Paradise Valley Ranch, one of the oldest organic farms in the state, became the first ranch in Bolinas to be protected under an agricultural conservation easement—worth over $5 million—by the Marin Agricultural Land Trust.
Peter Martinelli, who took over his family’s business, then known as Fresh Run Farm, in 1999, is the third generation of his family to tend to the land. He uses about 22 of the ranch’s 240 acres to grow over 40 crops, selling to restaurants like Chez Panisse and Quince. Goats and sheep graze other portions of the ranch, and there are orchards, too. More than half of the property consists of pristine riparian and woodland habitats that support rare and native species like the northern spotted owl and the California red-legged frog, a press release from MALT stated.
Half the cost of the easement came from $1 million donated by members and Bolinas residents, along with a $1.5 million grant from the California State Wildlife Conservation Board.
The Martinelli family donated the price of the other half, to ensure the land secured permanent protection.
“I think Bolinas was once a very vibrant agricultural region. Even when I was a kid, there were a number of dairies operating in the watershed,” Mr. Martinelli said. “For me, this MALT easement is the beginning of—hopefully—an effort to protect the entire greenbelt in the village of Bolinas. There are a few properties currently at risk.”
Development pressure is intense in Marin, but it’s particularly fierce around scenic Bolinas, just 25 miles from San Francisco. Jamison Watts, the executive director of the land trust, said the Martinellis approached MALT in 2010 about selling the conservation easement. (He added that they dedicated their donation toward the easement to their grandparents, who bought the land in the 1940s.)
The newly protected land—now one of just eight MALT easements used for row cropping, among 75 easements in total—is fed by Pine Gulch Creek, which carries populations of threatened steelhead trout and endangered coho salmon into the Bolinas Lagoon.
Next year, Mr. Martinelli says a water storage project he and two other farms have been collaborating on for almost 15 years looks like it will finally be built, after securing roughly 10 permits.
The Pine Gulch project involves banking creek water during the rainy season for use in the summer, and the cohort of farms—including Dennis Dierks’s Paradise Valley Farms and Warren Weber’s Star Route Farms—have partnered with agencies like the National Park Services and the Marin Resource Conservation District to ensure the farms will benefit, while the fish remain unharmed.
Peter Martinelli speaks about the conservation easement for Paradise Valley Ranch at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 3 on KWMR’s Epicenter.