Television Now Serving ‘Ranch to Table’ from Santa Barbara
Elizabeth Poett’s Life on Her Historic Family Property Now Featured Weekly on Magnolia Network
Prior to the drought that kicked off nearly a decade ago, Elizabeth Poett was building a beef empire. Every week, often with her two tiny kids in tow, she was selling Rancho San Julian meats — raised by her father, Jim Poett; and her husband, Austin Campbell — at three farmers’ markets in Santa Barbara as well as the big one in Santa Monica while supplying butcher shops across Los Angeles.
“Things were going really well,” said Poett, the seventh generation of the famed De la Guerra family to call the 14,000-acre ranch between Gaviota and Lompoc home. “I was busy.”
But then, after four years of steadily growing her business, it stopped raining. “We really had to focus on our mother cows, which are born and raised and live on the ranch their entire lives — those are our genetics,” explained Poett, who is the daughter of this newspaper’s editor-in-chief and co-owner, Marianne Partridge. “We couldn’t keep extra cattle on the ranch. There just wasn’t enough space for me to be raising more animals.” She kept selling in Santa Barbara but had to cut out the entire L.A. market.
