photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCB
Erin Roscoe (left) and Brennan Murphy at Fox Sparrow Farm.

Sonoma is famous for its vineyards but farmers in the county produce so much more.

From eggs to milk, and all kinds of specialty greens, Sonoma County is the bread basket for the Bay Area.

But making it as a farmer here has gotten a lot harder, in part, because the land has gotten so expensive.

There are still a fair share of small farmers who are trying to make it though.

We've still got farm trails, farmers markets, and plenty of farms.

Farming remains a big part of Sonoma County’s identity.

But it’s an identity that’s a challenge to maintain, and you can see the challenges at Fox Sparrow Farm.

Erin Roscoe is one-half of the team that runs it and she showed me around recently.

"Guinea and sheep, and then we've got ducks...we do laying ducks, and we have a couple goats," Roscoe said.

There’s about 50 ducks behind a fence on this 13 acre plot of land. 

Fox Sparrow Farm also raise sheep for meat, and pigs, Roscoe said.

"Mangalica, they're like this Hungarian breed of pig, it's kind of an old world breed," Roscoe said.

They cross breed the heritage pigs with conventional ones…

"The lard is very soft and delicious...and so if we cross them with a more conventional breed, we get better yields, but still have like the nice fat," Roscoe said.

They do all this just west of Cotati.

Roscoe said they lease the land but as farmers they’ve put a lot of their own sweat and muscle to make the land healthy and productive.

"We're adding compost to these pastures, we're seeding them, we’re doing hedge row plantings," Roscoe said.

Roscoe and her partner have shelled out their own money to make improvements, but despite all this work, they're like any other renter.

"There's no equity in this shared property for us except there you know, we get to be here," Roscoe said.

Roscoe said they have a really good relationship with their landlord. She lives in Palo Alto and keeps a second home on the farm.

"She could decide one day she doesn't want to do it anymore and walk out, and then we have this operation that we have to move again," Roscoe said.

Fox Sparrow Farm isn’t alone. Finding affordable, good-quality farmland is one of the major challenges for Sonoma County's small farmers.

This challenge has become so precarious that the Sonoma County Ag and Open Space District launched a study looking into the issue.

Along with the University of California Cooperative Extension, they found affordable farmland and housing are two of the main challenges for the Sonoma County's farmers.

Moving again weighs heavily on Roscoe, she wants to see a return on all the investments they’re making, and knows that won't happen if they keep renting.

Roscoe knows what Fox Sparrow Farm needs to keep going: buying their own land.

"We've kind of set our sites on something between 20 and 40 acres just so that we can sustain our business," Roscoe said.

But, with fairly limited resources, Roscoe says they're a bit boxed in.

"I wouldn't feel good about like our financial situation going over 500k," Roscoe said.

That makes Fox Sparrow Farm's options really limited. The average price in February for a home sold in Sonoma County was over a million dollars, but the average farm in Sonoma County only makes around $25,000 a year according to the USDA's Ag Census.

For small farmers like Roscoe and her partner Brennan Murphy that math simply doesn’t work; and Murphy points out in this market, "there's always the chance that someone's just going to swoop in, buy it with cash and turn it into a vineyard because that seems to be what everyone is doing right now."

Murphy gets to another big issue the Ag & Open space study found.

Sonoma County is popular for rural estates, but that popularity raises prices and takes prime farmland out of production.

And of course, Roscoe said, they're not immune to the general inflation that has hurt so many households.

"Everything from hay to feed which we go through a lot of, to gas prices to just like...just fixing my truck. It's like all more expensive," Roscoe said. "Even, you know, our PG&E bill, has tripled."

It means they have to strike a delicate balance, raise prices enough to keep going, but not so much they scare off their customers.

It's a tight rope that's getting harder and harder to walk, and not just at Fox Sparrow Farm, but Roscoe fears, across all of Sonoma County.

"We are the kind of the local bread basket of the Bay Area, and it's very quickly going away," Roscoe said. "And then what do we have? We have either hobby farms or we have to rely on the Central Valley for our food."

Even with all the hurdles, Roscoe said she wants to keep Fox Sparrow Farm going here in Sonoma County, and on the horizon, is a new program which might help her do just that.

Tomorrow, you can read and hear part two of this story on KRCB, when we bring you more about an innovative program designed to connect Sonoma County's small farmers with land to call their own.