Who We Are

Jack Thrift Anderson

After 6 years working with the livestock, landscapes, and mission of Quail Springs, Jack became enchanted with native California range and the role of ruminants in it. As Rangeland Manager at Quail Springs, he studied the high desert, oak savannah, short grass prairie and chaparral communities of the California Central Coast and developed a plan for managing their 450 acre site. He was the caretaker of the 4,000 acre Cornelson Ranch in Fairview, Oklahoma, where he was mentored by long time holistic management practitioner Kim Barker of Walnut Creek Farms. He fine-tuned his work with sheep and deepened his understanding of the prescribed grazing service and California lamb industry working with Kaos Sheep Outfit before developing and launching Cuyama Lamb, LLC with Jenya. When he isn’t taking in the breathtaking views of the beautiful lands we get to occupy, he’s playing little folk ditties and fighting for environmental justice.

Jenya Sarah Schneider

Jenya Schneider has been asking how we can be good students of and stewards of our native ecologies for the past two decades. She has worked in human, plant, and animal-centered systems working to restore ecosystems, including the Elwha River watershed, the Bay Area, and the Cuyama Valley. After meeting Jack at Quail Springs in 2016, the vision of working as a part of California ecologies while producing regeneratively sourced food and fiber quickly wooed her into becoming a co-founding member of Cuyama Lamb. She is passionate about working alongside these amazing animals to create a California that lives safely and abundantly alongside natural wildfire ecologies.