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They are not typical farmers. Chris, who grew up in Southern California, honored his family tradition by graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and serving three years as a light infantry officer. Afterward, he went to business school, which led to a career in biotechnology. He met Lori, who grew up in the Bay Area and has an MBA, at the company where they both worked.<\/p>\n
Other than tending a small garden near their apartment and taking a few gardening classes, the couple had zero experience with the gritty day-to-day reality of growing crops or raising animals before launching Lola Sonoma Farms. They have since learned by trial and error, by taking advice and counsel from other farmers and by attending classes and networking sessions.<\/p>\n The Melan\u00e7ons grow a range of produce in hoop houses and beds, which they sell at farmer\u2019s markets and to restaurants. Barns and pastures support 40 hens, 17 goats, 32 pigs and a small herd of sheep. Customers can purchase pork through a farm share program. They also keep bees, offer workshops for making goat cheese, and breed livestock guardian dogs to fend off predators, including coyotes, foxes, and raptors.<\/p>\n The couple\u2019s mission is to further regenerative agriculture and put back into the land what they take from it. They\u2019ve received grant funding to plant a hedgerow that supports organic pest control and pollinators. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to solve climate change on 12 acres, but we\u2019re doing our part,\u201d Lori says.<\/p>\n The work is hard, and the days and nights are long. This spring, Lori bedded down in a stall with a goat that had gone into labor. Two of the kids were born without complications, but a third was breach, forcing Lori to reach inside and turn the baby, likely saving its life and the life of the mother. Such life-and-death moments carry profound weight for the couple, who say losing an animal unexpectedly is the hardest part of working the farm. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen enough of those instances, more than I care to admit,\u201d Chris says. \u201cBut when I talk to other farmers, they say they\u2019ve all been there, that it\u2019s part of the profession. You have to focus more on the beginning and not the endings, and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n Chris works the farm full-time, while Lori still has a biotech job. One silver lining of the coronavirus outbreak is that she has been able to work remotely from the couple\u2019s home. Most days, she rises before dawn, pours herself coffee and logs on to a computer for meetings with her colleagues on the East Coast. In the early afternoon, she changes into her grubbies and heads outside for farm chores.<\/p>\n On warm summer evenings, the couple enjoys home-cooked meals on their outdoor patio in the glow of string lights. Farm volunteers, many of them WWOOFers (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), are often invited to share the experience. \u201cYou get to meet so many people from around the world, and there\u2019s no better way to share a relationship than over food – especially food you\u2019ve grown,\u201d Lori says.<\/p>\n Having traveled widely, Chris says they can\u2019t imagine a place more suited to fostering their dreams than the place they call home. \u201cI can say pretty confidently I don\u2019t think there is another place on the planet that values the small farmer more than Sonoma County.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chris and Lori Melan\u00e7on were burning out on the hustle of city life when they started having discussions about buying land and becoming farmers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":77672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2620,749],"tags":[189,3651,24304],"layout":[5591],"class_list":["post-75746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-whats-new-sonoma-county","tag-sonoma-county","tag-sonoma-farm","tag-sonoma-farmer","issue-july-august-2020"],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/www.sonomamag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/445_Lola_Farms_SonomaMag_052320-scaled.jpg\")
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