We were so lucky to have Joy Prouty spend a day on the ranch documenting daily life on the farm. She was up with the sun to capture us working the sheep, feeding all the animals, making breakfast together, herding the cows across the road to new pastures, packing boxes, exploring the mountain and coming home together at the end of the day. See all her photos on her beautiful blog post HERE.
The talented and delightful Joy Prouty spent a day on the farm documenting life for us in a Harvest Session and video. It perfectly paints a picture of a typical spring day and we are so thankful to have this keepsake for our family to remember these busy but full days!
By Gabrielle.
If you don’t follow Mary Heffernan on Instagram, you are missing out! Her life, from the time she wakes up until the time she calls it a day, is jam-packed with ranch life. That means fresh eggs and dirty kids and four-wheeler excursions and happy births and sad little animal deaths, and a multitude of ranch happenings that are totally and completely different from neighborhood happenings! (So completely different, even, than her previous life we peeked in on here.)
Oh. And there is a Dead Pile. Gulp. Come see what I mean when I tell you I’m kind of obsessed with this family’s days! Welcome, Mary!
I wake up this morning to the roosters crowing at 6:00 am ready to start the day and check on the animals before I rouse the girls for school. I linger in my cozy bed as many extra minutes as I can, but it’s definitely time to get up! My husband Brian is at least an hour ahead of me getting out the door to feed and check the cows.
It’s calving season now so we have to be particularly vigilant, and most mornings we discover a few new calves have joined our Black Angus herd. We always get excited about new babies on the ranch and like to spend a little extra time with them in their first few days to make sure they have the best start to life possible.
Brian lets our herd of heritage sheep out of their night pen near the house. We do our best to keep them safe from the local predators that roam our ranch including bears, mountain lions, and coyotes, and he starts our daily list of chores. It is always a long list! I grab my jacket on the way out the door for the first time since fall is fast approaching and it’s chilly today. It reminds me we’re behind on stock-piling wood for winter to heat our little cabin. Remind me to add that to the list.
I make the rounds feeding the chickens and turkeys and collecting some eggs. Most won’t lay until a little later in the day, but we like nice clean eggs to sell to our customers so I collect them often. My husband has fed the large animals and is loading up the tractor to fix something or other, so I head back to the house by 7:00 am to start waking up the girls.
We have four daughters, all named Mary, which is why our farm is Five Marys Farm. Our girls were all named after grandmothers and aunts on both sides carrying on a long standing family tradition of strong women named Mary. I am Mary Regan after my maternal grandmother. Our girls are MaryFrances, who is eight and goes by Francie; MaryMarjorie or Maisie is six; MaryJane or Janie/JJ is four; and MaryTeresa is Tessa, two years old, and more affectionately known as Tiny.
I try to wake the oldest two quietly, but the little girls wake up as well since all four of them not only share a room, they also share a bed!
We live in a small cabin on our ranch that is all of 780 square feet, and their room only really fits one double bed. I turned their closet into a built-in triple bunk so they each have their own little space for books and treasures, but the closet bunks are only four by two feet, so it’s a little tight for sleeping! They have gotten used to sleeping together piled in the same bed, anyway.
We moved up here full time a year and a half ago to start a very different life than our old one! My husband was a lawyer and we owned several small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, including family-friendly, local-fare restaurants. We had been working with small farms to supply our restaurants, and then decided to raise our own meats to produce the quality we really wanted.
After a lot of long weekend trips up here — a six hour drive both ways — to get the ranch started, we quickly realized this was the lifestyle and community in which we wanted to raise our family. So we sold our businesses to move up here and be ranchers.
We hoped to continue to provide really good meats, raised the way we wanted them to for our customers, and we are actually doing that now through direct shipments to our customers’ doorsteps instead of on a plate at a restaurant! It allows us to provide for a much larger audience and really makes it all worth it when we get reviews from our customers saying it’s the best steak/burger/lamb/bacon they’ve EVER had! Brian and I are both from California agricultural families with deep farming roots, so in more ways than one it felt like we were going home.
The big girls get up and dressed, but the clock is ticking closer to 7:45 am so I run a brush through their hair and herd the big girls out the door with their backpacks to walk a quarter of a mile down to the shop to meet their Dad who drives them to school most days. We are fortunate, living in the country, that our little school is only five miles down the road.
Then the little girls and I clean up from breakfast and get the food scrap bucket together for the chickens. Janie is old enough for preschool but she prefers ranch school, and we are happy to have her home one more year. So is Tiny! We pile into my four-wheeler and make the rounds to all of our Cluck Trucks, which are old non-functioning trucks or trailers we’ve turned into mobile chicken coops. We have 450 chickens we raise for eggs that we sell at our little honor system roadside stand in front of our barn or ship to our customers.
One of the trucks had part of the roof blow off in the wind last night so I have to stop and fix it; I always carry my tools in the back of my four-wheeler since things always need to be fixed around here. The girls run around catching their favorite chickens and collecting more eggs while I’m working on the roof. They have learned they need to be useful on the ranch. While I climb on the roof, Janie climbs half-way up the truck so she can hand the drill up to me. I probably should have gotten a ladder but patience is not my strong suit, and like many things on the ranch, you just gotta make it happen.Where there is a will, there is a way is one of our favorite family mottos, and always has been.
We fix up the coop and then drive through the pastures to find my husband who is checking cows again. These momma cows have had babies before so they are seasoned mothers and we hope for things to go smoothly at birth – as opposed to our heifers or first time moms who need to be checked carefully and more often, sometimes hourly in the middle of the night during their calving season. We need to be there to help if they are having trouble birthing, we know we need to be ready to pull a calf quickly to save the mom or baby or both.
So far, all the calves are doing well and nursing on their own already, so they should be off to a good start. We also keep a supply of colostrum in the freezer we get from a local dairy in case a mother dies in childbirth or has twins and rejects one so we can step in and bottle-feed to keep the baby alive. We tag their ears so we know which momma each belongs to, and make note that it is a bull calf or a heifer. We will keep some of the females to add to our breeding herd, but the males are all likely raised for our meat program to be finished on our ranch pastures.
Then, we all head to our corrals to bring in the rams, our male sheep who are in their own pasture right now until breeding season starts in November. We have 190 ewes (mother sheep) and 240 lambs right now. They travel in a pack and move from pasture to pasture in our rotational grazing pattern. Or at least that’s the hope! But the sheep love to bust through fence for greener pastures and are usually in the wrong place, which has earned them the name “Mama’s Damn Sheep” since my husband was always teasing me “Your damn sheep are out again!” The little girls started casually asking “Are those mama’s-damn-sheep?” and it stuck!
The rams look healthy and happy so we turn them back out to their pasture and then bring in a cow who has a piece of wire stuck in her foot and has been limping. We get her in our chute which helps restrain this 1600 pound animal so we can help her get that wire out pretty easily today, thank goodness!
Ranch life can be intense, and we are learning as we go. Every day there are new animal medical issues — some normal and some emergencies — but we do not have a traveling large animal vet in this county so we have to figure out these things on our own or call on neighbors for help. We’ve learned a lot from YouTube! And we each have a vet friend in other regions that we can text or call for advice on the fly, which is very helpful and saved the day on more than one occasion.
We go in for lunch and make tacos with our leftover pulled pork from last night’s dinner. Yum! I pick some tomatoes and jalapeño peppers from the garden to add a little spice. The girls wash up their dirty hands — never mind the rest of their bodies are still covered in dirt — and play baby dolls in their play corner of our cabin for awhile. My husband and I talk about our plans for our next round of shipments over the lunch table and freshly brewed sun tea.
I go to pick the girls up from school at 2:00 pm and we drop some of our eggs and honey off at the local cafe in town that sells them for us. We visit with some friends in town as we drop them off, and then head home for the afternoon. The girls have a few chores to do when they get home to help out; they feed the working dogs and clean their kennels, and then we all load up to get to the real work.
We stop at the shop to say hi to our only ranch helper, John, who is working on a welding project putting a hog carrier together so we have an easier way to weigh our Gloucester Old Spot heritage pigs. They get to be about 300 pounds before they are ready for slaughter, and not so easy to move when they don’t want to go! So this steel pen will allow us to put them in safely and move the whole operation to the weigh scales in the corrals.
We have 22 pigs we are raising for meat right now with four more litters on the way from our four momma breeder pigs. Pigs can have two and a half litters in a year with seven to 12 piglets in each litter! We like to go easy on them with longer rest periods between breeding, but it’s still a lot of piglets running around here.
I have had to learn to castrate them myself. At first it was really intense, but I’ve gotten better every time and can do it pretty quickly now. We mix some feed for the pigs from our careful ration of GMO-free all natural feed, and haul it out to the happy pigs who come lumbering out of their mud wallow across the pasture at the sound of grain filling the their feeder.
The afternoon quickly turns into evening and we still have plenty to do! We all jump on the feed truck for the second feeding of the day and help Dad hand-load 18 bales, 120 pounds each, to feed our spring herd who are up on the hillside. The cows hear us coming when the diesel engine starts up towards the hill, and they coming running down to wait at the fence line. The girls get to ride on the flatbed and cut the bales open throwing the flakes to the cows. They love this job, especially Tiny.
The wind is picking up tonight and hay is flying everywhere as we throw flakes of hay but we’ve got the local country music station playing in the truck and all six of us our out there working together, our animals all look well-fed, happy, and healthy today, and that makes us pretty happy, too.
Then the big girls get on four-wheelers to help herd the sheep in for the night to keep them safe from predators. And tonight there is excitement in the air since we’ve been seeing a bear on our game cameras up the mountain on the Dead Pile. And, yes, it is exactly what it sounds like!
It’s a sad fact but a real-life-on-a-ranch fact is that we have animals that die. We try our absolute best to give the best care possible to any animal that is sick, but sometimes it’s unavoidable that one dies. When they do, we haul them up the mountain to let nature take its course. We have motion sensor cameras on the Dead Pile to see what kind of wildlife we have up there on the ranch. And there has been a big black bear the last few nights – he even tried to eat the game camera off the tree and we got a good shot of the inside of his mouth!
Recently Francie and Maisie found a four and half foot rattlesnake by the Dead Pile. The kids are obsessed with all the wildlife at the ranch! It’s like Wild Kratts but in real life!
We have a rule around here, and that is that we feed and take care of our animals before ourselves. So we eat dinner usually late, sometimes VERY late! We use the slow cooker often so dinner will wait for us, but we don’t mind sitting on the porch and BBQ’ing up some hard-earned steaks, either. We cook our own meat and eat our own vegetables almost every night; it’s a treat and a fruit of our labor that feels well deserved, too.
We started ranching this way because we believe so strongly in feeding our children really good quality meat raised the right way. You can’t cut corners. Our animals live their whole lives on our green pastures in the California mountain air and sunshine. While we exceed many animal certification standards, we do not really believe in labels and third party certifications. Our customers know and trust that we are providing the best husbandry and quality possible. All-natural is the name of the game, and we go the extra mile to dry-age our beef for 28 days which is pretty unheard of — but, boy, can you taste the difference in flavor and texture!
And we are really excited to be shipping this meat out to any family in the US right now! We ship all of our product by the cut and also offer monthly boxes of 10-25 pounds of a variety of cuts to keep their freezers stocked with the best pastured beef, pork, and lamb they can buy.
It’s a bit like a CSA model but customers don’t have to go anywhere — it comes right to their doorstep. We know how busy family life is and we hope to make it a little easier and more accessible to feed their families quality meats you can’t buy in the grocery store. Thanks to social media, a lot of our customers say they really enjoy buying our meat since they follow along on our ranch adventures and see all the animals first-hand on Instagram! Our ordering site has lots of options for gifts to send family at friends for the holidays, too!
We try to end our day with time together, even if it’s just riding around for one last check on our animals. This is about the time of day I like to make my M5 Sidecar ! It is a favorite around here, especially after a long day’s work. It’s actually evolved and it’s not really even a traditional Sidecar anymore, but we take creative license!
The recipe is equal parts fresh squeezed lemon juice, preferably from Meyer lemons, bourbon, and half as much Cointreau. Shake over nugget ice, and pour in a cold mason jar. On a hot summer day I might add a little sparkling water to lighten it up, and on those cold winter nights I trade the ice for hot water and add honey. It’s a pretty standard request around here now!
I go to bed every night pretty exhausted, but the kind of tired that feels good in your bones. We’ve always worked hard, but have never worked harder than this. We are together seven days a week from sun up to sun down, but working hard and working as a family has never felt so good.
I feel humbled to be taking care of all of these animals, side-by-side with my husband and children. I worry a little before I fall asleep whether the animals are all okay out there in the pastures for the night while we sleep. It’s a job that you can really never rest from or stop worrying about…much like parenting, I guess!
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Yes, it sounds A LOT like parenting! Minus the bears, mountain lions, and coyotes! I love the idea that you’re all working together on your family’s dream; it makes me smile, especially when I catch scenes from your Instagram stream showing all your Marys, muddy but definitely merry and thrilled to be working hard by their parents’ side! Well done, Mary.
I also love the idea that the Heffernans up and sold their successful businesses to chase after their dream, don’t you? If you could change your path tomorrow, what would your new life look like? Think about it…it might just be the first step toward a new life leap!
To get to Five Mary’s Farm, you drive through damp Northern California forests and wind alongside deep river ravines, until you clear the mountain pass and arrive in the expansive prairie river valley of Fort Jones, California. Mary and Brian Heffernan’s Sharps Gulch Ranch spans the country road, river pastureland and barn on one side and the family’s modest home, historic bunkhouse, high pastureland and mountaintop on the other. This couple and their four daughters named Mary - MaryFrances (Francie), MaryMarjorie (Maisie), Mary Jane (JJ) and MaryTeresa (Tessa or Tiny for short), have never been a family to shy away from surmounting challenges and hard work.
Before leaving city life, they lived in the Silicon Valley center of Menlo Park. Brian worked as an attorney for many years but left practicing law to work alongside his wife. Together, Mary and Brian opened eleven family-focused businesses in Menlo Park; a learning center, a maker’s space, a plant/floral shop and a play space for toddlers, just to name a few. Each business they created thrived as they listened closely to what people in their community wanted and needed. In 2010, they opened a farm-to-table restaurant called Bumble.
The seed was planted to start a livestock operation while trying to source ethically raised meat for Bumble. They struggled to find suppliers that delivered on their promise of animals that lived good lives before ending up on someone’s plate. Mary and Brian had always dreamed of eventually leaving city life behind and raising happy, dirty and independent free-range kids. They decided to explore a new venture, building a livestock ranch somewhere in California so they could supply their own meat products to their restaurant and many others in the Bay Area that were also looking for ethically raised meat.
In 2013, their search came to an end when they toured the Sharps Gulch Ranch. Up in the river prairie land of Siskiyou County, it sat a short drive away from the Oregon border and close to California’s main thoroughfare of I-5. By California standards, a quick 6-hour drive back to Menlo Park, but without the insane sticker price of land closer to the Bay Area. The property had two houses, one a historic Victorian in desperate need of repair and one a cozy two-bedroom cabin that the previous owners had made their primary residence.
Originally, they planned to hire ranchers to run their operation for them and they would drive up on weekends with their girls so the family could get much desired time running free in the great outdoors. That plan only lasted a few months, as they instantly noticed a positive change in their children and themselves. They loved repairing fences, learning about animal husbandry and the daily rhythms of feeding, watering and caring for their animals. They also loved how the ranch brought their family together, working each day alongside their girls and one another. They were ready to take a huge leap of faith, they sold their businesses and put their house on the market.
They planned to renovate the Victorian house to allow everyone their own space when they moved, but the insane start-up costs to get their livestock operation off the ground, put that project at the end of their list. They opted to move full-time into the tiny cabin, Mary and Brian in one room and their four girls in the other. After only three years running Five Marys Farm, it is amazing what this family has accomplished. T
hey raise cattle, sheep, pigs, turkeys and chickens. They run a mail-order meat business, sell their ethically raised products and eggs locally in their new community and also make the 6-hour trek every month and set up farm stands at the homes of friends and family - inviting customers and the public to come learn more about what they do, try their products, buy their meat and eggs and enjoy a ranch style beverage or two. They call it a "farmers market meets a cocktail party."
There are no holidays or weekends, but getting to work together as a family, for Mary and Brian, feels like hard but incredibly rewarding work. At the end of a long day, Mary and Brian love to mix a cocktail, put a Five Marys roast in the oven, and sit on their front porch to watch their daughters run free in the yard. This new life required a lot of sacrifice, hard work and risk, but for them, the payoff is seeing their girls grow into fearless, independent and hardworking free-range women.
We have always had a desire to raise our kids in wide open spaces in a more rural community, Brian grew up on a farm and hoped we’d get back to the land someday. In our "old lives" we were working in the heart of Silicon Valley as a lawyer and business owners. We bought this ranch to raise our own meat for our restaurants, but after coming up here every weekend (a 6 hour drive each way) for a couple of months and finding a gem of a community here we, quickly decided this was where we wanted to raise our children. We sold our businesses and moved up the day our oldest daughter finished Kindergarten and have been "all-in" ever since.
The idea of jumping in with both feet, selling our businesses and our house and really being full time ranchers was scary - but it was just the idea of the unknown that was hard to imagine before it actually happened. Once we were living here full time it was clear we’d made the right choice and that we were just where we were supposed to be. Challenges arise everyday when things break, animals get sick or we have new obstacles to figure out how to navigate our way through - and I’m sure it will continue to be a steep learning curve for a long time to come, ranching is not easy!
The wonderful, kind, very smart people around us who have been so willing to lend their time and expertise to help us at every corner. I am also surprised that the things I worried about (cold winters, living in a much smaller house, only having a wood stove for heat) are some of the things I love most about living here!
They couldn’t be happier on the ranch and officially declare themselves “country kids” which I’d say is true if you saw them on an average day carting around a baby lamb in a doll carrier, dissecting snakes, shooting ground squirrels and always, always covered in mud and running around with dirty bare feet. I am proud of how strong and independent they've become since we moved here. My three year old was still sleeping in the house one day when we were all working, my husband went to check on her and found her dressed (albeit in a bumble bee costume and moccasins), with her helmet strapped on and riding her scoot bike the 1/4 mile down the driveway to the shop by herself. He asked her how she was doing and she said "I woke up and no one was there so I got dressed and went to find people!" obviously :)
In the city I could get anything done at the drop of a hat with lots of people you could hire or find to help - in the country I’ve had to adjust my expectations that everything moves a little more slowly BUT living on a ranch with tractors, welders, scrap wood piles and stuff to repurpose also means you can build anything you can imagine yourself, which is even more satisfying than having to hire someone to do it! I've learned to weld (not very well) and build things out of repurposed materials and make do with what you've got on hand to make it work.
I don’t think it would be possible for either my husband or I to ever go back to an urban or even suburban existence! We always hoped to retire rurally and feel lucky we got to make the change earlier in life - it’s lots of hard work but we love the lifestyle. Grabbing a couple of cold beers at 5:30 and feeding the cows and finishing chores as the sunsets, eating dinner at 10pm and having our children all piled in like puppies sleeping in the same bed in our tiny little house - I wouldn't change any of that for the world!
I am so appreciative that I get to live this life everyday with my husband by my side and our four girls working right along with us. I love that we get so much time together as a family. We don't have activities or sports or birthday parties - our girls are a necessary part of making this ranch work and their activities revolve around things we are doing on the ranch so our work IS our life, but I am so appreciative for all the time we spend working together raising our animals and running this ranch.
Just do it :) It’s a decision you won’t regret! Make sure you have some savings because the start up phase is no joke, but with thoughtful planning it will hopefully set you up for success. Try staying on a farm for a short time to make sure you are up for it, but there is really nothing like setting up a life on your own land.
I find a lot of inspiration from other folks that have done the same thing we have done and have made “friends” on social media who share their trials and tribulations together. Instagram has been an unexpected way to feel connected and learn from other people! We also use YouTube for “lessons” on all kinds of ranch chores like castrating pigs and docking tails. Not exactly professional or published material but it’s the real deal!
The process of breeding, birthing, raising, feeding and caring for animals their whole lives until their “one bad day” and then having our family and our customers so thoroughly enjoy our meats is very rewarding and satisfying. Hearing glowing reviews on our 28-day dry aged beef or our heritage lamb makes and hearing people say they appreciate their meat more when they feel like they really know where it comes from makes it all worth it!
I'm way stronger :) My girls favorite motto is "where there is a will, there is a way" and we all have to push hard to make it all happen!
Brian wakes up before dawn to catch up on some of the paper/computer work then loads up the feed truck at first light. We have a ranch hand now who helps out so they make the rounds feeding animals and checking waters int he morning while I get the big girls up for school. He comes back to take them to school at 7:45am (just 5 miles down the road, we are lucky we have great public schools so close by!) and I make my rounds feeding the bottle babies, collecting and washing eggs, checking on the sick pens if we have any animals needing a little more attention. Then we meet up to figure out what the day might bring and what needs to be addressed first. If we had a new animal born overnight we tag them and record, if we have animals that got out or broke through fence we have some fence fixing to do (always!) or planning for the change in seasons, moving animals, assisting in births, doctoring the sick, moving water or fixing anything that is broken. Every day brings something new! I usually try to find a little time to work on my laptop updating our inventory or or website, marketing our meats, answering customer inquiries and planning for our Ship Days which happen every Tuesday. We ship our beef, pork and lamb directly from our ranch to customers doorsteps all over the US so there is lots of prep for ship day and the FedEx man. We also trek down to the Bay Area, Southern Ca or Portland about every other month for a "Farm Stand" where we set up a little cocktail party type event for people to try our meats and shop - so there is lots of preparing for those trips too! We take our animals to the butcher ourselves every round of "harvesting" so some days we are loading up animals and taking them to the USDA slaughterhouse or picking up the cuts of meat to bring back to our walk in freezer on the ranch to sell. We pick up the big girls at school at 2:15 and they have some chores to do when they get home too - then before we know it, it's time to feed again! We start 2 hours before dark and eat dinner after that - even if that means we eat at 9/10pm our rule is we feed the animals before we feed ourselves. We finish the day with our feet up on the front porch looking out on the animals and the ranch, ready to do it all over the next day.
Oh wow, so many things! Skinning sheep, castrating animals, performing a “rumen transplant” on a cow but siphoning (yes with your mouth) the rumen fluid from a healthy cow to transplant it in the second stomach of a sick cow, having to put animals down, helping deliver babies with my arms shoulder deep inside, giving IV’s and life saving CPR to premature infants, having baby animals sleeping by the fire in my living room or in my bathtub, killing rattlesnakes (ok watching my husband kill rattlesnakes) and working so hard physically everyday.
The top of our mountain, we call "The Saddle", at the end of a long week with a bonfire, our girls running around building forts, cold beers and reviewing the week with my husband always inspires us to enjoy our land and keep on going.
People think country life is “simple” compared to city life but in reality it is the exact opposite! It is extremely complicated to figure out how to keep everything running on a farm, especially raising multiple species and farming hay. We have so much respect for farmers and ranchers who have been doing this for generations and the wealth of knowledge they have. Small town living is pretty special - everyone you pass on the road waves and you know all of your neighbors. When there is a wedding in the community - you can't find a babysitter because everyone is going to the wedding! So you bring your camp trailer and put the kids to bed in the field-turned-parking-lot when they get too tired to keep dancing ;)
We always have a few big ideas in the pipeline! Our first priority is to keep taking the best care of our animals as possible and to continue to get our premium meats to our customers, but we have a few fun ideas we are working on around the ranch too.
September 2016
By Jordan Venema
Photos: Joy Prouty
It took only six short months for everything to change. At the beginning of 2013, Mary and Brian Heffernan lived in the Bay Area with their four daughters – Mary, Mary, Mary and Mary (more on that later) – where Brian practiced law for a reputable firm and Mary owned restaurants that focused on upscale, local and organic cuisine. By the year’s end, Brian and the five Marys had moved to Siskiyou County to start cattle ranching under the name Five Marys Farms.
“We call it our old life and our new life,” laughs Mary.
The decision to raise cattle was spur of the moment, and they never exactly planned to relocate. The ranch was really only ever supposed to be a means to another end.
“We were always looking for a good product,” says Mary, referring to their restaurants. “We wanted a ground beef for our burgers that was a barley finish, dry-aged 28 days with a really good flavor profile, and something ethically raised, but we just couldn’t find it. So we just decided to do it ourselves, which was probably a little naïve.”
The Heffernans purchased historic Sharps Gulch Ranch, and every weekend made the nearly seven-hour commute between Siskiyou County and the Bay Area with four kids in tow, until about the eighth week, when they realized they didn’t want to go back. They sold their restaurants, Brian left the firm to his partner, “and we never looked back,” says Mary. From the courtroom and kitchen to 1,800 acres, the Heffernans shifted their focus to raising more than 250 head of cattle, plus their “free-range kids.”
The transition wasn’t easy, but it’s been rewarding. “I didn’t grow up around it at all,” Mary says of the ranching lifestyle. Her husband grew up in Red Bluff and had experience with 4H, and even as a child he “told his dad that he wanted to be a farmer, but his dad talked him out of it.”
With the help of their brother-in-law, a fifth-generation cattle rancher, Brian and Mary learned the ranching ropes. “I somehow earned the castrating job,” Mary says with a chuckle, which she taught herself by watching YouTube videos in Swahili. Other than a single ranch hand, it’s just Brian and the five Marys taking care of the ranch – birthing cattle, giving shots, while the daughters help with laundry and cleaning around the house.
“They’re really blossoming,” says Mary. “They’re so independent and confident. We tend not to set expectations very high for children thinking they can’t do it, but in reality, they can.”
Both the name and story behind Five Marys Farms almost – almost – overshadow what they do, which is no less unique: the shipment of choice cuts of meat from their farm directly to their customers.
It’s almost like a community-supported agriculture program, except instead of filling a custom box with vegetables and fruit, Five Marys will ship and stock boxes with anything from ground beef to choice cuts of steak, lamb or pork – whatever the customer wants.
So for those who want to stock up for a season or order just a pound of ground beef, Five Marys will ship to their front door. For the seven western states, they charge a flat rate of $25, though they do not charge shipping for orders over $199.
Interestingly enough, as restaurateurs, the Heffernans were looking for a farm just like theirs to stock their restaurant’s kitchen, but now the majority of their customers, Mary says, are families looking for quality meat, ethically raised.
Speaking with Mary, one gets the impression that the farm is almost a happy byproduct of the opportunity to raise their daughters on a ranch. And the daughters are certainly earning their keep, as well as a place in the farm’s name. Five Marys Farms certainly has a ring to it, almost that it seemed planned, though Mary laughed away the suggestion.
“My husband and I actually are both from big Catholic families and there’s a lot of Marys. I didn’t really even want to name my daughter after me, but I loved the tradition,” she explains.
Their first daughter was born and named after a grandmother, Mary Frances. Then the second daughter was born, and they honored another grandmother by naming her Mary Marjorie. “Then our third, well, we were really expecting a boy,” Mary says. “But it was another girl and we were like, well, can’t stop now.” Mary Jane and Mary Teresa complete the quartet, but every Mary has a nickname to differentiate.
So Five Marys Farms made sense, but does Brian feel left out? “Actually, it was his idea,” says Mary. “He does all the grunt work, and he’s the hardest working on the farm, but he never wants any credit.”
6732 Eastside Road, Fort Jones (530) 598-6094
By Gabrielle.
When Mary first contacted me about a possible tour, she was sweetly hesitant and sent along a few photographs to share the space she and her husband are living with their four daughters. As I always do, I asked for a few more and added a lot of exclamation points to my request.
And when she sent me many, many dozens scenes from her daily life, I spent a good afternoon poring over them. I had to beg Mary to edit them down for me because I simply could not! This tour would have included at least 750 photos! Because, Friends, this life of the Heffernans is pretty lovely. And busy. And thoughtful. And supremely well-designed. I love it all, and I hope it just makes your day, too.
(Just maybe, there will be a follow-up post this summer with all the photos I couldn’t use this time around! I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because I would really, really love a tour of the family businesses!)
Q: Please introduce us to your sweet family!
A: Hello! I’m Mary Heffernan, a mom and small town business owner and a country girl at heart. My husband Brian is a manly mountain man who is surrounded by a crazy wife and four independent, strong-willed little girls. Luckily, they tend to be tomboys and are out there hunting and fishing with him, so he couldn’t be happier. Brian and I met in 2006 at a charity event, where he was on the board and I was volunteering. Eight years later, we have four daughters and a fun and crazy life together, running a range of small businesses in Los Altos, California.
All four of our girls are named Mary, which makes traveling interesting! They are all named after different grandmothers, as we are both from big Catholic families with a lot of Marys! Our eldest, MaryFrances or Francie, is six and the leader of the pack. MaryMarjorie or Maisie, is four and a sweet, maternal soul. MaryJane or JJ is the wild child at three and full of personality and outfit changes. MaryTeresa, Tessa, is one year old and packs a punch to keep up with those big sisters! We have a chocolate lab named Moose, and three Navajo Churro rams on our ranch named Chief Big Horn, Geronimo, and Eugene.
My husband and I are both native Californians – my girls are 7th generation stock to Northern California! – and love the outdoors and wide open spaces. We live in the city, but our roots are in agriculture and farming on both sides. We escape to our ranch in Siskiyou County as often as possible to raise free range kids and – soon! – free range cattle and chickens to serve in our restaurants.
Q: How did this house become yours?
A: We feel very lucky to be stewards of this old house full of history. It was built in 1910 by a Southern Pacific Railroad executive for his wife, Rose Shoup, to raise their children when the area was nothing but apricot orchards and railroad tracks. Only three other families have lived here since then, so we are the fourth! The house was meticulously restored by the last family, the Jennings and their four children, to bring it back to life. We actually lived right next door while they restored it and got to watch the progress.
I grew up in a 100-year old house that my parents restored, so when the Jennings moved, we knew we had to raise our kids in that house. Now, my husband and I are slowly working on a big old house project on our ranch: fixing up an 1868 farm home built before electricity and running water. I guess you could say we are drawn to old houses and their stories. This house is on the historic registry, and we just hope to do it justice by filling it with family memories and lots of noise.
Q: What are the things that make you love where you live?
A: We love Los Altos! We live six blocks from our little downtown where my husband and I run our family-centric businesses. It’s a small town feel, but also close to so many great places: 45 minutes to San Francisco and just a few miles from Stanford, Palo Alto, and all the Silicon Valley hot spots. Our house backs up to Redwood Grove Nature Preserve and a great park, both with a creek running through. It’s a place which means hours of entertainment for my kids and where I also have many memories playing as a child.
The downtown has really seen a transformation over the past several years and we love being a part of it. There are so many families with young children in the area, and it’s a really great community to live and do business in. The weather is great, and we walk to town for work and school most days.
Q: Speaking of your family businesses, what sort of companies do you and your husband run?
A: Our businesses are built around family. We know people value good services and good food and try to offer both! Twelve years ago I started my first business, a tutoring company called Academic Trainers, and I met my husband when he was a lawyer in the area.
Since then, we have opened two restaurants, Bumble and Forest on First, that center around locally grown, healthy ingredients and a welcoming environment for families to feel comfortable bringing kids out to eat. We have a playroom in Bumble staffed with attendants to entertain kids while parents finish their meal in peace, and Forest on First has a gorgeous redwood and natural eucalyptus treehouse play structure with more casual cafe fare and an all-natural juice bar.
We also have a creative DIY supply and class shop called The Makery that is really fun and my happy place to craft and be inspired by the latest, coolest stuff made by our vendors and in-house staff! The Botanist is for all things beautifully botanical, like succulents and home decor and flea market finds galore. There’s a throwback arcade called Area 151, and an old school hobby shop called Red Racer, and a children’s drop-in class space called PLAY.
We are working on another restaurant to open this summer called The Alley with a local Michelin star chef, Marty Cattaneo – who I grew up with – to do really awesome burgers and locally produced fare.
And yes I know this seems a little insane – some days it is! But since most of the businesses are in the same town, it’s more like running one big business for our very loyal customers. Instead of taking one good idea and doing it multiple places, we found a captive audience hungry for good businesses and did multiple ideas in one place. It’s a great town for business!
Q: How do you divide professional and family duties, and also keep your relationship separate?
A: My husband and I certainly spend a lot of time together, so we try to balance it without driving each other crazy! He is the morning bird and wakes up early every day to get things prepared for the day. My downtime is staying under my down comforter a little longer!
We both walk the girls to school in the morning, then head to work. We are very fortunate my sweet cousin Emmy watches the babies and brings them to music class or for a snack at the restaurants, so we get to see them a bit during the day. My husband and I start our work day with breakfast together and our laptops at Bumble, then head to various meetings or dealings with employee issues and pow wows for what’s up next.
We wind down with a house full of kids to feed and sit down as a family for dinner every night if we can, even if we end up having to order in pizza or clean out the fridge for kid snacks! Our girls are night owls like I am, so I usually wrangle bath time and talk them into going to sleep. Working together was a bit of an adjustment for sure, but once you get used to seeing each other ALL day, it’s hard to imagine going back!
Q: You’ve got some really dark and moody rooms, and one very bright white kitchen! I love it all! Tell us your color philosophy and whether you feel the need to stay true to the original style of this home? Any changes you wish you could make?
A: The house has a lot of period specific style. We try to stay true to the craftsman style and work with a lot of beautiful, dark woodwork. The kitchen is a bright white open space for gathering and family chaos.
When the house was built, the kitchen was very small and mostly used for the staff to prepare meals for the first owners, the Shoups. My, how times have changed! Now it is the gathering place for entertaining our family and friends.
My husband is the cook in the family and we love to wind down in the kitchen with the girls, usually throwing food around or dancing half-dressed around the island. It’s never quiet in our house!
Many of the colors were here in the house when we moved in, but I painted a few rooms a little more neutral. But I am a big fan of color and saturation! I think the house needs some deep color to compliment the beautiful dark wood that has all been stripped back to original wood after being painted white at one point! It works here.
Any changes? Maybe picking this house up and moving it to the country with wide open spaces around it!
Q: How do you manage your collections? What are your favorite things to collect, and how do you decide when or if to cull?
A: My mom, aunts, and grandmother were big antique collectors, and I have inherited many of their pieces. I went to college in Virginia and found some neat stuff there to fill my little college house I shared with seven friends. Now, I love to scour flea markets and collectible sales!
Alameda Antique Fair is always a good bet, and last year we took a trip to Canton, Texas for First Monday Trade Days to fill a U-Haul for The Botanist. We found some really amazing stuff and the prices couldn’t be beat.
Right now my favorite collection is vintage kilim rugs. I have them in almost every room in the ranch cabin, and somehow still feel the need for more! I am not very good at cutting myself off from a collection; I like to repurpose and put the old ones someplace new to make room for new ones. Sometimes they even end up for sale at one of the businesses!
Q: What memories do you hope with all your heart that your girls take from this home and from their childhoods? What do you hope they remember specifically about the kind of mom you’re trying to be for them?
A: I hope they remember playing with each other, cementing those long-lasting, sisterly bonds outdoors and in the sunny windows of our home. We don’t have a working TV – it’s been too complicated to set up since we moved in, so we gave up and got used to it! – so they spend a lot of time creating games and forts or stirring up a ruckus with the neighbor girls, who also have four girls under the age of seven!
I only hope I can be half the mom to my girls that my mom was to me! The get-on-the-floor-to-play-board-games kinda mom. I hope technology hasn’t interfered too much so they remember me with an iPhone in my hand…but technology does allow me to work a lot and be a present mom during the day or when we travel, which I am very grateful for.
Q: What has been your favorite part of living with your own girls? What has surprised you the most about being a mom? What do you already miss as they get older?
A: Living with four girls, each with their own distinct and strong personality is a new adventure everyday! I love when they all crowd around me to tell me about their day or latest discovery. It’s chaos and crazy, but I know I will miss these days and try to savor them. We entertain a lot, but my favorite days are hanging out at home, just our family, sitting on the front porch while the girls run around in the yard.
I am most surprised about how much of myself I see in them, especially Francie, the eldest, and how she knows just how to push my buttons! You can’t get much past her and I see so much of myself in her. She reminds me to find some patience, and it takes a lot of mental work to best figure out how to discipline or encourage her…I guess the oldest is usually the guinea pig on this front anyway, and she’s very tolerant of it!
I already miss so much about having a squishy newborn and all those baby stages! Now that Tessa is a growing toddler, I am missing the baby phase and all that comes with it…well MOST of what comes with it! I think we are good for now with four, but maybe a surprise baby down the road wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Q: Please finish the sentence: I wish someone had told me…
A: I wish someone had told me to slow down and soak it in. I am trying to remember that, but life is so busy and crazy that I know I will look back and think I should have been more present for these early years.
They are very special times and I try to be there as much as I can, but working and life sure do get in the way. When we can escape to the ranch, life is so different and a much slower pace. It really makes me look at our busy life at home and want to press pause!
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Mary, I am the same way about about technology! I want my kids to remember me as present, but the fact is that I can be present more often with technology at my fingertips wherever I may be. Thank you for the tour; your home and life are dizzyingly delightful!
We were lucky enough to be featured in The Land of Nod Real Families in 2014! I am a huge fan of The Land of Nod and was inspired by their adorable furniture, toys and bedding for the girls' playroom and bedroom - so they came out to photograph it all this spring!
Life with our Four Marys! Raising Free Range Kids in Northern CA.
