Farm rises from South Dallas Fresh food has eluded Bonton residents, but a nonprofit delivers opportunity to their backyard

Jan. 30, 2015 — The first chickens arrive by pickup inside a wood-and-wire cage. “I’ve got 103 for you,” announces John Ramos, stepping from his truck.

A welcoming party gathers around the chirping riot of browns and grays, blacks and whites. Golden comets, barred rocks, buff orpingtons and Ameraucanas: future layers raised by Ramos, an East Dallas chicken rancher, and his wife, Emily.

“You ready?” John asks Patrick Wright. “Been doing your homework?”

Patrick nods and shares some of his reading about goats, as in Laverne and Shirley, penned in the barn nearby.

Daron Babcock, his friend and mentor, offers guidance, grinning. “Patrick, you can’t show partiality. You’re going to be a parent. You’ve got to take care of them all.”

The flock is freed with sweet talk and tips of the cage. “Welcome to your new home,” says Patrick, as his roaming charges begin scratching a mulched patch of South Dallas.

He helps stack bags of soy-free, non-GMO feed near a new coop. The Ramoses talk of chicken care and behavior and how these beauties should be producing eggs by May.

“It’s a big day,” says Daron, treading lightly among the newbies. “One more step toward becoming the real deal.”

Bonton residents Daron Babcock (first image), and Patrick Wright (second image) are part of a team dedicated to providing healthy, affordable food for the Bonton neighborhood through the creation of Bonton Farm-Works.

Five years ago, Babcock was a corporate manager, living with his two sons in a four-bedroom house in Frisco. Six months ago, Wright was out of work and down on his ways, still getting high after years of drug-crime incarceration.

Now they are part of a team with a plan: provide healthy, affordable food and opportunity for the people of Bonton.

Learning as they go and with home-grown labor, they are creating a farm in the ’hood. The audacity.

Four miles south of downtown, bounded by two highways and a Trinity River levee, Bonton is recharging after years of decline. The origin of the name is murky, but in the early 1920s, newspaper advertisements announced the sale of lots in the “exclusive” 50-acre “Bon-Ton” Addition.

Habitat for Humanity has built or repaired almost 170 homes in Bonton since 1996. A new public housing complex has replaced one of two decrepit projects razed six years ago.

Bonton Neighborhood The Bonton neighborhood in South Dallas is bordered by U.S. Highway 175 to the north, state Highway 310 to the west, and Trinity River levee to the south and east.

New sidewalks, landscaping and other public improvements are in the works or planned. Bonton streets have calmed, police and long-timers say. Crime, particularly violent offenses, has decreased. A neighborhood long home to African-Americans is attracting white residents to its mix of blacks and Hispanics. William Blair Jr. Park, with its lake, trees and open spaces, remains a draw.

But poverty-level incomes and limited options still challenge many residents. The local elementary school closed a few years ago. Boarded houses and littered lots endure. Big Daddy’s, a Bexar Street hangout, doesn’t score one for healthy living.

JBC food mart, near the bus stop, is a step up, even selling a small selection of produce. Sam’s Liquor has its steady clientele. The neighborhood has its ways of dealing with life.

Some in Bonton have moved past obstacles, bad choices and rap sheets to jobs and hope, with help from groups including H.I.S. BridgeBuilders.

Others are trying to get there through that Christian-based nonprofit’s budding venture in urban agriculture: Bonton Farm-Works.

Find the place at the southern end of Bexar past the shuttered washateria, the city’s southeast operations center and the lineup of modest churches. Find it near the Dallas Housing Authority’s Buckeye Commons apartments and the Bexar turn-around, once a dead-end.

Signs on a fence and above an entry present the acre-plus farm, where Babcock and Matthew “Trog” Trogdon, BridgeBuilders employees, work with volunteers and six Bonton men.

The goat barn, built of recycled wood, awaits six more Nubians, expected to join Laverne and Shirley this month. A second delivery of Ramos chickens arrived Wednesday, as did three men from West Texas, who trucked in equipment to prepare soil for planting.

If plans work out, the Bonton farmers will be selling fresh vegetables and pasture-raised eggs by late spring.

I’m hoping this connects people to the land and helps them make better decisions. Daron Babcock, Bonton resident

The longer view imagines a greenhouse; goat milk soap, lotion, cheese and yogurt; farm fruit and compost; and the raising of rabbits, turkeys and fish for neighborhood consumption if not sale.

The vision includes a community training center, store and caretakers’ quarters. A rezoning request for those additions awaits action by the Dallas City Council.

Beyond food, the project aims to provide living-wage jobs and education. Ideally, visitors will see animals and food production in action, and learn about healthy cooking and consumption.

“I’m hoping this connects people to the land and helps them make better decisions,” Babcock said.

Donations are funding construction of the farm, with hopes its production sustains it.

“We’re going to sell a portion to people who can afford it,” perhaps at farmers markets or wherever, he said, “and use the profits to lower costs to the people here.”

About $250,000 toward a $750,000 goal has been raised. The project will develop as far as the money allows, Babcock said. “We’re going to be faithful with what we’ve been given.”