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Glaum Family Ranch back to list

by Anonymous

Crack open an egg from Glaum Egg Ranch in Aptos, and it’s easy to see why so many locals eschew the supermarket brands and take the winding drive up Valencia Road to purchase a dozen or so farm fresh eggs. Doug Glaum, youngest son of Dorothy and the late Marvin Glaum, believes customers come for more than just eggs. They come for what the eggs represent: family farming and fresh, local food. What the Glaum family does is also about more than just eggs. It’s about preserving a family legacy.

The Glaum poultry legacy began with Doug’s grandfather, John Glaum, in Alexandria, Nebraska in the 1920s. John eventually moved the business to the Santa Cruz area, where his son Marvin took over upon returning from the Korean War. In addition to his dedication, Marvin brought his creative spirit to the farm and became known for his innovations. Among them is the locally famous egg vendor, which is located at the Aptos processing plant. Customers put in $2 and receive 21 fresh eggs, plus entertainment in the form of a musical puppet show, featuring seasonally costumed chickens and eggs. It was Marvin who later decided that the tons of manure that are the natural result of raising chickens should be made into compost. Glaum 100% Organic Composted Fertilizer is now sold at the Aptos plant and at nurseries across three states.

Today, the Glaum Egg Ranch includes 28 acres in Watsonville, which is home to about 80,000 chickens, cage-free on one side of the pasture and organic on the other; the processing plant, composting site and headquarters are nestled in the redwood-studded mountains of Aptos. It sounds like a large operation, but the Glaum Egg Ranch is truly a family farm, with three generations of Glaums and only about seven employees doing all the labor. It may not be glamorous work, but it’s always been meaningful to the family, even more so since their father passed away in 2004.

Marvin’s passing coincided with a tough time for the family as they struggled to survive in the egg business. For years the Glaums had toughed it out in the market place, competing with the factory farms of the Midwest, which can house up to two million birds at a time. Recently, according to Doug, there have been so many eggs on the market that they are selling for 50 or 60 cents less than they should be. The family had already addressed the issue of getting their eggs to market without paying out a huge chunk of their profits to a middle man, going straight to the customer via direct marketing and farmers markets. Still, they were at a crossroads and needed to decide in which direction they wanted to travel: continue competing with factory farms, or look for other ways to stay in business. After a lot of soul-searching they decided to follow in their dad’s innovative footsteps, get a step ahead of the conventional market, and follow the trend toward more healthful, conscious eating. The result of that decision was their conversion to producing cage-free and organic eggs. It was a scary decision, made a little easier because the Glaums live and farm near Santa Cruz, where organic food and farming is a way of life for so many people.

“I was apprehensive at first, but I would not go back,” says Doug.

The cage-free chickens, a white hy-line breed, are allowed to “roam around” and have easy access to food and water with no antibiotics or hormones added. The organic chickens, a brown hy-line breed, are also allowed to roam outside and are fed an organic diet with no antibiotics and no hormones, and their eggs are hand collected. Moving to a cage-free and organic operation was more labor intensive, but in the long run, Doug thinks it was worth the effort. In fact, they have seen their sales increase. In fact, he believes they are on the ground floor of the market, which he says was only 2% of the nation’s total egg production last year. He also believes the popularity of the eggs is about more than just a matter of human health, but also how the chickens live.

“People are so conscious these days about where their food comes from and wanting to know what your business practices are,” he says. “People want to know what the treatment of the animals has been and they are willing to pay a little bit more.”

Doug says the change has made him feel better about what he does. Going cage free and organic has become more important to the Glaum family than just following a trend or finding the latest niche in the marketplace.

“This is what our ranch is all about. We’re not a specialty egg. We’re a specialty ranch.”

His brother Steve is the production manager and is in charge of overseeing the Watsonville site. He also runs the composting business, and on a sunny morning in May he could be found up the hill from the processing plant, driving a tractor, dumping piles of manure into the windrows near the composter. There it is mixed with sawdust and allowed to mature for anywhere from 30 to 120 days. Doug says organic farmers come to pick up compost by the truckload. Home gardeners can buy the compost by the bag at nurseries or right at the store front in Aptos.

Doug is in charge of processing and daily operation at the Aptos plant. He may have a title, but he laughs as he refers to himself as “manager, mechanic, laborer…I don’t know.” He’d spent time earlier in the day repairing a piece of equipment in the plant and later he would work on a broken door. His wife Ericka, who is in charge of sales, greets customers at the sales window--people who have driven out of their way to buy cage free and organic eggs by the dozen, flat or box. The customers are cheerful and there is a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere around the plant, where family and employees talk and joke with one another. Doug’s sister Debbie is in charge of accounts receivable; his other sister Sherrie is the office manager and Dorothy still helps out with daily operations, including accounts payable.

The plant, which is about the size of a modest shop, houses the processing equipment, loading dock and cold room, where about 5,000 dozen (60,000) eggs a day start the journey to the Glaums’ early 500 customers in the Santa Cruz/Monterey area.

The average morning starts at about 5:30 a.m., when Doug meets with Steve to map out the events of the day. They make sure the trucks are on the correct routes, picking up eggs in Watsonville and transporting them safely to the Aptos plant for processing.

Once the eggs arrive, they are transported onto a conveyor belt, which takes them into the egg washer. Afterwards, they head for the candler, where they are inspected for cracks and other imperfections. The eggs that pass inspection head into the grader, which uses finger-like tools to pick up and weigh each individual egg, distributing it to its proper category, which ranges from Pee Wee to Extra Jumbo. The machine keeps automated records of how many eggs go into each category, before pushing them out into the carton or flat. One employee stands at each end of the processing line, but everyone is on hand to help out when needed. Ericka takes a break from waiting on customers to help load eggs off the pallet and onto the belt. Doug takes time from talking to move some pallets. No one is above lending a hand, no matter the task.

Grocery stores make up about 50 percent of the Glaums’ customer base, restaurants 40 percent and bakeries 10 percent. Aside from those commercial customers, they also get a good amount of walk up business, about 30-40 customers each day, drawn by the fresh eggs and one-of-a-kind vending machine.

In addition to being certified by California Certified Organic Farmers, the Glaum Egg Ranch is a Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) business member. Doug says the family decided to put the CAFF logo on their egg cartons because they liked what CAFF was doing in terms of trying to preserve family farms.

“I liked what CAFF was doing, connecting people with farmers. That’s what we’re doing, fighting off the factory farms.”

The CAFF logo has brought a very favorable response, especially since it is also visible on the Glaum Egg Ranch web site.

“We’ve gotten great support beyond the Santa Cruz area from people interested in buying eggs from a family farm.”

He likes the way CAFF is working to educate both farmers and the public. He says farmers need to learn more about how to promote themselves and stay connected with local customers. The public also needs to be educated about where their food comes from and how it’s raised.

“They don’t know and don’t realize that the family farm is disappearing at a fast rate.”

He sees membership in CAFF as just another part of the way his family wants to do business.

“It’s about caring about the end product, caring about what we do.”

He offers the Glaum organic compost as an example of how his family takes manure, a byproduct of their business, and turns it into compost, “a product that can be put back into the earth.”

Continuing in their new direction, the Glaum Egg Ranch will soon introduce Omega-3 and organic fertile eggs. They are also in the process of being Certified Humane Raised and Handled, by Humane Farm Animal Care, a non-profit organization dedicated to the humane treatment of farm animals. To receive certification the ranch is required to meet certain standards: providing a minimum amount of land per chicken, providing ample access to food and water with no added hormones or antibiotics, allowing the chickens to engage in their natural behaviors (no forced molting), and handling them gently to avoid stress.

Asked what keeps him going when times get tough, Doug reflects on all the lessons his father taught him about hard work. He talks about being born on the Aptos property and his ability to make a living and still be close to his family. He is aware that he is one of those lucky individuals who get to work and live on the Central Coast. He also gets to provide a product to customers who appreciate it.

He may not be rich in dollars, he says, but he’s rich in other ways.

“We’re rich with what we have here.”

He tells a story of being alone in the sales office one afternoon when the phone rang. He answered and a woman’s voice said “Thank you.” He asked what she was thanking him for, and she explained that she loved being able to buy organic eggs and appreciated the Glaums for providing such a quality product. The phone call made his day, and experiences like that one keep him looking for ways to improve.

Doug thinks the next challenge will be that of local organic versus non-local organic. “Time will tell,” he says, whether customers will pay a little bit more for a local organic egg, versus an organic egg from a large company, which costs less, but has to travel a lot farther.

The Glaums will face that challenge when it comes. For now, they’re enjoying life, enjoying their family business and enjoying the customers who travel up that winding road for the taste of a farm fresh egg.

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