Eco-Farm features Permaculture Based Agriculture

The Tarleton Ranch Eco-Village Master Plan honors the Tarleton family’s unique heritage of responsible land stewardship with a plan to provide a Permaculture based evolution of existing Tarleton Ranch agriculture land into a productive Eco-Farm Park that combines food production with recreation opportunities. The Eco-Farm Park aspect of the Tarleton Ranch Eco-Village will preserve 185 acres of land for agriculture and recreation uses, composed of TREV PUD Commons combined with the three Eco-Farm Parcels owned by the Tarleton Family, plus GaiaQuest’s Permaculture demonstration center.

With a Permaculture solution, 56% of TREV’s 331 acre Project Site is master planned to evolve into a regeneratively-sustainable ecosystem that provides nutrient rich organic food for the community, farm jobs, enhanced wildlife habitat and a beautiful community park experience. The Eco-Farm plan includes a dynamic polyculture of many hundreds and likely thousands of annual and perennial species that collectively become an environmentally stable “food forest” composed of over story trees, mid story trees, understory bushes, low shrubs, ground covers, vines, root zone tubers, fungus and beneficial soil life.  

The food forest system provides protected areas for alley cropping between food forest lined swales. The system also includes large & small animals, poultry and fish. In addition to the seasonal outdoor farming, the Eco-Farm Plan includes year-round food production in greenhouses heated in the winter and cooled in the summer with a state of the art annualized geo-solar (AGS) technology. The irrigation system will primarily include permaculture swales similar to the existing Tarleton Ranch Irrigation (TRI) system and drip irrigation, sourced from the Acequias running through the property (with water rights), harvested storm water and purified tertiary treated waste water.

The Eco-farm will also provide important stream and habitat restoration for beneficial insects, birds and mammals that will actually enhance the system’s stability and productivity. The Eco-Farm operation will monitor the amount of energy used in relation to what it produces, the effects of the system on the environment, and the high quality social outputs, like meaningful employment and high quality food. As time passes, the whole system will increase in stability, productivity, value and output. The Eco-Farm master plan layout will include 6 Permaculture Zones that are appropriate for TREV’s Eco-Farm Park location, as shown on the map below.