At Shakefork Community Farm our passion for farming is deeply rooted in a profound and transformative lifestyle commitment.  We draw little to no boundary between work and life; the stuff of sustaining life is our work and our play.  We farm to reconnect with a simple agrarian lifestyle and strive to supply as many of our own needs as possible.  It is our goal to eventually provide for Humboldt County most of the foods that are foundational in our diet.

It all started with a bowl of oatmeal, or more precisely, a wish to make that morning bowl of oats something homegrown.  We saw it as the missing link in an otherwise primarily local diet.  Although Humboldt County’s official records reveal a once significant harvest of oats, wheat, and barley, the ascendency of so-called “economies of scale” soon made farming small grains in our coastal county an impractical and inefficient endeavor.  

Supported by a renewed and re-strengthened interest in the restoration of our local food economy, we now cultivate 15 acres of diverse grain and seed crops - including barley, wheat, rye, oats, dent corn, buckwheat, lentils, beans, peas, flax, and barley & oats for our livestock.  Small-grains are the heart of our operation, but just a part of the whole.

A walk through the spring grains - barley and buckwheat.