Sonoma County farmers in danger of losing their farm partner with Oakland chef

By CBS Bay Area

One longstanding family farm in Santa Rosa is in jeopardy, as they need critical funding to keep their doors open. 

“We’ve been farming in Sonoma County since 1980,” Lee James, CEO of Tierra Vegetables, Inc., told CBS News Bay Area. 

She and her brother, Wayne, have cultivated black tierra corn, along with other types of corn and fresh vegetables at their farm along Airport Boulevard.

“We went to some of the first farmer’s markets, certified farmer’s markets in the state,” James said. 

She has been leasing their farmland from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District since 1996. And now, the county has officially decided to sell the property.

James added that the deadline to close escrow on the property is by the end of the year. 

“We really at this point don’t want to take on a huge amount of debt right at the end of our farming career to purchase half a million-dollar piece of land,” she said. 

And that is why she and her brother decided to start a fundraising page in hopes that the community can jump in to help raise money for the land. 

“Small farms, small vegetable farms are not highly profitable business,” James said. 

“We have luckily found someone who is interested in the legacy of the farm and our products,” she added. 

Geoff Davis, an Oakland-based Chef Owner of Burdell Restaurant, will now be partnering with the James family to help keep their doors open. 

“A personal relationship beyond just a working one,” Davis told CBS News Bay Area. “A lot of our dishes feature their products, front and center.”

He has known both Lee and Wayne James for the past 15 years and added that he is helping their farm transition eventually to the next generation of farmers. 

“There’s a lot of restaurants that give a lot of lip service to ‘farm to table,’ or it’s ‘local.’ But you know, every restaurant, every kind of restaurant, sources stuff from a farm, and serves it on some sort of table and it doesn’t really mean anything until you have personal relationships with these people who are growing things and really dedicating their lives to their craft,” Davis said. “I have a farmer that is going to relocate to start kind of training with them, and as they let go of the wheel a little bit. And nothing’s going to change with the farm, the farm sells to a lot of great restaurants in the Bay Area. And we want to continue that.” 

He added that the impact of Tierra Vegetables is tremendous to his business, as he receives about 30 to 40 pounds of cornmeal a week. 

“Being able to tell the difference between their cornmeal that’s stone milled for us every week, and the stuff that’s been sitting in a warehouse for five years, is just a huge delta between those things,” Davis said. 

“Continue to tell that story, and continue to honor that commitment and legacy going forward,” he added. “And we don’t want to disrupt any of that. We just want to be able to carry it on.” 

Meanwhile, James continues to expand on her expertise, like making sunflower seed oil. 

“It’s not as easy. It’s different than pressing olive oil,” James said. 

And through this time of uncertainty, she reminisces what started it all. 

“My mom was a florist, we all worked at orchard nurseries in Lafayette, so we’ve been into plants our whole life,” she said.

 She adds that she hopes that by the end of the year, things will fall into place. 

“Our plan is to step back, you can’t really retire. When you’ve been farming most of your, majority of my life, you can’t just quit,” James said. 

In the meantime, James, who is 73 years old, plans to keep doing what she loves. 

“I like growing things, I like the food, I like eating good food, I like being with my dog,” she said. 

CBS News Bay Area reached out to the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District for comment, and a spokesperson sent this statement below:

“Sonoma County Ag + Open Space is proud to have worked with Tierra Vegetables for over 20 years, and is heartened to see the recent groundswell of support for their farm. In their time on the property, we have seen the land flourish from a weedy pasture to a highly productive farm. In preparing for the sale, we’ve been working with Wayne and Lee over the last several years to develop a conservation easement that will protect the land’s open space, agricultural, and natural resources, and to ensure the property is actively farmed for generations to come. All of these requirements and limitations make the land significantly less valuable (a nearly 50% reduction in land value), which we hope will make a purchase more accessible for working farmers like Lee and Wayne. Because of their long history of thoughtful stewardship, community engagement, and innovative farming, we are able to offer the property to Tierra Vegetables first. The appraisal that established the sales price will expire around the end of the year, but we’re hopeful and optimistic that Tierra will be able to purchase the land before that happens.”