Notes from Your Farmer

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As many of you know...

Our Story

When most people, including the people writing this, read a book that makes them upset or angry, they complain about it over wine with their friends. It’s one of the finer pleasures in life.  It takes a lot less energy to vent then to say, buy 300 acres, start a whole new career, and figure out how to raise food for and distribute food to about 700 families. However, Tara and Craig are not “most people” and so, here we are, 3 years later.  

In case you are wondering, the book was the “Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan.  

Tara’s new goal in life: to feed our community healthy food that also regenerates the landscape from which it came, to have Tara Firma Farms sustain itself economically, and to have fun doing it.  We’re all on board.

The Financial Reality of the Farm

As we all know land prices in California are very very high which makes it hard to run a profitable farm when you have to cover the cost of land values here. Second, running a model (CSA) where we provide food direct to the consumer isn’t cheap. Forecasting the demand for our 700 families not to mention taking care of the customer service needs of everyone is cost intensive. Third, raising animals humanely and using them as tools for regenerating the land takes careful attention and more time than old world ranching. However, healing the land and providing food to our community are two of the main goals we have at the farm here so these are costs we are committed to covering.  

The good news is that every year we are approaching closer and closer to profitability and we are so close we can almost taste it. The bad news is that there is no more money to subsidize the business. Tara Firma Farms needs to stand on its own two feet as quickly as possible if we are going to be providing food to our community this same time next year. After thorough economic analysis of the business what we found is -

we are close.

Membership Appreciation Month

Right now we have around 700 Members and what we need is about 1000 Members total in order to cover the overhead of the business.  The exciting part is that if just under half our current membership had ONE of their friends sign up we would be there!

The truth is we love you. We really do, if it weren’t for you we wouldn’t be here - you co-produce every bite of food we grow. So to show you how much we love you May will be Member Appreciation Month.

What will that entail, you ask? Having fun, we say.

We are putting together a seductive calendar of events starting with an epic Member Open House/Swap “Meat,”, followed weekly with a dash of Bar-B-Ques, movie nights, Q&A’s about grass and nutrition and celebrations sprinkled throughout the month. It is going to be quite a ride!

And we know you’re busy, and you have a lot to do. We also know you talk a lot about wanting more community and you love the farm as much as we do.

So here it is, May - our Membership Appreciation Month - for our Gratitude to all of you - our current Members - and our chance to grow our Membership to a sustainable level, so we can keep our doors open and the earthworms earthing.  It can’t get easier or more fun than this. So what we are asking from you is:

1) Come to the Member Open House and bring a non-Member friend,
2) Come to at least one event in the middle of the month and bring some non-member homies that are CSA curious.
3) Come to our Barn Dance at the end of the month where we celebrate your awesomeness.

Get ready for May as we party the farm to profitability and say thank you to you, our Members.

The Farm Fresh Team