Tamara Jo Hicks grew up in rural San Diego County and Oklahoma, so when she moved to the Bay Area to pursue her Clinical Psychology degree, she gravitated to bucolic West Marin. In 2003, she, her husband, David Jablons, and their two daughters, Josy and Emmy, purchased the 160-acre Toluma Farms property, and in 2007, restored the land’s dairy operations to transition it to a goat and sheep dairy. In 2012, thanks to a grant from USDA Rural Development and capital from the land trust with Marin Agriculture Land Trust, and after several years of intensive land restoration, Tomales Farmstead Creamery was born.

Jessica MacLeod is a writer and illustrator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She began volunteering at Toluma Farms when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. At the time, she was running a non-profit that matched tech workers with government agencies in need as the crisis unfolded. While Jessica continues her career at the intersection of technology and social good, her visits to the farm and cooking delicious meals for family and friends keep her connected to the community, land, and abundance of Marin County.