About

Daisy always wanted to own a farm, to produce her own food and food for her family. Farming was just a dream for an exceptionally long time. It originated with her own father and mother, field pickers in the golden belt of California, which instilled a love for agriculture in her early days of childhood. She remembers the rising sun over the fields of strawberries, picking ripe fruit along with her family and friends. The calm that came with the routine of hand picking, but also the heat, the tiredness and sometimes the defeat of farming. As she grew and moved to the City of Santa Ana, her love of agriculture and farming grew with her. She studied at San Francisco State University, majoring in Biology concentration in Zoology. She met and married her husband, raised their children while he was in the USMC, studied at Victor Valley College receiving an associate degree in business administration in 2019. Her dream came true and the origins of Birds N’ Things Farm started in the high desert of California, where they raised their own livestock for family consumption and slowly grew their endeavors to raising livestock for sale.

In late 2019 a chance to manage a 240-acre farm in MN arose and she relocated her farm and family for a chance to live her dream. Unfortunately, domestic violence started at this point. While many saw the success and accomplishments of the farm and her part in it, this angered her husband to a point that was never seen before. In May 2020, their poultry operation on this farm made enough income that they could purchase a plot of land for themselves. To minimize domestic violence, Daisy again relocated her farm and family to an empty plot of land in Ashland, WI mid-June 2020. The permanent home of Birds N’ Things Farm. Unfortunately, this did not mitigate the domestic violence and while she and her kids dealt with so much violence on the daily…. the farm grew through all of this. The farm was successful. Within 3 years, Birds N’ Things Farm was able to secure contracts and grants worth over 400,000 dollars in revenue but at last in May 2023 the worst domestic violence incident occurred, which was witnessed by someone else.

This created a chain of events in which Daisy was able to leave the domestic violence situation safely with her children. Within 2 weeks, she had rehomed her livestock, livestock guardians, and pets – relocating her kids and herself back to southern California. She burned the whole operation to the ground, figuratively speaking; legally leaving the remainder to her husband, her abuser, to manage. But the need to farm remained. The need to raise good food at an affordable price, for her family and community. While in the emergency domestic violence shelter in southern California and then transitional housing for domestic violence; Daisy kept going back to farming. Like the name suggests, Rancho El Phoenix is a farm that will rise from the ashes of the previous farm that Daisy Perez co-owned with her former husband.