Tucked in beneath the spreading arms of a hillside live oak tree, a dozen newborn Angus calves are enjoying nap time on a September morning at California’s Rancho San Julian.
“See that one heifer in there with them?” Elizabeth Poett indicates an older cow in the shade of the oak. “She’s the designated babysitter. I just love seeing that, the way the herd takes care of its next generation. It’s the same thing, year after year.”
Generational traditions hold vast importance for Ms. Poett: She represents the seventh generation of a family that originally began San Julian in 1837, with a 48,000-acre Spanish land grant to her ancestor José de la Guerra. Leaving the ranch after high school to attend college in Ohio and work in New York and Los Angeles, she returned 15 years ago to help carry on the family’s longstanding business, assisting her father with the cattle operation and helping preserve the 14,000-acre ranch, which is about an hour west of Santa Barbara and remains dedicated to her dad’s original pasture-raised beef vision. She married a like-minded local ranching scion and is raising two boys in a historic ranch home.
Along with helping run the cattle business, she’s now the doyenne of an enterprise, “The Ranch Table,” devoted to sharing the styles and foods of traditional California cattle country celebrations, of which there are many—following branding, calving, gathers (cattle round-ups), fall cider pressing, and other ranch activities, along with universal holidays such as New Year’s and Easter. Ms. Poett has a Magnolia Network TV show, “Ranch to Table”; welcomes groups to the property for festive events at which they experience not only the ways of farm and ranch life, but the beauty and value of human gatherings; and has just released a lavishly illustrated, celebration-oriented cookbook, “The Ranch Table” (William Morrow).
“I’m a big believer in connecting people to the land, and everything that grows on it, and the importance of both those things,” Ms. Poett said.
Coming Back to the Ranch
Her corn-silk hair cut mid-back length, and her denim-clad, sinewy frame borne of ranch life, Ms. Poett is outspoken in her reverence for tradition. She and her family pronounce the name of the ranch in the Spanish way: “sahn hul-y-ahn.”She grows heirloom tomatoes, chiles, melons, corn, and pumpkins in the garden behind the original ranch house. Nearby is an old apricot orchard, and a 6-foot barbecue pit and grill adjoin the picnic area for preparation of the Central Coast’s traditional oak-roasted Santa Maria tri-tip steak.
Tradition and history ride the breeze here, but Ms. Poett ventured far out into the modern world to catalyze her eventual return. She attended Kenyon College in Ohio (“I got a degree in communications, no ag studies there!”), studied in Spain for a while (“I fell in love with the culture and the food”), and then moved to Manhattan, spending several years in Greenwich Village in a tiny flat trying her hand at writing.
That wasn’t quite as familially exotic as it may seem: Her mother was the editor of The Village Voice in the mid-’70s and founded an independent weekly paper in Santa Barbara after moving west with Ms. Poett’s dad, Jim Poett, California’s first organic beef producer.
Relocating to Los Angeles after a few years in New York, Ms. Poett found herself heeding her dad’s requests to head north on weekends to help manage the cattle operation. “There I was in LA, and my friends would say on Thursday, ‘So, you going to see the Foo Fighters at Hollywood Bowl Saturday?’ I’d say, ‘Well, no, I’m heading back up to Santa Barbara for the fall branding,’ which would always be followed by a traditional barbecue. They’d give me a strange look and shrug.
An Invitation to the Table
Among Ms. Poett’s many jobs at the ranch has been selling the family’s beef at the Santa Barbara farmers market.“Those are very sophisticated consumers,” Ms. Poett said. “‘Are you organic?’ they’d ask. I’d tell them it’s a much bigger question than that. We focus on what we’re proud of, what we can stand behind, such as careful grazing rotation to preserve the pastures.
“They’d say, ‘Can we come visit and see?’ I thought, ‘Why not?’”
That was the genesis of Ms. Poett’s various enterprises promoting the San Julian lifestyle. Her dinners take place beneath a massive grape arbor beside the original home ranch, the oldest section of which dates to 1806, before San Julian’s 1837 creation. Long, slightly sloping porches adjoin the exquisitely evocative, Dutch gable-roofed white adobe and clapboard house, one of the oldest in California. Sturdy oaks and sycamores lift their shoulders high above the house and yard. Weathered gray picnic tables can seat up to 90 guests—a number that might have been likely at a gather a century ago, say, when ranch life was a communal affair in which neighbors, relatives, guests, and workers all pitched in for brandings, gathers, and such. (And still do today.) A spring-fed freshet burbles beside the arbor patio. Old quilts cover the mattresses on brass bedsteads in the house.
The quiet drive out front is lined with huge, shaggy eucalyptus trees that lead around a curve to the stables opposite the house. In the 19th century, this exact lane was the stage road between Santa Barbara and Lompoc.
But as pastorally glamorous as it may seem, Ms. Poett says there are stressful days when she and her husband, Austin Campbell, and their two boys return to their house as grumpy as any modern family. Her husband may have spent an afternoon corralling wayward steers; she may have devoted a difficult morning to nursing a calf born too early; the boys may have endured a testy day with math at school; and all four might have had to head out to a distant pasture for a couple hours to repair a fenceline on which an ancient oak unexpectedly dumped a limb the size of an elephant. And their rural cell service might be balky, so no text chats with friends and neighbors.
“Unlike most people, we can’t just order pizza delivery—no Grubhub or Doordash out here. So I’ll cook up a favorite dinner—maybe weeknight steaks with sweet onions—and when we sit down together, the day’s issues fade quickly,” Ms. Poett said. “Food fixes every problem.”
And so she urges all to realize that celebratory gatherings need not require massive effort, nor a centuries-old ranch setting, nor even a table set with white linen, silver, and porcelain.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s the back of a pickup truck, or a beach picnic with a foldout table and really good hot dogs,” Ms. Poett said. “Look back on your life and recall the meals that made the biggest difference in your own story—often they were much simpler than you think.”
Thus her new book, which is organized into a baker’s dozen seasonal events, from a beach cookout (melon with lime and chile, grilled fish tacos, and grilled summer squash) to a tailgate dinner after a gather (avocado dip, beef chili and cornbread—the cornbread, of course, is made in a cast-iron skillet). Almost all the ingredients for her recipes are widely available, though she does prefer sustainable, local provender such as the free-range beef produced by San Julian’s 700 black Angus mother cows.
“Honestly, I enjoy cooking for 50 people more than just four,” she reported cheerfully. “The more people at the table, the more joy I feel.”
“Making a meal, inviting people over, and eating together is the best way to build community and show appreciation for the people in my life,” she writes in the introduction to her new book. “Keep it simple, keep it fun, and enjoy the moments you have with the people you love in the places you care about.”
On Holiday at Rancho San Julian
Sparkling crystal, candlelight gleaming on porcelain dinnerware, long feast tables with festive holiday runners—holiday gatherings at Rancho San Julian are not down-home outdoor affairs. But they do still focus on simple verities of American life stretching back generations.
Ms. Poett saves favorite holiday cards from past years and hangs them in her windows for decoration. She often convenes a holiday baking party before Christmas, at which she and neighbors and their kids cook up treats such as sugar cookies, caramels, and her mother-in-law’s “cowboy brittle.” Then she packs these delights into tins and distributes them to family, friends, and neighbors—who are all doing the same with their own treasures.
New Year’s Eve brings out standing rib roast with horseradish, oysters Rockefeller, a green salad, and classic popovers following her dad’s recipe. Ranch life does not favor sleeping in, even on holidays, so everyone rings in the New Year at 9 p.m., gathering at a bonfire outside.
For others planning a holiday gathering, Ms. Poett suggests simple, thoughtful touches: having non-alcoholic drinks available in addition to your signature holiday cocktail; using place cards at the table, “something that shows the guests you thought about each one before they arrived.” But her overarching advice complements her philosophy that entertaining need not be arduous: “Don’t stress. It does not need to be perfect. People are just excited to be able to be together, so take the time to enjoy the occasion with friends and family.”
