By Soo Youn
Scattered among the plump chickens skittering around Sharon Palmer’s dusty 61-acre farm are some scrawny standouts. These hens look unevenly plucked, until you realize that their feathers—which are white—actually haven’t fully grown in. They’re skinny, they wobble more than they walk, and although Palmer is raising them, they’re not her chickens. Not originally, anyway; these are rescue chicks.
“Do you see the crowns on top of their heads? They were almost white, and they’re supposed to be bright red,” Palmer exclaimed. Indeed, the crowns on these organic birds are pale and floppy. “They’re so incredibly small and malnourished because these big facilities keep the lights on 24 hours a day so they’ll lay more than one egg a day. And they were cranking out eggs. These chickens couldn’t walk, they couldn’t see, they couldn’t eat and they had no feathers. They had never been out of the cage,” Palmer huffed, still indignant, as she guided me to the chicken houses on a recent Sunday visit.
At 48, Palmer is a sturdy brunette who looks younger than she is, especially considering the many long hours of physical labor she puts in daily as proprietor of Healthy Family Farms in Santa Paula, about 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles. With her ponytailed hair she looks almost girlish. But there’s also something fresh and unspoiled about the way she coos and pets her animals—like Dumbo, a goat with floppy ears—on a tour of the farm.
Which Came First?
The chickens at Healthy Family are generally kept fenced in for protection from hawks and coyotes, but dozens seemed to be underfoot as we walked. Four weeks earlier Palmer had rescued the hobbled birds—that she says would otherwise have been incinerated—from a nearby organic egg facility that closed rather than make regulatory changes. The difference between them and Palmer’s organic and free-range chickens—who are brown and plump, fully feathered with bright red, firm crowns—is striking. Compared to their rescued brethren, they look like Olympians of the species.
The 1,000 chickens rescued four weeks earlier had been raised “organic,” and not “free-range.” And therein lies the catch. Strange as it may seem, they don’t have to be free-range to be organic, and in view of the complexities of labeling (see sidebar), it’s easy for consumers to be dismissive in their purchasing choices. The appearance of these rescued birds, though, was nothing short of shocking. Even had the chickens been cage-free, Palmer explained, they would have been required only to have “just enough room to turn around.”
Palmer’s own 1,700 free-range, organic chickens produce 9,000 eggs a week that she sells both on the farm to “members” or at 14 local farmers markets. When you approach the cubbies where they lay their eggs, the squawking is so loud you almost miss the process. The hens lay their eggs in the same box every day, and even queue up if it’s occupied. 
Afterwards, as a USDA-certified farmer, Palmer has three days from when she collects the eggs to get them packaged and sold. For commercial eggs, on the other hand, “There is no federal standard for dates on the carton,” writes Patty Lovera, assistant director at Food & Water Watch. Palmer believes they sometimes languish for months before a sale.
Farming by Numbers
Healthy Family Farms at one time was an apricot orchard, until the trees were cleared so the previous owners could sell it as a horse farm. Now, as Palmer experiments with various ways to shade her animals from the searing Southern California sun, she’s brought back fruit trees. She’s moving away from netting and synthetic materials to sugar pear and apple trees, which eventually will protect the chickens while their manure, in turn, fertilizes the trees.
Palmer’s farming methods can best be described as trial-and-error. She mostly educated herself by visiting and studying other farms in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, Texas, Ohio and Northern California.
“Farmers are the rare exception— business people who want you to learn how they do things,” she said.
Having left a corporate career as a project manager for reorganizations and bankruptcies, she relocated from Pennsylvania in 2002. “You know, your values change,” she explained. “I wanted to be home with the kids, I’m a single mom. I love animals.”
The farm literally grew organically out of Palmer’s own tastes, as she thought about what she wanted to feed her own family. When we arrived at the farm earlier that day, she was squeezing lemons with an old-fashioned, manual juicer for lemonade—sweetened with honey from her own Honey Pacifica bees. It’s not for sale, just an alternative, along with hibiscus tea, to sugary sports drinks for her kids. Four of her five, ages 11 to 26, and an assistant, CJ, help her out on the farm—selling on Sunday, packaging eggs, and feeding and caring for the animals.
“We started with organic free range eggs. And then my customers would ask, ‘Do you have the chicken that go with the eggs?’” She laughs at the inherent, age-old joke. “I raise a lot of chickens now. And then Thanksgiving they wanted turkeys, so I started raising turkeys; this is my fifth year. And I really like goat cheese and I love goats and I always wanted to make cheese.”
Palmer’s goat cheese and eggs have given her a foothold on LA’s culinary map. Akasha Richmond, owner of Culver City’s trendy Akasha restaurant and bakery, lit up at the mention of the farm. Professing nothing less than an obsession with goat cheese, Richmond, who visits goat farms from Kauai to Siena, Italy, says of Palmer’s dairy, “Her products feel so farm fresh. I’ve had a lot of goat cheese all over the world and I think hers is some of the best I’ve ever had. It’s very mild. It’s creamy, delicious, but not really goaty—hers is subtle.”
Palmer also raises grass-fed Scottish Highland beef, lamb, Muscovy ducks and milk-fed pork. She is passionate when she talks about food, animals and commercial abuse, and all of the farm’s animals are known to be treated so humanely that neighbors will sometimes drop off sick or injured animals, knowing she won’t say no to raising them.
No Idyllic Life
In addition to the vagaries of weather and the market and concerns about animal health, organic farming faces other hazards. To the commercial agribusiness sector, the burgeoning of these small farms is sometimes viewed as threatening, and independent farmers have been harassed. This may have been why Palmer was suddenly arrested for selling unpasteurized milk last December. “When I was arrested, I was not selling raw milk,” she says. “People would preach to me [about its benefits] but I would pasteurize it.”
Ironically enough, the experience, and what she learned about raw milk because of it, convinced her of its benefits. She doesn’t sell the milk or milk products, but owners in her herd share can take a portion of her raw goat milk and milk products.
Doing What You Love
Despite her passion, Palmer has no illusions that her farm will change the way the entire world eats, but hopes it will contribute to a more local food movement.
“With everything that’s happening with our food out there, I decided that maybe I could just raise enough to feed 100 families, have things really fresh and natural,” said Palmer. “So you can bring the kids up and see where eggs come from and know how you take goat milk and make ice cream . . .
“You want to do what you love, right? Because there’s really not a lot of money in it. It’s really the love of food,” she says. “So if you can pay the bills, and you can feed your family, and feed everybody else’s families, you’re good, you know?”
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