Seventy years a flower farm, and now ours to care for.

Two acres on a hilltop in North County San Diego, slowly being regenerated by the family that lives on it.

The Spanish-tile ranch house at Tradewinds Ranch under a mackerel sky at sunset, palms along the ridge above a wheat-colored field

The Schleicher family walking hand in hand through the grass at Tradewinds Ranch at golden hour

The family who became its next caretakers

Tradewinds Ranch spent more than seventy years as a flower farm before our family moved here in 2022. We are the Schleichers, raising four kids on ground that has grown things for far longer than we have been on it.

The work is ordinary, constant, and important. Clearing, planting, fencing, learning what brings life back to the soil and nutrients back to our food. Regenerative agriculture is the way, and we're learning every day.

Stewardship

Caring for the land, and every life on it.

Stewardship here means the soil first: feeding it, covering it, letting it rest, and watching what returns when we do. The animals graze it, the compost feeds it, and the water we put on it stays where we want it. Everything that lives on this hill is part of the same system, and our job is to leave it better than we found it.

01Soil built back with compost, cover, and rest

02Animals rotated through the fields, feeding the ground as they go

03Habitat left standing for the hawks, bees, and everything else here first

04Nothing hauled away that the hill can use, including your pumpkins

The animals who finish the season

Goats, chickens, and a guardian dog who takes the whole hill personally. The kids raise them, bottle-feed them, and name every one.

Three of the Schleicher kids holding baby goats by the fence line at Tradewinds Ranch

A baby goat nuzzling the ranch's white livestock guardian dog on the tile patio

Our son in a straw hat and cowboy boots holding a buff hen outside the coop

What comes next

Pumpkin porches are the first thing we have offered, not the last. Holiday styling follows in December, and growing our own pumpkins is part of the ranch's next chapter. We will always tell you honestly where things come from.

Reserve your porch Read the FAQ

Rows of young pumpkins growing in the field at Tradewinds Ranch with the ranch house and palms behind at dusk

Freshly listed rows of red dirt at the ranch, waiting to be planted

A toddler in rain boots walking down the wet dirt road toward the tractor

Sunrise over the fields at the end of a growing season, a worker clearing the last of the rows

The end of a season, and the ground being made ready for the next one.

Boots of the whole family lined up on the old brick patio at Tradewinds Ranch, the baby standing barefoot on a pair

↑