Tara Firma Farms

Finally had a chance to speak to Max today at Tara Firma, and let him know how upset and disappointed I was in the customer service or lack thereof over the weekend. He was lovely and understanding. Our agreement was that he would cancel my subscription and refund my money. After we got off the phone, OnTrac delivered the product to my house sometime between 9:30 and noon. My partner found it when he came home for lunch. I don’t plan on opening a package of meat that has been sitting in a warm truck since Friday, my thought is I will just put it directly into the garbage. I gave one more star for today’s phone call and service, but the Saturday experience ruined this overall for me even if the mistake was made by OnTrac. If someone at Tara Firma had done what they said they would… call me back on Saturday and just told me, «you’ll have to wait till Monday when we can figure this out» I wouldn’t have been so aggravated.

Disclaimer: This makes me so sad to post, but I had to cancel my subscription to Tara Frima Farms before I even got to experience them. So I have no experience with the actual subscription or products, but I wanted to comment on the level of customer service and attention to my needs as a brief member.
Sadly, getting a CSA box was not in the cards for me, living in the city in a highly populated area just outside of their delivery area. It just didn’t make sense, and outside of that inconveniencing our friends just wasn’t something we wanted to do, even if it was only a monthly basis.
Maria and Max were wonderful at trying to find solutions that worked for us in order to receive the CSA box, they literally tried everything they could think of to find a solution. Unfortunately, each solution seemed good at first and slowly deteriorated as I got more details and understood the logistics around them. This was not the fault of the farm… more so the fault of my lifestyle. ;)
When my situation changes I will for sure be resubscribing as a member. Purely by the fact that they were so amazing with me and did explored every option for delivery with me.

Wanna see piggies and piglets head to the farm. Although it may seem isolated and desolated there are people out there other than the animals!

Tara Firma Farms is amazing. They really treat their animals right and raise them the way animals are meant to live out their lives. The chickens are free range and the cows and pigs gets plenty of room to roam as well. Because of this, the animals are happy and rarely sick.
I went on a tour with Tara and she’s hilarious. I can tell she opened this farm with lots of love. The eggs and meats here are simply AMAZING! Pricey, yes, but amazing if you want to eat food that is actually good for you.
I am a member and gets monthly delivery. I wish I lived closer to here but I visit a few times a year. They also have lots of areas for members to walk around and hike and their dogs can go off leash too. I’ve taken my dog here and she’s had a blast. Make sure you tick proof your dog though! It is a farm and she definitely had a couple hop on her.

They do not sell whole animals here. My boyfriends family are Croatian and it’s tradition to roast a whole pig, so I was calling around for prices and weights. Three stars for seeming like they care about animals, and how cute their animals look– but I’m sorry, I like bacon and that doesn’t make me an asshole for calling a farm inquiring if they sell animals when I just typed «Pig for sale» in Unilocal and they came up. I’m leaving a review for the people out there that think this is a farm to buy whole animals– don’t call about it, for you will get a response as cold as Elsa’s wrath for even thinking about it.

We were planning to pick up organic apples at Chileno Valley Ranch, a nearby organic farm, but they were closed for the day. Needless to say that after a 2-​hour drive the kids and grown-​ups were highly disappointed. We had to quickly figure out a plan B and thanks to Unilocal,we found this animal farm. Although we had in mind to pick up produce, we thought that a farm tour would entertain the kids and it surely did. The friendly guide gave us an informative tour of the farm. We visited the horses, cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens and hens. The kids got to hold and pet the baby chicks. She explained in detail how they humanely raise the animals without antibiotics or hormones, let the cows graze on grass, give food scraps to the pigs, turkeys, chickens and hens and let them roam leisurely. Their beef is pastured till the end and their eggs are from pastured hens. They have a small store where they sell all their meat products, pastured eggs, other local products and some fresh produce from a local organic farm. We did not really leave with a bucket of apples as we had planned, but certainly learned quite a bit about life on the farm and how animals are fed and treated. I highly recommend this free tour! Call ahead to find out their hours and tours.

Can’t believe this place has not been shut down. Its filthy. They feed rotting food they get from stores that throw away bad and outdated trash to their animals that they then butcher and sell as healthy,“grass fed” farm raised food. Seems more like dumpster fed. Disgusting. There are big bins of food they collect from the trash businesses throw away and let it sit uncovered, in the heat to rot. Its covered with insects and then fed to the animals.
How is it healthy to feed animals food unfit for sale to humans after its been allowed to decay and rot even further?
There are no bathroom facilities. Only a single porta potty baking in the hot sun that is filthy and no clean running water or soap unless you count a hose with brown water running out of it and no soap or towels. So great, we now get to eat BBQ prepared by people who have who knows what on their hands since the employees have no clean facilities or a place to wash their hands and they sure as heck are not wearing gloves. The food being served is sitting in trays on table in the hot sun and occasionally or partially covered with foil to keep the swarms of flies and bees away. If there is no running water how clean are the cooking utensils and serving trays or silver ware being used? From what we could see all they did was spray them down with the dirty brown water coming from a garden hose and that was running off into a pond 10 feet away. They rent this place out for events and have party events here and all those guests have no place to wash up after using a disgusting renta crapper.
The food they sell is so overpriced its indecent. Over $ 17 lb for garbage fed chicken breast? Seriously? Rib-​eye for over $ 25 lb?
They butcher chickens outside in dirt fields and wash the blood and other remains into a creek and from what we could see people like employees walk right through the area where this slaughter takes place and right into the freezers where food and vegetables are stored. If this is the price of eating farm raised food then we’re headed right back to Whole Foods and Trader Joes where at least we don’t need fly swatters and insect repellent to shop. The stores these days offer disinfectant wipes for the shopping carts and in the meat departments to help stop the spread of germs. And this place has the nerve to attack the food industry for their practices?
Odd that a farm doesn’t grow a single vegetable on the property, nothing unless you count acres of weeds. They get all that they sell from other farmers. The quality of the vegetables is poor at best and the dirt is not washed from them before they are delivered. They pack everything in boxes they recycle, yeah! Except that those boxes are then sent to other customers homes and then returned and just re-​filled again and again. Just what you really want, food, put back into recycled dirty boxes over and over again that have been handled countless times and in the homes of who knows how many people with no disinfection of any kind. So food comes to you courtesy of some other families germs, sick children or adults and who knows what other things have been in these recycled boxes.
Dogs are welcome at the farm and even more welcome to pee and crap anywhere they like. No rules about picking up what rover leaves behind and on the very property where your food is eating that oh so healthy grass that’s been fertilized courtesy of every visiting dog and of course the chicken guts they throw out into the field rather than safely disposing of these health hazard.
Made the mistake of going into their so-​called office. An old, dirty mobile home that was so filthy with dead bugs and stained carpet and more flies inside than on all the rotting food they feed the animals. The smell was like walking into a dumpster and with no air conditioning it felt like an oven inside.
We had hopes there might be a clean restroom and clean running water and soap to wash up… not a chance. My wife departed the bathroom about as fast as she entered saying the porta potty was cleaner than their bathroom. While she was trying to use the toilet I thought I might find some clean water and soap in the kitchen. I nearly threw up when I saw the sink and counters piled with dirty dishes, pans with rotting food, and bugs everywhere. The smell from an overflowing trash bag was disgusting.
You can print anything you want on your website and tell all sorts of stories, but when you see how disgustingly dirty and run down this place is… well I wouldn’t eat at a restaurant that looked like this place especially knowing the cooks and waiters use an outhouse and no place to wash their hands before touching my food, plates and silverware.

The meat is expensive, but super tasty and fresh. Most of the times the processing dates on the meat are within a few weeks of the date of delivery. Veggie share is diverse and high quality — lots of greens and root veggies. The fruit share was squashed, overripe, and a bit of a mess. Most of it went straight to compost when we got it (twice, then we cancelled it). Eggs are so fresh and fun — different colors and shapes every time and sooo tasty. I love visiting the farm and seeing the happy animals. You can tell this farm is very loved and that the owners have a lot of pride in it. That’s the kind of people I like managing my food!
Only downside (other than the fruit) was trying to decipher the issues associated with the meat processing place. The owners want to be transparent, so they sent many emails explaining things. However, the emails were erratic and difficult to follow, which made the situation seem shady. I still don’t know if Tara Firma was a part of the problem that led to the meat recall. Was it their cows that had the «paperwork» errors? Did they send cancerous cows to get processed? Not sure. It wasn’t clear in the emails, though there was excruciating detail about other aspects of the issues.
In the end, I stuck with them because I can tell the owners love their farm and take pride in delivering a high quality product, which leads me to trust their judgment.

Great produce and other food– but eventually cancelled our CSA account due to the owner’s RECENT barrage of political email newsletters. It got weird– the newsletters went from great info about the farm to these crazy politically fueled rants about the USDA. The last one being in support of the tea party Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy. The owner later apologized personally to me, and later gave a half apology in their next newsletter after several people reacted. It was one of those «I’m sorry you feel that way» non apology apologies.
To be fair, all comments in the newsletters etc were made prior to Mr Bundy’s crazy racist comments airing, but our family didn’t feel like we wanted to spend our dollars where someone supports that kind of behavior. Also– I don’t want my veggies served with a side of negative political fuel. How about they keep those thought to themselves? Not good marketing or PR, and really disappointing.

I love this place, and the thought and effort that goes into supporting a community accessible farm. This is not Disneyland or a manicured lawn, but an actually working farm with rusted fences and dirt roads that produces some of the best tasting and responsible meat available.

I love their meat and The way they treat animals! So wonderful to see happy pigs, cows and chickens. The best meat I have had in my life… I do not eat much meat so when I do I want it to be the best quality.
I am a proud and loyal member.

Extremely disappointed! Did a farm tour, desire to support local farms, signed up for a grande value meat share and a grande veggie box to the tune of $ 135 every other week. 1^st week we got 5lb of meat (we were told we would receive10lbs) and had to drive out there so they could make it right. 2^nd delivery was great. 3^rd delivery we got 6 lbs! Called and they didn’t want to fix it etc so we cancelled the meat share. Today they were suppose to deliver veggie box but they said it wouldn’t be till Thurs and that their email telling us it would be today was a mix up. We cancelled the veggie box, when asked why we explained all this and they didn’t care, took away the membership, no refunding the deposit etc. I’m speechless as to the kind of operation these people run. They say/​claim one thing and their actions reveal the opposite. Merry Christmas!

Absolutely DISAPPOINTING! They don’t deliver to your door. You have to travel to someone’s house to pick up your order. My order was not at the site and they still charged me in full. Took a few months for me to clear that. The meat come frozen and it’s not that great. VERY TOUGH AND CHEWY. I finally got fed up and canceled my membership. Oh by the way, the membership is not free. I copied this text from their website on the membership page: «There is a one time $ 15 sign-​up fee and $ 20 refundable deposit.» I did not get any refund when I canceled.
Anyways, I found another great local farm with way more products and THEY DELIVER! Do more research before you purchase from Tara Firma, they are very expensive.

Tara Firma Farms is doing it right. Want to learn about where you foods comes from? How it gets made? How’s it’s shipped or processed? Tara Firms can show you. The tour starts out with looking at baby chicks. Craig (Tara’s husband) is extremely knowledgeable and answers the questions in your head even before you ask them. After baby chicks, you see teenage chickens frolicking in the pasture, then you see pigs, and cows, and more chickens, and some vegetables. If it’s a hot day, be sure to wear sunscreen or bring a shade umbrella. And bring water!
After the tour ends in a barn, where you may see a family of owls (so cool!), you’ll be informed about their CSA. Sign up people! It’s local produce delivered to your house or available for pick-​up. It changes seasonally and it’s not expensive! All that produce you see at wherever you shop (Safeway, Sprouts, etc.) is most likely not local. Tara Firms Farms is on I St. It doesn’t get much more local than that.
Take a tour and treat yourself to some organic farming knowledge.

I was very pleased to recently visit the farm and pick up items for the month. Though I wished I’d gotten there earlier to take the tour.
These folks took the time to chat, answer my many questions, telling me about their products and make great recommendations. They really went out of their way to make sure I was happy and to make my trip from the city worthwhile.
Their meats are top rate. I’m reminded of the quality and care my grandfather took as a meat cutter. Everything was impeccably butchered, packaged and stored. The flavors in their meats really reveal their practices to be healthy and humane. It makes my body very happy to enjoy them. I’m not bothered one bit that their animals are processed at another location. I prefer to enjoy the cost benefit of the lower overhead while allowing them to concentrate on what they do best, farming and selling.
Even though I’m low on the income scale, I’m definitely becoming a member and getting monthly orders – it’s worth every single penny to ensure I’m not consuming low grade proteins from CAFOs via grocery stores. You should too.

We went for a tour one Sunday thinking it would be a fun thing for the kids to do and two hours later, our lives were changed. We now get their small veggie share and a la carte meats weekly and have transformed our eating habits. We have fun opening the box each week to see what veggies we got and then trying to figure out what to make with them. My 3 year old is suddenly stoked to eat vegetables (worth the $ 20 alone) and mom is stoked at the affordability and quality of the food we’re getting. Extra bonus: I’ve lost 8 lbs. this past month by eating more veggies and less processed foods. We’ve been «members» for two months now and our veggies have always been fresh and delicious. The meat is some of the best I’ve ever tasted, and I’m not even that great of a cook!
I’m looking forward to this spring and summer and utilizing all of the other activities the farm has to offer — hiking, fishing, and the barn dances. Places like Tara Firma make me SO happy we decided to raise our kids in P-​Town!

Go on the tour they do daily. These guys are the real deal. Great process to which they have their animals and vegetables setup. The final product is amazing. I picked up lamb chops, ground beef, bacon, eggs, carrots and potatoes.
I’ve never tasted bacon or carrots like this. It wasn’t the dirty kind like you get from even WF these were amazing. The eggs were so orange/​yellow and tasted so fresh it makes you think twice about buying the food line eggs from the grocery store.
These guys rock!!!

Free tour of the farm on a weekend? Yes, please. The staff here is very passionate about responsible and sustainable farming and eager to share all that they have learned with the community. I had recently watched Food, Inc and wanted to see what was going on at the forefront of the responsible farming movement and this was the perfect place. At the end of the day I left with several pounds of happy animal meat. Super excited to try it.

Can meat and produce really be that delicious? YES, at Tara Firma Farms!
Can community events be that enjoyable? YES, like being transported back in time, when agriculture was the center of our universe.
DON’T miss Pumpkins on Pikes next year! Sooooo COMMUNITY!
GO TARA! GO CRAIG!

Tara Firma Farms is a great little secret in Petaluma!
Its a working farm so don’t set your expectations high. Nothing fancy or commercialized.
Produce is grown on the property using no pesticides! All the produce we bought, potatoes, carrots, green beans and purple green beans was fresh and very tasty.
Take the free tour or roam the grounds on your own. I advise you to take the tour. Its very informative and the guide tells you about the diversity of the farm and how they fertilize the fields. Wear tennis shoes. Its a farm and you will get dusty and dirty.
There are pigs, chickens, cows, goats to see. In one of the barns you’ll find all the chicks and baby turkeys (not sure what a baby turkey is called), you can pick them up and its great for the little kids!
You are welcomed to drive or walk up to the pond and fish and have a picnic lunch. The drive is through the barn and up a dirt hill. Not the best drive for a 4dr sedan. AWD or 4WD would be best. Fishing is catch and release. Fun for the little kids! No shade up there. Bring a blanket and plenty of sun screen.
After our tour and picnic lunch we headed back up to the store to purchase a whole chicken $ 7/​lb, beef skirt steak $ 18/​lb, beef chuck steak $ 8/​lb. Prices seem steep BUT remember its all organic (not certified)! The chicken we bought was processed on a Tuesday and we ate it on Sunday night! So fresh and juicy!
They have a membership deal.