Robin's Write Living: Charlie's Farm

This row of mailbox called the Hoist is the dirt row turnoff for the farm.

Here are a few photos I took during my visit to Sweetwater Farm, although I'd guess many people in these areas call it Charlie's Farm. Charlie Cascio is an amazing man who has lived his days in a few different endeavors. As a young man he trained in the culinary arts and spent ten years in France as a chef. One of those years he spent living with an illiterate goat shepherd living off of the land. He told me he has spent the rest of his life trying to recreate the lifestyle he experienced with that shepherd.

There are seven happy goats who are taken on a long ramble each day through the mountaintops.

As Charlie speaks to a guest, his oldest and dearest goat shows her affection of 16 years together.

This is a little room where he prepares all the cheeses. I missed getting a photo of his Cave where the cheeses are aged.

Outside his little home. I thought it was amazing but he remarked humbly that he was a chef not a builder.

When he returned to the States, he returned to Esalen, a place he was already familiar with. He ran the kitchen at Esalen for over a decade, culminating his time in that roll by writing the Esalen Cookbook. Sometime in the early 80s, he purchased forty acres of land for a very inexpensive price as the land was in rugged, steep terrain and deemed unusable, wasteland.

Wood burning stove in his home...I think I recognize those towels!

Sweetwater Farm is located about an hour from Esalen, north till you cross the Bixby Bridge and then up a valley till you rise above the redwoods into the oak filled ridge tops. His farm is located at 3,000 feet, above the fog that clings to the land below. He has gorgeous views of the ocean as well as nearby Pico Blanco for which he has named one of his cheeses, I think a manchego with peppercorns and a wine brine.

Kitchen tools for a lifetime chef turned farmer

Most of been a tough day of work getting this stove up the mountain!

Charlie's farm is a labor of love. He has never built any roads on his land, everything is done by foot and by hand. Everything on the property was carried there, everything he sells from the land must be carried away. It has been a gradual evolution over several decades, but his farm is a working operation now, supporting him financially and spiritually.

I am in love with this little kitchen!

Charlie has a composting toilet and a sense of humor. Here's a sink planter,

and a toilet planter!

Here's where he wrote the Esalen Cookbook, it's in a yurt.

all the splendid details!

Charlie raises goats and turns there milk into artisanal cheese, he raises honey bees, grows and cures olives, raises chickens for eggs, grows vegetables and fruits mostly for his own consumption, and is waiting on some orchards of apples to come of age to begin production on hard cider. HIs goods are only available at the finest restaurants and boutiques in Carmel, Monterrey and Big Sur. He has about three interns usually living on the farm for six months to a year with the global WWOOF project, here's one such experience.

He currently has 30 chickens and sells ALL the eggs to one restaurant in Carmel at $7.50 a dozen! He's expanding the coop this year to bring it up to 50 chickens, good idea!