Abigail Montoya
Seth Fagan, hospitality coordinator at Timberview Farmstead holds some freshly grown lettuce.
Over 20 minutes south of Fort Worth east of Interstate 35W near Everman Parkway at 4274 Timberview Drive is a new teaching farm where a golf course once stood. The old Timberview Golf Course has been transformed into what is now the Timberview Farmstead, which consists of nine ADA-accessible animal barns, a large event pavilion, and a zero-waste aquaponic greenhouse. Timberview is a dream destination for anyone into the concept of sustainability, fresh food, and animals of all shapes and sizes. Upon arrival, guests to this newly revamped 150-acre facility can see a stunning hand-built open-air pavilion, which is the centerpiece and meeting area for any and all guests. This portion of the property is only phase one in a series of three that will transform each section into very different themed spaces.
This unique nonprofit, overseen by Timberview CEO Alan Brown, was several years in the making before opening its doors to the public in March. Since then, word has gotten out about the farm’s educational and community programming for local kids and families.
“Timberview seeks to be a place where people can connect to more deeply rooted ways of life, enjoy unreasonable hospitality, and learn in a hands-on way,” Brown says.
The plan for phase one, which is in itself being rolled out into phases, is to have a place that can educate young people about natural sustainability while also being sustainable itself. Currently, Timberview Farmstead grows its own lettuce and produces its own eggs via its own chickens, but this is just the beginning, according to Brown, whose family helped fund this project from the get-go. The plan is for the farmstead to create its own milk, eggs, lettuce, and eventually fish. There’s even a plan to build a coffee shop on the property in the near future. On the east side of the property is a garden that could yield more produce for Timberview in the future. However, for now, the farm is all about its educational tours.
“Everybody splits up into groups and they go all throughout the farm learning about the connection from animals to what these animals do,” Brown explains. “We teach how animals are integrated in our lives and our food systems and all those things.”
Like the phases this open-air classroom is based on, the structure themselves are also divided up into sections with both large and small animal barns, and a structure for chickens and roosters.
“We've got our food side, which is our outdoor garden, and then our greenhouse,” he says. “All of that's our teaching farm component. Our big three words are learn, grow, and belong. That's who Timberview is.”
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Since opening its doors in March, Timberview Farmstead has hosted many educational field trips to more than 2,500 local students and educators. The farm currently has partnerships with Everman ISD Adult Transition program and Texas Workforce Commission adults with special needs programs for students to come learn about farming and participate in daily tasks on a regular basis. In fact the farm is so popular its booked for tours well into next year.
“We want everyone that visits Timberview Farmstead to grow in their understanding of things,” Brown says. “Not just in knowledge, but also to grow as people, and then the belonging piece is a community piece, kind of hearkening back to the old days of just being together in community in different ways.”
This notion comes back to another Fort Worth educational initiative called River Tree Academy at 5439 Bonnell Avenue in the Como neighborhood. In fact, Timberview Farmstead's tie to this school comes down to its founder Brown’s brother Randy better known as Dr. Brown.
“My brother was working in the Como neighborhood doing a lot of mentoring programs,” Brown says. “He started a summer camp using college and high school kids as the counselors. The group was called Dr. Brown's Mighty Men.”
Building off of this idea, Brown wanted to expand it, which led to his family foundation buying the Timberview Golf Course in 2014.
“We began looking at how we could do a school and take it to that next level,” he says.
After looking around the country, Brown says the main consensus he heard from educators is that a school of this type really needs to be in the community. Additionally, the leadership team is in the process of developing Timberview Scholars, a youth mentoring program to help rising sixth graders be college, career, and military ready by the time they graduate from high school.
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“Now we offer the same programs we did at River Tree Academy but for various schools not just one,” Brown says.
Outside of the learning component, Timberview is also available for events like weddings, and large dinners. There’s even a plan to add an outdoor stage where concerts can be held. This sense of gathering is also prevalent in phase two of Timberview’s plan, which is to build out a hospitality and retreat center.
“We're going to actually have a farm to table restaurant, along with 36 cottages plus a 12-room inn,” Brown verified.
The cottages themselves will surround a pond along with the restaurant and inn, south of the phase one farm section still being completed.
“Primarily it's a retreat center focused on various groups, like corporate groups, and gatherings, all those kinds of things,” he says. “The nonprofit that owns all this land is going to sell that piece of property to a for-profit venture to put the retreat center together.”
This phase will begin in six eight months, depending on how long it takes to find investment dollars to start the process. As for phase three, Brown says he’s looking at possibly creating some sort of cottage neighborhood on the south west corner adjacent to the hospitality retreat. But this plan is still a long way from being developed.
“We're excited to see what can unfold as this place grows and becomes what it really needs to be, and already excited about what it's becoming now,” Brown says.
