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Leiss Ranch, Chileno
Valley Sitting on the couch in her living room, 92-year-old Gladys Jacobsen Leiss slowly turns the pages of a photo album. The pictures in the book begin in 1945. That was the year she and her husband Bill moved to the 208-acre Hicks Valley ranch that is still her home on the banks of a crick, as she calls it, that empties into Estero de San Antonio. Though the house was nothing more than a shack
then, the beautiful ranch with its native perennial grasses and
its bay, madrone, buckeye, and oak woodlands appealed to the young
couple. "Bill liked it, and so did I," Mrs. Leiss recalls,
and so they made up their minds to buy the place. There they raised
two daughters, Betty and Nancy, as well as Gladys' brother's two
sons. There they milked cows, raised chickens, constructed ponds,
built bridges, fashioned a milking barn from handmade bricks, and
turned it all into a good business. This spring Mrs. Leiss sold an agricultural conservation
easement to MALT to permanently protect the land she loves from
subdivision and non-agricultural development. Because of its proximity
to Petaluma, the ranch was especially vulnerable. MALT paid the
appraised value of $542,500 for the easement. Funds were raised
entirely from MALT members and contributors. Now the ranch is part
of a chain of ten contiguous easement properties, totaling 7,000
acres Before her marriage, Gladys Jacobsen taught at
the one-room Halleck School (see Zimmerman easement story). She
and her husband started their married life in 1934 with a cow and
12 chickens, wedding gifts from her father. By the time they moved
to the ranch, that lively dowry had increased to 2,000 laying hens
and 32 cows, just about enough to make a living on the grassy acreage.
The couple took turns driving their pickup into town twice a week
to deliver farm-fresh eggs, while a young man would come each morning
from the creamery to pick up the twenty-four 10-gallon cans of milk
Bill put out after milking. It was hard labor, but Bill loved to work, "…and
that's why this place grew," Mrs. Leiss says. And he loved
to have her help building the dams and bridges that were necessary
for the operation. She would often pack a lunch and spend the day
in the fields, then come home with her husband to complete the daily
chores. Though Bill Leiss died in 1992, the ranch continues
to be operated by Betty Leiss Nunes and her husband George. They
oversee the three dozen beef cow-calf pairs that graze the property
today and also run their historic "A" Ranch, a dairy in
Point Reyes National Seashore. Mrs. Leiss is a matter-of-fact person, and her
reasons for selling an easement to MALT are practical ones. When
her own mother needed convalescent care, the family sold its Petaluma
ranch to finance the cost. If she herself ever has to move from
her home, Mrs. Leiss says she wants to be able to pay for the care
without sacrificing her property. But the look on her face as she surveys the land
from a hill freckled with serpentine rock and blanketed with spring's
first wildflowers-shooting stars, tidytips, buttercups, goldfields,
and poppies-tells another story. She points out the pond where Bill
liked to swim, then her own house and that of daughter Nancy, both
tucked into the valley below. Mrs. Leiss studied botany at UC Berkeley,
and though she finished her education with a teaching degree from
San Francisco State, she admits, "I've always been a flower
person." Indeed, it's hard to imagine her without this ranch-or
this lovely ranch without her.
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