 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||
|
Moore Ranch, Nicasio Valley The barnyard mud is just about dry on an early spring day at the Nicasio Valley ranch that cattleman Rich Gallagher has called home since his birth there almost 70 years ago. The sun is warming up the old hay fields, too, and the views of Big Rock Ridge, Mt. Tamalpais, Black Mountain, and Hicks Mountain are crystal clear. After a long, wet winter, “the cricks are runnin’ good,” says Rich. “It’s my favorite time of year.” The youngest of nine children born to descendants of Irish immigrants,
by 1999 Rich was one of numerous heirs to the landmark 1000-acre
property located at the intersection of Nicasio Valley and Point
Reyes-Petaluma roads. Faced with distributing the family assets
among so many, a sale became inevitable. “I hated to sell
it,” Rich recalls, “but I went along with the rest of
them. Being it had to be sold, there couldn’t be a better
guy than Jim.” In a partnership that seems to sit well with both past and present owners, Rich Gallagher retains ownership of the ranch’s cattle business. “I have a deep appreciation of both the challenges and the pleasures of ranching,” Jim says. As a young man, he worked and lived on ranches throughout the West, and his parents owned a cow/calf operation for several years. “But Rich is as much a part of this place as that rock,” Jim Moore says, pointing to one of the sandstone outcroppings that characterize the landscape. “We want to make sure he can do what he’s been doing since day one.” The land was once part of the Rancho Nicasio land grant, initially presented to Don Pablo de la Guerra and John Cooper. James Black purchased a large part of it in the mid-19th century and established a tenant ranch. The owners from 1881–1950 were all heirs of the Pacheco family of Ignacio. It was purchased in 1950 by the Gallagher family who had leased it since 1923. The Gallaghers operated one of the biggest dairies at the time, milking about 150 cows. In those days, availability of home-grown feed dictated the cycle of the dairy’s year. Cows bred in the winter were dry during pregnancy through the summer months when the hay was growing. The grain was harvested in the fall about the same time the new calves were born. The milking cycle could begin once again, and young Rich and his brothers and sisters would be put to work. Jim Moore was born and raised on the eastern slope of Colorado where his family has resided for generations. For Jim, that rural lifestyle would be short-lived. “I woke up in the summers to the sound of hammers,” he said, remembering the march of suburbs across the countryside, until the former working landscape was almost unrecognizable. It was this early experience and a recognition of the national threat to farmland that helped the Moores make up their minds to sell an easement. “That’s what drove the MALT decision,” Jim says, “You philosophically have to want to tie up a piece of property in perpetuity.” Rich runs the beef business in conjunction with one on the historic F Ranch, formerly owned by the family and now operated under a lease with the National Park Service. Meanwhile, the Moores are working on improvements to the barns and outbuildings, hoping to some day move to the ranch from their home in San Francisco. Upgrading historic springs and distributing water more evenly will provide diversification options in the future. “We’ll maintain the beef operation as Rich wants it for as long as he wants to do it. From then, we’ll see what happens.” Like the original founders of MALT, these two men from very different
worlds have found common ground in caring for land that in many
ways has changed very little over the years. “This is an amazing
piece of property,” Jim says, “this is the old California.”
Ellen Straus, MALT Co-founder Home | Site Map | Terms of Use |
