Tarleton State community farming program with roots in Fort Worth grows to other campuses

by McKinnon Rice, Fort Worth Report
December 11, 2025

Tomatoes and eggplants are not the only things growing through Tarleton State University’s Taste the C.U.R.E. program that teaches organic farming methods to community members.

Success during the program’s pilot year in Fort Worth led the university to decide to expand it to the school’s campuses in Stephenville, Bryan and Waco in January 2026.

The free program began in collaboration with Opal’s Farm, a Fort Worth urban farm named for local civil rights icon Opal Lee, who started the farm in 2019 to grow fresh food for communities with limited access.

When the program opened applications for its first cohort, Dana Fitzpatrick, director for civic and community connections at Tarleton State, and Opal’s Farm manager Greg Joel were not sure if they would even get enough applications to fill the 25 spots they had available.

In the end, they received more than 100 applications, including from applicants living an hour or more outside Fort Worth.

“With that type of reach, it was saying, ‘Well, we need to think about how we can get this in other places,’” Fitzpatrick said. “If this is the response that we’re getting back, then it demonstrates the need for it elsewhere.”

The goal of the program is to teach community members how to grow their own food in an organic, sustainable way. 

The benefits are both mental and physical. Consuming nutrient-dense produce has positive physical health effects and can help prevent chronic disease. 

Participants also reported that the farm work itself had positive mental health impacts from “putting (their) hands in dirt,” Fitzpatrick said.

Growing one’s own produce can be especially valuable for those living in food deserts in Fort Worth or far from a grocery store in rural areas, she added.

The program also brings people together, Joel said. Although the first cohort’s participants did not know each other at the start, connections quickly sprouted.

“The thing I like most about the program is it also builds community with people, which I think is something we all need a lot more of, is to build that community and to have new friends and people that we help and help us,” he said.

The classroom portion of Taste the C.U.R.E. will take place online this year as the program expands to more cities. For the hands-on farming component, Fort Worth participants will continue to work at Opal’s Farm, while participants in Stephenville will farm land on Tarleton’s campus. 

The program will accept 25 in-person participants for Fort Worth and Stephenville due to limited farm space, but others, including those in Waco and Bryan, will be able to take part using their own outdoor spaces.

Applications are open now and close Dec. 19.

McKinnon Rice is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org. 

The Fort Worth Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

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 <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org/2025/12/11/tarleton-state-community-farming-program-with-roots-in-fort-worth-grows-to-other-campuses/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org”>Fort Worth Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;quality=80&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://fortworthreport.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=323093&amp;ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://fortworthreport.org/2025/12/11/tarleton-state-community-farming-program-with-roots-in-fort-worth-grows-to-other-campuses/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/fortworthreport.org/p.js”></script>