Green String Farm, a pioneer of sustainable practices, closing in Petaluma after nearly 20 years

Legendary Sonoma County farmer Bob Cannard was making plans in October for a major life change. He was relocating to the Chico area after decades of managing notable farms across the region and nearly 20 years of running the innovative Green String Farm in Petaluma.

He was training a longtime employee, Pedro Infante, to take over daily operations at Green String, and Cannard would contribute as a consultant to the property he co-founded in 2003 with Sonoma winery owner Fred Cline.

At age 69, Cannard was ready to move on to his own venture after working for other people all his life, he said in October.

Yet, an announcement Wednesday on Green String’s Facebook page said the 140-acre organic farm would shut down Christmas Eve. A close-out sale was in the works for the on-site farmstand market, which has long attracted shoppers for its premium produce, grass-fed beef, pasture-raised pork, free-range eggs, nuts, preserves, honey and other artisanal foods.

Even the farm’s 31 ducks — friendly fowls that are not to be considered food, according to adoption details — will be needing new homes, including the six Khaki Campbells, 11 Pekins and 14 Indian Runners that have supplied eggs and entertainment for customers the past several years.

Green String’s surprise closure reflects an unfortunate reality for many agricultural businesses faced with increasing costs, a lack of workers and climate change.

“I’ve been in ag for a long, long time and it’s just been eroding,” Cline said. “Labor has been one of the biggest issues and rising costs. It’s a sad time, for sure.”

Prolonged drought has played a significant role, too, with some of the rows of produce in Green String’s usually bountiful fields off Old Adobe and Frates roads turning scraggly over the last year.

“In 2021, widespread water shortages required producers to adapt to diminishing water supplies by reducing operations, turning to alternative water sources, and changing cultural practices,” Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner/Sealer of Weights & Measures Andrew F. Smith wrote in the county’s 2021 crop report.

“We want to recognize the hardships our farmers, ranchers and producers face while maintaining a diverse agricultural industry and their continued work through the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Indeed, Green String’s operating budget was challenged for more than a year as Cannard had to truck in water from other Sonoma County farms. Then, in the summer, Mother Nature played tricks with severe cold spells followed by high heat. That meant lettuces bolted, crops failed and soils suffered.

The pandemic-driven labor shortage also impacted the farm.

“People eat and plants grow every day,” Cannard said. “The main thing is we still can’t get anyone to work. So, the store is only open four days a week, and I’d like to be open six. It’s not the money — we pay well, we’re part of a big company — it’s just nobody wants to work.”

Cline and his successful Cline Cellars Winery funded the farm, but large amount of visitors to the farm diminished during the pandemic.

“I just can’t afford (to subsidize) anymore,” Cline said. “Some of my vineyards are devastated. We have a couple of small wells, and got some recycled winter wastewater from the city of Petaluma, but everybody needs it. The suffering has been unbelievable.”

For Cannard, the closure marks the end of a project he poured his heart and soul — and money — into.

Cannard said he hadn’t taken a salary at Green String for many years. Instead, he chose to support the experimental farming practices he has championed nearly all his life.

“It doesn’t matter, since I drive a company truck, filled with company gas, and I eat whatever I want from the store,” he said while touring the farm with a reporter in the fall. “It's worth it to me, because I enjoy so much being out in the earth every day.”

As one of Northern California’s best-known organic farmers, Cannard is legendary for being one of the first to work with nature, rather than against it. He has never used commercial fertilizers and instead has relied on nitrogen in the air, compost and cover crops. He famously stuck to an admittedly unprofitable method of harvesting 50% of his crops for human consumption and leaving 50% to till back into the soil, since it is “the right way” to ensure for nutrient-dense dirt populated by beneficial bugs.

Like-minded sustainable home gardeners have long snatched up his handcrafted “rock dust,” an earth friendly soil supplement that includes crushed volcanic rock and oyster shell minerals, sold at the Green String farmstand.

Cannard employs the science-meets-Zen approach that for decades attracted celebrated Bay Area restaurant clients, such as Chez Panisse, Postrio, Odwalla and Olivet, that sought the finest ingredients for their transcendent dishes.

The journey has been a learning process for Cannard and Cline, who shared a vision that led them to founding the former nonprofit Green String Institute, which operated for more than a dozen years. The agricultural internship housed students on the Green String site, sharing the organic philosophy and encouraging others to respect the earth. Some students would stay on for a graduate program, too, and some went on to become successful farmers and gardeners.

Ultimately, though, the venture got buried by bureaucracy — under California law, Green String had to pay its interns and provide insurance — and the institute went broke.

Passionate comments poured in on Facebook as the news spread of Green String’s anticipated closure.

“Such sad news,” Paula Johnston wrote. “I was an intern on the farm in 2011, the best three months of my life. Bob was, and still is, such an inspiration. I run a farm now back in Ireland, and apply all that I learned from him and my amazing time there.

“You will be missed. So sad to hear you are closing.”

Sarah Burkhart thanked the farm for nourishing the community.

“We have been loyal customers for years. This is such a huge loss to Petaluma. I really hope this isn’t forever. I’ll miss those incredible views, hearing the redwing blackbirds, and my kids will miss visiting the chickens, ducks and the playhouse,” she wrote.

For the time being, Cline said he hopes to hold some pop-up events on the Green String property, which he owns, and is working on opening a Green String farmstand at his winery on Arnold Drive in Sonoma, to sell produce that remains planted on the farm.

“We’ll try to persevere,” Cline said. “Our goal has always been to feed people, and feed them good food.”

Meanwhile, Cannard currently is transitioning to the 25-acre farm he bought in Tehama County, just north of Chico. There, he said, he can get agricultural land for less than $1,000 an acre. In the Sonoma area, it’s $10,000 an acre, he said.

For the farm’s other employees, the closing will affect their lifestyles as much as their incomes. Pedro Infante’s father, Rigoberto Infante, worked with Cannard for nearly 20 years until he saved enough money to recently move back to Mexico and start his own farm.

Farmstand store manager Linda Fahy has been with the shop for five years.

“I felt very fulfilled to be Bob’s ‘farm wife,’” she said. “In the next little bit I am going to take some time to breathe, homestead a bit and spend time in the kitchen.”