Drive through the gates of Rancho Santa Clara del Norte, just 10 miles from California’s Ventura coastline, and you’ll feel like you’ve traveled back in time. A bright-white, 19th-century farmhouse commands the center of a half-circular gravel driveway. Towering palm trees rise from a verdant, well-manicured lawn, dwarfing a carefully curated assortment of cacti growing on the left and a meticulously maintained English garden with radiant roses on the right. Every corner of the property tells a story, and it’s easy to see that the land is very much alive.
Thomas Lloyd-Butler, a descendant of the family that started the ranch and a part owner of the land today, tells The Rooted Journal that his grandmother’s ancestors founded it in around 1864, building upon a grazing operation that had been part of the 14,000-acre Mexican land grant dating to 1837. Before that, the area sustained a large population of Native Americans; its fertile lands were the original home of a Chumash settlement occupied by the Ventureño tribe. “You can imagine how vibrant it was and what it was able to support,” Thomas, who goes by Tom, says, speaking of the area.
From top: “My grandfather raised Belgian draft horses and mules well into the 1930s. At one point, there were about 120 heads of those on the property used to harvest and haul the lima bean crop,” Tom says. The farmhouse circa 1895; it was built upon an old adobe. The rare jelly palm planted at the time suggests a “thoughtfulness and intention about the way they built the garden with limited plant material,” Tom says. Weiler Shafer in front of the old almond processing facility.
Tom honors the connection between the area and its Native American legacy with respect, as each generation of farmers at Rancho Santa Clara del Norte integrated learnings from those before them to honor the diversity of the land. He witnessed his father’s efforts to do that firsthand; James Lloyd-Butler was as much a part of the land as the crops themselves, picking walnuts — a product Ventura County was well-known for at the time — from an early age. As proof, his initials are carved into a pillar within the farm’s walnut dryer, along with those of many still-remembered ranch employees.
As he settled into farm management in the 1950s looking after the ranch with his own father, James combined the historical knowledge of his predecessors with his education in soil science and entomology to cultivate prolific crops of avocados, lemons, and other fruits. His father’s studies “kept his mind open,” Tom says. “He understood the importance of healthy soil and was curious about balanced ecosystems and insect populations.”
But when James decided to manage the ranch full-time in the late 1970s, the pressures of running a business ran counter to what he had learned. Farming is a business, after all, and the need to increase yields and expand acreage in the 1970s and 1980s led to more chemical-based farming and to the removal of hedgerows impinging on the lemon groves. This was common for a lot of farmers in the area who shifted their focus to monocrops and emphasized yields and volume production. The unintended consequences showed up years later. When it came to fruit, Tom says, “quality was reduced by wind damage, an unbalanced insect population resulted in greater pesticide use, and an explosion in rodent populations came as a result of not having raptors to eat them.” And below ground, soil health was dilapidated. Where a lot of farmers would dig in and try to solve these issues with conventional methods, his father slowly returned to the ethos that greater symbiosis with nature was a more efficient way to farm. While he had to straddle both approaches in tandem, James first resumed mulching and planting cover crops to retain water, reduce respiration, and regulate soil temperatures, seeing the environment eventually return to a healthier and more biodiverse state toward the end of his life.
James Lloyd-Butler lived long enough to see the rancho return to regenerative roots (painting by Alastair Adams).
James lived until 2022, but Tom says 2016 marked a more profound shift in focus at Rancho Santa Clara del Norte, when James collaborated with Dr. Gordon Frankie, a professor at Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, to plant an experimental habitat garden. The garden was designed to draw native pollinators into the avocado groves and help return the land to a more balanced ecosystem. Near one of the cottages where he often stays today, Tom remembers his father “came out on his electric scooter and was just amazed at the amount of insects and bird life” teeming in the pollinator garden. Memories like these incentivized Tom to accelerate the shift in approach he had started a few years earlier while continuing to honor his father’s legacy as a legendary farmer.
From top: Tom in front of the stumpery, a Victorian concept that encourages wood to decay adding fungal support to the soil. The sprawling lawns and historical farmhouse as they are today. A young James Lloyd-Butler with several family members, including a brother who is now over 100 years old.
Today, under the guidance of Tom, his two sons, and his two nephews, Jamie and Weiler Shafer, along with ranch manager Mike Sullivan and foreman Arturo Romo, Rancho Santa Clara del Norte thrives primarily as an avocado farm, growing around three to four different cultivars on 150 acres of fruit along with a variety of citrus. “Adopting a model of care that goes back long before the Colonial period,” Tom says, the rancho boasts four different biomes: orchards, pasture, nearby riparian land adjacent to the Santa Clara River, and gardens — all of which encourage biodiversity. “In our gardens, we have 6,000 trees and plants representing over 700 different taxa. There are Japanese maples, collections of conifers, palms, and cycads. A small grove of Wollemi pine, a hardy plant that’s survived for 200 million years, which we just rediscovered in 1998, tells an interesting story about how hardy nature is, and how little we know about her,” Tom told an audience at a recent soil workshop. At the event, many farmers, new and old, gathered to learn about the future of regenerative practices, which can help farmers save money by reducing chemically based inputs while producing stronger, more nutritious crops.
1. Just some of the 126 species of newly grown, regionally appropriate, drought-tolerant plants that attract pollinators with their flowers.
2. Rancho Santa Clara del Norte thrives primarily as an avocado farm, growing around three to four different cultivars.
In its current form, the rancho is a living lab where Tom applies lessons he’s gleaned from his visits to farms in England, Scotland, and Holland, along with insights from writers like Gabe Brown, a leader in soil science who founded the regenerative agricultural consulting company Understanding Ag to help farmers improve their soil health. He jokes that his father played his cards close when Tom was away pursuing a career in finance, but his recent return has modernized the family’s commitment to the future of the rancho, focusing on what he calls “the three layers: sky, earth, and dirt.”
From top: Lupe has worked at the rancho for five generations of owners. A small garden shed featuring original terra cotta tiles from the main adobe house. Foreman Arturo Romo in his workshop. Weiler takes a closer look at his prized Japanese yuzu lemons, an umami variety he started using while working as a line cook. Inside the Catholic chapel. The cactus garden started by James with a small collection of plants he gave his wife (chapel & cactus photographs by Austin Brown).
Tom’s nephew, Weiler, puts this in context as we tour the farm, pointing to the thriving hedgerows that provide an airy windbreak for all the orchards and habitat for birds. “These windrows are so important for commercial operations such as this. We’ve had very intense wind events in the past and they will continue. The eucalyptus, casuarinas, and the cork oaks help protect [the crops] and us from the elements,” he says. On top of the earth are newly grown, regionally appropriate, drought-tolerant plants that attract pollinators with their flowers — 126 species, to be exact, verified by an ongoing study into pollinator diversity led by Frankie. And in the dirt at the rancho is a stumpery, one of the more novel features on the land and a Victorian concept that mimics the natural order of decay of wood and branches, adding fungal support to the soil to help plants absorb micronutrients. These mycelia can stretch over long distances, creating a diverse and vibrant microscopic fungal community. Learning how this all works together shows that the team at Rancho Santa Clara del Norte is getting it right.
Next steps include cultivating cover crops throughout the property supported with a generous grant from Elevated Foods. While the ranch has utilized cover crops in the past, the renewed effort is more comprehensive. First, new cover crops will utilize a more complex mixture of plant material capable of fixing both nitrogen and carbon into the soil. Second, cover crops will remain on the soil through every season instead of being disked into the soil, which means their living roots will sustain critically important soil microorganisms year-round, enabling them to support crops naturally and help reduce chemical and other conventional inputs.
As a leader, Tom embodies hope for the future while tapping into generational wisdom and a treasured past. Addressing the crowd at the soil workshop, he asserted the idea of “just do something,” with snark inherited from his mother. “She’d say, ‘Don’t be afraid! If you make a mistake, rip it out.’” She nurtured many of the gardens near the farmhouse at the top of the drive, a testament to the family’s spirit and the rewards that come from risk and experimentation. This attitude demonstrates how regenerative practices can rejuvenate the land, bring profits, and infuse creativity and integrity into a farm like Rancho Santa Clara del Norte that serves as an example to others.
