Miguel Chavez never stops moving. 

Milling rice requires an operator to move at a breakneck speed.

As the machines that process Harvest Grain Mills’ organic rice whir to life, Chavez maneuvers with precision, climbing a ladder to reach the assembly line’s command center.

He quickly corrects the computer program, “the brains of the operation,” that guides all six steps of milling.

David Kirkham established Harvest Grain Mills in Anahuac, Texas, in 2017. The family has been farming rice in Chambers County for over 90 years. But this year, Kirkham, 69, is passing the reins to Harvest Grain onto Chavez, his son-in-law, and daughter, Keri.

“I want to put Harvest Grain on the map,” says Chavez, a first-time business owner.

Milling, he explains, is the final step of rice production, where each grain of rice is thoroughly cleaned before it can be bagged, sold, cooked and eventually, of course, consumed.

“We’re milling Charleston gold rice,” he says over the roar of the machinery. “But the problem is that the machine runs on Carolina gold rice, so I have to modify the program to spit out the dark spots.”

As rice travels through the milling equipment on a balmy morning in late November, pieces of dirt, small pebbles, random grasses and broken shells of rice are separated out from individual grains of rice. Each grain — certified organic — represents more than just a source of food or an engine of Chambers County’s local economy.

“It’s a family business,” Chavez says.

Kirkham and his cousin, Donald Wayne Wilcox, have carried the family’s tradition of rice farming since they were both in high school.

On average, they produced about 400,000 pounds of rice per year, Kirkham shares over pulled pork and chicken during lunch with his son-in-law at Anahuac-staple, Tony’s BBQ.

But this year, the longtime farmer explains that he’s taking a step back and passing his labor of love down to the next generation. Kirkham still plants, cuts, harvests and dries rice along with Miguel’s help. But his son-in-law now carries the milling torch, and Keri Chavez, Miguel’s wife and Kirkham’s daughter, has taken on Harvest Grains’ sales and marketing.

“It boils down to helping the family out,” Keri said. “Taking over something with so much history and not see it crater … I’d hate for it to completely stop.”

That familial legacy extends beyond the Kirkham and Wilcox lineage to Miguel’s family tree.

On a Sunday evening in mid-December, multiple generations of the Chavez family gaze adoringly around su nieto Casen, asleep in his car seat. Casen, Miguel and Keri Chavez’s 3-month-old son, will hopefully inherit the family business one day. For now the baby rests.

Miguel’s father, Andres Chavez, hovers above his 10th grandchild, cooing at him gently in Spanish.

More than a half a century ago, Andres and his brother Reyes crossed the Rio Grande into the U.S. from Mexico. They found work on a ranch near Del Rio in West Texas before meeting Elton Brice “Goog” Kirkham and Donald R. Wilcox.

Goog, Keri’s grandfather, and Donald Wayne, Keri’s great-uncle, encouraged Andres and Reyes to follow them across the state to their rice farm in Anahuac where the brothers worked the fields. Andres spent 20 years on the farm before making a lucrative career out of shrimping in the Trinity Bay, he explains.

“I love working,” Andres says. “I never step back, always step forward.”

That mindset guides Miguel and brings their entire family full circle now that the Kirkham and Wilcox families have entrusted Andres’s son with Harvest Grain.

“David trusted him, put him on milling,” Andres says. “It’s real good that somebody trusts him and likes him.”

But Miguel’s future wasn’t always certain.

Fifteen years ago, Miguel was riding in the bed of a buddy’s truck that was pulling a trailer behind it. The vehicle swerved suddenly and the trailer swung in one direction while the truck forked in another. Miguel couldn’t hang on and was launched 63 feet in the air before smashing into the ground and crushing the entire right side of his face.

“They say I flat-lined three times,” he says, explaining that the doctors told his parents to expect him to be “vegetable” after sustaining multiple brain injuries and permanently limiting the vision out of his right eye.

As his son lay in a coma for 21 days, the pain was almost too much to bear for Andres.

“He made a lot of tears in my eyes,” his father says.

But the accident didn’t end Miguel’s life.

He and Keri, who have known each other since they were practically in diapers and graduated from Anahuac High School together, wound up reconnecting several years afterwards. 

“It was always like God put you two together,” Andres says with a smile.

Now, Andres and David, Keri’s father, share a grandson in Casen. A bond that only magnifies the love put into Harvest Grains, Miguel adds.

Andres and his wife Margarita’s children, in-laws and grandchildren, are gathered in the dining room. They are celebrating daughter and sister Lori Chavez Kendall’s birthday in her near-southwest home. Andres, Miguel and Miguel’s younger brother Reuben Chavez sit down at the overfill table next to the kitchen to eat together.

Reuben can’t help but overhear his father talk about his journey immigrating to the U.S., and says that it motivates him as an aspiring entrepreneur in his own career in sports medicine.

“I read this book by Angela Duckworth, and she talks about the American Dream, having grit and resiliency, and I just realized that’s my father,” he explains, referencing Duckworth’s 2018 “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.”  “My father had the vision,” Reuben says. “And I see that vision through in the next generation.”

For Miguel, that means expanding Harvest Grain’s offerings to include basmati and jasmine rice.

“You know that phrase, ‘Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish he’ll eat for a life?’” Reuben asks. “We literally live that metaphor.”

His brother laughs.

“Yeah,” Miguel jokes. “Except for us it’s, ‘Give a man a bag of rice, he’ll eat for a week, but teach a man to farm, rice he’ll eat for life.’”

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