If you want to know the psychological impact that bare store shelves can have on the public, just call Evan Smith of Escondido. That is, if you can get through to his phone.

In the weeks since San Diegans were ordered to shelter at home with whatever groceries they could find at local supermarkets, Smith has been fielding 200 to 300 calls a day for baby chicks at his family-run business, Escondido Feed & Pet Supply. He has been sold out for weeks.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It’s insane,” said Smith, whose family has run feed stores in the county since 1975. “With people seeing how the food supply can be affected, they want to be more self-sufficient. But you don’t just buy chickens and they lay eggs. It takes six months. But still, people are rushing to buy them.”

Baby chicks have been impossible to keep in stock at Escondido Feed & Pet Supply this spring. (Courtesy of Escondido Feed & Pet Supply)


With worries over food supply and most Americans stuck at home with time on their hands, homesteading hobbies are on the rise. Sales have skyrocketed for gardening equipment, vegetable seeds, apiaries, sewing machines and fabric, bread-baking supplies and Mason jars for canning.

Escondido residents Oriana Mullins-Robbins and Brian Robbins have enthusiastically embraced the homesteading trend over the past three weeks. They have purchased baby chicks and a chicken coop, are baking their own bread, teaching their children quilting skills and are now mapping out a vegetable garden in their backyard.

“These are things we always wanted to do, but living in a tract house in Escondido, we only had so much space. But we’ve been self-quarantined since March 10 and I didn’t want to be thinking negatively about the problems of getting food. So we decided to take this seriously.”

Brian Robbins of Escondido slices some bread he baked recently as part of his family’s new homesteading hobby. (Courtesy of Oriana Mullins-Robbins)


The couple live with their two daughters, ages 9 and 10, an 11-year-old son with special needs, and the 10-year-old daughter of a friend in the military who is deployed overseas. Feeding a family of six is hard enough, but relying on Instacart, which is now booking deliveries up to two weeks out, led them to make some lifestyle changes.

“It’s a two-fold thing. The reality is things are harder to get. We may only get two eggs a day from these chickens, but at least that’s two eggs we won’t be worried about getting,” she said. “We can also teach the girls some skills. For them, until you take it away or look it up in the dictionary, they don’t think about where things come from.”

Mullins-Robbins bought their chicks at Hawthorne Country Store in Escondido after finding them sold out at Smith’s feed store.

Smith said chicks have been in short supply in Southern California for two years due to an outbreak of Newcastle bird disease. That led to a ban on shipping chicks through post offices in some counties. As a result, Smith said he drives to Arizona every few weeks to buy 600 chicks at a time.


Usually that would be enough chicks to supply customers for a week or two. But now when he gets a shipment of 600 chicks, it’s gone within a couple of hours, with many customers driving in from as far away as Orange County.

Smith said he’s also seen a run on beehive supplies and rabbits, though he attributes the last item more to kids wanting Easter bunny pets than people wanting to raise rabbits for meat.

Spring is already peak season for gardeners, but the sudden pandemic-induced interest in planting fruit and vegetables has created a nationwide supply chain problem in the seed industry. Many of the nation’s largest seed companies — including Territorial, Baker Creek Heirloom, Renee’s and Fedco — are either out of stock, unable to fill orders for several days or are now limiting their seed sales to commercial growers.

The demand has led to a boom in sales for 10-year-old San Diego Seed Company, which specializes in organic seeds bred especially for the Southern California climate. Owner Brijette Peña said she and her employees are “working around the clock” to fulfill orders from online customers and 24 San Diego County nurseries.


Two crates of new seed orders ready for shipment Friday at San Diego Seed Company. (Courtesy of Brijette Pena)

Peña said she noticed the uptick in sales on March 16 and it keeps growing. In the weeks since, the company has shipped almost 700 seed orders to customers from as far away as L.A. and Imperial counties.

She has also seen a surge in inquiries for the company’s gardening classes. Most of her spring classes were canceled due to shelter-at-home rules, but she’s planning to launch online classes soon. For information visit the company’s website, Facebook, or Instagram sites.

Peña is passionate about encouraging more people to become urban gardeners so they can sustain themselves in times of crisis like this.


“It’s so relevant to what’s going on right now. You don’t have to be in Ramona with 10 acres to be a farmer,” she said. “People are now seeing the importance of regional and local seed supply. This pertains to food as well. We’ve been pushing people to understand that this is why it matters so much.”

Fabric stores have also experienced a dramatic revitalization, not just from the homesteading trend but from the nationwide mobilization of home seamstresses to make cloth face masks for healthcare workers and their own families.

And home bakers have begun posting notices on the Nextdoor app and Facebook whenever they find suddenly-elusive ingredients like yeast and flour.

North Park resident Edward Wilensky used to enjoy baking in his younger years, but work, life and family got in the way and he stopped about 20 years ago. In mid-March, he began working from home and helping his wife teach their 10-year-old son, Daniel, after his school shut down.


Wilensky said what started as a one-time science experiment to teach his fourth-grader about the chemistry that makes bread dough rise has since become a weekly family lesson in bread-baking.

“I really don’t have the patience for baking in my regular life, but I find that making bread during this time is a nice diversion that reminds me of simpler times,” he said. “I hope it will continue when all of this is over.”