Farming for the Future at Jalama Canyon Ranch

When imagining the quintessential Central Coast spread, it’s hard to conjure up something much more bucolic than Jalama Canyon Ranch, 1,000 acres of seemingly perfect beauty located a couple of turns off of Highway 1 about 10 minutes south of Lompoc.

Near the bottom of the property, babbling brooks trickle by rustic cabins, a tall barn, and barbecue pits, with grapevines and olive groves nearby. Cradled by hillsides of aromatic sagebrush, meadows of green and yellow are textured by weathered boulders, dark clumps of elderberry, and bushy fingers of willow, with foxes, wild turkey, and raptors at play. Atop the 1,600-foot ridge, past rare tanbark oaks and mossy live oaks fed by steady springs, the views spread over squatty manzanita and wind-whipped monkeyflower in every direction: from the space discs of Vandenberg Space Force Base to the coastal peaks of the Santa Ynez Mountains, inland toward Figueroa Mountain, and then back through the Santa Ynez Valley, settling on the chalky face of a diatomaceous earth mine just one rise away.

But recent tours through the property aren’t focused on such pastoral pleasantries. Rather, a visit today quickly turns into an exposé of everything that’s wrong with Jalama Canyon Ranch: the ever-eroding hillsides, the gaps in foliage between creek beds and oak forests, the milk thistle and mustard overcoming native grasses, and, perhaps most of all, the property’s underused potential for, well, almost everything, from appropriate agriculture and ecological restoration to educational opportunity and economic profitability.