Bee the Change Microfarm
Building a Sustainable Poultry Farm One Dream at a Time
by Susanna Seidensticker
Bee the Change Microfarm is nothing short of a labor of love. Neither I nor my partner, Ian, have backgrounds in farming. We both share a deep love and respect for Mother Nature—Ian grew up around agriculture in Davis, and I rode horses for almost two decades when I was younger. We weren’t aware that the other might even have an interest in farming when we started dating, and we had been together for about a year when I casually asked if he might consider enrolling in a community college course on natural beekeeping with me. To my surprise, the answer was a resounding yes. I truly believe that in that very moment, Bee the Change Microfarm was born.
We were both immediately taken with beekeeping and started hatching harebrained ideas about keeping bees in the suburbs. We lived in the city of Santa Maria at the time, just south of the Central Coast of California where I grew up. We had a concrete backyard where we grew fruit trees in big pots and flowers for pollinators, and I tried and failed to keep worms for vermicompost. It didn’t take long before we both started dreaming of more.
It did not feel like it at the time, but it was almost kismet when our landlord decided not to extend our lease, forcing us to choose between another year of rent or taking the leap into home ownership. We decided to take the plunge and started the stressful process of house hunting, and we somehow managed to purchase a house on an acre of land in the very arid Paso Robles region. I don’t think we’ve stopped working since.
We lived in Paso Robles for just over four years, and unsurprisingly, we acquired a beehive almost immediately. Our goal was merely to be more sustainable in our way of life, to live intentionally, to get our hands dirty and maybe, just maybe, lighten our footprint on this earth. All my life I have wanted to make a difference, and our little property was where I poured all my angst over the state of the world. I cannot say if it was the bees or the chickens that were our gateway drug into farming, but I know that once we got our first chickens, it cascaded from there. We started with only two hens, given to us by a friend of a friend, and named them Cluck Norris and Nugget. Anyone who has chickens knows that they are like potato chips and as such, we rapidly acquired more from wherever we could find them. As time went on, I began getting more and more interested in chicken breeds, genetics, and standards of perfection. So began my obsession with rainbow eggs and poultry breeding.
To be honest, I started selling eggs as a way to justify hatching more chicks. I absolutely love doing research and believe that anything worth doing is worth doing right, and the more I learned, the more breeds I wanted to add to our flock. I knew I would never have the most eggs to offer, nor the cheapest, so I made it my goal to have the prettiest. The intersection between chicken genetics and egg color is quite interesting, and it is this combination of art and science that has kept my interest to this day. Of course, the real goal was still to feed my family in the most sustainable way possible, but I also felt truly honored to be able to have my eggs out in the community, hopefully giving people a little bit of joy with their beauty. It was truly wonderful to see our customers delight over the different colors, thick shells, and rich yolks, and I felt inspired to dig deeper and see what else we could offer.
As our chicken flock grew, we began adding ducks, guinea hens, geese, and quail to our menagerie. We decided to choose heritage breeds for our waterfowl, specifically Ancona ducks and Pilgrim geese, due to their status on the Livestock Conservancy priority list. These breeds are relatively rare in the United States, and being able to steward their genetics felt like the right step for our farm. However, it was the quail
that ended up stealing the show. Quail are unique. They begin laying eggs as few as eight weeks after they hatch, making them ideal for both eggs and meat. We decided to raise a jumbo breed that gets significantly larger than typical quail birds, and almost by happenstance ended up selling them to a few local chefs. Last year we were honored to provide close to 250 quail to a Michelin-mentioned restaurant in Paso Robles, our proudest accomplishment thus far as a farm.
As much as we loved our property in Paso Robles, we always knew that it was not destined to be our forever home. When Ian secured a job in the Bay Area, we immediately set our sights further north. We have always loved the forest and often dreamed of being in a more rural location. We had traveled through Mendocino County together before and loved the natural beauty, diversity, and community the county had to offer. Leaving our old property behind was bittersweet, but we still felt as though we were gaining so much more than we were losing.
While rebuilding on our new land in the hills outside of Willits is undoubtedly daunting, especially due to the fact that our land is far from prime farmland, we are excited by all the opportunities it has to offer. It is steep and wooded, but instead of seeing this as a detriment, we are looking forward to stewarding the forest via regenerative farming. I had always hoped to adopt a regenerative model, but our old property, with its arid climate and small amount of land, made this goal unrealistic. Regenerative agriculture is an incredible tool to combat climate change, as it helps to put carbon back in the soil, but it requires the ability to graze animals on a rotational basis. Rotational grazing in an arid environment would require a lot of irrigation, something I never felt comfortable with, but here in the cool shade of the forest, it just might work.
We plan to incorporate other animals into this model as well, and have already welcomed five adorable Kunekune pigs to the farm, who will be rotationally moved throughout our property when they are old enough. We continue to expand our quail operation and are also working towards providing the community with chicken meat. The commercial chicken industry is one I find to be problematic, as the vast majority of meat birds are a breed called Cornish Cross. While they grow incredibly quickly and efficiently to become the plump, big-breasted birds most are accustomed to seeing, the reality is that they are a hybrid that cannot actually live past the age of eight to ten weeks old. They suffer from heart attacks and other ailments, do not feather out due to their rapid growth, and often end up unable to walk or with broken legs due to their large front ends. They are the standard for meat chickens and they have their place on many farms, but I wanted something different.
In search of a more sustainable option, I started raising a breed called the Bresse. These heritage birds originated in France and can live just as long as any other chicken breed, meaning I can run a closed-loop system by keeping a breeding population and not having to buy chicks every year. Not only that, but they are known for a gene that allows fat to be stored in a different pattern than is generally seen in chickens. Some liken this to marbling, but in actuality it just means that they have more widely distributed fat throughout their bodies, making them an incredibly tasty, if not quite so plump meat bird.
There was zero infrastructure on the property when we got here, so we are still in the building phase. We’ve started “hatching out” quail this winter and hope to have our quail operation up and in full swing by spring. The meat chickens will take longer as we have to build a breeding pen for them, hatch them out, and raise them up to slaughter weight, which all takes time. I am also refining the breed and will be adding a second genetic line next year to work on their body type, growth rate, and so on. I hope to offer hatching eggs and chicks by 2025 as well, for the Bresse as well as a few other breeds that I raise.
We hope to sell quail to local restaurants and ultimately offer direct-tocustomer sales via our website for pickup or local delivery. Someday we’d also like to offer a poultry-based CSA. Our eggs are available through the MendoLake FoodHub when they are in season—chickens slow way down in the winter, and we opt to stick to the natural cycle rather than providing artificial lights.
Ian and I have many dreams for our new home, some reasonable and some completely preposterous, but we would not be where we are today if we did not allow ourselves to dream. We dream of bettering our land and feeding our community. We dream of living a more sustainable existence in harmony with the natural beauty around us, and above all, we dream of making this corner of our world a better place. Everyone knows that dreams without work are just that, but luckily we are not afraid of a little work. We look forward to finding our place here in Mendocino County, growing in ways we cannot even imagine yet, and seeing where our preposterous dreams take us next.
Keep up with everything at Bee the Change Microfarm at BeeTheChangeMicrofarm.com.
Photos courtesy of Bee the Change Microfarm.
Cover Photo of Ian and Susanna by Sonja Burgal.
Susanna Seidensticker operates Bee the Change Microfarm with her partner, Ian.