Glamping With The Ladybugs

Our farm isn’t just a place for the wild creatures to take refuge from the civilized world, or for a civilized soul to find refuge from a wild world. Mariquita Farm is also a working farm and one of our main crops are beans.

“Albert Einstein slept here,” Albert Straus said, as he showed me to my room.

“Albert Einstein came to Marshall?” I was incredulous.

“Talk to my father and he’ll tell you that, sooner or later, everyone comes to Marshall,” Albert said.

The Straus Ranch is perched on the shores of Tomales Bay, near the settlement of Marshall, halfway between the towns of Point Reyes Station and Tomales. A sloping drive lined with ancient, wind twisted, dark cypress trees led down from the old, white, Victorian ranch house down to Highway 1, with the cold, choppy, bay waters slapping at the shore just a few yards past the road. It’s the edge of the continent, the middle of nowhere, a windy rangeland populated mostly by dairy cows, and seagulls. Marshall is isolated, but beautiful, and in 1979 I had the fortune to spend a season living there and working for the Strauss family on their dairy.

Besides our market crops we grow lots of flowers for fun, including over 100 different kinds of roses. This is an old, Italian heirloom rose called “Variegata di Bologna.”

Over time I learned the family’s story in more detail. Bill and Ellen, Albert’s parents, had come to America as Jewish refugees from the Nazi occupied Netherlands. They had a friend in common with Einstein, who had fled Germany when the Nazis came to power. To the racist ignorati, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was “Jewish Physics,” and they wanted to kill him for thinking creatively. Luckily, Einstein found a refuge at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. He would continue to work on the puzzles of relativity the rest of his life and when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts he could decamp from academia and spend some quiet time in Marshall with the Straus family and their Holstein cattle.

We have a half mile of trails that link three different redwood fairy rings in Pinto Creek Canyon along the edge of the property.

I was hired because Bill Straus had “retired” and Albert needed help with the chores. Mr. Straus, “retired” though he was, still put in long days of work on the ranch. Besides their home ranch, the Straus Dairy rented a second ranch a few miles down the coast in Marshall called the Pauli Ranch, where they grazed the “open” heifers that they were waiting to breed once they reached maturity. On my day off, when I wasn’t available to go to Marshall and feed the heifers, Mr. Straus would do the work. Bill saw me one day when he returned from the Pauli Ranch.

“You’ll never guess who I saw in Marshall,” he said.

I couldn’t. A large, Victorian era hotel in Marshall had, until recently, been occupied by a drug and alcohol treatment organization called Synanon, but they’d gone cult and tried to kill the lawyer, Paul Morantz, who was checking into their affairs by putting rattlesnakes in his mailbox. Mr. Morantz didn’t die. Now Synanon was being sued, and their hotel in Marshall was up for sale. The real estate agent was showing the property to institutional buyers to see if he could sell the place as a potential spa, hotel, or spiritual retreat center. When the real estate agent saw Bill Straus pull out of the Pauli Ranch, he waved him over. If anyone in Marshall could be counted on to make a newcomer feel welcome, it would be Mr. Straus, who was always gracious and understanding.

“Bill,” he said, “allow me to introduce you to his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Your Holiness, Mr. Bill Straus.” The two exiles shook hands and greeted each other warmly.

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“Sooner or later everyone comes to Marshall,” Bill replied.

Here I am walking around the edge of the labyrinth with Starr’s granddaughter, with one of the three corn patches on my right.

I owe the Straus family a lot. Not only did they put up with me for a year, but after I’d left the ranch and gone back to college they were very helpful to me. Albert’s mother, Ellen, observed that I had taken a lot of interest and initiative in getting a vegetable garden going while I was living on the dairy.

“Maybe you should go into organic vegetable farming,” she told me. And she gave me the address and phone number of Warren Weber, her neighbor down the coast in Bolinas who owned and operated Star Route Farm. With Ellen’s good references I was able to get a job there and I’d spend five years in Bolinas learning the vegetable trade from “the ground up.”

Our “Glamper’s Yurt” nestled between the Meyer lemons and the Makrut limes.

Now, 43 years later, I’ve got my own farm in Corralitos and it’s as lovely in its own way as the Strauss Dairy in Marshall or Star Route Farm in Bolinas. For fun and as an outdoors art project my partner, Starr, and I have chosen to create an eleven circuit labyrinth that’s 110 feet wide and plant it out in lavender. The labyrinth is embraced by citrus orchards and the beds of herbs, vegetables, and flowers that we tend. In the redwood canyon we’ve created  quiet walking trails that link the redwood fairy rings one to another. Our next project is the creation of a wildflower meadow to sustain the birds, the bees and the butterflies.

The yurt is roomy and you can see the stars overhead on a clear night.

Our farm is a twenty acre refuge in a crazy world. Maybe, like Albert Einstein, you’d like a farm to hang out on when your thoughts get heavy. Maybe, like the Dalai Lama, you want a meditative environment for workshops and events. If you’re a “glamper,” we’ve got a big, big tent with a bed, a table, and an outdoor kitchen. If you’re a bird watcher, we’ve got a turtle pond full of ducks, egrets and geese. We’ve even seen a Bald Eagle on occasion although when the eagles show up the other birds clear out. If a stay on our farm looks attractive to you check out the “Amenities” section of our website for more details and photos. https://www.mariquita.com/venue-rental/

The work never stops here, and we welcome volunteers. We can especially use help weeding the labyrinth since we use no herbicides. During the rose season it’s great to have some help “Dead-heading” the roses. Here’s the link to our volunteer signup. https://www.mariquita.com/friends-of-ladybugs-labyrinth/

Thanks, and we hope to see you soon.

Our climate is temperate and mild because we’re only about 12 minutes away from the Monterey Bay. This is Aptos Beach at Rio Del Mar.

© 2023 Essay by Andy Griffin