At Fallon Hills Ranch, a lesson on where food comes from
Fallon Hills Ranch is a small, family-run ranch that straddles to boarder of Sonoma and Marin Counties west of Petaluma. With two young children, Kevin and Erika Maloney have introduced the sixth generation to family’s ranch, which dates back into the 1800’s.
Offering naturally raised beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and rabbit, to conscientious consumers throughout the Bay Area, the Maloney’s approach to food production harkens back to a bygone era, where neighbors helped each other through good times and bad. They were not looked to get rich, but simply want to provide for their family, selling their surplus in town, and shipping any excess to the greater Bay Area.
Following this same model, Fallon Hills Ranch offers both standard and custom order cuts for pick-up at the ranch, at pre-planned delivery locations in Petaluma, and at Bay Area farmers’ markets. “We try to offer standard cuts week in and week out,” says Maloney. “But we also do some seasonal stuff, like London Broil in the summer for grilling, and Top Round in the winter for roasting.”
I attended Petaluma High, which being on the west side of town, meant we were the more rural of Petaluma’s High Schools. Along with the regular reading, writing, and arithmetic, we took hands-on classes, like wood, auto, and metal shop, along with other ag related classes. A good portion of the student body was either in 4-H or belonged to the Future Farmers of America, or both. Our school parking lot was filled with dirty pick-up trucks, driven in by boys and girls who often started their day well ahead of the rest of us, having already completed a day’s worth of work long before taking their seat for first period English or Math.
With last names like Dolcini, Gambonini, Flocchini, Pelfini, Thomasini, Bradanini, Camozzi, Figone, Grossi, Moretti, Volpi, and Benedetti, just to name a few, I coined the term “Farmini” as an affectionate alternative to the more commonly used “Farmers” when we referred to that subsect of our friends who dawned dusty boots and callused hands.
The Maloney’s are a perfect example of the Petaluma “Farmini” of my youth. Alongside his five siblings, Maloney was raised on the family’s ranch, which was started in 1875. Maloney descends from the original Fallon’s, who manned the Fallon Station, an important stop along the now defunct coastal railroad, in the enclave of Fallon, which was located between present day Valley Ford and Tomales. Maloney’s great great grandfather is responsible for the name “Haystack” Landing, which still appears on Google Maps on the south end of Petaluma. While awaiting shipment to San Francisco, Mahoney’s extremely large cache of hay was ruined by an unexpected rain. The new landmark became known as Haystack Landing. Erika, Maloney’s wife, also traces her farm roots back to her grandmother’s dairy, which was located at the corner of Middle Two Rock and Purvine Roads, just west of Petaluma.
Maloney’s mother started a crop insurance company in order to help local vineyards withstand natural disasters, later selling it to American Ag Credit, where two of Maloney’s sisters still work. Another sister is a nurse, and sister Courtney supplies FHR with its chickens and eggs. And for those wine drinkers that think the Mahoney name sounds familiar, brother Brian Mahoney is the winemaker at both DeLoach and Buena Vista wineries.
Maloney attend SRJC to studying Ag, before moving on to CalPoly where he majored in animal husbandry. Wanting to get back into the farm life, Maloney left school early to pursue a career with a dairy equipment company and later a dairy feed ingredient company. But in 2010, he returned to his ancestral home and started Fallon Hills Ranch, hoping to make a business of his hobby of raising animals. Initially the business supplied many local restaurants with high quality meat, but has since turned its attention to direct sales to the more discerning home chefs around the bay area through local farmers’ markets and direct sales.
I spent much of my childhood among the ranches that dot the Petaluma countryside, sometimes helping my Farmini friends with chores, sometimes fishing their stock ponds, and sometimes just enjoying a good home-cooked Italian dinner. No stranger to ranch life, one might think that I would balk at attending a local ranch tour. But I jumped at the rare opportunity to attend a Fallon Hills Ranch tour a few weeks ago on one of the last warm afternoons of Indian Summer.
The crowd was an equal mix of Maloney’s fellow farmers, like childhood friends Rob and Debbie Royer, who supply Maloney with his pork, and regular farmers’ market customers from throughout the Bay Area. Compared to the Maloney’s, growing up in Penngrove on a quarter acre with a few chickens and a pig makes me a city slicker, but flanked by these city folks, costumed up in their best country wester boots, hats, and plaid shirts, I actually felt like a bonafide local yokel.
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