Marin Sun Farms

Inverness, California

The cows behind David Evans’ house are not alone. Following them through the grass are 150 chickens, who spend their days pecking through what the cattle leave behind. They live in mobile coops, which look like covered wagons and roll to a new spot in the pasture every few days. To their left and right are wild irises, and down the hill is a ten-mile beach that makes up the west side of Point Reyes National Seashore. Not your average egg farm.

The idea behind it is uncommon, but not revolutionary. The system simply takes advantage of symbiosis: The chickens break down the cows’ manure, pecking through to eat the larvae it contains and spreading the fertilizer into a useful, less concentrated density; the chickens get food, the cows get fewer pests. The birds don’t significantly increase the impact on the land (if anything, they mediate the cows’ presence), and yet the eggs and meat they produce add to the land’s yield.

Neighboring ranchers think the whole thing is nuts, but that’s not new for David. Ever since college, he has forged his own path by asking new questions of agricultural convention. “When someone says ‘This is why we plant corn in rows,’ I ask, Why? What are the benefits? And more importantly, What are the downfalls? What are we not getting out of it?”

By asking these questions of traditional cattle-rearing, David envisioned an alternative system that regarded the land as a whole—and in doing so, offered himself and the ranch a brighter future. While still in college, he was planning changes to his family’s operation in Point Reyes. After graduation he initiated a program of management-intensive grazing, which involved subdividing pastures and rotating cows through them quickly and strategically. The aim was to maximize the land’s productivity and wean the ranch off external feed, and it worked: more grass grew and the cows were healthier as a result.

Yet as deeply as David trusted his new approach, the rest of the family trusted their own tried and true methods. Moving cattle from pasture to pasture was considered a waste of time. “I realized it wasn’t just about me and my thoughts,” David said, “that I couldn’t just come up to people and explain my philosophy and expect them to believe it. They weren’t going to fire me, but who was I going to be for staying? And, even moreso, who was I not going to be because of that?”

Looking at David, it is impossible to miss his enthusiasm. His blue eyes flash as if brimming over with the energy contained inside him. You might question whether the choice to forge ahead alone was ever a choice at all. As he once said, “I’d rather get my fingers caught in the door than not push at all.”

When he was 27, David stopped working on the family ranch and started a fence-building company. The relatively lucrative income allowed him to save money, and a year later he and his partner in the fence company leased 90 acres of pasture and bought 40 cows to graze it. Marin Sun Farms was born.

They raised the cows without hormones or antibiotics, and fed them nothing but a natural diet of grasses. David was sure that beef raised this way and sold directly to the customer would be the future of ranching. But at first they needed to simply test the time-controlled grazing and see what it could grow. For two years they stuck with the traditional market, buying cows from a broker, raising them to a sellable weight, and selling them back for finishing on a feedlot.

In January, 2001, they vowed to sell the meat of five cows directly to customers in the year ahead. They put up a simple web site explaining their thoughtful practices, and waited. Two months later, Michael Pollan’s landmark article “Power Steer”came out in The New York Times Magazine. After people read his candid description of modern beef production, Marin Sun Farms’ phone began to ring off the hook. Their ship had come in sooner than expected, and suddenly they had no choice but to dive headfirst into being what they had only dreamed about. Before he knew it, David was working non-stop: not, just raising cattle, but giving tours of the ranch, delivering meat to customers’ homes, and speaking at community functions. That season Marin Sun Farms sold the meat of not five head of cattle, but 25.

David has been in full gear ever since, though luckily the business has normalized a bit. In 2002, Marin Sun Farms sold 60 head, mainly through farmers markets. The next year they increased beef sales again. They also launched the pastured-chicken business, added more farmers markets, and opened a small store in the town of Point Reyes. Midway through 2004, they were selling their 40 cuts of beef, as well as Marin Sun Farms sausages, eggs, and chickens, local rabbits, even preserves made by David’s sister. At six farmers markets a week they were selling their products both packaged and grilled into delectable sandwiches. All in all, they were supporting ten full- and part-time employees.

As David put it, “The demand is off the charts.” That has presented Marin Sun Farms the odd challenge of finding a way to grow as quickly as it wants to. The problem as David sees it is that the meat industry is structured around large corporations. The players along the way—packers, in particular—can accommodate massive volume or minute, hobby-level production, but not the moderate output of a small business. Case in point: There is one small packer, 45 minutes away, that can do David’s processing. Word has it, though, that it’s currently going out of business. It simply cannot compete in today’s market.

Of course, that’s not enough to stop David. He has convinced a neighbor to follow similar production standards—all grass, no meds—so he can buy the cattle and thus augment his supply of meat. He’s working with a local agricultural group to invest in a mobile slaughter unit, so his animals never have to leave the farm. And, as the packer shuts its doors, Marin Sun Farms plans to open its own facility, right there in downtown Point Reyes Station.

Meanwhile, the chickens remain on the hill above David’s house, oblivious to the trials their keeper faces. They themselves have become one of the greatest challenges, for familiar-sounding reasons. For instance, industrial egg factories power-wash their eggs by the thousand, but David and his crew must clean their product by hand. The labor raises the price far above what consumers are accustomed to, and so each dozen sold to a new customer requires an explanation of why these eggs are different—and better.

Plus, the longer the chickens are in the pasture, the more predators are drawn there and thus the more chickens leave the pasture. But David’s resolve is as firm as ever. “I know the system works,” he says. “We just have to be able to make that happen. In the meantime, it keeps me stretched in the way I need to be stretched. It keeps us learning.”