Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Neubauer.
Megan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I had a career in biotech and academic scientific research before leaving UTSW Medical Center to start the farm with my Dad. We’ve always been into food and cooking. We first had the idea to be an aggregator, buying produce from local farms and delivering it in CSA type shares, but most farms we spoke to didn’t have excess produce to sell, so we decided to grow it ourselves. Land in Collin County is a pretty sound investment (especially nine years ago) so we bought a 28-acre property and started growing on it. Dad is a retired petroleum engineer, so I like to say that one engineer and one scientist combine into one decent organic farmer.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Of course not! But we have improved and refined significantly in the last few years. Growing is always a challenge because so much is out of your hands (weather, pests, etc.) but moving from a market garden to a pick-your-own has been a game changer for us. Farmers markets are so saturated right now, farmers don’t get enough traffic at one market to make a living, so they have to pay people to go to multiple markets, and dog forbids if it happens to rain on Saturday morning. We weren’t capitalizing on our greatest asset, which is our beautiful property very close to the Metroplex. Agritourism is in great demand, at least at the moment.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are a pick-your-own farm in McKinney. Dad (Jack) and I are the two employees, we have no “workers”, we do everything ourselves. We specialize in blackberries, with about 2 acres in production, and we also have about an acre of annuals (vegetables – onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, etc). The farm operates on a reservation system – we set up our open times as classes, with a limited number of spots per hour. You book the spots on the website. This keeps it from getting crazy, and we can really chat with everyone and make sure everyone has fun. I think we’re known for that more than anything else, we love entertaining and showing people how food is grown.
What were you like growing up?
We’ve always been into food, and my mom is an excellent cook. I’ve always loved science, though more on the human side before this, but living things are living things and most of it translates to plants. My dad’s job took us overseas for most of my childhood, mostly southeast Asia, which was an incredible experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. It really opened up our eyes to other cultures. An interesting thing about the pick-your-own is how many international people come out to partake, small family farms are obviously more common and valuable overseas.
Pricing:
- Admission is $2 per person, excludes babies that aren’t walking
- Produce prices vary per pound
Contact Info:
- Address: 7505 County Road 201
McKinney, TX 75071 - Website: www.purelandorganic.com
- Email: megan@purelandorganic.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/purelandfarm/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PureLandFarm
Image Credit:
Megan Neubauer
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