Greg Schmid, with his wife Tammy, are the owners of the Schmid Ranch located southeast of the City of Davis along Putah Creek and have been conservation easement partners with YLT for over 20 years.
Greg hails from southern San Joaquin County. His family was not involved with farming, but Greg found interest in the field early on, especially livestock, by participating in the local 4-H. In the late 1970’s a friend provided him the opportunity to move to Yolo County and manage farmland under the umbrella of the well-known Anderson Farms.
Greg worked as a farm manager for Anderson Farms until the mid-1980’s when he branched out into contract farming for an institutional investor. The land he farmed included much of what is now the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area. It was during this time that Greg made the connections that led him to lease and buy land for his own row-crop farms and for his own grass-fed livestock operation to fulfill his childhood dream.
Greg became aware of the Yolo Land Trust and its work to conserve Yolo County’s farmland in the late 1990’s. In 1998, Greg partnered with YLT, the City of Davis and the CA Department of Conservation to record an agricultural conservation easement on a 780-acre farm southeast of Davis. Greg saw partnering with YLT as a positive business decision and liked the idea of the property remaining in agriculture into the future.
In 2008, Greg and Tammy partnered with YLT in collaboration with the Yolo Habitat Conservancy, to record Swainson’s hawk mitigation easements on their home ranch. The purpose of these easements is to preserve habitat for Swainson’s hawks, a threatened species in California.
Now mostly retired, Greg spends his days on their home ranch enjoying the constantly required landscaping that comes with the territory. He explained, “There are always weeds that need pulling.” But farming still calls him so he still does a bit of farming on the side. When asked about succession and the future of young farmers in Yolo County, Greg explained it is a challenging situation because young farmers are now competing at a global scale. People are looking for customers online or through delivery services, far different from when he first started farming. “New customer, new deal, new trees have been planted,” Greg states. Pondering if he would start over in today’s new environment, Greg says “I think I would be tempted.”
The Yolo Land Trust is grateful to Greg and Tammy Schmid for their long commitment to conserving farmland in Yolo County, and we look forward to visiting their home ranches again this year.
