On the dusty road of Hollister Street going toward the Tijuana border are plots of land mainly used for homesteading. One of those plots is S&S Friendly Ranch.
The ranch was founded in 1980 when siblings Sim Wallace and Sarah Buncom were looking for a place to board their horses after they migrated from the South to San Diego about a decade earlier.
Today those 10 acres are a community gathering place thanks to their descendants and a close friend.
Diamond Brandon is the granddaughter of Wallace. She says she never saw herself as a cowgirl, which is why she decided to take a more business-minded approach to the ranch.
“I don't think they ever saw what it could become this far in the future,” Brandon said. “I will say it's been such a beautiful experience, a very empowering experience.”
Brandon, a San Diego native, says it's especially important to keep the ranch running because she's seen Black businesses and families come and go over the years.
She was taught at a young age that when you are given the opportunity to build something, it's about sharing it with your community – like her Sim and Sarah did.
“I think centering it where it becomes an event space and a venue and a place where the community can come to heal, to learn, to play and just have a good time, that that upholds the legacy that he started.”
The space has seen events like family reunions, Juneteenth celebrations, anniversaries and even quinceañeras.
The ranch still includes some animals – three horses, a handful of goats and several chickens – but Brandon says they plan to phase that portion out because of limited staffing.
“We're very small and the other work is like pulling, so we don't ever want to have a situation where animals are not getting the care they deserve,” Brandon said.
Another way the ranch connects with the community is through partnerships, like Azili Wellness, which operates out of the ranch.
Azili is a collective focused on healing through ancestral practices and homegrown goods. The group began operating informally about three years ago and became an LLC in 2024.
Jazzay H’Armani Buncom is a co-founder of Azili and the granddaughter of S&S Friendly Ranch founder Sarah Buncom. She also serves as the ranch’s director of agriculture.
“I've learned that my people have been doing things like this for a long time,” Buncom said. “I've learned more of like where I come from and just how easy it is to step into those roles once I realize it's not that crazy. It's not that new.”
Currently, agriculture takes up about one acre of the land, but they plan to expand to two acres by the end of the year. Buncom says part of Azili's work involves preserving seeds from the crops they grow. With ongoing environmental challenges in the Tijuana River Valley, the ranch needs to be strategic about what they plant.
“It's important because seeds have memory just like people in our DNA so, if I wanted to make a seed here that's more water resilient, I can cultivate that seed here for a number of years giving it less water, save the seeds that are doing the best and every year those seeds will be better and more adaptive to the bioregion,” Buncom said.
Lucie Cishugi is one of the owners of Azili. She met Buncom and Brandon after visiting the ranch several years ago. Over time, she became part of the team.
Cishugi says that after leaving the Democratic Republic of the Congo at age 3, her work at the ranch allows her to reconnect with her lineage.
“I'm working in soil, but I know there's soil in Congo. So, I'm like low-key communicating with my ancestors too,” Cishugi said. “We're all talking and cultivating red burgundy okra, black-eyed peas that came from like Africa as well and are traveling through different families in the Americas to be back here on this land”
Brandon says without the physical and spiritual foundation that Sim Wallace and Sarah Buncom planted decades ago, the ranch would not exist in its current form.
“Every word that comes out of my mouth, it is fostered by the love and the wisdom and the compassion and just heart for people that they poured into me and that they lived every single day.”
