Built in 1886, the main house was the primary home of four generations of the Picchetti family for the next 90 years and served as a social hub at the ranch, filled with family parties and frequent guests. The area around the house was also central to ranch operations, with a washhouse behind it containing a brick oven for baking bread and a stove for processing fruit, while the area to the west held sheds for processing fruits and rows of drying racks where prunes and apricots dried in the sun. In front of the main house stood one of several aviaries built by John Picchetti, son of Vincenzo, to keep his pet birds, and he also screened in the front porch of the homestead house for them. According to his grandchildren, he bred canaries and tried to breed a blue canary; although he never succeeded, he did breed a green one. The peacocks there today continue John's legacy of keeping birds at the ranch.