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Pozzi Ranch, Tomales Today, that spit of land and the surrounding acreage have reverted to bucolic pasture. Sheep and cattle graze on abundant grasses. But the extensive shoreline frontage that allows panoramic views of Tomales Bay and the proximity to nearby cities gave the property extremely high development potential. In the summer of 2005, MALT purchased an agricultural conservation easement on the property, enabling the Pozzis to purchase the ranchlands they had leased for the past four years and permanently protecting the land for agriculture. MALT paid the appraised easement value of $4.1 million. The California State Coastal Conservancy provided a grant of $1,450,000. The remainder was raised from MALT members and supporters. “The Conservancy has been working with MALT to protect Marin County farmland for about 20 years,” said Sam Schuchat, Executive Officer of the Coastal Conservancy. “I can’t think of a more productive partnership.” Both Martin and Sally Pozzi were born and raised in farming families. Sally’s Southern California family has grown citrus and avocado crops for five generations. The Pozzi family, too, has deep roots in family farming. Martin’s great grandparents settled in Occidental in 1880. Martin grew up just one half mile from his new ranch on his family’s home place—150 acres purchased in 1915, where they ran a dairy and, later, a beef and sheep operation. Martin and Sally have two children, and the ranching life is a big part of their upbringing, just as it was for their parents. Like a lot of seven-year-old boys, Steven Pozzi builds trucks from Lego® blocks. But on Steven’s vehicles, the yellow blocks become bales of hay. He also imagines a tractor, a real one, and describes how he’d use it to cut thistles, scrape the ranch roads, and herd sheep. While he’s talking, he picks a bouquet of wildflowers for his mother: clarkia, blue-eyed grass, a dandelion or two. Regina, nine years old, loves to read, even while touring her parents’ ranch in the back of the family SUV. Regina’s in 4-H, and she’s raising a calf and lambs which she showed for the first time at the county fair this year. But she has little patience for 14 llamas grazing near a flock of sheep. The gangly animals were brought in to keep the coyotes at bay. “All they do is spit, eat, and have more llamas,” she says, a trace of rural practicality in her young voice. In fact, their parents say that the Pozzi children are actively involved in everything having to do with the ranch, whether it’s fixing fences, delivering hay, or attending meetings of the Marin County Board of Supervisors when agricultural issues are being discussed. When it’s shearing time, the kids are up at daybreak, helping to sort the animals, even though the market for sheep’s wool is so bad that Martin says he gives it away. “Recently, we’ve received a fair price for the meat. We supplement that income with our beef herd and our hay business.” If succeeding in agriculture today means knitting together a combination of businesses, the Pozzis are willing to do it. “We’ve done a lot to survive,” Sally says. “We’re not afraid to try things.” But coming up with the money to purchase the valuable land they’d been leasing would have been an almost impossible challenge. “The landowners wanted to sell the land to us,” Martin says. “They could have put it on the market at a price that was unreachable for us, but they saw how hard we work on agricultural issues. But if you don’t have organizations like MALT, the resources aren’t there for a young person to buy land. We feel blessed that, in this day and age, we were able to purchase this property. This transaction would not have transpired without MALT.” Sally couldn’t agree more. “We’re so fortunate
for the landowners [wanting to sell to us] and that MALT was able
to work with us. I wake up and I think I’m the luckiest person
on the face of the earth.”
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