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Meet Melissa Garrett of Irish Oaks Ranch in San Luis Obispo County

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Melissa Garrett.

Melissa, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Matt and I met back in the 1990s, and even though we grew up worlds apart, we could not be more aligned in our passions and interests.

I was the daughter of an Air Force Captain, living all around the world. Matt was born on his family’s farm in Ivanhoe, California, which was started in the 1860’s. Matt grew up being involved in Future Farmers of America as well as raising cattle and hogs. After high school, I moved to California to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo studying Animal Science, pre-veterinarian, where Matt and I met.

An internship called me away to the Los Angeles area, where I was hired and worked as a successful R&D Scientist for MARS, INC.

Matt followed me south and was hired as a Firefighter for a Southern California Fire Department. Even though we lived in Whittier, we always kept a large backyard garden to grow our food.

In 2005, after the birth of our first son, I resigned my corporate job to be a full-time mom. We moved to the suburb of Camarillo and our backyard garden grew to a backyard farm. We raised a plentiful bounty of fruits and vegetables in which we shared with friends and family. To the surprise of our neighbors, we also kept a small flock of egg layers, one of the first to do so in our town.

As our family grew, so did the desire to grow something bigger. In 2012, we sold almost everything we owned so we could buy the small homestead ranch on the Central Coast. Through hard work and plenty of failures, the small family farm has grown into a flourishing small business. Our friends, family, and customers are always amazed when they find out how many different things we do on our “small” property. In all honesty, we can probably do even more! By using best practices from a forgotten era, we care for the land first and strive to be efficient as possible. We employ organic and holistic practices to create nutrient rich grasses, vegetables, and fruit. All animals rotationally graze the property in a high-intensity practice: Cattle and goats graze the grass followed by chickens and turkeys which eat the bugs and spread the manure, followed by hogs that till the soil.

We have three children which are all active in running the farm and participate in 4H. At age ten, Aiden started his own business making goat’s milk soap from his herd of Alpine dairy goats. One of our friends, Jocko Willink, was very impressed by what Aiden was doing and started to promote his products on his podcast.

Not wanting to be left out, Aiden’s younger sister, Emma, joined into the business at age 11. Both of the kids produce some of the finest handcrafted products found anywhere, producing over 15,000 units a year of soap, lotions, luxurious bath products, and candles. In addition to being offered on our website, their products can be found in shops throughout California, as well as in Australia, England, and Iceland.

In 2021 we have decided to take the next step and grow our businesses by opening our first retail location in Atascadero, CA.

Has it been a smooth road?
There have been many challenges that we faced as we grew from raising meat for our family to producing a quality product that our customers would love. We moved to a new home/city, all the while raising three young children and growing our meat business. Matt continued working his full-time Fire Department job that was over 2 hours away. We had to learn not only how to raise a healthy active family but raise animals that were healthy and well cared for in a calm environment. From scratch, we were building pastures that we could put rotational grazing into practice, moving the animals around our property from pasture to pasture, using electrical fencing to fence off areas which constantly seems to present us with problems of shorting out when the wind blew or rained or lost power. We can’t count the number of times we woke up to cattle in our front yard and we were trying to rush off to school. This itself was full of comical situations as we all know animals don’t always do what we ask.

The greatest challenge we have faced is scaling up while maintaining quality. Although Covid has created many obstacles, it’s allowed our children to stay home and contribute to the growth of the business while maintaining a high-quality standard. With every new obstacle, it gives us the opportunity to teach our children how to problem solve, take initiative and be successful.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Irish Oaks Ranch story. Tell us more about the business.
We are in the business of producing the best tasting meat for our consumers and luxury handcrafted products which are all produced on our farm. We put our love for animals and our knowledge of land management to create an environment that grows healthy animals and that is truly sustainable in all ways. The end result is the healthiest and most delicious pasture raised meats out there. Additionally, our kids have learned through hard work and their passion for their dairy goats to be entrepreneurs, putting what they learn into producing the finest handcrafted products from their goats milk.

But to us, this is more than growing a small business, it’s growing a family legacy. A family legacy of knowledge, work ethic and care for the environment.

I would have to say I am most proud of how our family has worked together and supported each other. Without all of us working together towards this dream, we would not be as successful as we are today.

We pride ourselves on producing the finest products possible and provide excellent customer service. Whether it’s our healthy pasture raised meats, or our handcrafted products, we make it our passion.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We are very optimistic about the future of our business and the products we produce. This is 100% fueled by the encouraging feedback we receive from our customers. It’s easy to love what we do when we interact with so many positive people, it fuels our desire to learn and grow!

This recent pandemic has people seriously thinking about their health and self-care. The products we produce provide benefits to both. I also believe people are starting to get a little fatigued with big box, online shopping which has them searching out local, family-owned businesses like ours.

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