I grew up on my family’s farm in the Oakland Hills. Collecting eggs. Riding horses. Raising pigs through 4H. 

My first exposure to what agriculture could be happened in my freshman year of high school. 

 

One day in class, we watched Fast Food Nation, Cowspiracy, and a video called What Came Before: The Truth About Meat and Modern Farms featuring Steve-O. That day changed everything for me.

 

I learned that the amount of meat Americans consume today isn’t supported by the amount of land we have. There isn’t enough pasture to do it the right way, so instead, the system relies on shortcuts like overcrowding animals, degrading land, and prioritizing speed and profit over quality and care. 

 

I knew I had to do something. I knew there had to be a better way. 

 

After high school, I went to baking and pastry school with dreams of opening my own business but in 2020, everything shifted and I found myself reconnecting with my farm roots.

 

I fell down the homesteading rabbit hole and learned about organic and regenerative farming. Chickens in mobile coops, rotating across pastures. Livestock guardian dogs protecting the flock. Land being healed instead of depleted.

I saw that and thought: I want that.

So I started.

 

First, chickens and ducks in my backyard. Before I knew it, I had nearly 100 hens and three livestock guardian dogs and I had outgrown the city.

 

I knew Petaluma was next.

I had never moved out of my parents’ house. Never moved to a new city. Definitely never taken on a full farm. Everyone thought I was crazy.

But I knew what I was building.

 

I checked Craigslist every single day, multiple times a day until one day, a 10-acre property popped up. It had been listed just 15 minutes before I saw it.

I called immediately. Saw it. Fell in love.

And I moved.

 

I didn’t even have a house lined up yet but within a week, I found one, along with a job to fund this dream.

 

Just a girl who decided to do something about it.
Because if I don’t do it, Tyson Foods will. Foster Farms will.
 

Someone has to do it differently and I knew it had to be me.

 

Rancho Villa was born.

 

Eventually I added goats to the farm and found myself milking every day with no real plan for all that milk.

One day, while I was out feeding, I saw my neighbor Lee walking toward me and he introduced himself.

 

He had his own garden, the same acreage as mine almost like mirrored land, divided by a fence and a creek. Not long after, we crossed paths again

 That’s when I learned he made goat cheese and goat milk soap 

 

So I asked him if I supplied the milk, would he show me the way?

 

We started making cheese and soap together.

Not long after, we decided to raise 50 Cornish Cross meat birds.

 

We built a mobile chicken coop ourselves, raised them from chicks, and eventually processed them side by side.
 

That day, I showed Lee how to butcher chickens from start to finish. We did all 50 birds, plus 20 of my roosters.

 

It took over 8 hours. We were wet, blood stained, hungry and exhausted by the end of it.

 

But after that, I knew
if we could do something like that together, with good energy and not want to kill each other by the end of it,
we’d make a great team.

 

The rest was history. 

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Today, Lee and I raise over 1,000 chickens and 80 pigs across 18 acres of regenerative pasture.

 

We believe everyone should have access to fresh, local, pasture-raised eggs, the way they did long before grocery stores when people knew their farmers, knew where their food came from, and shared in the abundance of their community.

 

At Rancho Villa, we're reconnecting people with that tradition one egg at a time