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Excellent Eggs
When it comes to Judy’s Family Farm Organic Brown Eggs, the chickens come first.
FOR JONATHAN MAHRT AND HIS FAMILY, terms like “cage free,” “natural,” “organic,” “grown local” and “humane” aren’t just buzzwords. They’re a promise deeply rooted in nearly a century’s worth of farming experience, and one that’s delivered with every carton of Judy’s Family Farm Organic Brown Eggs. With a product locally cultivated under the Mahrt family label, Petaluma Egg Farm (www.petalumaeggfarm.com), the idea for the Judy’s brand was conceived at home. “It was inspired by my mom, who started to feed us more organic food when my three brothers and I were young, and she thought that my dad should also be producing an organic egg,” explains Mahrt. 32 july/august 2022 marin living.
The family has been raising the Judy’s variety since 1996, and local shoppers likely recognize the design on the cartons; this too includes the Mahrt family touch. “That is a handdrawn design that my dad worked on with a local artist,” says Mahrt. “The boy and the girl are supposed to be caricatures of my parents as children working on the farm.” Both of Mahrt’s parents have extensive history in the business. Petaluma Egg Farm was started in 1983 by Mahrt’s father, Steve, but his family started producing eggs in Petaluma in the 1920s. Mahrt’s mother, Judy, grew up helping at her family’s Calistoga hatchery, a business that dates back to the early 1900s. Mahrt and his brothers were encouraged to continue this tradition, and the family now
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By Caitlin Hamer
