From NICU Nurse to goat grazier, how a retired nurse continues to save lives using goat grazing to combat California wildfires.
- Garrett Wade
- May 25, 2025
- 6 min read
Andree Soares
Company: Star Creek Land Stewards
Location/ Service Area: California (Bay Area up into Marin and Napa County)
Primary Focus: Reduction of fire fuels
Size: 10,000 goats and sheep
How Many Employees: 3 full-time, some 22 seasonal workers
How Many Dogs: 20 livestock guardian dogs, 30 border collies
Years in Operation: 2013-Present
What made a NICU nurse of 27 years quit her job to start grazing operation that eliminates more than 3000 acres of fire fuels from California every year?
Andree Soares of Star Creek Land Stewards wasn't always in the grazing business; in fact, most of her working life was spent entirely outside of the ag sector. Despite coming from a long line of sheep ranchers, she followed in her mother's footsteps and became a nurse. For the next 27 years, Andree worked in the medical industry. Then, one day, she received a strange message.
One of her father's foremen, Emilio, contacted her with a bizarre proposition. He had been helping someone with a grazing job in the Santa Cruz mountains, and it made him think of Andree. They met after the job, and he said he thought she should buy the grazing business . At first, she was baffled by the concept of prescribed goat grazing, asking, "You're telling me people are going to pay us to feed our animals?" Emilio told her that was precisely what he was saying. Although Andree was worried that she was unqualified to run a grazing business, Emilio reassured her and said he would stay on as foreman and help care for the animals.
While it might have seemed like a ridiculous choice to make to the outside world, Andree claims it was actually an easy one. When asked about it, she explained, "… I say this to people now… it's such a sensible concept. It's like, once you see the animals on the landscape, you can't unsee it."
So soon, she got started, and during the first year of the business, Andree ran it alongside Emilio while continuing to work as a nurse. However, realizing she was not doing either job justice, she quit as a nurse to become a full-time goat/sheep grazier.
Fighting California Wildfires
Helmed by Andree, Star Creek Land Stewards grazes over 3000 acres per year in a well-thought-out effort to mitigate the impacts of wildfires like the ones that ravaged the LA area earlier this year. The company works primarily in the Bay Area but also does jobs up into Marin and Napa County.
Andree says that the goal of their grazing is not to prevent fires entirely, admitting that is nearly impossible, "We don't ever say we're going to prevent a fire, but we will prevent mass destruction and give people time to evacuate because fire crews will be able to get to it."
According to her, one of the areas that the goats and sheep can help make safer is along two-lane roads in the coastal ranges of California that create nightmare scenarios in the event of a fire. The houses along these roads are surrounded by dense brush, making accessing them in the event of a fire difficult. Even worse, there are schools at the end of some of these roads, and due to the lack of access roads, these schools' fire response plans are simply to shelter in place.
Talking about the emergency response plans of those schools, Andree said, "They're not getting out. They know that if they try to get those kids out and they're at the end of that two-lane road and every other neighbor's trying to evacuate, they will die trying. So the plan for these schools is to shelter in place… When I heard that for the first time… that was moving because, as a parent, I wondered how many parents actually knew that."
Dedicated to helping mitigate the damage of a scenario like that, Star Creek Land Stewards "graze strategic areas so that they can be used as fire breaks and so that they can get fire emergency equipment to those neighborhoods and schools from an alternate route." This grazing also includes clearing areas for helicopter landings as well as reducing the total amount of invasive vegetation that serves as fire fuels.
Despite the opportunity to prevent the horrifying situation that would result if fire crews could not reach these areas, the use of goats in California to manage fire risk is still relatively limited. While this might be disheartening, Andree is optimistic that it will become more popular, saying, "…younger people are taking over some of those middle management positions and management positions able to influence decision-making; they're the ones that know about it… they're able to influence the decision-making at the agency… and I think that will continue to be a reason for growth in this business." Through the use of social media and going on podcasts like ours, Andree helps ensure that more and more people are exposed to prescribed goat grazing.
How does Star Creek Land Stewards operate?
While Andree is the president of Star Creek Land Stewards, she is quick to explain that the business would not be possible without Emilio, the man who told her she should buy the goats in the first place, and her daughter Bianca. These three work together symbiotically, combining their strengths to maximize the company's firefighting potential.
Andree takes care of long-term financial planning, Binaca serves as the project manager, meeting with clients one-on-one, and Emilio is the operations manager, ensuring the goats are happy and healthy while additionally managing over 20 seasonal herders.
The seasonal herders they employ are recruited through the H-2A program, which allows companies in the agriculture sector to hire foreign workers to fill roles that US citizens are not interested in doing. Andree reports that many of their workers originate from Peru, and she even shared a story about one worker who loved the job so much that he called, wishing he could come back despite the fact that he was 81 years old.
While she is a big fan of the H-2A program, Andree says recent legislation has made business more difficult. This legislation, Assembly Bill 1066 in particular, mandates that agricultural employers, including those in the H-2A program, pay workers overtime. This impacts Star Creek Land Stewards, because their shepherds, who often stay in campers on the grazing sites, quickly rack up insane amounts of overtime. This cuts into the business's ability to make money, and she fears that the goat and sheep industry cannot bear the burden that this bill places on it. Doing her best to mitigate this strain on Star Creek Land Stewards, she has had to shorten the grazing season, bringing in workers later in the season and sending them home earlier.
Logistics and Job Bidding
Through their collective efforts, Andree, Bianca, and Emilio operate all over the San Francisco Bay area. They plan their grazing jobs far in advance to graze an area most efficiently. Splitting their grazing about 50/50 between private and public properties, they patchwork them together so the goats can go from one paying customer to the next.
This grazing plan uses more than 13 herds of goats and sheep, each numbering around 400 goats. Given the transportation logistics, this number has been found to work best for them. This number, in part, also determines how much they charge for their jobs. Other factors include vehicle access, water accessibility, foliage density, and terrain type.
In addition to all this, they must consider the safety of the goats and sheep. To protect from predators like mountain lions, wild dogs, coyotes, and even humans, Star Creek Land Stewards has between 18 and 20 livestock guardian dogs. Their standard practice is to have one dog per herd, but for the larger paddocks, they will use two. Andree speaks of these dogs with fondness, appreciative of their ability to dissuade and scare away predators.
Although 18 to 20 dogs sound like a lot, that isn't even all the dogs that help in this massive undertaking. In addition to the livestock guardian dogs, Star Creek Land Stewards has about 30 border collies helping their herders. They are pivotal in allowing herders to move the goats between paddocks efficiently.
What's Next?
Andree, Bianca, and Emilio plan to continue mitigating fire risk in California with the power of prescribed goat and sheep grazing. In addition, they run a merino cross sheep to sell for meat and fine wool.
When asked what the number one piece of advice she has for other graziers is, she said, "The best piece of advice, in my opinion, is that you have to have a healthy herd and an exceptional, or at least well-thought-out, animal husbandry plan to manage those animals on a year-round basis." Essentially, happy and healthy goats and sheep make for the best graziers.
While Andree might be done saving lives working as a NICU nurse, she continues to serve her community through Star Creek Land Stewards, mitigating the impacts of California's deadly wildfires and potentially saving the lives of children forced to shelter in place..
Where to find Star Creek Land Stewards
You can find them on Instagram @StarcreekLandStewards or facebook @https://www.facebook.com/starcreekgrazing/. If you are interested in contacting them or getting goats on your property, you can go to their website at StarCreekLandStewards.com.
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