Loaf & Leaf, LLC is the creation of Kelly McFarland, M.S., a community-based cultural anthropologist who specializes in studying the U.S. industrial, and North Texas local, food system. First and foremost, Loaf & Leaf, LLC is a local bakery and lifestyle shop which strives to be a synergistic community partner. Our fresh baked goods are not only delicious, they are made from the highest quality ingredients, sourced locally when possible, made and sold fresh daily. Our lifestyle products are designs which spotlight handmade, artisan production, due to both the quality of products created, and the sustainable nature of artisanal craft production. While our high-quality goods and foods are excellent on their own, an additional strategy and service that Loaf & Leaf, LLC employs is user-experience design rooted in community-based research and the use of the Design Thinking process in considerations of goals, barriers, and development. Not only does Loaf & Leaf, LLC value the wants and needs of our customers, but we strive to develop a better community for everyone by working with local universities, schools, and cities to promote wellness initiatives, explore the application of new trends and technologies, and continually ask how we can all grow a stronger, more resilient local economy.

 

Loaf & Leaf, LLC has been created as the next step in Kelly's journey to understand, evaluate, explain, and educate others about the North Texas local food system, in order to consider our trajectory and what changes can be made to reinforce and amplify local food production. Why is local food production important? Because through the development of a local food economy, the question of access to nutritious, fresh, culturally-correct foods is spotlighted, as well as the complex considerations around trade, logistics, environmental impacts, local economic stimulation, waste, fair pay, and sustainability, amongst many other issues. Through Loaf & Leaf, LLC, Kelly McFarland is able to continue to develop an understanding of the needs of the local food system and local economy and devise strategies to reduce barriers to participate, and goals for our collective future.

 

Loaf & Leaf, LLC began as a small farm, R K McFarmland. R K is still our homestead and small family farm, located in North Texas. We are owned and operated by Kelly McFarland, M.S., a left-handed Latina who conducts research using lived experiences, and Rich McFarland, a quiet man with a heart of gold. We have been farming since 2017 and try to approach the world of farming with clear, curious eyes. We believe in the "each one teach one" approach to life and seek to teach as we learn, to help find a way forward. 

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We believe there will be no sustainable future in food without food justice becoming a central part of our battle for sustainability. There will not be true environmental sustainability in one community without it existing in all communities. We are all linked in this. We believe food and farming should become linked again. Finding solutions in one area can help to change the way a problem looks elsewhere. We believe community driven solutions are what will pave the way forward.

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R K McFarmland is located on eight acres of land that was historically owned, managed, and cared for by the Caddo and Wichita Native American peoples. The land was taken from them through the settlement of colonists and the eventual Treaty of Tehuacana Creek. Once settled as the city of Valley View, the land was used to grow cotton and the topsoil became heavily depleted. Afterwards, the R K site became a homestead where a gentleman electrician raised small goats and donkeys as his farm livestock. When R K McFarmland was created in 2017, the topsoil was starting to redevelop and the land had laid fallow for some 20 years. Today, we seek to heal this land through sustainable approaches, and through using regenerative practices to build a closed system of mixed methods that support and enhance the microenvironment.

 

We came to farming through Kelly's studies in anthropology and food and Rich's wise business sense and keen eye to the future. As a cultural anthropologist who specializes in the industrial and North Texas food systems, Kelly knows that there is no way forward without understanding where we have been and how we got here. 

 

As a business, we do not seek to increase the divide between those in power and those without. We are constantly reevaluating our business model with this mindset, in hopes to grow together as a community. 

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Welcome to our site. Please don't hesitate to reach out with questions or suggestions. We hope you enjoy your visit, 

Kelly McFarland, M.S.