Small Nevada County farms cater to local customers

Tucked away in the hills east of Yuba City, a collection of Nevada County farmers is carving out a living and a lifestyle growing produce for neighbors who choose to live far from large metropolitan areas.

These farms tend to be small, and the farmers tend to follow a low-capital model that relies more on ingenuity than sophisticated equipment. They largely serve local communities, rather than commodity markets.

"One of the biggest challenges of farming in our area is access to land, because none of the land is flat and it is heavily forested," said Jake Benedict, a co-manager at Mountain Bounty Farm, a 50-acre operation on the San Juan Ridge near Nevada City.

Benedict came from the Midwest a decade ago in search of a life close to nature and found Mountain Bounty, which grows vegetables for 700 to 900 community subscribers on a third of its land, leaving the rest in forest and meadow.

Their community-supported agriculture model lets the farm share financial uncertainties with customers who pay for a weekly share of organic fruits and vegetables.

"For the most part, the subscribers pay up front, which gives us operating capital for seed, diesel fuel and labor for planting," Benedict said during a virtual farm tour to kick off the annual Ecological Farming Conference.

Nevada City-based Sierra Harvest organized this year's virtual tour of hillside farms. Sierra Harvest gives local farmers help accessing markets, and offers classes that include detailed information about the business of being a small farmer.

"The Sierra Harvest business course let me think about how to make my small farm profitable," said Sarah Silverheels-Keller, who operates an organic seed business on 20 acres near the Yuba River.

Her business, Fore the People Seed Farm, is part of the Organic Seed Alliance, which tries to help small producers fill the gap in supplying organic seeds.

"It's a challenge being a seed farmer on a small scale," she said. "The seed farmer's job is to go from seed to seed; it's important to know where your seeds come from."

Many of the hillside farmers in Nevada County said they have developed close relations with their customers.

"Initially, I didn't want to grow flowers; I wanted to grow food," said Molly Nakahara, who partners with Paul Glowoski to operate Dinner Bell Farms, a 50-acre Nevada County farm that specializes in flowers and pasture-raised pigs. "But you have to start somewhere if you are a farmer. Flowers are food for the soul, and I can bring in good income from them."

Glowoski tends to a herd of American Mulefoot, Mangalitsa and Hereford heritage hogs.

"The pigs are grazing on the cover crops in the peach orchard," he said. "This is peas, oats and barley. It is pig heaven. A couple of days before we are going to move the pigs, we put seeds out so they can work them into the ground with their hooves."

Glowoski said he relies on his dog for help moving the massive animals.

"If you've ever tried to move a 600- or 700-pound pig by yourself, they just look at you," he said. "But the dogs have such a predator-prey relation, they can move them without much trouble."

Until recently, most of Glowoski's hogs went to a San Francisco restaurant, but the restaurant failed during COVID-19 restrictions, so he is building markets near the Grass Valley farm.

Mountain Bounty Farm has the oldest and largest CSA in the Sierra, serving weekly subscribers from as close as Grass Valley and Nevada City to as far away as Truckee and Reno.

"We're constantly shifting when and what we plant," farm owner John Tecklin said, discussing the challenge of satisfying diverse and shifting markets.

Tecklin grew up in a Nevada County log cabin without electricity, a telephone or hot running water, and returned to start Mountain Bounty in 1997 after learning the basics of running a CSA.

This model, which was very popular in the early days of organic farming, has enjoyed a resurgence as people seek a closer connection to their food sources during the pandemic.

"We had quite a surge in our CSA early in COVID, because people were uncertain about going to the store," Benedict said. "They also want to invest in the local community."

The subscription market has grown so large that Mountain Bounty invested in software that does much of the work of keeping straight when subscribers go on vacation, and when they want to shift from a larger to a smaller box of vegetables or vice versa.

"We are using new software, called CSAware, to manage the CSA," Benedict said. "It lets us keep track of payments, vacations, and we're hoping to automate some of the record keeping by letting members go in and make changes."

The evening before its CSA boxes are packed and shipped, the farm's co-managers discuss what is ready to harvest, what must be picked now and what could be left in the ground for a later harvest.

For these more established and stable operations, farming always comes back to building the soil that supports the crops.

"We prioritize a cover crop," Benedict said. "Every year, early in the fall, we plant a combination of legumes and grains, primarily oats and vetch. Generally, we also spread 10 to 15 tons of compost an acre."

(Bob Johnson is a reporter in Sacramento. He may be contacted at bjohn11135@gmail.com.)