Our family’s “Beach Front Farm” story begins years before there was even a Wasco family. My husband and I had two sets of dreams and aspirations before we were married but soon combined our dreams to create one vision for our family’s future. The following is the paths that lead us to where we are today.

Ronda grew up in a small town. Her parents always had a small farm. They grew vegetables; she mostly remembers eating fresh cherry tomatoes right off the vine. Her father, who was a heavy equipment mechanic by trade, would often come home from work with a new farm animal as payment, instead of a check! They had chickens, raised pigs and cattle, chickens providing fresh eggs, a few goats, a funny story about geese, and even the lama… Woody! Their farm was always full of dogs and cats!  Ronda learned early that eating farm raised food was a great way to live! She eventually left her small homestead and went on to become a Firefighter, retiring at the rank of Captain after a 20 year career to become a stay at home Mother to her two small children. Ronda homeschooled both children until 6^th and 4^th grade.

Michael was raised on a piece of country property in the mountains where he began farming with his Aunt and Uncle. They had cows, dogs and cats as well as plum, apple and pear trees. He grew up eating fresh fruit and veggies and learned to jar jellies and apple sauce. This eventually led him to start a business creating and selling exotic jellies and salad dressings. He later sold this business to become an IT manager and still retains this job today as we build our family farm.

We fell in love, got married, and moved to our home in Roseville, California. We each loved nature and had a love of food, especially local organically grown food. As Ronda pursued her fire career and Michael pursued his career in business, we both knew deep down we wanted something more from life. We have always shared the common dream of living off the land and being self-employed and self-sufficient while providing back to our community.

We began gardening and raising chickens in our backyard in Roseville.  It was about this time that we purchase just over 3 acres in Fort Bragg, California. This purchase would eventually become “Beach Front Farms”.  We decided to take a leap of faith and sell our Roseville property and move into our 1 bedroom 950sf home in Fort Bragg with our 2 children.  Have fun reading through all our adventures on Farmers Wife Blog.

We started off with a small garden, mostly carrots, snap peas, and broccoli. We soon added rabbits and then chickens and eventually 3 goats, and two more dogs for a total of 3!  As Michael was perfecting his goat milking skills, Ronda was busy making cheese and yogurt for our family and goats milk soap to sell online and in local shops in our area.

We hope that our small local farm will bring happiness and joy to the community around us, and our friends and family afar.  We hope you enjoy our locally grown products, our hand crafted soaps and beauty products, and the scenery here at Beach Front Farm.

From our family to yours,

Beach Front Farm