcomed farmer and author Ben Hartman to McKinney!

Our first Symposium of the year affirmed that the local food movement is gaining steam and stronger than ever! Local farmers, ranchers, artisans, county extensions agents, and advocates packed the Grand Ballroom to network, make new friends, and catch up with old ones.

For the first time, we hosted one of our Farm Tours during the fall! The organizers of the Dallas food festival Chefs for Farmers asked if we would do a tour as part of their weekend lineup of events, and we happily obliged.

In 2019, the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance’s Farm and Food Leadership Conference was held in San Marcos, Texas. For the first time, FARFA partnered with Texas State University’s Small Producer’s Initiative, to offer more sessions, speakers, and workshops than ever.

Farmers markets are wonderful, but there is nothing like actually visiting a farm to make you feel truly connected to the people that grow your food. For our spring farm tour this year, we visited Water Boy Farms in Lucas, Pure Land Farm in McKinney, and Stonebranch Microfarm in Celina.

Easily our favorite event of the year, the fourth annual Chef and Farmer Pot Luck was held at Water Boy Farms on Memorial Day Weekend. Due to the never-ending rain this spring, it was too muddy to set a long table in the paddock as we usually do, but that wasn’t going to slow us down!

The Seed Project held our first North Texas Farm-to-Table Symposium of the year in the Ballroom of the Grand Hotel in Downtown McKinney. Nearly 140 local farmers, ranchers, local food advocates, chefs, restaurateurs attended.

Seventy degrees and sunny, the perfect North Texas fall day. We sold out our first ever outdoor Gala in the Garden at Water Boy Farms weeks earlier and a dozen people were scattered on the farm, deep into event preparation for the night, with a little black cloud overhead; the forecast called for 90% severe storms at 8pm, exactly the time of our live auction.