She restocks the shelves on Thursdays. Bags of mixed lettuce, onions and bouquets of snapdragons are neatly arranged alongside other produce; inside an ice chest lies a specialty item: coturnix quail eggs, $7 for a dozen.
Little Wing Farm’s new farmstand all but sprouted out of the gravel of a defunct cement company’s parking lot on Point Reyes-Petaluma road this summer.
Owner Molly Myerson, a youthful fixture in the West Marin farming community, grows her wares just a mile from the stand, on Black Mountain Ranch. The new plot and storefront represent her return from a major setback last year, when her barn in Tomales caught fire, decimating her flock of quail and leading to the closure of the farm.
After she took some time to regroup, Dave Osborn, whose family has owned the nearly 1,200 acres on Black Mountain since 1975, approached her about farming on his land.
“I knew she’d be a perfect fit,” he said. “She’s always really impressed me in terms of her work ethic and how much she cared about the land.”
Her farm is part of an overhaul at Black Mountain, where pastureland has historically been leased for dairy and beef cattle grazing. “I really wanted to improve the energy there,” Mr. Osborn said. “Half the family is vegan, and we really wanted to try to be a humane property rather than slaughtering animals.”
Matthew and Astrid Hoffman’s Living Seed Company grows heirloom seeds on the ranch, where Maggie Levinger and Luke Regalbuto planted a 50-tree orchard and Arron Wilder grows produce for his Table Top Farm. “The whole idea was to bring young energy and people who really want to be productive and be more positive,” Mr. Osborn said. “It’s onward and upward.”
Ms. Myerson planted the one-acre plot in January, working ten-hour shifts, seven days a week, with a small staff of two. “One acre pumps out a lot of food if you know what you’re doing,” she said.
On a recent sweltering afternoon, Ms. Myerson donned a hat to shield the sun as she watered a row of sweet peas. She still raises quail, but keeps all 250 of them at a separate location outside of Petaluma.
Outside of the stand, she also sells their eggs to Saltwater in Inverness and the State Bird Provisions in San Francisco.
The stand is stocked Thursday afternoon through Sunday. The produce selection varies by the week, but tomatoes, padrón peppers, winter squash, cucumbers, strawberries, kale and more will be summer staples.
There aren’t any salespeople hovering nearby, as the stand operates under the honor system with a cash box bolted to a shelf. Patrons record what they buy on a notebook on whose cover someone has endearingly scrawled, “Best roadside stand ever!”