Our Farmers
Learn More About
The Farmers.
Linda Powell-McMillan
Born and raised as a 4th generation San Franciscan, I have lived on the Flying M for 45 years. I grew up as a city girl, enjoying the diversity and richness of a cosmopolitan city. However I always had the vision of living in a little house on the prairie. Living in the hills, in the grassland of the Red Hills I have loved the quiet, the wildness of the Flying M. I enjoy working in the soil and have cultivated a vegetable garden, a small fruit orchard and many perennial plants, roses and season bulbs. I have attempted to grow native California plants around the ranch buildings to attract birds and wildlife. Ranch life definitely agrees with my soul.
Greg McMillan
Conceived in the Carrizo Plains and raised on the Flying M, the ranch has been my permanent address for more than 70 years. My parents instilled the benefits of work and living gently on the land. I grew up riding horses, managing a small herd of beef cattle and assisting my father with the many and varied tasks of owning a ranch. I never imagined myself as a farmer. I followed my father into a career of wildlife film photography and produced several full-length wildlife films for the National Audubon Society. When the film industry shifted to video and ultimately digital photography, I made a personal shift to another profession.
After building our first house in the 1970’s I began to build more. This phase of my life began with the repair and restoration of old barns and other agricultural buildings. That morphed into residential construction. I met many pioneering architects and designers and, in the late 1980’s I was asked to be the contractor on the first permitted straw bale house in California. The rest is history with many scores of structures in my portfolio scanning the range of houses, wineries, ag buildings and nature centers. My last project, before I retired was the frantoio where we take our olives to be processed. It is built of strawbales and is an amazing structure. Have a look at it..(enter the URL for Kiler Ridge.)
Now I am retired to the ranch and tending the trees. It feels good to be home.