The Journey

Part I - In the beginning, the birth of an idea, and our search is rewarded.

The beginning of this story is shrouded in mystery. I don’t recall as a child being interested in gardening, let alone raising livestock. I grew up in Corona Del Mar, close to the beach. I was a beach kid and liked the Pacific Ocean. I enjoyed camping as a Boy Scout but never had a garden until the early 1980’s after I bought my first home. I had no experience in raising livestock until recently. Elizabeth, on the other hand, grew up on a ranch in the high desert from age 10 until she was 18 when she left home for college. During that time she raised sheep and steers. From 1983-1985 Elizabeth served in the Peace Corps in Belize and taught a rural educational agriculture program. When she returned to the United States, she attended the California Polytechnic State University in Pomona where she obtained her Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture in 1990. She wrote her thesis on “Designing Sustainable Agricultural Systems”. I read the thesis before she submitted it and was intrigued by the idea of creating a ranch where the ideas she presented could be realized. However, for the next 30 years we were content with gardening in the backyard of our various homes in Carlsbad while we continued to work and serve at my Law Office.  Those years of backyard gardening were an enjoyable time of trial and error, although we did discover there are many gophers in the world. We explored different ways of vegetable gardening including container beds, raised beds, terraced beds but mostly ground beds. We planted many different types of fruit and nut trees with varying degrees of success and learned something along the way. Our efforts to raise livestock were limited to dogs, cats, birds, fish, and chickens. 

As retirement (or sabbatical as I like to call it) approached, we began to consider where we might choose to live after we no longer were tied to the Law Offices in Carlsbad. Our search included all of California, most of the southwest United States, and even southwest Australia (the Margaret River area three hours south of Perth). Ultimately our three children and two grandchildren, who live in San Diego county, tipped the scales to finding some land nearby where we could bring our vision to life. 

Our search began in northern San Diego county, however, we expanded it to include the entire county. We began searching in Carlsbad, Oceanside, and Vista where we considered buying a home with as little as one acre of land. Consequently, the large population increase over the years and the results of urbanization soon ruled those areas out. When planning, we determined that 5 acres of usable land would be ideal. We ruled out Bonsall and Fallbrook as they were no longer rural. We found a property in Valley Center, which had a nice home (although small), and several raised beds for gardening. The property was 12 acres on Betsworth Road. We made our first offer to purchase on that property. Our offer was not accepted and we were disappointed. However, shortly thereafter we discovered that the country had approved a very large subdivision of tract homes on Betsworth and Valley Center Roads, which has changed the character of Valley Center irrevocably. We had dodged a bullet and decided we had better look even further east if we wanted to find a truly rural property. The real estate broker we were working with, Lee Thomas, had years prior lived in Valley Center and had a neighbor who was also a real estate broker, Donn Bree. When the new high school was built near their neighborhood, they both moved. Lee to Escondido, and his neighbor, Donn Bree, to Mesa Grande. 

Lee suggested we work with Donn since he was (and is) the number one real estate broker in the back country of San Diego county. Lee correctly believed that working with Donn and Meriah would give us the best opportunity to find a home in the competitive real estate market in San Diego county in 2019.

In January 2019 we began working with Donn Bree and Meriah Druliner (and now partner), his sales manager, in the search for our dream home. The real estate market was on fire and there was very little inventory available in the back country so we knew it might be a long process. The first property they showed us was in Pine Hills of highway 78 on the way to Julian. We liked the house but the elevation was a little high and prompted some cold winters. On the way home to Carlsbad Elizabeth and I drove through Mesa Grande for the first time. Mesa Grande is not on the way to anywhere. It is located between California highway 76 to the north, highway 79 to the east and highway 78 to the south. We drove from the 78 to the 79 and after a couple of miles turned off on Mesa Grande road. Mesa Grande has been mostly large cattle ranches since the 1870s and 1880s and not much has changed. As we drove through the wide open countryside we fell in love. Cattle grazed on the side of the road and in one place on the road. As we headed for the back entrance to Mesa Grande (which is off highway 76 near Lake Henshaw) we approached a narrow bridge and traveling across the road was a flock of wild turkeys. I turned to Elizabeth and said, "This is where I want to live." 

It was two years before we found our home, but from that day forward we knew it would be in Mesa Grande. About one year later at the height of the pandemic Elizabeth and I decided to travel to Mesa Grande on a road we had not taken before. The land to the west of Mesa Grande is extremely rugged. There is no paved road to Mesa Grande from the west. There is however an unpaved road that begins in the area south and west of Ramona known as Black Canyon Road. On a beautiful sunny day in early April, 2020 Elizabeth and I traveled from our home in Carlsbad out highway 78 to investigate Black Canyon Road. You leave the 78 before you get to Ramona and navigate through rural neighborhoods to the east and north to get to the unpaved Black Canyon road. The road was initially well graded but became less so as homes became less frequent. Soon the road became almost impassable, even for Elizabeth's four wheel drive truck, with deep ruts caused by erosion and a thousand foot drop on one side of the narrow and winding road to the valley floor below. We persevered and eventually came to an intersection with the road to Sutherland Reservoir. Thereafter the road, while narrow and winding, became somewhat smoother and we breathed a sigh of relief as it appeared we were going to make it to Mesa Grande after all. A few miles up the canyon we came to a beautiful group of homes situated on a seasonal creek which runs through Black Canyon which are a part of Mesa Grande Indian reservation. Another couple miles up the canyon from there we discovered a gate with a dozen or more locks hanging from it and two white concrete block structures on each side of the private road leading off of Black Canyon road. I stopped the truck and got out and examined the gate and the concrete block structures and remarked to Elizabeth "I wonder who lives there". Little did we know that we would own property in that group of ranches in less than a year. A few months later we made an offer on a property just off Mesa Grande road with 17 acres and an adobe house built in the 1880's. The owners had remodeled it without permits, building a second story on an adobe house with a crushed rock foundation. Fortunately the property did not appraise for the sales price and we canceled the contract. Elizabeth and I would occasionally travel from our home in Carlsbad to the mountain town of Julian or through Julian to Agua Caliente park in the Anza Borrego desert. On our way home coming down the mountain from Julian you come to a place called Inaja Memorial Park dedicated to 11 firefighters who lost their lives fighting a forest fire in 1956. Shortly thereafter you have a 180 degree view of the Santa Ysabel Valley. On each occasion when we would travel this route I would remark to Elizabeth "This looks like a nice place to live"

In February 2021 we purchased 40 acres adjoining the Cleveland National forest in historic Mesa Grande. With a beautiful two story A framed house, adorned with three dormers in the front, situated in the middle of a forest of Coast Live and Engelmann Oak trees in a park-like setting, we knew at first sight this would be our new home. The land was essentially untouched. The house was built in 1989 by the Sellers. In the time they had lived there, they had built a storage shed for equipment and tools and a couple years before they sold it, a three (3) car garage across the road from the house. The only other "improvement" they had made was to plant their yearly Christmas pine tree somewhere on the property. We immediately began work to realize our vision of building a sustainable ranch. Recognizing the need for power, we contracted to have 24 solar panels installed on the top of the hill behind our home. Although we are on the grid we felt we should have sustainable power for our energy needs. We also installed a propane generator as a backup power supply when the power goes out. Next we had a new well dug. The property had an existing well, but it did not produce much water. It was barely sufficient for residential use and certainly not for the agricultural uses we planned. We had to drill 1,140 feet down to obtain a sufficient, reliable water supply. The water is pure but has a high mineral content. In addition to the well itself, we had installed a 10,000 gallon water tank and put two pressure tanks and a booster pump in the storage shed to provide power to move the water throughout an extensive irrigation system we installed to service the needs of the ranch. We installed two inch water lines from the water tank below the storage shed to virtually all of the arable land and that which is suitable for pasture which is about 6 acres of the 40 acres we own. We have four water storage tanks which are or will be attached to the roof rain gutter for the house and barn to collect another approximate 2,500 gallons of water for irrigation. We have also terraced the land and built a collection area to catch surface water run off. All of the water we use returns to the aquafer(s) from which it came.

Most of our land is forest consisting primarily of oak and manzanita. We are blessed with abundant wildlife. We have deer, wild turkeys, foxes, skunks, coyotes, bob cats and mountain lions. Recently there was a juvenile black bear spotted in our neighborhood. In consideration of this reality we wanted a safe home for our two dogs, Claire Belle, a vizslas and Sunshine, a standard poodle. One of my clients for thirty years was Kent Scott. Scott Fence in Carlsbad has built a lot of fences and enclosures for the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park so he knows the challenges of keeping the wildlife out or in. He constructed an 8 foot X 16 foot enclosed (top, bottom and sides) dog kennel behind the house. The kennel was completed in December, 2021. It wasn't more than a few months before the kennel was tested. At about three in the morning my son, who was pet sitting for us while we were on vacation, was awakened by the barking of our dogs. When he went downstairs and looked out the back door toward the kennel there was a mountain lion looking at the dogs. However she was not able to get to them. The kennel had done its job. We also purchased the materials for a chicken coop and chicken run which we constructed between October and December of that year to provide a home for our seven chickens. We hired an excellent contractor, E&G Builders, and throughout the fall of that year we did an extensive remodel of the home. While we were working on the house remodel we discovered that the hillside behind the house which was quite steep had eroded to the point where the ground was almost level with the wrap-around covered porch which surrounds three sides of the house. We decided it would be a good idea to build a block retaining wall behind and on one side of the house which we did. The remodel of the house included adding two French doors one upstairs in the master bedroom and one downstairs in the living room to provide more air and light, a reconfiguration of the master bedroom to make use of space that had been walled off when the home was constructed such that we were able to add about 100 sq ft in living space. We added a large shower to the master bath and created two doorways to allow the downstairs to flow more freely. We put in new tile flooring downstairs in the kitchen, office, and living room and hickory flooring in all three bedrooms upstairs. We added new chandeliers, in the entryway and dining room and added Belgian tapestries to the entryway depicting the harvest and crushing of grapes ("vendange" in French). This was fitting in that my three sons and I had planted about 225 vines of several different varieties of grapes on about one quarter of an acre of the property with a southern exposure. On December 30, 2021 I transitioned out of the practice of law after 44 years to become a farmer. 

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Part II - We move to the country, face the challenges, and bring sheep to the ranch.

Part III - We bring goats to the ranch.

Part IV - Charlie, the border collie, joins the pack.

Part V - We add quail, ducks and more chickens and our first lamb is born.

Part VI - 2 lamb ewes are born and we have a party to celebrate the completion of the barn.

Part VII - We host our first paying guests and begin our 4th year on the Ranch