42 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} little town near Gregory, South Dakota, when he met and married a farmer’s daughter, his late wife, Mary Lou. He started selling cars to support their young brood of six kids, and when he heard about a car dealership for sale in Burlingame, he flew out to see it. Back in 1965, the family could only afford one airplane ticket, so when the decision was made to move west, the rest of the family followed by train. “Idyllic” is how Lisa describes her childhood. “We all rode horses, went to Woodside Elementary School and there wasn’t such a thing as homework,” she recounts. With a pack of friends, she used to gallop all over Guernsey Field (since renamed The Horse Park at Woodside) and raise steers, lambs and chickens for 4-H. Although neighbors owned businesses such as a carpet or alarm store, above all, she says, “They were people who liked land, who liked horses.” As Lisa tells it, her father was so into horses that he bought property on Mission Trail and built a barn, a riding arena and a covered arena. “My dad spent all of his time riding,” she says, “so my mom said, ‘I’m never going to see you unless I build a house where the barn is,’ so they did.” That was about 35 years ago. By then, the kids had already left home. After graduating from Notre Dame High School, Lisa earned a B.S. in Agricultural Economics from UC Davis. While living in Sacramento, she studied to become a UC Master Gardener When you hear the name Putnam you may immediately think about the block of car dealerships on Burlingame’s Auto Row, but the family is actually rooted in generations of farming—a tradition that continues on the Peninsula today. Now in his late 80s, patriarch Joe Putnam lives on Woodside’s 14-acre Mission Farm, surrounded by crops, an orchard, horses and chickens. His daughter, Lisa Putnam, runs the farm with the help of one caretaker and 10 volunteer gardeners. They planted corn last spring so Joe could see it out his window and advise them as usual. Joe was a sharecropper in a
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