About Wise Acre Farm & Diversification
My name is Mary Fahey and I own Wise Acre Farm. My main interests since childhood have always focused around art, design, animals and growing things. I guess it's no wonder that my life has followed the path it has. I earned my college degree in Fine Art from U.C. Davis. After college I began a career as a graphic designer. In 1997 I bought a 10-acre farm in Arbuckle. The farm has since grown to 20 acres where abundant gardens grow, a menagerie of animals thrive and I make a diversified living through supplying local folks with fresh produce and eggs, growing hard shell gourds for sale and for producing artwork, and offering graphic design expertise. I also work for the Colusa County Resource Conservation District assisting local landowners and producers in addressing their natural resource concerns on the land.
Diversify. When I started learning about running a small farm, the word diversify kept coming up. "Grow a variety of different vegetable, fruit and nut crops,"... "create value-added products from the items you produce on your farm,"... "try different things - eggs, wool, meat, honey" ..."in this day and age, diversification is the only way a small farm can survive." I read this advice over and over, and heard it at the farm conferences I attended. Over the years, I have come to see first-hand that it is true - diversification is the key to running a successful small acreage farm.
Wise Acre Farm is a diversified small farm system. I grow a variety of fresh market produce and raise chickens for egg production. These farm products are sold through local deliveries (CSA), farmers markets and a home farm stand. I grow hard-shell gourds that I sell via the internet, and I also create artwork from them (a value-added product) that I sell in art galleries and at art and craft shows. And finally, I continue with graphic design, a career that I love and a skill that I utilize both in my artwork and in running the farm, as it keeps my mind thinking in creative ways.
