EDIBLE ENVIRONMENT

Trusting Nature The amazing menagerie at Bee La Forte Farm and what it means for life on earth

STORY AND PHOTOS BY MARK C. ANDERSON

Cowpie the steer lives with heifers, alpacas, hogs, turkeys and a flock of designer chickens. Opposite page, multi-colored eggs are stamped with the farm’s bee logo in edible ink.

Tawta was doomed. That’s how it goes with cross beak chickens.

They’re born with a condition where their top and bottom beaks don’t align, so they can’t really eat or drink, and under normal circumstances die of starvation.

Only, Tawta won the birthplace lottery, hatching in the upper reaches of Carmel Valley at a place called Bee La Forte Agroforestry Farm. That’s where a former horse ranch is being transformed into an ecological wonderland that sells eggs, alpaca-wool scarves and (eventually) a bunch more items like fruits, vegetables and select meats.

Five times a day, Tawta starts getting jumpy and her primary human, Gabriela Forte, knows to gather her “special needs house chicken” for a meal.

Often it comes with human hand-preening, because Tawta can’t do that either.

The main course starts with a special Avian Health Shake, the 35-plus ingredient list of which includes red quinoa, kelp and hemp hearts.

Gabriela mixes it with raw duck egg and powdered açai, molds that dough into a worm and pops it into Tawta’s scissored mouth.

Cross beaks never lay eggs, according to experts. But Tawta is so happy and healthy, she grunts out one beautiful pointy green-blue egg a day.

On Edible Monterey Bay’s visit, Gabriela conducted the feeding while holding Tawta on her lap. The pair sat on the couch in the country-style living room where the chicken spends most of her days and nights—wearing a custom cloth diaper— while a menagerie of animals congregates nearby.

Among them are Violetta Tequila, the fluffy 3-pound poodle, and Furbetta the calico cat.

Like all the creatures on this campus, they have unique relationships with the chickens and Gabriela.

Violetta and her mistress are so into each other, the pup drinks directly out of mama’s mug of ice water. “She thinks the water in the bowl is for peasants,” Gabriela says.

Furbetta takes her name from the Italian word for “sly” and likes to herd (and not perturb) the baby birds into their box next to the couch.

There, under a heat lamp, a range of designer fowl poke around their first days on the planet—Sebastopol geese, tiny heritage turkeys, poofy Japanese silkies and the world’s smallest chicken breed (Malaysian serama) along with the world’s rarest (ayam cemani).

The afternoon visit introduces a catalog of characters from there.

There’s the heifer Bridget Brisket, now known as Houdini for her chronic pasture escapes.

Or the gobbler Sheriff William the Conqueror, who threatens to attack newbies when they get too close to his turkey harem, but changes his crown colors—from reddish to blue—when Gabriela rubs his head.

Or Ronaldinho, the neutered alpaca, who is so hot for anything with legs Gabriela calls him “gender fluid and species fluid.”

Or the kunekune hogs Guanciale and Pancetta, who conversely refuse any romance despite Barry White soundtracks playing in the barn. “One of my team suggested Drake,” Gabriela says.

Along with an upbeat human team with its own charisma, they all contribute to the living, breathing, peeping, working landscape that is Bee La Forte.

Yet with all those characters present, none better symbolizes what the farm hopes to accomplish than Tawta.

But a mini-donkey came first.

Sheriff William the Conqueror rules the roost at Bee La Forte Agroforestry Farm.

BEGINNINGS IN BRAZIL

Brazilian born chef Gabriela often speaks in 15-minute, stream of consciousness flows that are equal parts entertaining, expansive, enlightening and exhausting.

She’s also the first to call herself crazy.

When she and her husband Carlos Forte decided to replant family property near Rio de Janeiro using something called “agroforestry,” locals questioned her sanity in a less playful way.

“They said we were insane,” she recalls.

The techniques the couple applied hail from the head and heart of Swiss farmer Ernst Götsch. He moved to Brazil in 1982 to develop sustainable farming techniques known as syntropic agriculture or agroforestry.

“It’s about watching and studying how nature works…and trusting it over our own concepts,” he explains on his website. “We are part of an intelligent system, not the intelligent ones.”

Strategies include 100% diverse planting of the land, with canopyproviding cacao and other fruit trees interspersed with lower-lying vegetables, plus timber trees, flowers, grasses and grains in crop lines that might include 20 different species—as they do with early plantings at Bee La Forte—and zero pesticides or synthetic fertilizers.

In a few years Götsch transformed the poorest soils in the Bahia region into a mini-rainforest where he grows tons (and tons) of cocoa and bananas.

In Brazil, the Fortes’ lead farmer Pedro Lima was among those skeptical of such an approach. But his opinion has changed dramatically as formerly lifeless dirt now supports massive bunches of bananas and sweet potatoes that weigh 3 pounds.

“Everyone said that nothing was going to happen in that place, because it was an abandoned land,” Lima says through a translator. “But we started little by little to plant green trees and seek experiences on how to plant and manage…the place was transformed—and I was completely transformed with what I learned about agroforestry.”

Carlos just returned from a visit to the Brazilian plot for the first time in years and the sight made him emotional.

“When you see a grown up tree where there was none, when you see fruits and vegetables all over the place, it is mind blowing,” he says.

The means to do it, meanwhile, also came from Brazil, where he worked in the family business freeze drying coffee. In the 1990s Carlos was invited to Carmel to work.

In California he developed supply chains and relationships to freeze-dry fruits and vegetables for the likes of Kellogg’s and Trader Joe’s. He eventually created Vita Forte, which today connects upwards of 80% of freeze-dried açaí to the market worldwide. Açaí, while a superfood superstar Carlos helped mainstream, represents but one of 200 different freeze-dried superfoods—a term he helped define and then globalize—in Vita Forte’s catalog.

That brings us to the donkey. As they decided to go all in on the Brazil agroforestry project, Gabriela made a request for her birthday. Carlos was thinking jewelry. She asked for a miniature donkey.

After months without any donkeys to be found in Brazil, they gave up and came up with a new plan: find some land in California where they could replicate their farming success in Brazil.

The Forte’s agroforestry project in Brazil produces hefty sweet potatoes and healthy bunches of bananas. (photos by Carlos Forte)

On a visit to the Carmel Valley property, the realtor gave them news he thought would dampen their enthusiasm: They’d have to inherit some animals, including a brood of chickens and…two donkeys.

“He said, ‘The house is this way, don’t you want to see it?’” Gabriela recalls. “I said, ‘All I want is to see the donkeys!’”

In other words, the deal was done. Today Princess and her pal Lucky have the least interesting diet of the farm, but are healthiest on hay. The chickens, ducks and turkeys who do the laying, meanwhile, fall on the other end of the menu spectrum.

They benefit from a steady supply of organic superfood processing byproduct like acerola cherry and camu camu powders, which Gabriela mixes with other superfoods and GMO- and soy-free Modesto Milling organic feed for anytime eating.

They drink coconut water (also made from freeze-dried Vita Forte product). They do pasture pecking by day. Before bed they get a rotating dinner special that might feature still more superfoods, fresh herbs, edible flowers, wild miner’s lettuce, organic compost scraps or all of the above.

That’s what makes the eggs so desirable—and so expensive. The rare breeds they prefer also don’t come cheap. Clients like Elroy’s Fine Foods co-owner Jay Dolata are beginning to stock Bee La Forte eggs for around $20 a dozen.

“Gabby is someone who is really excited about food and where it comes from and how it’s made,” Dolata says. “She takes that all into consideration, and that’s what food is about. It’s about the impact it makes on our lives in every way.”

While the Bee La Forte Farm is now visiting restaurants and sharing its goodies with local chefs, its egg circulation has been hyperselective so far.

Le Soufflé in Carmel—which by definition is all about eggs—sources its eggs exclusively from Bee La Forte. Chef Ivan Samchenko notes he doesn’t have to age the egg whites for soufflés like he would

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Gabriela is a busy bee who “can be everything and everywhere all at once,” says a long-time collaborator.

normally, that the yolks’ deep orange color leaps off the steak tartare, and that he gives all his kitchen compost to the farm to help close a loop.

“This is truly a full-cycle environment that produces the eggs—I know who’s being fed with what and where it’s coming from,” Samchenko says. “I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants. I’ve seen a lot of eggs. These are perfect.”

REGENERATIVE POSSIBILITIES

On the edges of Bee La Forte Farm’s expansive acreage of grassland, oak woodlands and runaway cows sits a dry river bank that Gabriela roars by in her ATV, Violetta Tequila tucked in her right arm.

She shouts over the engine, “We can bring that river back,” she says. “We can plant water.”

It seems like her boldest proclamation yet, but watch a few Götsch videos and it becomes apparent the right ecosystemic planting can create lush amounts of moisture, boost soils and ease heat quotients.

At the Brazilian farm, manager Lima marvels at how 104-degree days just four years ago now are in-the-80s afternoons because of the forest they’ve sown.

The drought that dried the river contributed to the 2020 Cachagua Fire that burned to the doorstep of Bee La Forte Farm, and January 2022’s out-of-season Colorado Fire in Big Sur.

Carlos was there for the latter as a Mid Coast Fire Brigade volunteer. Gabriela joined the effort by cooking and delivering hot meals to the volunteers much as she did for weeks straight during the Soberanes Fire in 2016.

Carlos remembers 30-foot-high flames in Palo Colorado. Mid Coast Chief Cheryl Goetz puts them closer to 100 feet.

In their volunteer efforts the Fortes are active in confronting a scary outcome of climate change.

In their work on the farm, they aim to treat the sickness, not the symptoms—and want to build out a farm school program to help others functionally repopulate ecosystems. The former executive director of MEarth environmental education program, Ben Eichorn, was recently signed on to bring it all to fruition.

“If we can’t do it in a way that other people can see that it works and that they can do it, we’re not doing what we want to do,” says Gabriela.

She acknowledges it can be easy to feel hopeless when massive monoculture farms use pesticides and subsidies to extract maximum yield with minimal consideration about species interplay and soil quality.

“The planet is being destroyed and that’s heavy to deal with,” she says. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to accept it. We can be smarter.”

That’s why Tawta is the best mascot for Bee La Forte.

Like us, she could’ve been doomed, but the Fortes weren’t feeling that. Now, with the right love, nutrients and species around her, Tawta is thriving.

With every egg-laying miracle, you can almost hear her clucking, “Not today, doomsday.”

Mark C. Anderson is a roving writer, explorer and photographer based in Monterey County. Follow and/or reach him on Twitter and Instagram @MontereyMCA.

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