In a renovated shed, industrial fans generate a mellow hum that drifts through the rafters. Electric thermostats emit a yellow hue as they blink 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Condensation blurs the tent windows to create muted fragments of orange, brown and gray for anyone peering in to get glimpses of the growing spores. 

Through careful nurturing, these spores will quickly develop into large mushrooms, but E3 Farms owner, Ethan Carter, is growing much more than just fungi. The Wolfforth, Texas, farmer is growing micro-greens, arugula, radishes, artichokes, peppers and other various vegetables on his ever-expanding operation behind his family’s home in western Lubbock County.  

Carter is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Horticulture at Texas Tech and graduated with his bachelor’s degree in plant and soil science with a concentration in local food and wine production in August 2023 from the Davis College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.  

E3 Farms’ success over the last eight years has its roots in Carter’s strategic farming practices that are nurtured through principles of science, innovation, and curiosity – traits necessary for crops to thrive in West Texas. 

“The passion for learning about growing new things is what kind of kicked me off to enjoy gardening,” Carter said. “And then I realized that I could make money doing it, and have a job doing what I enjoy.”  

According to Visit Lubbock, there are 352 restaurants in the city, which has given Carter plenty of potential consumers for his locally-grown products. Valuable partnerships with chefs, Carter said, have helped propel his business forward while bringing awareness to the importance of local food sources.  

“We have the ability today to grow a lot more food and provide locally to each city,” Carter said. “That’s been my biggest driver to get as much clean food to people as we can.” 

Hearty Partnerships

The Wolfforth’s Farmers Market was Carter’s first opportunity to sell his produce. He said the market led him to partnerships with popular local restaurants that wanted fresh, locally-grown ingredients to incorporate into their dishes. 

Carter said two of his first customers from the Wolfforth Farmers Market have supported E3 Farms for the last eight years by purchasing his produce. 

Claraboya Scratch Kitchen and Bar, located on Avenue Q in Lubbock, enjoys working with E3 Farms, and their chef has supported Carter since he was a teenager.  

 “I have known him since he was 15 years old. I ran into him at the farmers market,” said Antonio Pina, executive chef at Claraboya Scratch Kitchen and Bar. 

Jessica Fultz, the co-owner of La Sirena, a restaurant in Lubbock’s Cactus Alley, said she has been consistently purchasing fresh vegetables from Carter since he first became a vendor at the farmers market.  

“He’s my main guy,” Fultz said. “At the start, it was just micro-greens, but since then it’s expanded to a lot more product.” 

Fultz said Carter’s year-round production, variety of crops, quick harvesting time, and high quality of food have helped E3 Farms create lasting partnerships with a multitude of Lubbock eateries. 

Most farms in the United States harvest their crops annually, Carter said. However, at E3 Farms, harvest is a weekly process helping him meet the demand for fresh and locally-grown produce in Lubbock. 

Carter said more robust crops like root vegetables are harvested on Thursdays, while micro-greens and salad leaves are harvested on Fridays to preserve their freshness, allowing chefs to use his produce days after they are delivered.  

“Most of the time our produce will be to our customers within a day or two of being harvested,” Carter said. 

Restaurants receive deliveries from E3 Farms on Fridays, Carter said, and the remaining vegetables are sold at the Wolfforth and Midland farmers markets, where Carter’s father, William, has a vendor tent most weekends.  

It Just Tastes Better

Pina and Fultz said they prioritize using local produce in their menus because there are significant benefits, including a better taste.  

Carter’s produce tastes much better than anything Fultz can purchase from a grocery store, she said, especially his butter lettuce and tomatoes. 

“The lettuce is just sweeter and crisper,” Fultz said. “The tomatoes that come out in the summer are so good. It’s such a big difference from anything else you can buy at the store.” 

Sukhbir Singh, Ph.D., is an associate professor of specialty and alternative crops in the Plant and Soil Sciences Department at Texas Tech University. He is also Carter’s advisor for his master’s degree and said he frequently eats the vegetables Carter gifts him on visits to E3 Farms. 

“Everything he grows that I’ve tasted is good,” Singh said. “My wife packs lots of his vegetables for my lunch, and the mushrooms are always really good when my wife cooks them.”  

Singh said local produce will often have a prolonged shelf life which can be related to the post-harvest process. Produce that is being exported from another country or coming from other states, he said, is usually harvested earlier than necessary which prevents plants from receiving all the adequate nutrients.  

“You’re cutting out the middleman,” Fultz said. “It’s the best way to buy.” 

Carter said he has noticed a longer shelf life for the spinach leaves and lettuce he grows, another reason why many chefs continue to buy from him. 

“Our customers will get an instant four- to five-day boost in shelf life with nothing spoiling,” Carter said. 

Another benefit of sourcing produce locally, Pina said, is the durability of the various vegetables he buys from E3 Farms. He said he has noticed they can withstand the kitchen prepping process, which occurs hours before dinner is served.  

“By the end of the night, those greens we get from further away will look like they got beat,” Pina said, “but not Ethan’s.”  

Longer shelf life and a better taste often help make local produce businesses more competitive with larger retailers, Singh said, ultimately increasing their profitability.  

The community and the chefs really are the backbone of all of the farmers.

Ethan Carter

A Career Rooted in Agriculture

Guests at Claraboya Scratch Kitchen and Bar will notice a menu that incorporates bison, elk, duck and fresh produce to create dishes that are well known but include as much local produce and meat as possible.  

The fresh produce featured in the Claraboya menu is a testament to Pina’s upbringing in the agriculture industry. His work, he said, is heavily shaped by his childhood in Pharr, Texas. 

“It was nothing but dirt roads, a lot of farmers, agriculture, and we were surrounded by fields,” Pina said. 

Grapefruits, oranges, watermelons, cucumbers, tomatoes and jalapenos were a few of the crops Pina said he recalls surrounding the small Rio Grande Valley border town where he lived until he moved to Lubbock in 2000.  

“I grew up eating what we had in the backyard of South Texas,” Pina said. “We just lived off what was around us. I thought that was normal.”  

Pina’s parents and extended family were migrant agricultural workers. Pina said his father has shared stories of the long hours and strenuous work conditions that Pina’s parents would undertake in the fields or the cotton gins during the winter.  

Pina said he applauds the grit and work ethic his parents, and other agricultural workers, must have to complete the jobs required for growing a crop. 

 One day, Pina said, was all he could handle working in the fields – a task his mother put him up to as a response to him not wanting to go to school.  

 “I did it for one day, not even one day,” Pina said. “My hands were so torn up from planting onions, it was painful.”  

 Pina said his background and experience in agriculture helped him become the dedicated chef he is today. His career has enabled him to become a mentor for other prospective chefs who work with him, he said, allowing him to relay the importance of supporting local farmers and ranchers.  

“The people I have working for me really care and take pride in what they do,” Pina said. “And they bought into what we are doing here, which is kind of unique.”  

Learning by Doing

Carter said when he and his family first moved to Wolfforth from Houston he had to be forced to help his father in the garden. However, what was once a tedious and timely chore of planting, weeding and harvesting plants quickly became a hobby which later transitioned into a full-time profession.  

“I was kind of forced to garden for the first couple of years,” Carter said. “I wasn’t a very willing participant, but I eventually got into it.” 

Despite living a short distance from Texas Tech, Carter said he appreciated the online class options within the plant and soil science department, which allowed him to work throughout his undergraduate degree on the farm and continue his business.  

Carter said he would often listen to lectures while working in the fields during the school day.  

“It worked out well because I did all my classes [online], so I could stay here at the farm all the time,” Carter said. “I would be in the field, pruning tomatoes, pulling weeds, and listening to the lectures through my earbuds and I would just go from there, working and doing school during the week.” 

Like Carter, who continued his career through hands-on learning experiences, Pina said he is a self-taught chef who gained knowledge from the different positions he had in restaurants.  

“Everything I know is self-taught: from my mom, from my grandmother, from all of the work that I have put in,” Pina said. 

Pina said he first worked at a Chinese restaurant as a server, and then in the kitchen where he could practice his newfound culinary skills. Following this, Pina said he worked in kitchens at various hotels in the Rio Grande Valley.  

“When I would look back there in the kitchen, there were woks, there’s fire, and these guys looked like pirates,” Pina said. “Before I knew it, I was back there slinging Chinese food like it was nothing. I could feel I was really good at it; I was a natural at it.”  

Pina said his success in the food industry can be connected to the dedication he put into every job, even when it meant having to work the jobs that were not involved in the cooking process.  

“If you want to be successful in the food industry, you have to focus on your food,” Pina said. “You must dive into it – the good, the bad, the everything.” 

Surviving in the South Plains

Growing crops in the often unforgiving landscape of West Texas can make it difficult for chefs to curate a menu that frequently incorporates locally sourced ingredients.  

Fresh produce, Fultz said, is not always easy to source in West Texas. However, she said there has been a drastic improvement to the accessibility to fresh and locally grown fruits and vegetables in the region compared to when she moved to Lubbock almost a decade prior. 

“Eight years ago, there was nobody doing it, and so that was hard,” Fultz said. 

Despite previous challenges to a lack of accessibility to fresh ingredients, Fultz said she recognizes the difficult growing conditions that farmers in the region must face daily.  

“It’s hard. West Texas is hard,” Fultz said. “In the winter it’s especially hard to find local grown stuff, too.” 

Wind, drought, heat and soil conditions make for unforgivable growing conditions, Singh said. 

“Extreme wind speeds will often create dust storms that can be detrimental for growers in the south plains,” Singh said. “The soil particles have a scorching effect on the leaves of the plants, sometimes permanently damaging the plant, or killing them.” 

Carter said that the summers and winters are often brutal for local farmers, who have few crops hardy enough to sustain the extreme temperatures, droughts, and erratic weather events.  

Despite Mother nature’s unpredictability, Carter said he has learned to optimize his crops and yields through conservation practices.  

Conservation was not initially a priority for the farm, Carter said. However, he soon began implementing conservation practices because he said he quickly learned that the environment will always support you. 

“Instead of trying to get the soil to do what we want it to do, we’re just trying to replicate the right growing environment,” Carter said. 

The soil at E3 Farms, for the most part, does not rely on amendments like fertilizers and chemicals, Carter said, but focuses on building soil organic matter and biology through the addition of mushroom blocks, biological inoculants, and plant residues from across the farm. 

Growing mushrooms was influential in helping alter Carter’s perspective on how and why plants are grown in a specific way and how conservation practices can help farms succeed.  

A Family Affair

His father, William, can often be found in the fields helping, typically wearing a large sunhat and gardening gloves. 

“He’s the engineer,” Carter said. “Anything that’s broken, he’s going to help fix or come up with an idea for making our business more efficient in the fields.”  

Jessica, Carter’s mother, also provides a helping hand to her son, often being found washing, drying, and packaging vegetables for restaurants and the farmers market.  

“She helps in many ways, washing and packaging is timely so having her help makes the process faster than if it was just me,” Carter said.   

Carter said his mother encouraged him to pursue other business prospects, which included selling seasonal jellies, made with the peppers and other vegetables he grows.  

“The jellies were my mom’s idea,” Carter said. “When we first started doing them, they were really popular. People at the market love them and we always sell out pretty fast.” 

Family businesses can often be difficult to navigate, Carter said. However, like Fultz at La Sirena, he is appreciative of the support his parents have given him as he has started his business. 

Fultz said she has been working alongside her mother in restaurants since she was 12 years old, first washing dishes at a deli in Lubbock that her mother, Cat Traxler, owned.  

“It was the first time I worked in a restaurant, and then I just never stopped working in restaurants,” Fultz said.  

Fultz said that mutual respect between herself and Traxler has allowed them to have a successful partnership, noting they each have different job positions at La Sirena.  

“She would never tell me what to put on a menu or how to do anything, and I would never do the same for her out there in the front,” Fultz said.  

Fultz said sharing similar career goals with Traxler has allowed La Sirena to be successful.  

“And surprisingly, we work very well together. It’s wild – I think we both just have the same goal, and we work very similarly,” Fultz said.  

A Different Dining Experience

Due to their innovative approaches to dining experiences, Claraboya Scratch Kitchen and Bar and La Sirena have become both local and statewide favorites with notable features in Texas Monthly.  

Claraboya patrons can expect a menu curated from classic comfort foods, Pina said, but with unique flavors. 

“I bring the flavors and food that I grew up eating at home,” Pina said. “It’s comfort food with the flavors that you know, but just done a little different.” 

Lobster corn dogs, duck birria tacos, pork belly and fried green tomatoes, and freshly baked breads are a few of the items featured on the Claraboya menu, Pina said.  

Guests at La Sirena can expect to be greeted by a cozy ambiance with an eclectic and vibrant interior — a notable testament to the unique and flavorful menu, colorful bar, and fun personality of the mother-daughter duo Fultz and Traxler. 

 Fultz said she describes La Sirena as an upscale farm-to-table restaurant that is heavily influenced by tequila and mezcal, with a notable presence of fresh and locally grown ingredients.  

“We give you the best quality of everything. The best quality service, and the best quality of food…but in a non-pretentious way,” Fultz said.   

Customers at La Sirena can expect a menu featuring vegetables from E3 Farms and sustainably farmed game and fish, Fultz said, while describing items on the menu like pulled quail empanadas, and mushroom and potato soup.  

Fultz said that while the food often intrigues guests, the bar is also a center point of the restaurant. She said she uses many Texas-owned spirits in her cocktails and fresh fruits grown by local farmers.  

“That bar is my baby, but I definitely have seven or eight spirits from Texas in there,” Fultz said.   

Trust is also an important factor in the dining experience at Claraboya. Pina said he wants to ensure that customers are satisfied with their meal. 

“How am I going to let you come in here and then waste your hard-earned money and not take care of you?” Pina said. “You’re entrusting me with your livelihood and your money, and I’ve got to do it right.” 

Pina said much of his success as a chef can be attributed to the forgiving and supportive nature of the Lubbock community.  

“One thing about Lubbock is they are very forgiving, because they want to come back and give you a second chance and they want you to succeed,” Pina said.  

Carter said the support from the local community, especially from the chefs and weekly grocers at the farmers market, has allowed him to expand his operation, where he recently bought 33 acres of land in Meadow, Texas.  

“The community and the chefs really are the backbone of all of the farmers,” Carter said.  

Carter and Fultz said they are hopeful for the continued success of local growers in the community and hope that the abundance and demand for locally grown produce continues to rise. 

Caroline Leach, Lead Writer; Annie Sulpizio, Photo Director; Trey Brumley, Design Coordinator; Payton Fletcher, Digital and Advertising Manager

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