ON THE FARM

ON THE FARM Humane Harvest

Lisa Knutson’s Pasture Chick Ranch is all about compassion

By Lisa Crawford Watson Photography by Rob Fisher

The fog is lifting from the depths of the Gabilans, revealing the beauty of the burnished landscape beneath the dark and brooding mountains, but not yet lighting the sky. Within the hour, the sun will burn hot and bright, relentless across the open fields.

A two-lane highway bisects the endless rows of promise or regret, depending on the pasture. Vans line up along dirt roads within verdant fields, waiting like tethered horses for workers to straighten their bowed backs after another day of harvesting someone else’s yield. Earth, unplanted, extends across acres, glistening like ground coffee in the sun.

Dust billows from a backhoe as it grooms the fallow land behind miles of wire fencing anchored to weatherworn posts. An orchard of leafy trees marches up a hillside punctuated by cattle in silhouette. Now and then a palm tree stands naked and alone, providing the shelter of shade to a farmhouse.

Ground Squirrels scurry across the pavement on a dare and disappear into the straw at the side of the road. Turkey vultures inspect an animal beyond caring. A horse, nibbling at a carpet of hay, looks up. San Benito County is coming to life.

Lisa Knutson bursts out of her Hollister farmhouse with arms lifted, inviting a hug. At her hip is Cooper, a white dog with kind eyes and a strong head, one of 10 guardians that keep her farm alive. In the bed of her white Ford pickup, three border collies stand like sentinels, awaiting command. And bouncing among them is Temperance, a three-year-old mini poodle who is not much bigger than an adolescent hen but thinks she’s one of the collies.

“I’d offer some Camembert cheese from the French Alpines I milked this morning,” says Knutson, gesturing to an assembly of goats gathered at the fence, “but it’s not ready. It needs to age for six or seven weeks. It’s just something I make for family and friends.”

Although she has run her ranch for just three years, Knutson, born in San Juan Bautista and raised in Hollister, has been preparing for this opportunity all her life. Pasture Chick Ranch, a nod to herself and the chickens she raises out on pasture, is the realization of a dream that didn’t actually become clear until she was out in the fields, feeding her chickens, tending her goats and helping her collies herd sheep.

“My life as a child was this,” she says. “My dad was a farmer at heart, and highway patrolmen didn’t make much money, so he raised cows, butchered turkeys and cultivated a huge garden. Before this I owned a day spa in Hollister, but I got really sick, doing something I knew I wasn’t supposed to do. I did a good job—the spa was voted best in the community, and it made a lot of money—but it was like putting on a costume and being convincing on stage. I, too, am a farmer at heart.”

So Knutson leased nearly 300 acres of rich, untended land across the street from her home and looked into buying chickens. Neighbors Vince and Amy Zuniga suggested she start with heritage birds— those that have been with us forever, she says, where chickens began. But she found these heirlooms didn’t yield enough meat or eggs to be economical. So she focused her funds and expectations on freedom rangers: slow-growing birds bred to benefit from life on the open fields, with fresh air, clear light and room to wander.

“I grow my chickens on pasture,” says Knutson, “and they’re organic. This means their feed is from a certified organic mill. They’re on the ground, which has not encountered pesticides in at least three years. They have to have a minimum of space to move; mine are like kids with a whole playground. And they are sheltered by a little house we move as the grass shifts. The lowlands are green all year long, perfect for my chickens.”

Knutson scratches her poodle behind the ears, promises she’ll be back and sets her on the front seat of her Ford before lifting a bucket of chicken feed from the back. She speaks to her collies in short bursts of command, mostly monosyllabic, warmed by tone. She disengages the electric fence, clears it with a single step and greets the chickens collecting at her feet as she pours feed into a 1930s metal chicken feeder she found at Fat Willy’s Antiques in San Juan Bautista.

She speaks to the chickens like she might a class of kindergarteners: warm, kind and direct but with an undertone that says she knows they’re not hers. There is a difference between pets and product, but only Knutson is aware of it on the pasture.

Come the weekend, she will harvest 100 chickens for sale. Her husband of 25 years, engineer Courtney Knutson, will help her, but the killing is something she does herself.

“I start it and I end it,” she says. “These are happy chickens; they have no clue. There is nothing humane in my mind about animals dying, but I make it as easy as it gets for a chicken.” She picks up a hen and croons; it settles in her arms.

“I do it myself because I don’t want them to be more frightened or scared than they have to be. I put them on my lap and distract them, kind of like when getting a shot from the doctor. I tell them it’s not going to get any worse than this, then I open up an artery. They get tired, and it’s over.

“I love these birds; they are sweet and kind. But they are our food. Their body content is wonderful. They are perfect for their lot in life; they take it in stride.”

Knutson also has a couple hundred Americanas, Cuckoo Marans, Delawares, Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds, which yield a kaleidoscope of colored eggs she gathers in a wide wire basket.

“When you have to pay $7 for Lisa Knutson on her Pasture Chick Ranch; organic eggs,” she asks, “don’t you on p. 20, her heritage turkeys. think when you open the box you should say, ‘Ah, the Easter Bunny was here? ’” This pasture chick also brought in 100 Cashmere goats and just as many Merino lambs for fiber or mild meats. She picks up a kid just to feel the softness. She studies a pair of adult sheep in the distance, whose wool, she says, looks like a 1930s camel’s hair coat. Knutson climbs back into her truck, moves Temperance to the console and begins to amble down the rutty path. “You know,” she says, “if you hurry an animal, you’ll cause chaos. The slower you go, the faster you’ll get there.” She admires a pair of mallards gliding across a pond and the empty bench she sometimes fills, if only for a moment. “You just don’t know how tired you are until you stop. But it’s a rich life I have, which is impor“When you have to pay $7 for tant to remember, so I don’t lose sight of it when I’m tired.”organic eggs, don’t you think Knutson returns to the 1916 when you open the box you farmhouse she has shared with her husband for the last 15 years and should say, ‘Ah, the Easter looks forward to sharing with many others. “This house,” she said, “has Bunny was here? ’” 14-foot ceilings and a 20-foot porch that wraps all the way around it. Or, at least it does in my mind. I used to think it needed all that before I could invite people in to experience all this. “People need to know that not all commercial farming is ugly; my community is a wonderful bunch of people committed to producing local, sustainable and organic food and products. Others need to know they can come out here and get a glimpse of it, taste it, touch it, understand what sustainable organic farming is all about. Porch or no porch, I’m just going to call people up and start cooking.”

Pasture Chick Ranch sells directly to the consumer through Phil and Katherine Foster’s Pinnacle Organics, San Juan Bautista; Live Earth Farm CSA, Watsonville; and Greenhearts Family Farm CSA, San Francisco and Half Moon Bay. Meats may be ordered at Jesse Cool’s Flea St. Café, Menlo Park, and prepared by Chef Carlos Canaba. RECIPE: Please go to www.ediblemonterybay.com for Pasture Chick’s French Chicken in a Pot.