The day after my 50th birthday, I decided to treat myself to a trip to West Marin County. January in the San Francisco Bay Area can have days that explain the high cost of living. Really too warm and beautiful.

The invitation had come from Phyllis Faber, a publisher, biologist, and activist with the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, an organization that has been helping to keep West Marin a pastoral paradise, and a place for sustainable local food production, for several decades. She had asked if we could come out and do an interview with Sharon Doughty, a dairy farmer whose family had been involved in farming in Point Reyes for a hundred years.

We were joined by a new friend of CDS, Amir Terkel, who volunteered to assist with shooting some video of our planned interview. It turned into a wonderful tour of West Marin agricultural history, current issues, and future prospects. We created a film from the interview. (View Film)

What we learned from our talks with Phyllis and Sharon was that the struggle to sustain Marin Agriculture has its roots in the sixties when the county considered creating freeways across Marin and planning a town of 125,000 people at Tomales Bay. Environmentalists joined with ranchers to oppose the plans. A second crisis occurred with the creation of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Point Reyes National Seashore as many ranchers faced the complete loss of their land. Lobbying efforts, including pleas from Sharon’s grandmother, led to a “lease back” arrangement with ranchers that made agriculture part of the ongoing sustainance of the Point Reyes peninsula.

Since the seventies concerns about sustaining water quality of Tomales Bay for fishing and oyster beds had forced water quality standards to be adopted that forced many ranchers out of business. As it turned out, the one’s that survived have slowly moved toward environmentally compatible practices, and for economic as well as environmental reasons, organic production.

Sharon’s courage and determination, having survived being widowed twice, and now facing a health struggle of her own, was a tremendous inspiration.