From the Fields - Tiffany Holbrook

By Tiffany Holbrook, Sonoma County egg and beef producer

We got some rain, which is nice. We have green grass popping up in our pasture. But our egg (production) has already started to slow down because eggs are a seasonal product. Our chickens are raised outside on pasture, so when they’re exposed to the elements, sometimes the stress can cause a decrease. The fires in Oregon and Northern California triggered a slowdown in the flock and jump-started their molts for molting season, and we have less production.

This isn’t a scientific thing but just in my observation as a farmer and having chickens for 20 years: When there’s stress or when there’s danger, their bodies are like, nope, it’s not a good time to have a baby. They’ll stop laying eggs. Their bodies crave certain things, and they know when they need a little extra calcium, so we provide oyster shells for them.

I’m very open with my customers (about the production slowdown). One of the great things about having a small brand and really knowing all your customers is I keep very open communications, so we have signs on our (egg) vending machine. With my restaurants, I say, “Hey, you could get dropped as early as October. I have no control over it.” But we need the break as much as the chickens do.

Our direct-to-consumer sales are up. We did try a farmers market to sell beef this year. All the other vendors at the market were saying this was a terrible year. Our market struggled, so we left the farmers market. We just sell it at the farm now, so we don’t have the overhead of the market. Some of our small processors seem to have taken advantage of the large grants available from (the U.S. Department of Agriculture) for small producers to expand their operations. There’s been a couple of new facilities that have opened in our county, so we’re able to keep the beef very local.