The historic Green Oaks Ranch, on San Mateo County’s south coast near Ano Nuevo, is on track to become the core of a new nonprofit that plans to promote sustainable farming, educate students, and even run a roadside pie stand to sell pies with fruit grown on the property.
The Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) advanced the process by purchasing the 13-acre ranch, now a national historic landmark, for $1.21 million from George Griffin of Palo Alto.
Green Oaks is part of the historic dairy farm started by Isaac Steele and his brothers in the 1850s, which grew to encompass 7,000 acres from Ano Nuevo to Point Reyes. The portion acquired by POST, a Menlo Park-based land trust, includes several farm buildings along with five acres of fertile row-crop soils and eight acres of natural coastal land.
The purchase includes an option that allows owners of the neighboring nonprofit Pie Ranch LLC three years to raise the money to buy the land for its new youth educational center.
Pie Ranch is aptly named. It refers to the 14-acre pie-shaped wedge of land immediately east of Green Oaks; it also refers to the pies that students make from fruit grown on the ranch.
Pie Ranch is run by a partnership of three farmers dedicated to teaching students about sustainable agriculture and giving them hands-on experience in growing fruit and making pies.
Co-Director Jered Lawson, who lives on the ranch, praised POST because of its track record in conserving land on the coast. “It’s a winning combination of strategies to protect working landscapes and provide meaningful relationships for people with nature,” he said.
The partners in Pie Ranch are busy forming the Green Oaks Agricultural Trust (GOAT) to acquire and restore Green Oaks, including the Steele family’s original Greek Revival farmhouse and several outbuildings. They plan to use the buildings for community and classroom learning about our food system, and for staff and student housing. They also hope to expand the acreage of organic farmland to produce ingredients for their pies.
Purchase of the Green Oaks Ranch brings the number of acres preserved in POST’s 20,000-acre “Save the Endangered Coast Campaign” to 14,532.
POST President Audrey Rust hailed the purchase as a way to promote sustainable farming through innovative approaches to land tenure. “The considerable historic, natural resource and agricultural values of this Coastside property will now be permanently protected as a result of this acquisition,” she said.
For information, call POST at 854-7696, or go to openspacetrust.org.
