TurkeyTail Farm is a family farm serving Butte County. We are a diversified enterprise dedicated to providing high quality food to a local community. We look to promote appropriate technology, ecological farming, and energy-wise food production. Our goal is to become a model of practical and profitable, ecologically conscious agriculture in the north state.

Oyster mushroom growing on rice straw.

The Farm

We are a farm producing a diversity of food including gourmet mushrooms, grass-fed lamb and goat, pasture raised pork and poultry, mixed vegetables, and cut flowers.

Our farm uses the highest quality feeds and inputs available to us. We use Sea Kelp throughout our program. Kelp provides both plants and livestock with micronutrients not otherwise found in commercial feeds and fertilizers.

Our sheep, goats, and pigs are pasture raised and supplemented with alfalfa, supplements, and formulated rations (for our pigs). Our animals are allowed to range, giving them access to grasses, forbs, brush and delicious acorns.

The Agriculture

We subscribe to the belief that an ecosystem, natural or agricultural, is more stable when there is a diversity of species. We do not grow crops in monoculture, instead we see the farm as a place where synergisms observed in nature can be brought into symphony. At TurkeyTail Farm we see agriculture as a management of relationships; utilization of photosynthesis, degradation and digestion to make efficient uses of all our resources, from the oak woods of the Foothills to the rice fields of the Sacramento Valley.

We employ landscape perspective to manage pests; using natural pest-predator relationships to control garden pests, not synthetic or “organic” spays. By providing a diverse ecosystem and habitat for pest-predators, our insect problems are nearly near zero. When pest problems do develop, we do not reach for a chemical or bottled solution, instead, we understand the pest is an indicator of nutrient or ecosystem imbalance (and try to adjust our management accordingly). Our garden program is not focused on yields or pounds produced; instead our goal is nutrient balance and healthy soil microbiology.

Mushrooms are the cornerstone of our farm. As decomposers, fungi make the great bank of nutrient in the world available to us through decomposition and degradation. We grow our mushrooms on straw and compost produced by regional farmers, and utilize the byproducts of our mushroom program as fertilizer and feedstock for other flora and fauna on our farm.

The Land

We farm 40 acres of oak savanna, brushland, and pasture in Yankee Hill, California. Seated between the immense wilderness of the Plumas National Forest and the great bread-basket of the Sacramento Valley, we manage our land for both the production of food and expansion of wildlife habitat. We are currently are working with the Natural Resource Conservation Service to manage our land for habitat of deer, turkey, songbirds and bats. We utilize non-violent and non-chemical means of controlling predators.