Drive a few miles south of Half Moon Bay, then a few miles inland from Highway 1 and – if you have a detailed map of the region – you’ll find Elkus Ranch. This scenic 600-acre learning center provides hands-on experience to youth and children with special needs living in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Students come from crowded cities into a world they may have only read about in books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Traveling on the one-lane dirt road neighboring expansive horse pastures, then into thick vegetation, you may think you’ve made a wrong turn until you happen upon a multi-colored wooden sign at the point of entry. A little farther along the way, you’ll see the Ranch’s Conference Center, where inside, in the main meeting room, is visibly displayed this inscription:
The Elkus Youth Ranch is dedicated to the freedom of opportunity for young people. In the setting of a working ranch, those who are more fortunate physically, mentally and financially share experiences with those who are less fortunate. Thus togetherness creates mutual understanding and caring, which is the philosophy of 1 + 1 = 3. This concept is the inspiration for creating the Ranch.
A welcoming valley opens past the center to the ranch itself. Barns, greenhouses, animal pens for goats, pigs, sheep, donkeys, chickens, rabbits, an enormous llama, and gardens, gardens, gardens: a Youth Garden; an Enabling Garden (with raised beds providing easy access for disabled children); and a Master Gardeners’ Garden, all nicely tended and heavily fortified against a foraging deer population.
Whether the kids are outside in the amphitheater discussing recycling and natural resource protection, in the shade patio attending a class on horticulture or nutrition, seated around tables under sunny skies enjoying lunch or inside perched on hay bales in the barn for a Sheep to Shawl lesson or a talk about barn owls or fossils, the whole ranch is their classroom.
And they’re by no means passive learners! Children readily volunteer to perform all those tasks that are essential to a well-run small farm – feeding, watering, and caring for the animals, and cultivating, planting, weeding, and harvesting garden crops. In the process, individual responsibility is bolstered and they take satisfaction to seeing the fruits of their labor. They also team up to complete cooperative projects and discover the joy of working together.
As a bonus to all this, there’s nothing quite like camping out with schoolmates in tents on the Ranch, falling asleep to the sound of crickets and wilderness silence, and waking up to bold rooster calls at dawn!
Inevitably, young program participants come away from the Ranch renewed and enriched by nature, motivated by outstanding educators, and with a hands-on, touch-the-earth experience that is never forgotten.
Weekly Image: “Blues Skies Over Elkus Ranch” (above ~ right)
Many thanks to Leslie Jensen, Program Coordinator, for her informative tour.
The Richard J. Elkus Ranch Environmental Education Center was the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Elkus to the University of California.
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Viktoria, thank you for such a wonderful article on Elkus Ranch. We are very proud of the Ranch and the educational programs that we are able to offer the students of the Bay Area. We appreciate your help in spreading the word about this special place.
Viktoria, to give and serve is one of the gifts mankind still provides in a special way. Elkus Ranch is one of the rare jewels. Wish I were a child again to breath the fresh mountain air. I love your insight; it was awakening.