2115 Miller Avenue, Escondido, California 92025, United States
The Owner
A 4th Generation Farmer
Hi, I’m Laura Hillebrecht. Our farming experience started way back in the late 60s with our farm family garden. Farmers have farms and often times they have a family garden. We were one of those families. It was training grounds for the future of our family farm. We learned to plant, irrigate, weed, trap varmints, and harvest at age 5 and on. My earliest recollection of harvest, was picking wild blackberries at the crack of dawn with the entire family…dogs included, until we discovered they were stealing the berries from our pans! My parents suggested that we whistle while we were harvesting so that we wouldn’t eat all the berries we were picking.
I remember lots of mosquitoes and stickers from the briar patch. It took some talking to get us down there sometimes. The promise of my Mom’s delicious berry cobbler usually did the trick.As soon as we were old enough to join 4-H we did, and it was through that organization that we got our livestock education. We raised beef, horses, hogs, and dogs and enjoyed a variety of other social activities such as public speaking, political education, community service, and marketing strategies.
My parents started selling Muscat grapes in their front yard in the late 70’s. Then they came up with the idea of marketing our citrus through our own fresh market and that is when they leased the corner of Idaho and San Pasqual Valley Road for our first season with the Farm Stand. My Dad designed and built the Farm Stand structure with the help of his lifelong friend Rolf Steeve. They built it on an axle, so that it could be picked up and moved fairly easily, at whatever time we found a suitable property to buy and set up shop. A year later, they traded a property for the land on the corner of Summit Drive and San Pasqual Valley Road.
I have three siblings. One brother, Mike, and two sisters, Mary and Sally, all older. My brother works for my Dad and helps us out where he can. My sister Mary lives locally, manages three farmer’s markets, and is a huge help with harvest and marketing of our Farm Stand products. Sister Sally farms in northern California, and helps me with computer accounting issues as well as encourages me with new and improved ideas for marketing. When she and her children, Steven and Regina and Husband Martin are here they help with harvest. At one time, we all worked in the Farm Stand business.
