It’s a temptation to ask Bob Larsen, “Whaddya gonna do for an encore?” I mean after all, his acreage out there on Gravenstein Highway where it  intersects with Stony Point Road, has hosted the Renaissance Pleasure Faire for several years. Then came the re-enactment of Civil War battles with horses, antique rifles and cannons attracting thousands of Yankee and Johnny Reb spectators.

Larsen remembers a regional blues society convention coming every summer in a fleet of campers and RVs and settling down on his pasture while they toured the wineries.

More recently, his pasture hosted a one-time event when a piano was hauled high on a crane and allowed to crash to the ground in a fundraiser for the Education Foundation. Not exactly show biz, but how often can you see it? “It was amazing how many phone calls we got on this.”

‘They come to us’
“I don’t advertise the availabilities we have,” said Larsen. “It’s all word of mouth - they come to us.”

You know the Cotati Accordion Festival coming up next month? Spectators will have lots of seating on hay bales from Larsen’s Feed & Pet Supply Center.

Hay distribution is the backbone of his business and the three-letter word covers a huge swath of sub-terminology.

“We have about 14 different varieties of hay, straw  and alfalfa here from special grains to roughage. We keep the special hay in one or two of the barns, the rest is in the big covered shed along with the bales.

“We buy five truckloads of hay every week, 52 weeks a year,” said Larsen. “It all comes from up north, fields around Dixon, Chico, Woodland, Tule Lake, Yreka and fields around there. Then we ship it, a lot of it in bales, to places like Pacifica, Golden Gate Park and Muir Beach. A lot of wineries use them for receptions and loose hay or straw for daily use inside. One of the bigger uses for hay bales these days are for erosion control.

“I also raise hay on the 127 acres we have here, but that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the truckloads we bring in.”

Solar panels are used
Hay pastures for livestock feed have been around homes and villages for thousands of years. So have windmills. Larsen’s added the latest innovation. He’s got 108 solar panels on barn roofs accumulating enough power to enable him to drop off the PG&E grid altogether. “They were made up in Oregon. I told the supplier I didn’t want any solar panels made in China.”

The pet food business came about when a customer asked Larsen if had any dog food. It didn’t take long for him to grab the opportunity. He turned one of his barns into a pet food store, added cat food and poultry feed, available in all sizes of sacks and found more room for pet accessories (the Larsen farm’s more of a rural complex with many barns, sheds and outbuildings). Then he added chickens and found more space for his horse-owning customers with a wide variety of saddles, bridles, reins and other tack room supplies.

Larsen’s own office is a small, crowded area just inside the store’s entrance fitted with a desk littered with notes to himself and messages. Our conversation was frequently interrupted by employees who had questions to ask him. His wife, Alice, came in the office after a visit to the dentist and understandably was not very talkative. “We’ll have been been married for 57 years come September. We met at a dance at the former Woman’s Club in Cotati, it’s now a synagogue.  Our son, Kenneth, runs a trucking business here,” pointing to several large dump trucks parked to one side. “He helps us out in his spare time.”

‘We’ve got a good business’
Larsen himself doesn’t have very much spare time. “I’m on the go all the time even though I’ve got problems with my knees. We have 10 full-time employees and I keep adding new ones.

“Even though we’re in tough economic times, we’ve got a good business here. We sell a lot of chicks these days. People save money on meat and eggs with a few chickens in the back yard. Nothing exotic, just White Leghorns and a few Rhode Island Reds and Plymouth Rocks.”

Larsen, now 80 years old, took over an acreage from his parents in 1972 who bought it back in 1947. They raised 600 head of Holstein dairy cows. He sold the cows a year after he bought it and went into hay production.

“I nearly sold it in 1990. Developers had plans for a shopping center and homes, four of ‘em to the acre. But the county cut this back to one home per acre and the developers dropped out. We’ve never tried to sell it since then.”

Larsen’s still in the beef cattle business in a modest way. “I’ve got about 30 head of Dexter cattle. They’re an Irish breed, all black, and not very well-known here. People confuse them with Black Angus, but Dexter’s have shorter legs.

“Maybe people expect to find cows here. They’re easy to take care of but can be a pain in the butt sometimes. It’s more of a hobby than a moneymaker for me.”