Our Homestead

The Florence Family home — called Meadowsweet — is home base, an 1890’s-era house nestled into a hillside in Marin County, California. It was built as a summer residence for General Sherman, the founder of Sherman Oaks and West Hollywood, California. He and legendary architect Bernard Maybeck were members of The Bohemian Grove together and had collaborated on multiple railroad stations up and down the coast of California, before beginning work on this grand old home, situated on one of the original sites for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad. This was once the manor house for the neighboring Meadowsweet Dairy Farm.

The property includes fruit orchards — apples, citrus, quince, plums, cherries, olives and pears — a honey producing bee apiary, a fire pit constructed of original stones salvaged from the former entrance of the property, a bomb shelter constructed in 1962, rolling lawns and expansive outdoor spaces complete with a family campground. In 2015, a custom- built reclaimed redwood barn and paddock was constructed to house goats, chickens & rabbits. Edible gardens, designed by local urban farmer and landscape designer Christian Douglas, provide the Florences with much of the produce they use to both feed the family and supply their San Francisco restaurants.

Over the course of the next year at Meadowsweet, the Florences will embark on a large-scale kitchen restoration, the building of a root cellar, an expansion of the bee apiary and its subsequent harvest, the redesign of the edible gardens and much more.