Kaufman County Poor Farm 2025 to Present

A New Beginning

Because of the evolving plan for the Poor Farm, we were asked to relocate our garden area from behind the Superentendant's house to the back of the property.

That process began in early 2025 and has been slow to progress because of the need to move our storage shed and to prepare the new garden area, which was overgrown with poison ivy. As pre-paration for moving the shed, we relocated the contents to a temporary storage area. While the shed was empty, we did some repairs to weather damage and gave the shed a new coat of paint.

Greenhouse Construction

When we moved to the Poor Farm in 2022, we could not move the hoophouse because there was no space for it. The hoops were set in concrete so moving them was impractical anyway. We purchased a small greenhouse, but did not construct it because we found out we needed to relocate to another are of the Poor Farm.

In October 2025, our intern class took on the construction as their intern project. They experienced many challenges, including missing parts and preparing a suitable site for the foundation. But they perservered, and we have a new greenhouse.

Sorting and identifying parts. Photo: KCMGA

Beginning wall assembly. Photo: KCMGA

Lynette Barker, Kathy Byford, Paul Ramler and Carolyn Jones with a side wall section. Photo: KCMGA

Lynette Barker and Linda Redd work on side assembly while Carolyn Jones helps Paul Ramler with roof assembly. Photo: KCMGA

Lynette Barker, Carolyn Jones, Paul Ramler and Linda Redd. Photo

Garden Planning

While work was being done on the greenhouse, another group was planning the design of our garden. The top half would be a pollinator garden with native plants, and the back half would have another pollinator plant bed with adapted plants. There would be four raised beds for vegetables. Since there are traditional vegetable garden plots on both sides of our area, we choose to focus on raised beds. Just behind the raised beds, between the green house and the shed would be a potting area that could be used for demonstrations and classes.

Raised Beds Are Installed

View of raised beds after installation. Layout of pollinator garden is begining in the background.

Work crew in front of path base and some of the soil for the pollinator garden.

Pollinator Garden Takes Shape

Split rail fence that defines the pollinator garden.

A split-rail fence that covered much of the top half of our garden area was installed. The pollinator garden would be planted here after the soil and path were installed.

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