Hello, I am Farmher Tiffany, a first-generation farmer in the North Bay Area of San Fransico. My husband and I took a leap of faith and purchased Wise Acre in 2018. Each day brings new lessons in agriculture, whether it's discovering innovative practices to enhance the land and the lives of our animals, or learning time-honored techniques that I previously knew nothing about.
As farmers, we constantly navigate a myriad of challenges while celebrating small victories, like the rare days when everything runs smoothly. Through my monthly blog posts, I aim to illuminate an industry that is crucial to our daily lives, yet often misunderstood. From how our food is grown, raised, produced, and marketed, to the journey it takes before reaching store shelves—this is my perspective and opinion as a wife, mother, farmer, and active community member.
Grant winner
2025 was the mark of our first grant. Learn what we are spending the money on and why we were trusted by the Pine Cone Foundation
Grant writing comes hand and hand with farming these days. We make enough money to get by, pay the bills and slowly build up a little extra that always gets wiped out with an emergency that wasn’t accounted for in the yearly cash flow spreadsheet. This is where grants come in, to provide funds for those of us who have a solid plan and want to be more resilient by expanding infrastructure. Honestly most grants for farming actually doesn’t help funding. Instead, money is given to better the land: cover crops to combat erosion, hedge rows to benefit our local pollinators, windbreaks to slow down wind and create wildlife habitat. These funding opportunities are one of the reasons why I get worked up when people act as though agriculture is the most environmentally harmful industry. Of course, I understand the impact Big AG has but how many industries are trying as hard as agriculture to make improvements that bring in no extra monetary value to the business. Do you see the fast fashion industry trying to limit their impact? The auto industry is green washing us all into acting as though they care by going electric, but in reality, are just trading one evil (gasoline) for another. (mining of lithium, cobalt, and manganese for batteries) I won’t even go into the fact that livestock are necessary for building healthy soil and help to remove carbon out of the atmosphere when used in rotational grazing practices, because that is not the point of this blog post!
In my second year as a real Farmher I felt confident enough and thought I knew what was best for the farm in the terms of expansion. I dove right in to applying for grants, only to be disappointed year after year with “Thank you for applying but….” emails. To be fair, I didn’t deserve any of those grants. I know now I was not prepared and needed a good half a decade under my belt before anyone should invest thousands of dollars into my operation.
After losing our laying hens to illness at the start of 2024 I knew my main focus needed to be diversifying our operations. We had all our eggs in one basket, and it almost caused us to close up. Currently almost halfway through my 7th year as a Farmher, I was more than ready to write a proper grant, to put my soul into words that would convince anyone that we would do good with the funds we were given.
Good for the land.
Good for the livestock.
Good for the community.
Good for our resilience as a business who is constantly dealing with so many factors out of our hands.
So I sat down in October and the words for the grant flowed easily because all the other grants that I wrote were not just to convince the readers I was worthy and prepared but I was also trying to convince myself. This time I didn’t need that, this time I had all the confidence in myself and my plan. I hit the submit button with so much confidence and was looking forward to the last week in November when I would know if we won or not. Well, that last week came and went without a word and I was so discouraged but wasn’t ready to give up. When the email came through naming us a winner on Dec 6th I yelled in shear shock!
Happy to say the weather is going to be perfect to start building coops so we can raise double the number of broilers in 2025 which should allow us to keep them in stock year-round! That also means more chicken feet, necks, livers, gizzards, and hearts for all the dog treats and stock making goodness! So grateful for this oppurtunity from the Pine Cone Foundation for helping our resiliency at Wise Acre.
Happy New Year!