Palo Alto environmental group buys three farms for $7.8 million

Hoping to restore wildlife and preserve farming in a part of the Bay Area that has seen growing development pressure in recent years, a Palo Alto environmental group announced Monday that it has completed the purchase of 668 acres of farmland along the border of Santa Clara and San Benito counties for $7.8 million.

The three contiguous properties are located on the east side of Highway 101 about 3 miles south of Gilroy along the Pajaro River.

The Peninsula Open Space Trust, the non-profit group that bought the farms from willing sellers, said it plans to restore areas along the river for birds, fish and other wildlife, while continuing to lease much of the acreage for farming.

Since 1977, the trust, which has been funded over the years by large Silicon Valley donors like the Packard, Hewlett and Moore foundations and other wealthy Bay Area benefactors, has preserved 93,000 acres of open space — an area three times the size of the city of San Francisco — mostly in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.

Although some of the lands it has preserved have become parks and open space preserves on the San Mateo County coast and in the Skyline-Summit area, the group is increasingly buying farms and ranches in and around southern Santa Clara County. Those include properties in Coyote Valley south of San Jose, and larger areas, like parts of Sargent Ranch along Highway 101 south of Gilroy. The goal is to keep properties on Silicon Valley’s southern edges as working agricultural land.

“There’s a lot of development pressure along the 101 corridor from Santa Clara County to San Benito County,” said Marian Vernon, wildlife linkages program manager with the Peninsula Open Space Trust.

“Our concern is that increased development there could make it more difficult for animals to move from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Diablo Range. We want to retain the connection. Preserving undeveloped open space for both agriculture and wildlife habitat is super valuable.”

The Peninsula Open Space Trust, an environmental group based in Palo Alto, announced Monday Oct. 6, 2025 that it has purchased three farms totaling 668 acres for $7.8 million about three miles south of Gilroy along the Pajaro River near the Santa Clara-San Benito county line. (Photo: Peninsula Open Space Trust)

The three adjacent properties are the 185-acre Bloomfield South Farm, located in Santa Clara County, which the trust purchased for $2.4 million; the 318-acre Ojeda Ranch, in San Benito County, which the trust purchased for $4.7 million; and the 165-acre Gonzales Ranch, which straddles the border of both counties, and the trust purchased for $665,000.

All the funding came from the trust’s donors, Vernon said.

The first two properties were purchased from farming families. The third was purchased from the Nature Conservancy, another conservation group that bought it from farmers in 2012, restored a 130-foot buffer along the river for wildlife, and rented the rest to a rancher who grazes the property with beef cattle.

Tomatoes and hay currently grow on the Ojeda Ranch. On the Bloomfield South Farm, celery, beets, snap peas, cilantro, and dill are grown.

Kathy Fehlman, whose family owned Ojeda Ranch for 30 years, said she is pleased it will continue as open space, wildlife habitat and agriculture.

“It’s an enduring legacy that is a really great outcome for everyone,” she said.

Vernon said the trust will work for the next several years to develop restoration plans for the properties to enhance wetlands, encourage trees and other plants, and make the landscape more attractive for wildlife, while also maintaining rental agreements with farmers currently working the properties.

During wet winters, the Pajaro River floods frequently — both near its headwaters in the area where the properties were purchased and farther downstream near Watsonville, where the most recent flood in March 2023 displaced nearly 3,000 people, and caused damage to 273 homes and more than 600 other buildings, including classrooms at Pajaro Middle School.

“This area forms a seasonal lake in wet winters,” Vernon said of the three farms the trust purchased. “The water sits there in the flood plain. If it was paved over with concrete it would send that water downstream and exacerbate the flooding in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.”

The area also is populated with considerable wildlife, she added, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats and other animals, along with the occasional steelhead trout.

“Every time I go out there I see northern harriers,” she said. “There are kestrels, barn owls, red-winged blackbirds. Red-tailed hawks. It can be very wet and green out there. In the winter sometimes there are ducks.”

Finding a balance between development, farming and wildlife preservation has become an increasingly high-profile issue in the southern Santa Clara-northern San Benito County area in recent years.

Last November, voters in San Benito County, a mostly rural area where towns like Hollister and San Juan Bautista are becoming bedroom communities for Silicon Valley commuters, approved Measure A, a slow-growth measure aimed at curbing Silicon Valley sprawl.

Under Measure A, approval by San Benito County voters is now required before land zoned for farms or ranches there can be developed. It was endorsed by Save Mount Diablo, Green Foothills and other environmental groups, and opposed by the San Benito County Farm Bureau, developers and some labor unions.

Meanwhile, in June, the Peninsula Open Space Trust spent $25.1 million to buy 2,467 acres of Sargent Ranch, a vast 6,500-acre property south of Gilroy where the owners, Sargent Ranch Partners LLC, based in San Diego, had proposed to build a gravel quarry, sparking a protracted land use battle. Last October, the trust also spent $15.6 million to purchase another 1,340 acres of the ranch from the investor group. It now owns nearly two-thirds of the entire property and is in discussions about the future of the rest.