Charles and Kaye Williams

Comanche County, Texas

As the second largest state in the U.S., Texas covers a lot of territory that varies considerably in climate and landscape. In the Central Texas county of Comanche, roughly one hundred miles west of Dallas, lies a 1,300-acre spread belonging to Charles and Kaye Williams. Part of that acreage began as Grandfather Williams' farm in 1915.

The Williams' farm lies in an area of Texas known as the West Cross Timbers, dubbed thus by early travelers through the area who encountered these timbered strips of land after traveling on the more open prairies. In 1854 a railroad prospector described it "...as by far the richest and most beautiful district of country I have ever seen...with a gently undulating surface of prairie and oak openings...with intervening plains of luxuriant grass."

When Charles' father returned from military service in '51 he took over the farm. "We were never too far from the organic model to begin with. I grew up around the concepts of organic management," Charles says. "My dad used a lot of organic remedies. He read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and the over-use of herbicides, pesticides, and antibiotics struck him as being dangerous. We tried to stay away from that, but we didn't do so well with organic production on the fertilizer side because our soil fertility was so low to begin with."

For decades the sandy loam soils of the West Cross Timbers were agriculturally productive. The Williams first sold milk in 1938 and have dairied continuously since then. Most of Comanche County's agriculture for the last 50 years has been based on peanut production. When the Williams acquired their property, the result of all that peanut production was evident when observing the extremely depleted sandy soil. "We have trouble growing anything here because our land has been worn out." Charles says.

Eventually Charles went to school, then he did his military service just as his father had done. When he came back to the farm, his father was getting ready to retire and Charles took over the farm. "We stayed very small for this area. The average dairy is about 1,500 to 2,000 cowsÉ We milk about 250 Jerseys. We've always had Jerseys. They do really well on grass and they handle the heat a little better than the bigger breeds."