The Reichardt family has devoted the last 30 years to perfecting a line of ducks famed for succulent pink meat and well suited to the slower, less stressful husbandry of a small Petaluma farm. Now their prized poultry is being delivered, not to the Bay Area’s finest Michelin-starred restaurants, but to the county dump. Avian influenza has barreled through Sonoma County’s historic poultry region, forcing the slaughter of 1.1 million birds and inflicting heartbreak and economic disaster on the Reichardts and other small family farmers in the once-famed “Egg Capital of the World.” “We’re still in the midst of wrapping our heads around…
