Tomales farmer keeps it local

Taking a few moments from her busy day, Tomales farmer Jessica McIsaac settles into a lush, grassy pasture above the family ranch with three of her young children, and soon they’re surrounded by some of McIsaac’s beloved flock of laying hens, clucking and chuckling.

McIsaac is the founder and operator of “Pasture Fresh Eggs,” which serves as the distributor for organic eggs for five family farmers from the Petaluma area. The Sebastopol native, who also helps manage a large family dairy business with her husband Neil, had the idea to create the local venture after she, along with other area farmers, had been left without an egg distributor when the large-scale business they’d been using as a vendor shuttered.

The 34-year-old, who’s long been involved in the dairy industry, saw this as an opportunity to diversify the McIsaac family farm and help other local producers by creating her own business where she could both produce and distribute eggs.

“I am very determined and not afraid to take new risks, so when the obstacle was in front of me I knew I was up for the challenge,” she said, adding that it was important to her that she work with other local producers who were in the same predicament. “There aren’t very many places that I could have sold my eggs if I didn’t have my own brand.”

As part of her coursework at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, she’d been required her to not only design a successful agricultural business, but to learn associated techniques such as marketing and web design, so she used those skills to launch “Pasture Fresh Eggs,” she said. She added that the biggest hurdle for her was the financial aspect.

“We had to upgrade our infrastructure as well as security, to go from an egg producer to an entire label and everyone in the family is involved,” she said.

Currently, McIsaac’s twins, Hunter and Hayden, help her hand-collect the eggs from her flock of about 6,000 pasture-raised chickens that produce an average of 5,400 eggs on her 220-acre farm in Tomales.

She uses a truck with refrigeration to pick up eggs from other local farmers, who share her organic and sustainable farming practices, with the “Pasture Fresh Eggs” ultimately producing about 11,000 organic, pasture-raised eggs every day, she said.

Since last month, “Pasture Fresh Eggs” have been offered for sale in 38 Northern California Whole Foods Markets.

She said the venture also serves as a way to teach her four children important values, and she considers herself a “very lucky mom” to be able to raise her kids on a farm.

“We want our kids to learn our work ethic, and when we sit down with a gallon of organic milk and have fresh organic eggs to eat, they see where our food comes from and they enjoy the results,” she said.

(Contact Lynn Schnitzer at argus@arguscourier.com.)