Century Farm in Redland That Has Quietly and at No Charge Been Protecting Our Creeks and Rivers For Over a Century

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What That Is Looking Like 100 Years Later

Help Restore the Water System at Red Mud Ranch

Red Mud Ranch sits on something rare.

For more than a century, this land has held its original water rights. Generations of this family defended those rights through legal challenges, regulatory changes, and competing claims that have stripped water access from many farms across the West.

This one survived.

Today only five of those original rights holders remain, and everything happening on this land depends on that water.

Recently, disaster struck.

A dyke failed, sending a surge of water and debris rushing down the hillside. In its path it tore apart and mangled the above-ground pipeline that feeds the ranch’s irrigation system from the creek uphill. The flood also destroyed the ranch’s historic cascading pond system, a series of ponds that had gently stepped water through the landscape for nearly 100 years.

In minutes, infrastructure that had quietly served the land for generations was ripped apart.

Emergency mitigation was carried out quickly to protect the watershed and stabilize the damage, and that immediate environmental risk has been contained.

But the farm itself is still at risk.

To restore the system and protect the ranch going forward, the damaged line now needs to be rebuilt with buried high-pressure pipe running roughly 600–900 feet up the hillside, along with proper drainage where a natural spring crosses the route. Rebuilding it underground will protect the system from future flooding and restore the water flow the land depends on.

Without restoring this system, the water that sustains Red Mud Ranch cannot reliably reach the fields. And without that water, the future of this place becomes uncertain.

Over the past five years, thousands of people have come here for music, campouts, and gatherings under open skies. Friendships have formed here. Memories have been made here. For many people, this ranch has become something special.

A place where land, community, and creativity meet.

But what matters just as much is what comes next.

Red Mud Ranch is growing into a place for future workshops, campouts, celebrations, community gatherings, and food sovereignty education. The land is being revived for regenerative agriculture, and the long-term vision includes a “Walk Through Time” living agricultural landscape where people can experience farming across generations while helping grow a more resilient future.

We don’t want those ideas to stay plans on paper.

We want to keep bringing people together.  

We want to keep growing food.  

We want to keep creating a place where land, learning, and community help build a more abundant future.

But none of that happens without water.

Right now we’re working to rebuild the waterline, restore the irrigation system, and protect the water rights that have sustained this land for over a hundred years.

If this place has ever meant something to you, or if you believe in protecting farmland, community, and the future of local food systems, we invite you to help.

Help us keep the water flowing, the land alive, and the future abundant! 

gofund.me/4b82a2e87 
https://linktr.ee/stsfarm