Farm Store // CLOSED

Green String Farm is a working farm in Petaluma, CA. We also have a store front in which we are lucky enough to interact and meet so many lovely customers from the community. We offer a variety of in-season fruits and vegetables along with local cheeses, eggs from our hens, honey, local bread, Grass Fed Beef & Pasture Raised Pork, local dairy products, dry pantry items and so much more! We welcome you to visit us, explore the farm and leave with something delicious that will keep you coming back again and again! 

The Green String Philosophy

At Green String Farm, we practice “natural process agriculture.” We keep the soil and plants healthy and free from pesticides and artificial chemicals. We produce beautiful food with very low input. 
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A farm is a system. Attention to soil health is essential to producing healthful food. Use of cover crops, compost, compost tea, and crushed volcanic rock and oyster shell mineral supplements help ensure that the earth is able to grow vibrant fruits and vegetables.

The goal is to create a self-nourishing system where less human intervention yields better quality crops.
We grow by the motto “50% for humans, 50% for nature,” maintaining an important balance between crops grown for human consumption and crops grown for soil improvement. This approach also benefits the community by preserving green spaces and wildlife habitats, protecting the soils, conserving resources, and stimulating the local economy.​

The People

Bobby Cannard

Fred Cline

Bob Cannard has been farming sustainably for 30 years, providing produce to Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. Growing up in the commercial nursery business, he has since developed the natural process approach to agriculture that's used at Green String. He has long been an important member and teacher of the sustainable food and beyond organic movement in Northern California. 

Fred Cline acquired a love for agriculture and vinifying grapes into wine on summer visits to his grandparents farm when he was young. He founded Cline Cellars in 1982, and has been growing his grapes the Green String way, without any synthetic fertilizers or herbicides  since 2000. By embracing the beyond organic movement he has been able to produce award-winning wines while caring for the environment. 

"Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food"

-Hippocrates

Farming Practices

01.

Cover crops

We grow cover crops next to or in rotation with food crops to introduce nitrogen to the soil and create a root system to hold the soil together. Cover crops like clover, vetch, and fava beans are essential for strengthening soil fertility in natural process farming. Cover crops also help manage soil erosion, improve soil biodiversity, and help control pests and diseases. 

02.

Soil supplements

We introduce beneficial microbes (like bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and protozoa) into the soil by applying compost tea, a handful of dry compost with nutrients soaked in water overnight. Finely crushed volcanic rock and powdered oyster shell provide easily accessible minerals and calcium for soil microbes to break down and transfer to our plants. This creates soil which helps plants build their own immune systems, and foregoes the need for chemical pesticides.

03.

Competition control

 Instead of fighting against weeds, we let them grow up alongside our food crops. When they threaten resources like light and space, we hoe or mow them back just enough, and leave the cut plant material to enrich the soils. Sometimes, we get a little help from herds of goats and sheep to keep overzealous cover crops in check! By resisting the urge to allow only the food crop to grow, we maintain biodiversity and enrich the soils while spending less time eradicating “undesirable” plants from our fields.

The Green String Animals

Meadowbrook Ranch Pork

Red Wattle
Our Red Wattle’s live side-by-side to our Mangalitsa pigs, foraging and roaming free on thousands of acres. Unlike much of the pork that you buy at the grocery store, where the pigs are raised never touching anything but cement, our pigs can be found playing in their hollows (mud holes) and lounging around the various pastures where they forage.
Red Wattle is a domestic breed of pig from the United States. It is best known for its red color and two wattles hanging down on either side of its neck. The Red Wattle meat is lean and tender and has excellent flavor. We supplement their natural foraged diet with Pearled Barley, Rolled Wheat, and Extruded Flax. 

Meadowbrook Ranch Beef

Our cattle at Meadowbrook Ranch live a pretty glamorous life! Spending their summers in beautiful Lassen County and winters at the Meadowbrook Ranch in Tehama County. With views of Mt. Lassen and Mt. Shasta, our cattle have thousands of acres to roam, graze and reproduce naturally.
 We raise a Black Angus / Dexter Cross – this cross produces high quality, manageable size cuts of beautifully marbled beef that is superior to many products you may find at the grocery store. Our free-range cattle are completely natural, which means they have never been:

• ■     Fed or injected with any antibiotics or ingredients containing possible antibiotic residues, including most boluses.  
• ■     Fed any antibiotic ionophores such as Bovatec or Rumensin  
• ■     Implanted with any synthetic hormones, growth promotants or steroids of any kind.  
• ■    Given any feed or supplement containing animal by-products

Green String Chickens

The chickens at Green String Farm are a happy bunch! Raised on Green String vegetables with a supplement of organic chicken feed, these lovely ladies eat better than most. This means that the eggs you get from our Green String Farm chickens are organic, cage free, free range eggs! Come out to the farm and visit the happy chickens and see exactly where your eggs are coming from. 

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