How Cedar Hollow
came to be.

“My grandmother made chèvre the way most grandmothers make tamales — without a recipe, with both hands, and with the kind of confidence you can't learn from a book.”

Rosa Garza grew up watching her grandmother work milk into soft, tangy cheese in a small kitchen outside Kerrville. When Rosa bought four Nubian does in the spring of 2014 and moved them onto a leased plot of land near Fredericksburg, she wasn't thinking about a business. She was thinking about that cheese. The Nubians were chosen for good reason — they give a richer, higher-butterfat milk than most dairy breeds, and that extra fat is what makes the chèvre come out the way Rosa remembers it. Creamy. Bright. A little grassy. She made her first real batch in a borrowed kitchen and brought it to her neighbor. By the end of that week she had twelve orders.

Miguel came later — though not much later. He grew up in Uvalde County raising hogs on his family's ranch, learning to read the land the way other kids learn to read books. His family ran Red Wattle hogs, an old American breed with deep Spanish roots and a flavor profile that has no business being this far from a Michelin star. Red Wattles are slow-growing, heavily marbled, and extraordinary when raised on pasture. They're also stubborn, intelligent, and very good at getting into places they're not supposed to be. Miguel and Rosa met at a farmers market in Fredericksburg in 2015. He was selling pork cuts from a cooler. She was selling chèvre from a folding table. By 2016 they were sharing sixty acres and a vision of what a small, intentional farm could look like.

The smoked bacon is Miguel's father's recipe — brown sugar cure, a long rest in the cold, then slow smoke over Hill Country pecan wood for the better part of a day. His dad learned it from his dad, who apparently learned it from someone in Castroville who had no business sharing such a good secret. Miguel won't say exactly how long the smoke runs, but he'll tell you that if you pull it too early it's just cured pork, and if you pull it too late it's firewood. That bacon sells out before most of their customers even know a new batch is ready.

Cedar Hollow runs on what Miguel calls a closed loop. The goats graze in rotation across the back pastures, moving every few days so the land stays healthy. The Red Wattles root in the cedar breaks on the north end of the property, which keeps the cedar from choking out the native grasses and gives the pigs the foraging life they were built for. Compost from both ends up feeding the kitchen garden, which feeds the family and occasionally the animals. Nothing leaves the farm that shouldn't. It's not a complicated philosophy — it's just what happens when you pay attention.

They sell direct — no grocery store accounts, no distributor, no middleman of any kind. Rosa answers her own phone. Miguel cuts every order himself. That's a choice, and it's a deliberate one. They want to know who eats their food. They want to hear what you thought of the chèvre, whether the bacon was salty enough, whether the pork chops were as good as they looked. Cedar Hollow is sixty acres and two people and a small herd of animals that all have names. That's the whole operation. They wouldn't have it any other way.