When it was time for Megan Keithly’s baby to try his first solid food, she took organic zucchini from the farm down the street and steamed it. A few years later, she’s making homemade diaper cream for her second child with Calendula flowers that also grow on the farm, a skill she learned from the farm staff. But this isn’t a tradwife rural fantasy made for Instagram. Keithly lives in a densely suburban area of Orange County in one of California’s agrihoods — a residential community built around a working farm.
As a new generation of aspirational homeowners looks to amenity-focused living, traditional luxuries like golf courses have gone by the wayside in favor of open space, trails and even farms. These agriculturally minded, master-planned developments have been gaining popularity, attracting new residents seeking community along with a life closer to the land.
California pioneered the creation of agriculture-centered housing developments more than 40 years ago. A local company even trademarked the term “agrihood” in 2016. No matter what you call them, more and more proposed planned communities in California integrate tenets of this concept, despite criticisms about land use and affordable housing. And as the state’s existing agrihoods increase in popularity, developers across the globe are using them as examples to improve the approach to this new kind of master-planned community.
‘I’m supposed to be here’
Keithly, 34, grew up in Orange County and knew she wanted to put down roots near her parents after getting married. She and her husband put their name on a list for new homes at Rancho Mission Viejo, a growing agrihood in an area she had always found beautiful, and moved there in 2022.
Her home is one of the more than 4,000 units now built on the family-owned, 23,000-acre historic cattle ranch. That land has slowly transitioned over the past four decades as the family, descendants of the original owners who purchased the property in 1882, has begun a new vision for the space. Planning began decades ago to develop roughly 6,000 acres while preserving about 75% of the land as open space, including professionally managed farmland…