Onions, bell peppers and jalapeños softened in the sizzling skillet as Luis Ortiz Jr. whisked three eggs nearby.
His mother diced, sliced and chopped the vegetables before they went in. His father took over the stove, browning chunks of hot links beside the vegetables before pouring in the eggs.
Ortiz, a junior and IT student worker at Tarleton State Fort Worth, had helped students and employees harvest the vegetables from the campus garden the day before and brought some home with him. He did not know yet what he would make with them. By 10 the next morning, the answer was breakfast.
“What we picked from the garden did make a difference,” he said.
But before the vegetables became part of this Ortiz family meal, they had passed through a small food system built around an urban farm, a campus garden and the Purple Pantry, which helps Tarleton State students stretch their meals.
After the eggs came Muenster cheese, then the final fold. The omelet took minutes to cook. Growing it began months earlier.
Many of the Tarleton State vegetables that end up in kitchens such as the Ortiz’s start at Conundrum Farms, an urban farm near Benbrook Lake. There, owner Cort DeHart and his team grow seeds in germination rooms and propagation greenhouses.
“We get them to a certain size, and then we deliver those small plugs,” DeHart said.
Sometimes, the farm plants seeds directly in Tarleton State’s garden beds. Other times, it brings young plants to campus and helps students and employees understand how to plant, water and harvest them. Tarleton State reimburses materials, such as compost, and handles the routine care.
The partnership began after DeHart met Rachael Capua, dean of Tarleton State Fort Worth, at a farm-to-table dinner. Their conversation led to discussions about how an urban farm and a university campus with agricultural roots could work together.
“We hope to turn it into a bigger garden or a bigger farm with them one day,” he said.
Before each planting cycle, Conundrum plans the next harvest. Some choices are experimental. Some respond to customer demand. Much depends on what can survive the Texas climate.
Seeds go into cell trays filled with a specialized soil mix, then move between indoor rooms and greenhouses depending on the weather as they sprout.
“There’s a lot of very precarious times in that January, February and early March,” DeHart said, “An unexpected cold snap or a failed heater — that could ruin thousands of individual seed starts.”
From there, some starts grow into crops for the farm. Some become plants for sale. Others make their way to Tarleton State Fort Worth.
Eronia King, director of extended education and workforce development at Tarleton State Fort Worth, said a visit to Conundrum showed her how urban farming could work in a small space. When she arrived at Tarleton State in 2024, the garden was not “as flourishing and great as it is now,” she said.
DeHart and his team taught volunteers what could grow well in Fort Worth’s heat and in raised beds. Since, Tarleton employees and students have handled the routine care.
“There’s great value in growing food yourself that you can turn around and cook in the kitchen really quick,” King said. “It’s a skill that nobody can take away from you.”
The raised beds have grown carrots, beets, zucchini, lettuce and bok choy. This spring, they held purple tomatoes, Thai basil, sage, parsley, purple bell peppers, shishito peppers, kale, collard greens, okra, green onions and eggplant.
King remembered students reacting with surprise when they saw what had grown.
“They’re different from when you see it at the grocery store,” she said. “We’re there and you put the plants in the ground and now you have eggplants that are huge.”
The reaction is what DeHart hopes the garden creates.
“We’ve kind of lost connection in so many ways to where our food comes from,” he said.
A small garden can restore part of that connection, he said. Someone might see the raised beds, ask what is growing and realize they could also plant something in a yard, on a porch or in a container at home.
“You plant a seed,” DeHart said. “In this case, the seed is a small garden up at Tarleton.”
The sky was calmer than usual for a late June afternoon. Patches of blue broke through the cloud cover, and the breeze appeared light — a complete contrast to the harsh heat typical of Texas summers.
Eight raised beds sit on the edge of campus, overlooking rolling land in southwest Fort Worth. Volunteers clipped collard greens, pulled onions from the soil and filled cardboard boxes with glossy eggplants, peppers, herbs and cherry tomatoes.
Bundles of rosemary perfumed the table. Freshly pulled onions rested nearby, their papery skins still dusted with soil and long green tops curling across the surface. Thick bunches of collard greens laid on a chair.
The garden has become personal to Viviana Hornick, a Tarleton State Fort Worth librarian.
Hornick became involved after attending planting events. When the garden club’s previous adviser left, she stepped in to help keep the student group organized.
The garden had struggled before, she said. Summers came. Students left. Staff members got busy. Maintenance fell apart.
This time, she wanted it to last.
In colder months, Hornick waters closer to midday so water on the leaves does not freeze. In the heat, she waters two or three times a week. On Fridays, she gives the plants extra water to help them through the weekend.
“I feel proud knowing that everything is staying alive and thriving and growing,” she said.
Students help when they can. Psychology sophomore Princess Hurtado joined the garden club in the spring after receiving an invitation while she was walking around campus. She did not know about the garden or much about gardening.
That made it easier to join.
The group has about four members, but Hurtado said they learn together. On harvest day, the garden manifested their efforts.
“You’re learning something with other people and you get to see an actual result happening,” Hurtado said.
Because it was summer, more produce was available for volunteers to take home. The rest went upstairs to the Purple Pantry.
The pantry started as a staff-funded closet of snacks in a faculty member’s office, said Isabel Talamantes, who oversees pantries at Tarleton State’s Fort Worth and Stephenville campuses.
“There wasn’t ever a kind of set mentality of, ‘We are starting a food pantry on this campus,’” Talamantes said. “It became more so where faculty and staff here wanted to help students.”
The Fort Worth pantry, now under the Dean of Students office, is self-serve. Students request access through Student Resources and Basic Needs. The only requirement is enrollment in the current semester.
The philosophy is simple: Take what you need, leave what you can.
“If they need to come in every day and get something, they certainly can,” Talamantes said.
Pantry food comes from Tarrant Area Food Bank deliveries on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month, donors, university purchases and occasional store runs, Talamantes said.
Ground beef and other red meats go quickly, but students also get excited about unexpected items: Fruit Roll-Ups, baked goods like fresh bread and cupcakes, oatmeal, ham and cheese.
The garden gives the pantry another option.
Once vegetables are harvested, they are rinsed and brought directly to the pantry’s refrigerator or fresh produce display. That gives students fresh food and helps reduce the need to spend pantry funds on fruits and vegetables.
For Talamantes, the pantry’s purpose is larger than the food on the shelves: It supports their well-being while protecting their dignity.
“If you don’t have an appropriate food source, if you’re not eating correctly, if you’re not getting the appropriate nutrients, then you can’t function in the classroom,” she said.
Hornick understands the importance of the pantry’s support — it filled gaps in her food budget as a graduate student balancing classes, a full-time job and living by herself.
“Having access to the Purple Pantry was very helpful in making sure that I had at least something, some food to eat at home,” Hornick said.
On that Friday morning, the onions, bell pepper and jalapeños Ortiz brought home became part of a complete dish.
The green bell paper gave the omelet color, he said. The jalapeños tasted fresher than what his family usually gets from the store.
They ate at the kitchen counter. Ortiz drank water and coffee. His father had some of the omelet, too. His mother already planned to eat something else.
For a few minutes after breakfast, Ortiz stayed at the counter and talked with his parents before they went on with their day. Since he didn’t have work or school, Ortiz went back to his room.
A jalapeño or two remained. The bell pepper was gone, but not entirely. Before it went into the skillet, Ortiz’s mother saved a few seeds. She wanted to try growing them at home.
Ortiz thought his mom might have been inspired by what he told her about the Tarleton State garden — how students and employees had planted, watered and harvested food from a few raised beds on campus.
“I’ll plan on helping her with that when it comes to fruition,” he said, laughing.
The omelet was gone within minutes. The seeds stayed behind.
Dang Le is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at dang.le@fortworthreport.org.
The Fort Worth Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
The Report’s higher education coverage is supported in part by major higher education institutions in Tarrant County, including Tarleton State University, Tarrant County College, Texas A&M-Fort Worth, Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan University, the University of Texas at Arlington and UNT Health Fort Worth.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.