At Rancho San Julian on California’s Central Coast, there are beehives to monitor, cattle to check, fences to mend, horses to feed, dry-farmed crops to watch, orchards to harvest, meals to prepare and visitors to welcome. Here, the day rarely unfolds exactly as planned.

For Elizabeth Poett, that unpredictability is part of the pull. “One of the things that I love the most about ranching, agriculture, farming, all of that, is that every single day is completely different,” she says. “You have no idea what’s gonna happen when you wake up.”

Poett is a seventh-generation rancher at Rancho San Julian, a 14,000-acre working cattle ranch in Santa Barbara County. Her family has owned and worked the land since 1837, and today the ranch is home to cattle, dry-farmed crops, kitchen gardens, honey bees, orchards, oak forests, rolling hillsides and the long-running family traditions that shape Poett’s cooking, television work and ranch-to-table events.

Elizabeth Poett: Born Into Agriculture

Poett’s agricultural origin story began almost immediately.

She was born and raised on Rancho San Julian, brought home from the hospital when she was just a day old. Her father’s side of the family had cared for the ranch for generations, and it was important to him that she grow up understanding the land and respecting what it represented.

“This ranch has meant a huge amount to my family,” Poett says. “We’ve wanted to really keep it as it is, and take care of this land.”

Still, like many people raised in family agriculture, Poett did not always imagine that ranching would be her path. She left for school, studied history in college, moved to New York, worked in the food industry, waitressed, bartended and, in her words, tried to do “everything but agriculture.”

But food kept calling her back.

Seeing the Ranch With New Eyes

While working in food, Poett began thinking more deeply about where ingredients came from and how meals were connected to land, labor and place. On one visit home, she and her father drove out to check cattle in the back of the ranch. It was March, sunny and beautiful, and something shifted.

“It was like I had seen the ranch with completely new eyes,” she says. “I could see that this is where I really wanted to be.”

Eventually, she returned full time. Her husband, Austin Campbell, is also a rancher, raised nearby in Santa Barbara County. Austin works alongside his wife serving as cattle and ranch manager at Rancho San Julian.

A Working Ranch With Many Seasons

Rancho San Julian is primarily a cattle ranch, but its agricultural life is layered. Poett describes it as a place with pockets of settlement: houses, barns, kitchen gardens and old orchards spread across the ranch, each one telling part of the family’s long history.

The ranch grows apples, pears, plums, apricots and pomegranates, with different trees ripening in different corners of the property. June brings apricots. October and November bring pomegranates. The ranch also dry farms crops such as Sudan grass and lima beans, including butter beans, a traditional crop for the area.

“We don’t have the water source that so many people do,” Poett says. “So we have to do a lot of dry farming.”

That kind of farming reflects the Central Coast itself: a place shaped by coastal air, valley heat, seasonal rhythms and careful attention to limited resources.

Santa Barbara County’s Agricultural Magic

Poett describes Santa Barbara County as “a pretty magical place,” and part of that magic comes from its microclimates. The ranch sits near the ocean, where breezes move inland, but it also feels the heat of the valleys. That mixture helps create a region where cattle, orchards, dry-farmed crops and seasonal produce can all be part of the agricultural landscape.

“We can grow incredible produce here,” Poett says. “I feel very fortunate to be part of it.”

That sense of place runs through everything she does. Poett’s work is not just about presenting ranch life beautifully. It is about explaining how deeply food is tied to geography, climate, season and stewardship.

Opening the Ranch to the Public

When Poett returned to Rancho San Julian, one of her goals was to help people understand ranching and California agriculture in a more personal way. She began hosting ranch-to-table meals, inviting guests to the ranch for tours, conversations about agriculture and long seasonal meals. She has been hosting these gatherings for nearly 16 years.

In 2018, Poett officially launched The Ranch Table, offering cooking classes, special meals and private events at Rancho San Julian’s historic adobe. The Ranch Table’s events are designed to teach visitors about food, ranch traditions, local history and Santa Barbara County agriculture, with a portion of gathering proceeds supporting ranch preservation.

“I really wanted to bring people to the ranch and be able to show them that this is real, and this really exists, and it’s very much alive and well,” Poett says.

From Rancher to Agricultural Educator

Poett’s public education work eventually grew into television. In 2021, she began hosting Ranch To Table on Magnolia Network, a cooking show that shares ranch life, seasonal recipes and the rhythms of her family’s working ranch.

For Poett, the show is another way to invite people into the conversation. Through the series, viewers see what she cooks in her home kitchen, but also the larger world that food comes from: cattle, crops, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, weather, seasons and work.

Her cookbook, The Ranch Table, was released in October 2023 and follows a year of harvests, celebrations and family dinners on the ranch.

“I really wanted to make my first book be a cookbook, but about the seasons,” she says. “A lot of people even think about California not having seasons, but California, yes, it doesn’t snow here, but we very much have seasons.”

California Grown, From Pasture to Plate

Poett’s work often returns to one central idea: people should know where their food comes from.

That message matters in California, where agriculture is both enormous and often misunderstood. The state produces more than 400 commodities, including nearly half of the nation’s vegetables and more than three-quarters of its fruits and nuts.

Poett wants people to see that abundance not as an abstraction, but as human work.

“California agriculture is so important because this is where most of your food is coming from,” she says. “This is where it is being grown. This is where it’s being raised, and there are humans that are doing it.”

She knows many people think of California through Hollywood, cities and iconic landmarks. But she wants them to also think of fields, ranches, orchards, fishing boats, farmers, ranchers and the people who make California Grown food possible.

“California is very much an ag-strong state,” she says. “And I’m proud to be part of it.”

What Consumers Don’t Always See

When visitors come to the ranch, one of the most common questions Poett hears is simple: What does your day-to-day life look like?

She understands the curiosity. Ranch life can look romantic from the outside. There are horses, wide-open landscapes, old buildings, long tables and sunset views. But the real work is often less cinematic: checking fence lines, managing animals, coordinating crops, caring for the land, fixing what breaks and constantly responding to what the day brings.

“I wish that I would ride this horse out into the sunset every single day,” she says. “But indeed I can’t. And the reality is, I am doing a lot more not-as-romantic work.”

That is the truth she wants consumers to understand about agriculture. Food does not simply appear at the grocery store. It begins with planning, labor, coordination, risk and skill.

“There’s just a lot of work that goes into something that seems simple,” Poett says. “It does not just show up at a grocery store.”

Women Have Always Been Here

For Poett, conversations about women in agriculture are both timely and deeply rooted. Women, she says, have always been part of agriculture — not as side characters, but as essential contributors.

“Women have been part of agriculture since the beginning of time,” she says. “And not only a part of it, a huge part of it.”

She understands why people may picture a rancher as a rugged Western man working with his hands. But that image has never told the whole story.

“Women are right there along with them,” she says. “I am really happy that this year is to celebrate all these women for generations, generations before me and generations after me.”

Cooking as a Way of Gathering

Poett’s connection to agriculture is not only in the pasture or field. It is also in the kitchen.

She loves cooking for a crowd, especially dishes she can prepare ahead of time: dressings, sauces and anything that lets her enjoy the people around the table instead of rushing at the last minute. She loves grilling meats, but also vegetables and artichokes, especially when summer produce arrives.

That style of cooking mirrors her larger philosophy. Food should connect people to place, but it should also bring people together. A ranch meal is not only about what is served. It is about the land it came from, the season that shaped it and the people gathered to share it.

Preserving the Past, Feeding the Future

Rancho San Julian’s long history gives Poett’s work a particular weight. She is not simply maintaining a business or building a brand. She is carrying forward a family relationship with land that has lasted for seven generations.

That preservation happens in many forms: raising cattle, arming, harvesting fruit, hosting gatherings, producing honey, sharing recipes, writing a cookbook, filming a show and inviting visitors to understand the ranch not as a backdrop, but as a living agricultural place.

For Poett, the mission is clear. She wants people to come closer to their food, to see California agriculture as real and human, and to understand that behind every simple ingredient is a landscape, a season and a person doing the work.

Or, as she puts it: “There are people that are working so hard to produce really good food.”

At Rancho San Julian, the table begins long before the meal. It begins in the pasture, the orchard, the field, the kitchen garden and the daily work of caring for land that has fed generations — and, if Poett has anything to say about it, will continue to do so for generations to come.

This article was written by Alison Needham (@atable_defloured) for CA GROWN. Images by James Collier, Paprika Studios.