Deviled Eggery hatches a holiday art show benefit

A historic Petaluma chicken ranch, popular in the ‘70s as an eccentric cafe and art space dubbed The Eggery – where musicians Norman Greenbaum and Kate Wolf were occasional visitors – is undergoing another significant identity change.

The playful new name, The Deviled Eggery, is just the beginning.

After a few decades as a quiet country house out on the edge of town – a home for humans, not poultry – the 1,000-square-foot building is being carefully re-imagined as more than just a residence. Inspired by their new home’s unique history and potential, owners Mary Beth and Eric Leland envision a vibrant community space for the property, a gathering place where ideas, art and lively conversation will be encouraged. Though a few small-scale activities have already taken place there, mostly planning sessions, workshops and talks, this weekend marks the Deviled Eggery’s first big public event, a holiday art show and sale benfitting the local nonprofit Una Vida.

“Here is where the restaurant was,” says Mary Beth Leland, a special education teacher at Casa GRande High School, leading a short tour of the place, located about two miles from downtown Petaluma on Bodega Avenue. The large room retains some of the vestiges of the former cafe – large windows, wall-mounted benches – but otherwise resembles a spacious community gathering area at a summer camp in the mountains.

The walls and ceiling, Eric Leland points out, were built of wood that was reclaimed from old chicken barns on the property.

“We haven’t changed much at all,” Eric says, though Mary Beth does acknowledge they added a heater to the room. “A modern heater, which the room really needed,” he agrees. “The pot bellied stove over there has been here forever. This place was originally a 96-square-foot egg incubator and storage facility. There were 20,000 chickens on the property once, back when it was a working chicken ranch. They turned part of it into a living area, then the owners expanded it further, and turned it into a restaurant.”

Songwriter Greenbaum (best known for “Spirit in the Sky”) reportedly penned and recorded his song “Petaluma” while hanging out at the Eggery, and the lyrics certainly sound like something that would have been written there.

“Got chickens in the houses/We got chickens in the trees/Chicken in the pots of all the Petalumees. Oh, I'm out in Petaluma/Spending' my days/Tell me how many eggs will a chicken lay.”

“We have met a handful of people who learn where we are living and say, ‘Oh, back in high school we used to party out there!’” says Mary Beth. “And when they come out here they have some intense nostalgia.”

According to the Lelands, the couple, who moved here a few years ago after living several years in the East Bay and then Fairfax, were casually looking for a home to rent or buy in Petaluma, when they heard about the Bodega Avenue property and visited it with their realtor one day before bids were due.

“The minute we saw it, we knew we had to have it, and already had a vague sense of what we were going to do with it,” says Mary Beth. “We even visited one other house right after after seeing this one, but all we did was stand in the yard of that house talking about this house. This place was calling our names.”

“We’d totally fallen in love with it,” agrees Eric. “We knew a little about its history, and when we were walking the grounds there was this other potential buyer talking on his phone about how he was going to tear everything down and build some modern McMansion on the property. There was zero appreciation for the history of the place. It was clear to us that if we bought it, a lot of exciting things could happen right here in this room.”

Within a week of closing the deal, the Lelands hatched the idea of forming an organization to support their vision of the property, recruiting a group of advisers to shape the future. The first official gathering in the room was a visioning session with those advisers. It was there that they adopted a set of “core principles” and a set of four “themes” – Environmental Protection/Sustainable Agriculture, Mental Health Support, Visual/Performing Arts, and Social Justice – to guide them when choosing what kind of activities to host, at no charge, on the property.

A website, DeviledEggery.org, was launched to explain their vision, list upcoming activities, and share some pictures and anecdotes from the property’s storied past. As for the devilishly egg-themed name, what began as a pun-happy placeholder caught on immediately.

“It’s nice to have something a little funny and irreverent, if we plan to do social justice work or mental health advocacy here” Mary Beth says. “This kind of work can be serious, so we have to remember to have fun.”

This weekend’s art show reflects Deviled Eggery’s core principles in its support of Una Vida, a Petaluma-based organization working to fight food insecurity and other humanitarian causes. Titled “Decades,” the show features artists young and old, spanning ten decades from 10 to 90. The Lelands have been working with invited artists to transform the space into a gallery and marketplace, while working out details of how to host a large group of visitors.

“The event is from 10 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon, and we just hope everyone doesn’t show up all at once,” laughs Mary Beth.

As for the future of the Deviled Eggery, that is largely up to the folks who propose events in keeping with the organization’s values and themes. Coming up is a workshop on scything, and possibly a musical performance or two.

“We’re open to all kinds of things,” says Eric, pointing out that the website has a form where folks can propose projects of their own. “We want this to be the community’s space, where we just happen to also live.”

One thing the Leland’s have no plans of tackling any time soon is a re-establishing a restaurant on the property.

“We still both work full time,” says Mary Beth. “A restaurant would be a stretch. But who knows? Maybe one day.”