Producer

Our small farm in south Sebastopol grows food with a specific eye towards feeding our community through the (sometimes) wet season of our mediterranean climate. This means we cultivate your standard hardy favorites (potatoes, winter squash, onions, broccoli, kale), as well as some exciting specialty crops (dried beans, dried peppers) for our winter/spring CSA program and farmstand, both running late November through mid-May. We also raise a small flock of Jacob sheep for meat, fiber, and land management.

Farming always has an impact on the land, but the health of our soil and ecosystem is central to our farming systems. We work to grow soil first, vegetables second (to pay for the soil building!), and to minimize our impact on the land. We cover crop every field once a year, whether in the winter for our summer production fields or the summer for our winter production fields, and graze the sheep at least once through the cover crop, which saves us tractor work and builds the soil faster. We use compost applications to further boost organic matter and fertility, and some additional organic amendments to boost the nutrients available to plants and avoid depleting our soils.

We also are trying to meet a scale that can sustain our business and our bodies, which means we balance tractor work with hand work. We use a reciprocating spader as our primary tillage, which results in less compaction than a rototiller, and once our beds are prepped, most cultivation and all harvest is done by hand. Though we are not certified organic, we follow organic principles and beyond-organic standards for the health of the soil and the people who work it.