Cathryn Henning, Wild Willow Farm

“I first came to Wild Willow Farm interested in the goats here. I’ve been wanting to share sustainable lifestyles with other people and really get a good understanding of it myself. So I started with the farm school program that they have here a year ago and stayed on. Now I manage the goats and I’m the community education coordinator here at the farm. Our farm provides educational opportunities to people of all ages, from young kids to adults. We are growing food and raising goats and chickens, which is good food for healthy people.”

“Our animals really work well with the farm, especially the chickens. We have a chicken tractor that can hook up right to our hoops and we’ll go through a crop and we’ll send the chickens in there and they’ll eat all the insects and they’ll poop and then we can let that hoop rest until we’re ready to plant again. So we’re getting direct application of manure and all the pests are being eaten out as well. The goats are fed by us and we collect their manure and that gets added back into our field crops, but they’re really here to provide people the opportunity of working with them because they’re so cute and fun to work with.”

“We’ve acquired the goats little by little. We started with [Kaiya] who’s the oldest goat. She’s nine years old. She came from the La-melpa farm which was up in northern San Diego County and when that farm closed down, she went to City Farmer’s Nursery in the city. That was a bit too small, so we brought her out here and we started the farm about three years ago. It’s just grown since then, and we want to create a herd that we can get milking goats from and teach people how to raise goats and get little babies running around the farm too.”

“I’d tell the next generation of people that sustainable farming is a really great way to connect yourself with others, connect yourself with the earth, and just help you think more clearly. So when you eat well, you can act well, you can think well and do well with intention. So it really starts with feeding your body the good foods that it needs so that you can make the right decisions for your life, so that you can be who you want to be.”