Half Moon Bay's animal sanctuary Sweet Farms offering tours

“So it’s bringing them out and talking to people about what their daily choices are and the impact those choices have and let people make their own decisions about how they want to move forward,” Penny Cistaro, associate executive director for Sweet Farms, said.

The 20-acre farm and nonprofit sanctuary on Tunitas Creek Road is addressing the global impacts of factory farming on animals and the planet. Sweet Farm is a strong advocate for a plant-based diet that reduces the number of animals used in the food industry while also working to help develop new technologies to make it happen.

Cistaro said they foster progress over perfection due to the difficulty it takes to change lifestyles, focusing on empowering people to live a more humane and sustainable lifestyle.

The tour starts with a visit of different crops, followed by going to various farm sections to meet rescued farm animals, called animal ambassadors, that come from around the area and country. Meeting the animals helps educate visitors about factory farming and sustainability issues and how the human food system affects animals. The farm reopened up for private tours in April, while public tours will begin in June. Member days start in July and include an educational component program like beekeeping, seed saving and fermentation. Cistaro worked in animal welfare for more than 40 years before she retired and started working with Sweet Farms. She noted many people who go on the tour are surprised to learn how young animals are killed for animal consumption, with chickens killed at around 16 weeks and four months for a pig, while a dairy farm doesn’t keep bulls and sends them to be killed.

“It’s those types of things that we can teach people and has an impact on them, and they stop and think,” Cistaro said.

The hourlong in-person private tour is for up to six people at $200, with many tours booked by a person trying to get friends and family to understand why they started a plant-based diet. Cistaro said the animals come to them for various reasons, with some neglected and treated poorly. Others were strays, lost their mothers, were no longer able to be taken care of or came from dermatology labs.

“Here, they are happy, and they are doing what they do. This is what they were supposed to be doing, just grazing all day, interacting with others within their herd,” Cistaro said.

The crop section of the tour shows Sweet Farm’s hydro-zoning farming, which puts together different crops based on water needs. For example, strawberries take the most water and get a section closest to water sources, while other sections are seasonal and further away. Sweet Farms is currently growing squash, potatoes, lettuce, kale, leeks and Swiss chard used for its Community Supported Agriculture program, or CSA, which allows the public to buy local food directly from a farmer. More than 60 volunteers help with the gardening, along with providing animal care and cleaning up.

Nate Salpeter, the co-founder of Sweet Farm with his wife, Anna Sweet, started Sweet Farm to end inhumane factory farming practices. Salpeter said changing practices starts with educating people and inspiring action that leads to changing practices and systems. He advocates for supporting innovative technologies, products and processes that transform the way the world feeds itself. Salpeter and his wife provided funding to help start Shiok Meats, a Singapore-located cell-based meat and seafood company. The cellular agriculture company grows meat from cells instead of using animals. Salpeter’s goal is to support technology and people worldwide to help make a plant-based diet adaptable and relevant for everyone.

“If you want to drive systemic change, you need to look at it from a systems point of view,” Salpeter said.

While the pandemic hit and affected funding, Sweet Farm got creative and offered virtual barn tours with the animals of around 10-30 minutes during Zoom meetings so people could hear their stories, called Goat-2-Meeting. The meetings varied from birthday parties, business meetings and conferences, with more than 8,000 virtual tours in the past year, according to Cistaro.

“That enabled us to still have a steady stream of revenue last year, and it has continued through this year. And it has gotten bigger. It goes back and forth between being really busy and busy,” Cistaro said.

The virtual tours enabled Sweet Farms to expand its exercise areas and stalls and help other sanctuaries survive during the pandemic.

“Goat-2-Meeting was a windfall for us. It really helped us build some of the infrastructures that the organization was lacking,” Cistaro said.

The demand last year led to Sweet Farms combining with around eight animal sanctuaries across the country to participate in Zoom meetings to ensure everyone got to meet animals. The demand has dropped off enough that Sweet Farms is doing it on its own.

Sweet Farm is seasonal and is closed from November to March. When they closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic, the farm was gearing up for the CSA program, leading to workers taking extra responsibility of handling harvesting, boxing and preparing the CSA food boxes.

Sweet Farm has done the CSA program for the past four years, and Cistaro encourages families to participate to show kids from where their food comes.

“It’s amazing the sheer delight on the kid’s faces when they get to pick the strawberry and just put it in their mouth,” Cistaro said. “It’s a lot of fun for them.”

curtis@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 102