Please note: As of August 2015, Madroño Ranch: A Center for Writing, Art, and the Environment is no longer accepting applications for residencies. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

The combination of water, earth, sky, rock, and plant and animal life at Madroño Ranch: A Center for Writing, Art, and the Environment gives rise to a unique, three-pronged program that is profoundly rooted in a specific sense of place.

Madroño Ranch is at once a working ranch and farm, with a free-ranging herd of grass-fed bison, a flock of laying hens, and fruit trees; a residential center where environmental writers and artists in any genre come to work in seclusion and to converse at the communal table; and, as a model of sustainable practice, a benefit to the local community and a source of nourishment both literal and metaphorical.

The 1,500-acre ranch is located on Wallace Creek (named for the legendary nineteenth-century Texas Ranger W. W. “Bigfoot” Wallace, who lived nearby) a few miles north of Medina, Texas. The property includes a lake of about 25 acres and numerous other streams and draws; steep, rocky terrain; and grassy, rolling hills. It is home to a number of plant and animal species in addition to our bison and chickens: the madrone trees (madroño in Spanish) for which the ranch is named; feral hogs; raccoons; whitetail, sika, and axis deer; bass, bluegill, catfish, crappie, and perch; bald eagles; wild turkeys; and many more.

Madroño Ranch is a proud member of the Alliance of Artists Communities, the American Grassfed Association, and Foodways Texas.