Wildflowers, donkeys, and old-sign magic at Katie Bird Farm

A tour of Kay Angermann and Julie Nelson’s utterly charming Katie Bird Farm, a hobby farm and garden in southwest Austin.… Read More

The post Wildflowers, donkeys, and old-sign magic at Katie Bird Farm appeared first on Digging.

April 22, 2025

Last week I invited myself to Kay Angermann and Julie Nelson’s utterly charming Katie Bird Farm, their home garden on 3 acres in southwest Austin. I love everything about their country garden, starting with this eye-catching vignette along the driveway: an upturned stock tank displaying a succulent bowl, accented with a sculptural cedar tree root, softleaf yucca, and young Texas mountain laurel. A beautiful old live oak in the background, bright green with new leaves, frames the scene along with leaning cedars in the foreground.

Katie Bird roadrunner

Katie Bird, if you’re wondering, is a roadrunner and the hobby farm’s spirit animal. As Kay tells it, she was chain-sawing cedar trees alone at the property — dangerous work — and noticed a roadrunner following her around. She felt it was watching out for her, and she named it after her beloved grandmother Katie from South Texas.

Roadrunner garden art throughout the property represents that good-luck bird and her grandmother’s spirit.

Julie is a real estate agent and author. Kay is a retired teacher and a picker — that is, someone who buys and sells (and collects) antiques. Under her business name Hipbilly, Kay specializes in vintage signs but also old farm equipment, some of which she repurposes into garden planters for Katie Bird Farm. I admired this old chicken feeder (I think?), one of a pair that she and Julie turned into planters along the driveway.