Tierra Vegetables – Save the Farm

Tierra Vegetables needs your help.

Lee and Wayne James are a sister-and-brother farming team who have been growing food for 40 years at Tierra Vegetables, a 20-acre sustainable farm located in the heart of Sonoma County wine country. And they desperately need your help.

A perfect storm of disasters, starting with the series of wildfires that began in 2017, the pandemic and now the current drought, was capped off by the recent failure of their water well. The farm is now in dire straits. At this point, Lee and Wayne cannot afford the cost of a new pump or even make payroll. Eleven families rely on Tierra for their livelihood. Their need is great, and urgent. 

Tierra Vegetables is a sustainable family farm – and family farms are dwindling at an alarming rate. We cannot let this small farm fail. Tierra Vegetables is an integral part of the community and our food supply chain, feeding local families for generations through their CSA program, the farm stand and three farmers markets. A variety of local and regional chefs also regularly source their ingredients from the farm. Wayne leads school tours and the farm provides educational opportunities for children and adults.

In addition to growing diversified and unique heirloom crops, the farm is helping our environment every day by building soil health and sequestering carbon through crop rotation, composting, and absorbing rainwater to recharge the aquifer. Lee and Wayne also pay their employees a fair living wage. They preserve the harvest in their nearby commercial kitchen to enjoy throughout the year. They reuse, recycle and repurpose everything they can. Even their barn is recycled! Lee and Wayne saved a nearby historic barn from demolition and moved it to its current site on Airport Boulevard. The farm received the Snail of Approval from Slow Food in Sonoma County for their sustainable management practices.

Please contribute and help save this invaluable and cherished local family farm. Lee and Wayne and the Tierra Vegetables team thank you from the bottom of their hearts.