Terra Firma was started by Paul Holmes over seventeen years ago, with a old VW van and a rototiller -- a mile up the road and five hundred feet uphill from its present location, on less than an acre of land. Over the years, the farm moved down to the fertile alluvial soils along Putah Creek just west of Winters, at the hilly edge of the Sacramento Valley.
In 1994, Paul Underhill joined Paul Holmes and they began to organize friends and acquaintances in San Francisco who wanted to get fresh, local organic vegetables on a regular basis. The CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture project, started with about 50 people and has now expanded to feed over 700 people weekly. In the meantime, the farm has grown to include over 99 acres of fields and orchards, including walnuts, apricots, and citrus.