It’s said that chickens are considered a gateway drug within the homesteading community: One chicken can lead to a farming addiction. And that was certainly the case for 34-year-old Alyssa Arellano. It started with a couple of chickens and a small garden in the backyard of her Westside home during the pandemic. Now she runs a small-scale farm and sourdough microbakery called Little Arellano Farm.
In her 4,000-square-foot backyard farm, Arellano grows a variety of fresh produce like tomatoes, jalapeños and onions. She also mills her own flour and raises 20 chickens.
The chickens provide all the eggs she uses to bake her sourdough breads and pastries. Arellano raises a variety of chicken breeds because she says she enjoys collecting the different colored eggs they produce — like brown or blue.
“They’re like the millennial new-age Pokemon,” she said. The three newest chickens in her coop are salmon faverolles, which are supposed to lay pink eggs. Those chickens are too young to lay yet, but Arellano is eager to see the eggs.
Arellano grew up in San Pedro and the Central Valley. She started baking with her mom at 3 years old, sitting on the counter smashing bananas for banana bread to put in Christmas baskets. As the treats baked, Arellano said she and her mom would dance and sing in the kitchen.
“That was like the best time of my life.”
But at 14, Arellano’s father died suddenly from a heart attack, and baking became an outlet for her grief.
Arellano attended The New England Culinary Institute in Vermont at 17, worked her way through professional kitchens – including those of world-renowned bakers Thomas Keller and Wolfgang Puck – then eventually opened her own bakery in San Pedro (where Colossus now stands).
She and her husband — a lifelong Long Beach resident — moved to the Westside in 2019. They found the neighborhood welcoming and affordable. When she found out she was pregnant with her first child, Arellano decided to close her bakery.
Four years later, after the birth of her third child, Arellano was hit hard with postpartum depression. Baking, once again, became a form of therapy for her.
“I needed something that felt like myself again,” she said. She turned her focus to sourdough because it is easier to digest and has more nutrients than regular yeasted bread. She also loves the challenge of working with something that is “alive and very fluid.”
“When you see how beautiful the loaf is out of the oven, [that] is the best feeling,” Arellano said.
Once she started baking, she couldn’t stop. She started giving sourdough country loaves to the neighbors, who have since become some of her biggest supporters. When there was still too much bread at home, she started selling loaves at local farmers markets, including the short-lived Wrigley Farmers Market and, most recently, the Westside Night Market.
“There was no real intention of going back into business, but it was just kind of heavy on my heart to keep going,” Arellano said. “I really love that I’m able to feed my community food that is made fresh and with wholesome ingredients.”
Urban homesteads like Arellano’s are few and far between in the Westside, an area that has struggled with pollution and poor air quality for decades. Last year, Arellano lost about 40% of her crops to poor air quality. She doesn’t use any pesticides on her crops, especially considering the harmful impact that’s had in the area.
Running the farm and microbakery for the past three years has given Arellano a new definition of success. Her 7-year-old son recently told his class that his mom is a “community leader” because she feeds everyone in the neighborhood. Her 5-year-old daughter wants to grow up to be a baker just like her.
“It feels good to serve those close to home,” she said. “It’s been really wonderful to not only feed your soul, but then be able to feed your family as well.”
You can order Little Arellano Farm breads and pastries online and pick up on Saturday mornings.